Darren Johnson - Arnesto Modesto - The World's Most Ineffectual Time Traveler

“Is there any sort of pattern you can detect?”

“It seems like they’re increasing in frequency.”

“That’s good… I think,” Pete said, scratching his head. “Is there anything you can remember about the future right now?”

Arnesto looked straight ahead and unfocused his eyes. After a few seconds, he turned to Pete. “No, nothing.”

“Hmm. Maybe you need to think about something specific. Like high school. Concentrate hard and see what you can remember.”

This time, Arnesto closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and let it out. At long last, he opened his eyes, looking disappointed.

“Nothing?” Pete asked.

“Dude, nothing ever happens at school.” Pete nodded in agreement.

“It’s late,” Arnesto said. “I should get going.”

“Alright, we’re not making much progress tonight anyway. I’ll see which of my parents will drive you home. I’ll check in with you on Monday.”

Come Monday morning, Pete checked in with Arnesto. No new memories. Tuesday, Wednesday, nothing. Soon Pete stopped checking in and soon after that, they stopped talking about it altogether.

Finally, three weeks later, Arnesto grabbed Pete and pulled him aside after Trigonometry. “I had one — a future memory. We have to go to the mall!” he said.

“What? Why?”

Arnesto looked around to make sure the coast was clear. “There’s a chick with enormous knockers!”

“What… the hell is wrong with you! For fuck’s sake, I thought somebody was going to die or something. Well, what mall? When?”

“I don’t know,” Arnesto said.

Pete’s shoulders slumped. “Do you remember anything else?”

“No. I was checking out Stephanie Summers in class — as always — and she stretched, arching her back, sticking out her chest like this—” Arnesto mimicked the motion.

“Arnesto, stop! People can see.”

“And I remembered the girl at the mall. Dude, you have to see this chick!”

“How will we find her if you don’t know where or when she’ll be?”

“Hmm,” Arnesto said. “I guess we’ll do what we did last time and we’ll run into her sooner or later.”

“But now we can’t. The first time, it happened naturally. Now, I’m always going to be thinking, ‘Is this the day? Should we go to the mall today?’ Our thought process has been altered because you had to go and alter the timeline.”

“You’re right… damn it.”

“No offense, but so far your skill only seems good for depriving me of pleasure.”

School Entrance

Monday, March 28, 1988

Morning

Pete was waiting for Arnesto at the school entrance when he arrived Monday morning. Arnesto knew it was important if Pete couldn’t even wait for him at their lockers.

“Do you remember anything about Chris Wood?” Pete asked as they walked down the hallway. Arnesto shook his head. “Anything about a tree?” More head shaking. “What about a car?”

“No. What’s going on?” Arnesto asked.

“They’re saying Chris Wood borrowed his parent’s car Saturday night without permission, lost control, and hit a tree. He’s alive, but he hit his head pretty hard. They’re saying he may not be the same after this, even if he makes it.”

“Wow, that sucks.” Arnesto knew who Chris Wood was, but they didn’t have any classes together and never crossed paths.

“How about now? Remember anything now?” Pete asked.

Arnesto shook his head. “No, nothing. Why?”

“If you had remembered before it happened, could you have prevented it?”

“Interesting. How would that work? Walk up to him and tell him he’s going to get into an accident? If his joyride was a spur-of-the-moment decision, he would have thought I was crazy. Or if he planned it, he would have wondered how the hell I knew.”

“Right. Either way, he doesn’t believe you and drives anyway. Maybe he avoids the accident but thinks you’re a freak and tells everyone. Or worse, he still gets hurt and thinks you tampered with the car somehow.” They sidestepped a couple football players walking the opposite direction. Pete continued, “The trick is to help without getting caught.”

“We could have anonymously called Chris’s parents suggesting they hide the keys. Or blocked their driveway that night. Or—”

“Or chopped down the tree, if we knew which tree. Wait, the accident would have still happened, never mind,” Pete said.

“Actually, that’s not bad, depending on what was behind the tree. If it was a field, then losing control of the vehicle while not having a serious injury might have scared some sense into Chris. My solutions would have worked that night, but maybe he would have tried again later and hit a different tree on a different night.”

“Phew!” Pete said. “It’s enough to make your head spin. Let’s say you were able to save him and get away with it. Here’s a bigger question: should you? I keep thinking about that kid whose nose you saved at the powderpuff game. What if getting hit would’ve started him on the path to becoming a world-class plastic surgeon?”

Arnesto laughed. “Or maybe the trauma of the event would’ve turned him into a supervillain. I can tell you this: life is not a zero-sum game. If I do something good, the universe isn’t going to compensate by making something bad happen. It could even lead to more good, like the woman who saves a drowning baby that grows up and becomes a doctor and saves the woman’s life many years later.”

Pete smiled; he liked what he was hearing.

“It’s kind of a moot point. There’s no way I could exactly reproduce my former life even if I wanted to. Everything I do and say, for example, this very conversation, may bring about changes that I couldn’t do anything about even if I knew about them. So yeah, may as well try to help people. Wait a minute. Did you just talk me into becoming a do-gooder?”

Now it was Pete’s turn to be amused. “I guess it’s true, ‘With great power, comes great responsibility.’” Pete noticed Arnesto’s confused look and said, “Voltaire.”

“I know,” Arnesto said, lying. “You just reminded me that they’re making a Spider-Man movie… someday.”

“Spider-Man, huh? Is it any good?”

“Yeah, it’s great. They had this cool trailer of a helicopter caught in a giant web between the towers of the World Trade Center. No, wait, they pulled the trailer… I can’t remember why. But anyway, they keep making more and more Spider-Man movies and they only get worse.”

“So I’ll only see the first one.” Pete smiled. “See? You can use your power for good!”

“Let’s see about that,” Arnesto said, noticing the situation escalating outside their homeroom door.

“You don’t hit a girl!” Todd Shea yelled. He was arguing with Nicholas Montgomery about some incident that occurred the previous summer. Apparently, Todd had just found out about it and decided to voice his concerns. Todd also had backup: three of his intimidatingly large jock friends whose names Arnesto didn’t know.

“She gave me a bloody nose!” Nicholas said, standing alone.

“I don’t care. You don’t hit a girl!”

Despite Todd’s well-crafted rebuttal, Arnesto knew — from experience — that the conversation was about to turn physical. He maneuvered around the jocks and positioned himself alongside Todd and Nicholas, who were only inches apart.

“Guys, teacher’s coming,” Arnesto said. They looked around but didn’t disperse as Arnesto hoped they would.

“ What teacher?” one of the jocks asked.

“Come on, guys, you don’t want to get suspended over something that happened last year, do you?” Arnesto asked.