“All rise,” I said as Judge Wilson swept into the courtroom. “The Court of Temporal Enforcement, Twentieth Century Division, is now in session. Judge Judith Wilson presiding.”

The courtroom was typical though the proceedings were not. Typical were the rich, dark wood tables and chairs, railings, paneling, and doors with brass fixtures. Only a handful of lawyers and court clerks were in the room. The pending cases were in the hallway outside. It was my duty to have everyone stand up to announce the entry of Judge Wilson. Tall and slim, with streaks of gray in her hair, she looked tired.

“Be seated,” she growled. She moved some papers around and cast an angry look over her reading glasses.

“I don’t mind telling the court that I’m tired and I have a headache. Let’s try to keep things orderly and as quiet as possible today. Bailiff, call in the first case.”

“Yes, Your Honor.” I rose to my feet again. “Calling case 13246. Suspected time code violations on date November… Oh shit.”

November 22, 1963. Dallas, Texas, United States of America. An American president assassinated, as his motorcade ran through Dealey Plaza, by a sniper on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. But it was hardly a routine event. There were many odd occurrences, contradictory eyewitness statements and unresolved loose ends that fed decades of alternate narratives and conspiracy theories. I smelled a clusterfuck. I have a good nose for these things.

“What’s that, bailiff?”

“Sorry, Your Honor.” I finished reading out the call for them to bring in the accused.

The double doors of the courtroom burst open. A loud rabble poured in. They were all dressed in mid-twentieth century clothing. There were four time cops and six accused. The time cops were distinguishable by their identical black suits. Two of the accused were also in dark suits. A tall older man sported a black overcoat. A younger good-looking man was wearing a sharply tailored suit with a narrow tie. He had an excellent haircut. The older man was indignant. The younger looked confused. Most of the accused were shouting at each other or loudly beseeching Judge Wilson. Not good for her headache. I only caught bits of it. Must have been a challenge for Wanda, the court reporter, who was seated next to me. I wondered what lovely Wanda might be doing after court adjourned. She would likely need a drink after this.

The accused were talking over each other. “Your Honor, please!”

“I was in the kah.”

“All the stories are true!” “This one ruined everything!” “Is it a crime to eat a banana?”

There was only one woman in the group. She wore sunglasses and a headscarf. The only one, other than the cops, who was not talking. She stood quietly toward the back of the mob in front of the bench.

The time cops were carrying various pieces of evidence. They placed the items on a table in front of Wanda and me. Included were an umbrella, some kind of fancy camera, a recording device with a long boom microphone, an old-fashioned pistol (I think they called it a .38), and

another weapon that was significantly more advanced and deadly.

Judge Wilson sank into her chair and leaned on her left elbow. She rubbed her forehead with her left hand while banging her gavel with the right.

“Order. Order!” She said wearily and then louder, more authoritatively when they didn’t react. “Order! I want order and quiet in this courtroom.”

“I have already stated I didn’t get much sleep tomorrow night. And no,” she said to preempt a couple of raised hands, “I’m not going to explain how that works. This is a time court.”

The raised hands dropped.

The Court of Temporal Enforcement was out of time. Not out of time as in ‘time’s up’ but out of the stream of events we know of as time. It had been established, along with the time codes and the time code enforcement agency, not long after the discovery that time travel was possible.

Most of what came before the court were straightforward SHITT cases. SHITT being short for “Shoot Hitler in the Trenches”. A surprising number of cases involved plots to kill that guy. Strangling baby H in his crib would raise too many questions. Easier to take a shot at him amidst the carnage of the Great War. Make him just another casualty of that conflict. So many tried, that SHITT had become the label for all attempts to change history and the future.

“So, chief, what do we have here?”

“Multiple unauthorized violations of a red zone event,” said the largest of the black suits.

That triggered another round of shouting and more gavel banging. “Your Honor. May I speak?” asked one of the accused.

“Very well. Talk. But know my patience has nearly run out, sir.” “I am not a violator. I have a permit.”

“I can confirm, Your Honor,” said another one of the time cops. “He does have a Schedule 16 permit.”

“Then why is he here?”

“Because of the altercation, Your Honor,” he said. “Altercation? You. Continue.”

“Well, Your Honor, we know that vids are not allowed for Red Zone Events. Something about observer effect that I never understood. But anyway, sound recording is allowed, especially where there is already silent video evidence. We have done amazing things with Mr. Zapruder’s original eight-millimeter film, cleaned up and enhanced the images, but there is no soundtrack. I was positioned in a rail yard at a fence overlooking the plaza—”

“Are we getting to the altercation soon?”

“Yes, Your Honor. I had the boom mic extended as the motorcade approached. Just then I feel a gun pressed against the side of my head and dickweed here says—”

“Your Honor! I must protest!” said another of the accused. “‘Dickweed?’ Really?” The gavel came down again.

“You will refrain from using such terms until accuracy is proven,” said the judge, raising an eyebrow and emphasizing proven to suggest a finding of dickweed-ism might yet occur.

“Continue.”

“So, he presses a gun against my head and says ‘Freeze, CIA asshole’. Whatever that means.”

“That’s what I thought you were,” said the suspected dickweed. “You didn’t look like a mafioso, so I figured CIA. You were exactly where they said you’d be.”

“They?”

“The people who know the truth about what happened. Come on, people! You even have men in black!”

The judge rolled her eyes. Several others in the court shook their heads. “I’m still not seeing an altercation here,” she said.

“That was when one of your cops jumped this guy and pushed the gun away from my head.” “That would be me,” said one of the cops. A very young one.

“Why didn’t you act sooner?”

“I ah, well Your Honor, it was very hot and I think I may have over-hydrated.” “He was off taking a leak,” said the head cop, “in some bushes a few yards away.” The judge started to rub her forehead again.

“Son, do you realize how many regulations you violated? You can’t leave any trace, including your own DNA.”

The young cop bowed his head in shame.

“That isn’t the worst of it, Ma’am,” said the head time cop.

The young cop raised his head. “When I pushed the gun away, I banged his wrist against the top of the fence and…”

“Yes?”

“The gun discharged, Your Honor.” said the head cop. There was a collective gasp around the courtroom. “It happened right when the shooting started. Unfortunately, somebody in the motorcade was struck in the wrist. It was the fellow sitting in the front seat of the target car. He was also hit in the back with a round from the shooter.”

“I loaded the gun with ghost rounds,” pleaded Dickweed. Ghost rounds were bullets that dissolved into nothingness shortly after firing, leaving no trace.

“Can this be handled?” asked the judge.

“Well,” said the head time cop, his brow furrowing in concentration. “There will be no ballistics evidence other than the shot from behind. It will be tricky, but possible to tie all the wounds to a single bullet.”

“My God,” said Dickweed with sudden realization. “That means I’m the shooter. I’m the one I came to stop! I’m so…”

“Confused? I bet you were, long before you got here.” Judge Wilson shook her head and frowned. She knew the crazy was just beginning. She gestured to the tall older man in the dark overcoat.

“Let’s keep this moving. I’m assuming that you, sir, are the owner of the umbrella on the evidence table?”

“Yes, Your Honor. I really must protest. I—”

“Yes, yes, but please explain first why you felt compelled to open the umbrella on a hot sunny day?”

“To resist sun exposure, of course,” said umbrella man.

A man opening an umbrella in the sunshine along the motorcade route was one of those odd sightings in Dallas that day.

“You realize that sun exposure was not nearly as fatal in the mid-twentieth century?”

“Well, I… Your Honor. I was conducting important historical research. It is an outrage that I should be brought before this court. I am a distinguished professor at the University of—”

“Do you have a permit?” “A permit? Well, no, I—”

“Then shut up. We’ll come back to you later. This one,” she said, gesturing toward a sort of

scrawny guy in workman’s clothing of the era. “What’s his story?”

Another time cop stepped forward and pulled out an old-fashioned notebook, the kind you used a pen or pencil to scribble notes on.

“Yes, Your Honor, this suspect was observed in the lunchroom of the building from where the shooting took place.”

“I was eating a banana. Is that a crime?”

“He was under surveillance because he had made himself look like the shooter and was following him that day,” the notebook-wielding cop continued. “There was also a previous trip to Mexico where—”

“Let’s just stick to the day in question.”

“Yes, Your Honor. I followed the suspect from the lunchroom up to the fifth floor of the building. That is where I apprehended him and seized a class 4 disintegrator pistol.”

He nodded to the weapon on the evidence table.

“The fifth floor?” asked Judge Wilson. “Not the sixth?” “No, Your Honor.”

“One stupid detail,” said the scrawny guy. “Otherwise, I would have done it. I would have changed everything. Saved the world!”

Why did they always say that? I thought to myself. If SHITT cases didn’t risk unleashing a cascade of unintended consequences, they would not be illegal and Temporal Enforcement would be unnecessary. This guy may have unintentionally caused too many Oswalds to appear in contradictory eyewitness and police surveillance reports leading up to, and on the day of the event.

Here the only cascade was of murmuring in the courtroom. The judge brought down her gavel again. The cop continued that the suspected plan of the accused was to do away with the shooter and his weapon before the act. Then he would assume the shooter’s identity long enough to clock out at the end of the day and disappear back to his expectedly altered time.

“OK, I’ve heard enough. That just leaves you two. Let’s hear from you first, young lady,” said the judge.

“Babushka Lady!” said Dickweed suddenly, with awe in his voice. “She’s the key. She knows the truth!”

The so-called Babushka Lady was another oddity of the event. A woman with a headscarf was witnessed filming everything from the opposite side of the road from the grassy knoll and Mr. Zapruder’s eight millimeter record of the assassination. Such a film would be evidence of what, if anything, happened over there. But she disappeared soon after. Some said men in black were involved.

The judge shook her head dismissively and said to the woman: “Am I right that this elaborate camera device on the evidence table is yours?”

“Yes, Ma’am…” said the woman.

“You will refer to me as Your Honor,” said the Judge. “Yes, Your Honor, but it isn’t a camera.”

Babushka Lady looked over at the professor in the raincoat.

“I was to use it when Professor Rutledge gave me the signal to proceed.” “Signal?”

“The umbrella, Ma’am, er, Your Honor.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere!” said Dickweed, who was sternly shushed by the cops. “I can explain, Your Honor,” said the professor in a more subdued, less indignant tone.

“I hope to blazes you can,” said the judge dryly. The jig was up. Time to come clean.

“We were there to perform a quantum extraction.”

Another gasp and murmur around the courtroom. Another banging of the gavel. “Body snatcher!” I didn’t mean to say it out loud; it drew a stern look from the judge. To the Professor she said “Are you aware, sir, that quantum extraction is illegal?” “Not in my time.”

“The ban is retroactive,” she said and looked at the papers on her desk. “It may well be your case that leads to the ban.”

I have no idea how quantum extraction works. It involves something called quantum disentanglement and there really isn’t an extraction. Rather, there is some kind of assembly of a person up from a subatomic level. Don’t get it? Neither do I. But I know it is illegal as hell.

“And what is this woman’s role in all this?”

“Well, Your Honor, we find it helps lessen the trauma for the subject if they see a familiar face. We recruited her over a year earlier.”

By “recruited” he meant that they had snatched somebody else from that time period. Likely somebody also at death’s door.

“We sensed something was up and followed the woman to a nearby alleyway,” said the head cop. “We apprehended both of them just as she completed the process.”

“I see,” said Judge Wilson. To the woman, she said “Is this all true? And please remove the headscarf and sunglasses. There is no chance of lethal sun exposure in my courtroom.”

“Yes, Your Honor.” The woman complied. Removing the garb revealed a tumble of platinum blond curls and lovely eyes that were somehow bright and sad at the same time. The man in the black suit with the nice haircut turned to her.

“Marilyn?”

Her smile was as engaging as her eyes.

“Mr. President!” she said in a breathy, sultry tone, both respectful and mischievous. “Marilyn,” he said, taking a step. “Marilyn. I was in the kah.”

Kah? Oh, car. He was a Bostonian, after all.

“It’s OK, Jack.” She held out her arms. “It will be OK.” They embraced.

“Awww.” Next to me, Wanda made the sound of seeing a cute kitten. There was some quiet applause.

“Aw for Christ’s sake!” said Dickweed. “Really?”

“Enough!” said the judge with a bang of her gavel. “You people all represent the biggest cock-up I have ever witnessed before this court. Chief, I expect to see what disciplinary measures are in store for the member of your team that pissed all over the scene.”

The head time cop nodded gravely. The offending cop hung his head again.

“The rest of you, I find sufficient grounds to proceed to trial and you are remanded until those proceedings can commence. I assume there is sufficient counsel present.”

A bunch of hands went up in the courtroom. The judge nodded. “But I have a permit!” protested Microphone Man.

“Which does not shield you from accountability for poor judgment. Of all the places to set up, you chose that one.”

Wilson then turned her attention to the embracing couple.

“This is all, except for you two. You are the court’s responsibility now. We can’t just put

you back, so I am referring you to time resettlement services. They’ll find some place and time for you. I imagine there will be a lot of questions of the both of you.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” said Marilyn. “I… I was in the kah,” said Jack.

Obviously, some more work to be done there.

“Just take care of him,” said the judge. “I think this has been more than enough for one day.” She nodded to me. I stood.

“All rise,” I said. “Court is now adjourned until 9 a.m. yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” asked Professor Rutledge. There was a groan in the courtroom. The Judge, already on her way to chambers for a pain pill and a lie down, did not respond. Why did they keep asking about that? The court was out of time.

I was bucking up the nerve to ask Wanda out for that drink. Maybe what we witnessed put her in a romantic mood.

Until yesterday then.