Author's Note:
I've been having Google Gemini lately help me turn my crazy dreams I've been having into fun to read short stories that I hope to put in a collection of like 50 short stories for publishing. This is my most recent dream to short story that I had made. ENJOY :).

The 88 MPH Problem

The hum of central air, the faint scent of stale popcorn, the worn carpet beneath my sneakers—it was all so perfectly, mundanely 1985. I was seventeen, a guest at a new friend’s house, hanging out with his crew: two girls, Lisa and Maria, and two guys, Mark and Kyle, all buzzing with restless summer energy. But something felt off. A persistent hum behind my eyes, like a faraway, forgotten frequency. I was Kate, here, in 1985, a high schooler… but a deeper part of me, a secret, adult part, felt out of sync. (Author's note for the reader: The protagonist, Kate, is 38 in her true reality, but experiences this dream as her 17-year-old self.)

Then the whispers started about the DeLorean. Not just any DeLorean, but the DeLorean. Custom-made to look exactly like the one from the movie, complete with the flux capacitor. It belonged to Mark's older brother, a real jerk who kept it locked away in his room, gloating about its uniqueness. The injustice of it, such a magnificent machine collecting dust, sparked an idea. An impossible, exhilarating idea. Mark's brother had apparently found the car, unable to believe it was just like the movie, assuming it was merely a prop. I felt a strange flicker of recognition about that detail, but it was fleeting, obscured by the thrill of the plan.

"Hey," I said to the group, pulling them into a tight huddle. "We gotta get that car out of his room. Somehow." The girls exchanged skeptical glances. Mark and Kyle leaned in, intrigued. "We use it," I continued, my voice low and conspiratorial, "to make enough money so each of us can afford our own DeLorean. Then we put his back, and he'll never even know."

Their eyes widened. The daring of it, the sheer audacity, was infectious. Before we could solidify our plans, a figure appeared in the doorway – Mark’s mom. She was a kind-faced woman, but her gaze was sharp, probing. I got the distinct impression she was a church-going type, always assessing character.

"Now, dear," she said, her voice soft but direct, "Mark tells me you're new around here. Where are you from? And tell me, are you an honest person?"

A sudden wave of guilt washed over me, a strange, misplaced feeling considering I was planning to 'borrow' her eldest son's car. "Oh, I'm from… just down the way," I stammered, then decided to play along with the assumption her question implied. "And yes, ma'am, I like to think I'm very honest."

"Good," she smiled warmly. "And Mark said you're seventeen, born in March? So you must be a '68 baby, then."

My breath hitched. My internal paradox screamed. I had agreed, knowing it was the polite, expected answer, but the truth burned. '68? No, that's not right. A sudden, impulsive need for honesty, for reality, seized me. "Actually, ma'am," I started, feeling a bizarre compulsion to set the record straight, "I was born in March of 1987."

Her smile faltered, replaced by a look of utter confusion. "1987? But that's… that's two years from now, dear." She chuckled, a nervous sound. "Are you joking, or… are you feeling quite alright?" I scrambled for something, anything, a fact to ground myself in this strange conversation. Reagan is president, I thought. No, she’d already know that. The moment hung heavy, awkward, before she excused herself, shaking her head.

The scene fractured, dissolved.

I jolted, not awake, but into another layer of awareness. I was still 17, but the room around me was dimly lit, unfamiliar. My Dad, Dan, was there, and my stepmother, Heather. They sat on a worn couch, looking at me with concern. "What happened?" Heather asked.

"I don't know," I mumbled, the words of the mom from 1985 still ringing in my ears. "I was just talking to Mark's mom, and I told her… I told her I was born in 1987. She got really confused, said it was two years in the future." I looked at Dad, my real-world anchor. "Dad, Reagan's the president in '85, right? Like, he's president now?"

Dad, a walking encyclopedia of presidential history, nodded slowly. "Yeah, hon. Reagan's absolutely president right now, in '85. She'd know that like the back of her hand." He frowned, looking at me strangely. "Why would you even ask that?"

I shrugged, the confusion deep. "I don't know. It was weird." A new thought struck me, an almost desperate need for future validation. "Who are the next three presidents after Reagan, Dad? Just... out of curiosity."

He raised an eyebrow, but indulged me. "Well, first would be George H.W. Bush. Then Bill Clinton. And then his son, George W. Bush."

"Okay," I muttered, the names settling in my mind. The world flickered again, a violent, disorienting snap.

I was back in 1985, back in Mark's living room. Had I passed out? The conversation with his mom, my ridiculous assertion of a future birth year, the confusion – it was all real. And the names: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush. My dad. He'd told me. But then, a chilling realization blossomed in my mind. Had he? Or had I conjured him, his response a figment of my own subconscious, feeding me information I already held, though repressed? The president question… I’d asked him as if he knew, but I was the one with the future knowledge. My father, in that dream layer, was nothing more than a voice designed to give me the information I needed for this time. The implications were dizzying.

Mark nudged me. "You spaced out for a second there. You good?"

"Yeah," I breathed, feeling suddenly, terrifyingly aware. "Better than good. Listen, guys, we gotta get that car out here. And we have to be smart. This DeLorean has some serious potential for danger. When it goes through time, it gets incredibly cold, almost freezing, and it needs to cool down—or really, warm up—before it can be used again. But that's not the biggest risk. It could potentially hit someone or something, or even worse, merge with other matter when it travels through time. We need to either travel somewhere totally empty and safe, or we need to mod it somehow to prevent it from hitting or merging with anything."

They listened, captivated by my sudden intensity. "Once that's settled," I continued, "all we need to do is reach 88 mph, and you're gonna see some serious shit."

I looked at their young, hopeful faces. I was from 2004, not 1985, and only 17 here, just like them. My future knowledge was limited. I knew about the dot-com bubble, about companies like Microsoft and Apple, but that is long-term. We needed cash now. So I proposed the plan: "We use the DeLorean to only go back, say, a couple of weeks. We use future information—winning lottery numbers, stock market fluctuations, sports scores—to make enough money so we can each buy a DeLorean and custom-make it like this one. Then we put his car back, and he'll never be any wiser."

I looked at them seriously. "But this is crucial: never, ever go very far back in time. You could make what feels like a tiny change, a ripple, and yet undo or change your present in ways you can't even imagine. You could erase yourselves or others from existence. If you go back in time, don't go too far. If you go forward, you can be more lax with the rules, but still be cautious about what you bring back to the present, so as not to alter the timeline too much. We don't want to mess up our own future."

The words tumbled out of me, a mix of genuine caution and giddy excitement. I still wasn't sure how I had gotten to 1985, or why I was 17 here, but I was here, and I had the knowledge. This DeLorean, sitting in the jerk brother's room, was my ticket to... something.

Our first chance came a few nights later. The jerk brother was out. We managed to get the DeLorean out of his room, a painstaking effort that involved makeshift ramps and silent coordination. I got behind the wheel, the digital display of the time circuits glowing an ominous green. Mark, Lisa, Maria, and Kyle piled in, their excitement barely contained.

"Alright," I said, gripping the wheel. "Couple of weeks back. Get ready for some serious cash."

I floored it. The car lurched forward, gaining speed rapidly. 50… 60… 70… 80…

"88!" Kyle yelled.

The exterior of the car shimmered, then vanished in a flash of light. A surge of exhilarating cold consumed us, a deep, bone-chilling cold that made us gasp. Then, just as quickly, it was gone. We materialized in the same alleyway we’d started in, the air now warm, normal.

"We did it!" Lisa shrieked.

I looked around. The alley was the same. But something felt... off. I checked the time circuits. Instead of two weeks ago, the date read: July 15th, 1984. We hadn't gone back a couple of weeks. We'd gone back several months.

"Whoa, easy there, speed demon!" Mark chuckled, clapping me on the shoulder. "A few months off, no big deal! We'll just jump forward a bit, right?"

"Yeah," Maria added, already getting out of the car. "We got the whole summer ahead of us to correct a little date. Think of the extra lottery draws we could hit!"

I shook my head, my newfound understanding turning their casual dismissiveness into a cold dread. "Don't you see?" My voice was tight, barely a whisper. "We only selected two weeks. It went back months. Remember, I told you I was really from 2004, and I'm currently with you in '85 – err, '84 now? Well, that can't be a coincidence. Something is seriously wrong with this vehicle. Either the date we enter is off, a display issue not showing us the exact time we're really traveling to, or each time we jump, it gets worse and worse. Who knows, we could end up in the Stone Age." The car's internal lights flickered, the flux capacitor glowing erratically. A faint, acrid smell, like burnt ozone and something metallic, drifted from the engine. This wasn't a minor glitch. This was deterioration.

We tried another jump, just a small one, a day forward to get back on track. The cold was more intense, the shudder more violent. The dashboard flickered, a red warning light flashing briefly before dying. The acrid smell was stronger, and a faint groan echoed from beneath the hood. Each subsequent jump was worse. Days turned into weeks, then months, as we tried to navigate back to our original present. The DeLorean bucked, sputtered, and threatened to tear itself apart with every temporal leap. The windows sometimes frosted over so violently we couldn't see. The console sparked. The cold became unbearable, even when we braced for it.

The initial excitement drained from Mark, Lisa, Maria, and Kyle, replaced by a growing terror. The lure of easy money, of personal DeLoreans, vanished like smoke. All they wanted was to get back to their 1985, to their own time.

"This is insane, Kate!" Lisa screamed after a jump that landed us in what looked like 1978. "I don't want a DeLorean! I just want to go home!"

"Me neither," Mark added, his face pale. "This thing is a monster. We have to fix it, just enough to get us back. And then we walk away."

It was a painstaking, terrifying process. We spent weeks, sometimes months, in different pasts, making small jumps, experimenting, trying to understand the car's new, broken logic. I poured over schematics, trying to decipher the alien engineering, feeling an almost instinctive connection to the machine's failing systems. Slowly, painfully, we began to understand its quirks, to coax it, to stabilize it just enough for precise, short jumps. The vision of my Dad, Dan, in the "false awakening" now seemed like a distant echo, a memory from a different reality, its source still a mystery, but its prophetic details about the car's worsening state now terrifyingly real.

Finally, after what felt like years trapped in a time-traveling nightmare, we calculated one last, desperate jump. A jump to August 1985. Our present.

"This is it," I said, my voice steady, though my hands trembled on the wheel. "Last one. You guys go first."

They scrambled out of the car as soon as we materialized in the alley, gasping in the humid summer air, their faces etched with relief and a profound exhaustion. They looked older, wiser, hardened by our accidental odyssey. They hugged each other, laughing, crying, finally home.

"Thank you, Kate," Mark said, his eyes filled with genuine gratitude. "You saved us from that… that thing." He glanced at the DeLorean, now smoking faintly, its time circuits dark, seemingly dead. "We don't want another one. Not ever. Just... be safe."

I nodded, a bittersweet ache in my chest. This was their stop. Not mine.

"Goodbye, guys," I said, forcing a smile. "I'll see you... well, you'll see me eventually. Oh hey don't forget to make some investiments in dot com, Microsoft, Apple and Google when you see them. Well...I'll see you in the future." My time was set to go back to my present in 2004.

I got back in, revved the engine one last time, praying to the quantum gods it had one last jump in it. I hit 88 mph. The cold, the flash, the lurch.

The alleyway was still there. But the air was different. The buildings looked newer, yet older. I stepped out, my legs stiff. The DeLorean sputtered, then died, its body corroded, its systems finally giving out for good.

Suddenly, a voice. "Welcome back, my friend."

I turned. Standing there were four adults. Two men, two women. All around 36 years old. Mark, his face lined with age but his eyes still kind. Lisa, her hair streaked with grey. Maria, looking strong and confident. And Kyle, a quiet strength about him. They smiled, a knowing, welcoming smile.

Mark stepped forward, extending a hand. "Took you long enough," he chuckled, but his grip was warm, solid. "We were starting to think you got stuck. Good thing we made sure to come back here once a year, just in case you reappeared."

I looked at them, my friends, aged but unmistakably them. They remembered. They understood. After all those years, all those jumps, all the terrifying uncertainty, I was finally home.