"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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