"Time, ah, Heals Itself"

HERE'S A FRESH TAKE on a very old science fiction cliché. Eventually the time will come when we must say . . .

"Goodbye, Howard Henning."
By John E. Stith (born 1947).

Illustration by Jacey (Jason Cook; HERE).
Short short short story (2 pages).
Online at Nature/Futures (HERE; PDF).

     "The gun barrel swung slowly until it was directed at Harold."

Bureaucracy rules—and the first rule of bureaucracy is to cover up your mistakes any way 
you can . . .

Characters:
~ Harold Henning:
  "That can't be right."
~ The visitor:
  "I really hate Form 18083."

Resources:
- John Edward Stith, who seems to delight in crossing crime fiction with SFF (sometimes satirically), has won quite a few Major Awards in his time; see Wikipedia (HERE), the SFE (HERE), the ISFDb (HERE), and his website (HERE).

- Another story with a time travel premise, this one highlighting different character motivations, is Edward McDermott's "The Snatchers" (HERE) from last November.

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