First published in Micro-Fiction Monthly
Copyright William Hammett 2015, 2022
All Rights Reserved
It's not like Jude Wells, electrical engineer and
upstanding citizen of Carbondale, Illinois, hadn't been forewarned. Like
everyone in the United States, he'd been told by his teachers that everything
he did would follow him for the rest of his life.
Jude was stopped on a dark Monday evening by
the Carbondale police for running a red light. Jude firmly believed that
the light had been yellow when the tail of his Ford Taurus cleared the
intersection, but Officer Warren Faulkner disagreed. Jude received a
ticket.
At traffic court three weeks later, Jude
pleaded not guilty, but Judge Clyde Muggers threw the book
at him after the bailiff handed His Honor a file while whispering in his ear.
"You can't evade the consequences of your actions any
longer, Mr. Wells," declared the judge. "I'm looking at your
permanent record, and I don't think we can risk any further missteps on your
part."
"Missteps?"
"It says here," continued the judge,
"that you were punished in third grade for talking in class. You also
failed a math test in sixth grade, a test on fractions. You being an
engineer, I don't have to impress upon you the importance of fractions. And
then there was your suspension from the varsity track team in high school, as
well as your first set of ACT scores."
"How do you know all this?" Jude asked,
perplexed.
The judge merely held up Jude's file, his
permanent record, which had been housed in an underground warehouse in Wyoming
for thirty-eight years. It's right next to the warehouse where everyone's
IQ scores are kept.
Jude Wells was sentenced to twenty years of
intense personal reflection at the state penitentiary. His
permanent record had finally caught up with him.
~William Hammett
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