Arnesto Modesto: The World's Most Ineffectual Time Traveler

A City Erupts

Arnesto's Hotel Room

Los Angeles, California

Wednesday, April 29, 1992

1:03 a.m.

Arnesto turned off the TV. He had finished watching a rerun of Cheers, and now it was time to move. He grabbed his knapsack and left his hotel room. He was only a block or so from Koreatown in Los Angeles. It was just after one o'clock in the morning, and only an occasional vehicle drove past.

He had told Katrina he was driving down to LA, but under the pretense that he was helping his grandmother move into a retirement home. In reality, she had already been living there a month.

Upon arriving at his target area, he walked a few more blocks, feeling an outward spiral pattern would work best. To him, it seemed less likely he would be caught walking in a spiral than if he simply went back and forth. He could also keep turning left while avoiding crossing his own path. And should he need to bail, due to a mugger, an irate store owner, or a suspicious police officer, he could do so easily, knowing more people would have seen his flyers at the center of Koreatown than the fringes. Who was he kidding, a spiral pattern was more fun.

At last, he arrived at the epicenter. Ground zero. Time to strike. He made sure the area was clear, then pulled a staple gun and a flyer out of his bag and stapled the flyer to a telephone pole.

BEWARE RIOTERS

TODAY, 4/29/92

If the officers who beat Rodney King
are acquitted, the people may riot.

Protect yourself and your family.
Good luck.

He tagged another telephone pole, then taped a flyer to a store window, keeping watch all the while. It took a few attempts, but soon he could rip off a piece of tape in his pocket, stick it to a flyer still in his bag, then remove the flyer from his bag and stick it to a store window in one smooth motion. Usually he could do this without stopping (except for high-value targets like bus stop billboards on which he posted more than one flyer), and eventually he could do it without even looking.

He thought about the anonymous letter he had written to the defense team imploring them to plead guilty. This had understandably been ignored. He thought about the other letter, sent from a fictional local business owner and addressed to the court. This one implored the judge to read the verdict "at a time inopportune for public outcries," but this letter, too, appeared to be ignored. And so Arnesto had found himself at a Kinko's on Wilshire Boulevard during their slow hours discretely making a couple hundred copies of his prescient flyers.

He tagged doors, too, hanging flyers over the locks. While a rushed business owner might not see a flyer on their window, there was no way they could miss a flyer blocking their lock. They might rip it off and toss it aside without a glance, but at least they wouldn't miss it entirely. He imagined a business owner looking at the flyer, taking it in his hand and reading it, then going home. Arnesto was jolted back to reality. The door he had just tagged moved. Not much, less than an inch, but it was open. It wasn't a business.

It was an apartment building. He peered inside and saw rows and rows of those thin little mailboxes that can only hold mail inserted vertically. Feeling bold and not seeing anyone around, he opened the door and stepped in. It was the perfect spot for him to deliver his message. While his other flyers might be read by no one, here he was virtually guaranteed a much larger audience. He put up several flyers, more than a dozen in total. He felt satisfied as he reached the back door of the long hallway. Just in time, too. He heard footsteps coming down a stairway from above, two, maybe three floors up. The bottom of the stairs was right behind him on his side of the building.