With Arnesto’s increasingly compromised blood-brain barrier, the hemorrhaging began to overwhelm him. Nurse Pearl watched as her patient’s brainwaves turned to flatlines on the small monitor by his bed. Through watery eyes, she noticed one of the men looking at her.
“He’s gone,” she said to him in a whisper, though the room was so quiet, nearly everyone heard.
There were hugs and tears and final goodbyes as people slowly filtered out of the room. Marcus clicked off the viewing monitor. The nanobots were all but gone, too, having completed their mission.
“Did it work? Is he in the past?” Jessenia asked, lingering at the foot of her grandfather’s bed.
Marcus crouched down to meet her at eye level. “Arnesto told me the experiment was so tricky, that even if it worked, there would be no way for us to know.” He glanced at Nurse Pearl who looked up as she pulled the sheet over Arnesto’s head. Marcus then looked back at Jessenia. “Your grandpa tried something that’s never been done before. If anybody could make it work, it was him.” Jessenia seemed to accept this answer and met her mom who was waiting for her in the doorway.
“Do you think he did it? Is it possible?” Nurse Pearl asked when the girl left.
Marcus looked at his monitor and saw a piece of destroyed nanobot float by in one of the windows. He shrugged, “If he did, the past had better watch out.”
On the outskirts of Arnesto’s memory center, one last reactor bot found and attached to a memory. It extracted the information and unleashed an enormous localized burst of energy, and then the memory was gone.
Familiarities
Modesto Residence
Massachusetts
Late Twentieth Century
The energy burst arrived as an impulse, which Arnesto’s brain interpreted and saved as a memory. The memory was of Arnesto at the DMV when he was twenty-eight. Not the most exciting memory, to be sure. However, it was a moot point. Arnesto would never have cause to recall this particular memory. Even if he could, even if he knew it existed, his young brain was too immature to handle it.
Arnesto giggled as the toy racecar left the track and landed on the shag carpeting. It didn’t take much to entertain him. He was, after all, only four years old. His mother kept an eye on him as she prepared his snack of apple slices.
“Are you excited to see the boats?” she asked. They were about to drive into Boston to see the tall ships arrive in celebration of the nation’s bicentennial.
He nodded, unaware of both the significance of the event and the fact that he had just made history of his own. One couldn’t blame him; there was no trail of flames, no ball of lightning, no fanfare of any kind. Still, it was there — a remnant from the future, harmlessly locked away inside the mind of a preschooler. Young Arnesto was now leading the world in time travel by exactly one memory’s worth of brain cells. As if in celebration of the event over which he had no control or even knowledge, he ate his apple slices.
At age five, Arnesto was relieved to hear his town included in the long list of school closings broadcast over the radio during the Blizzard of ‘78. He headed outside with his parents, where he climbed the enormous snowbank left behind by the snowplows working nonstop. He knew just where to jump to break through the thick layer on top of the three feet of powder covering the lawn. He knew because he remembered seeing his dad do exactly that on the 16mm projector they got out when family came to visit. Alas, he didn’t weigh enough and landed disappointed on top of the icy crust. His father had better luck, breaking through and now caught in snow up to his waist while his mother recorded it on camera. Just like he remembered.
When he was seven, and it was down to him and his neighbor, Cathy Gross, in the first-grade spelling bee, he somehow knew she was going to misspell “brown” as “braun” right before she did. He didn’t give it another thought. He was too excited about winning to reflect on what happened. Excitement that faded when his prize, disguised as a sugar cookie, revealed itself to be a damn oatmeal cookie.
He was ten when the family took a trip to Niagara Falls. Standing by the rail atop the American side, a bee appeared out of nowhere and stung Arnesto on his wrist, causing him to yelp in pain.
“Ow! Again?!” he said. Nobody was sure why he said, “again.” Had he been stung recently? No one could recall. Later, they were in the car when Arnesto’s mother, Nancy, turned around from the front passenger seat to ask how he and his little brother Gerald were enjoying the trip, aside from the insect attack.
“I saw the twins from soccer,” Arnesto said.
“You did? Where?” Nancy asked.
“Outside the Ripley’s Museum.” Confused, Nancy looked at her husband, Karl, then back at Arnesto.
“We haven’t been there yet. We’re going there now,” she said.
“Oh, right.” She was right, they hadn’t been there yet. He kept his eyes open as they arrived, parked, and headed into Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum. Arnesto was excited. After all, it had been his idea to go there. Though reluctant to go at first, his parents caved in and wound up also enjoying the oddities and exhibits.
When they finished their tour and were pulling away in the car, Arnesto took one last look at the museum, where he saw the twins Karen and Katherine Mitchell and their parents walking up the sidewalk to the entrance.
This was no big deal to Arnesto, who figured his earlier memory must have come from seeing them somewhere else in the area the day before and confused that with the museum somehow.
Two years later the family was watching the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. “Oh, look, Karl, that man is flying in on a jetpack! Do you think we’ll all have jetpacks soon?” Nancy asked.
“I don’t know,” Karl shrugged.
“No, they’re too expensive, impractical, and especially dangerous for everyday use,” Arnesto said.
“Gee, way to kill my dreams,” Nancy laughed. “How do you know that?”
“I must have learned it… sometime,” Arnesto said. Try as he might, he couldn’t recall when he had acquired this information. On the other hand, he felt confident his future would be disappointingly devoid of jetpacks.
And so Arnesto would continue to have these rare, sporadic moments of foresight that he couldn’t explain. They were harmless, inconsequential, and quickly forgotten. They never appeared to affect anyone, least of all him.
Until one did.
Outed
Sophomore Gym Class
Monday, October 12, 1987
B Period
It was cold outside, especially for one standing around in a field waiting for someone else to hit a ball at them. For some reason, the coach decided they were going to play softball for gym class that day. He chose the field closest to the school where there weren’t any benches. This meant one team stood in the field waiting for anything to happen while the other team stood around home plate waiting for their chance at bat. It was a large class. When his team took the field, Arnesto saw that they already had six or seven outfielders, so he chose a spot partway between shortstop and the left fielders.
As had been happening all period, there wasn’t a lot of action. There were many fine athletes at the school, however, few of them made it into the early morning sophomore gym class. Todd Shea happened to be one of the few present with any skill.
After a wise choice not to swing at his first pitch which landed on the ground five feet in front of the plate, he was given a perfect second pitch. The crack of the bat turned a few heads as he connected with a long fly ball to left field where Jon Kelley snagged it on a bounce. Arnesto saw Jon start to pull his arm back and quickly turned to first base where Todd had no intention of stopping. Arnesto wasn’t particularly concerned with the play, as he knew Jon could easily throw the ball to second. He became concerned, though, when he heard Jon shout his name from behind him. In that split second, Arnesto started to turn his head to the right, but then flinched and moved it the other way as he brought his glove up to where his face had nearly been, blindly catching Jon’s throw.