“Jim Jones, 28 years old, guilty of catastrophic tampering with causality. Rise,” said the bailiff.

The judge entered the courtroom.

“Mr. Jones, I hereby sentence you to temporal rectification. You have 24 hours present time to comply. Failure to do so will lead to severe consequences. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Jim, under supervision, was time jumped to the past to encounter his younger self.

“Jimmy?”

“Yes.”

“We have to talk …”

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He spoke at length with his younger self to convince him to alter his future life choices.

Jim had vanished … but he stood at judgment once again …

“We’ve discovered it, Mr. Jones.”

“Discovered what?”

“We know about the memory engram injection.”

“But I didn’t …”

“Apparently, your prior self programmed your younger self’s memory. We scanned your DNA and found the fragments. A very clever attempt at creating a loop to assassinate our great inventor of time travel. Did you really believe that would work? Unfortunately for you, you’ve made comparatively worse life choices this time around as per the holo-records on the temporal isolator.”

Jim shrugged. “Anything’s better than living in this time-traveling nightmare: Time Protectors and their constant temporal corrections, exploitations, and so-called rectifications. You’ve created monsters. It’ll only take one rogue to spin the wrong wheel, sending us all to paradox hell, destroying everything!”

“Very well, Mr. Jones, you leave us no choice but to take the most drastic action.”

A Time Protector jumped back 30 years to meet a young newlywed couple enjoying their honeymoon on a secluded beach.

“Mr. and Mrs. Jones, I presume?”