7. Time Police Writing Competition

Entry by Michael Hopkins

Regulation 847.6

Under no circumstances is any officer, trainee officer, field operative, or member of Team 385 to rescue, adopt, relocate, conceal, feed, comfort, name, transport, or otherwise become involved with any goose, gosling, duck, duckling, swan, cygnet, chicken, or other historically situated avian entity during an active operation to apprehend illegals or correct anomalies in the Timeline without the prior written approval of Animal Containment, Field Operations, Historical Integrity, and Captain Harker. Statements including but not limited to “it was only a baby,” “it would have died,” “it liked me,” and “I only picked it up for a minute” shall not be accepted in mitigation.

Time Police Internal Report

Subject: The Bruges Incident

Filed by: Captain Harker

Unit involved: Team 385

Status: Closed, regrettably

At 11:17 local time, Team 385 deployed to Bruges, 1468, in response to reports of an illegal time traveller operating in the vicinity of the Burgundian court during the marriage celebrations of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York, together with a minor but developing anomaly in the sequence of ceremonial events.

The illegal in question was believed to be using the crowds, processions, and general confusion of the day as cover. Team 385’s orders were simple. Locate the illegal. Identify the anomaly. Correct both. Return without attracting attention.

At 11:19, Officer Grainger removed a gosling from beneath a produce cart.

This was not part of the mission.

When questioned later, Officer Grainger stated that the gosling was trapped, squealing, and in immediate danger of being crushed by a wagon wheel. Officer Dacre stated that this remained none of their business. Officer Murdoch stated that taking hold of one small bird for a few seconds could not possibly compromise the operation.

This assessment was incorrect in every particular.

At 11:20, the parent goose returned.

At 11:21, Officer Grainger, now carrying the gosling, was pursued across the square by a highly motivated adult goose with excellent speed, strong opinions, and no respect whatever for operational discipline. In evading it, she collided with a stall selling devotional trinkets, ribbons, and sugared pastries. This caused noise.

Noise was unhelpful because at 11:21 the illegal, who had until then been under intermittent surveillance by Officer Dacre, looked round, spotted the disturbance, and moved away into the crowd.

At 11:22, Officer Dacre attempted to continue the pursuit while also disentangling Officer Grainger from the goose. He was not successful in either objective.

At 11:23, Officer Murdoch deployed a localised distraction field in order to cover the disruption and buy the team a few seconds. Unfortunately, due either to poor luck, poor timing, or simply Team 385 being Team 385, the field deflected a section of the Burgundian ceremonial procession directly into the affected area.

At 11:24, the illegal took advantage of the diverted guards, crossed a restricted point in the square, and interfered with a sequence already flagged as vulnerable.

This was the anomaly.

The illegal, in attempting to hide behind a ceremonial gift table, pulled at one corner of the cloth. The goose, reacting perhaps to movement and perhaps to simple malice, launched itself in the same direction. The table overturned.

At 11:25, an inkstand was spilled across a seating list.

At 11:26, the blue-and-gold ribbon marking the precedence of the English gift table was detached from the correct item and attached to the wrong one.

At 11:27, a clerk made a hurried amendment to the order of presentation.

At 11:28, two minor officials began a dispute over precedence.

At 11:29, notes were taken.

In the subsequent review, Officer Shaw and I agreed that matters might still have remained recoverable had Officer Murdoch not chosen this moment to shake emergency grain from his pocket while saying, “Here, birdie.”

This attracted not only the original goose but three further geese, several ducks, and one swan. No satisfactory explanation has been provided for the swan. Officer Murdoch maintains that it was already there. Nobody believes him.

By 11:31, the square had become the site of an active pursuit, an unresolved anomaly, one escaping illegal, a compromised ceremony, and a worsening concentration of hostile waterfowl.

At 11:33, Officer Dacre apprehended the illegal.

At 11:33 and several seconds, he discovered he had apprehended a local silk merchant of respectable standing and extremely understandable indignation.

At 11:35, the actual illegal, still at large, took advantage of the ceremonial confusion and made a second adjustment to the order of proceedings, this time creating a survivable but unacceptable branch in which the incident later appeared in three accounts as a deliberate slight by the English party to Burgundian dignity.

At 11:37, Officer Grainger secured the gosling.

At 11:38, the goose secured the table runner.

At 11:39, the swan secured the chapel entrance.

At 11:40, Officer Murdoch secured the square temporally in an effort to prevent further contamination, thereby trapping Team 385, two clerics, five officials, one pastry seller, one eel woman, the wrong prisoner, the actual illegal, and all relevant birds inside a stabilised containment zone.

At 11:42, the actual illegal attempted escape by climbing a statuary plinth and was knocked off it by the swan.

This, unexpectedly, was helpful.

At 11:44, the illegal was finally apprehended.

At 11:45, the anomaly remained uncorrected, because nobody could get near the overturned table without provoking further avian intervention.

At 11:49, Team 385 requested assistance.

At 11:50, I received the request.

At 11:51, I received a second request, marked urgent.

At 11:52, I received a third request consisting solely of the words: “Bring nets. And perhaps a priest.”

I arrived at 11:57 to find Officer Grainger crouched behind an upturned bench holding a gosling wrapped in part of a ducal cloth, Officer Dacre trying to explain the wrongful arrest of a silk merchant, Officer Murdoch defending the tactical logic of grain, and the illegal handcuffed to a decorative pillar and complaining about the swan.

Timeline restoration required the removal of all birds, the reinstatement of the correct seating order, the substitution of one damaged ribbon, the repositioning of two witnesses, the correction of three written references, the release of the silk merchant with compensation, and the suppression of an emerging divergence now retained in sealed records as the Bruges Waterfowl Incident.

The sequence has since been stabilised.

No approved historical account now refers to “the Fowl Insult.”

The review concluded that the primary cause of the incident was not the illegal, nor the anomaly, nor even Officer Murdoch’s indefensible grain-based strategy. The primary cause was Officer Grainger’s persistent inability to see a distressed creature without behaving as if all operational priorities are temporarily suspended.

Regulation 847.6 was therefore enacted with immediate effect.

Officer Grainger objected to the phrase “persistent inability.”

Forms wished to insert the word “pathological.”

I declined on the grounds that we are, at least in principle, a professional organisation.

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