She wasn't the only one on trial. This trial was different. It wouldn't only decide her fate. No. This trail was going to decide how the law viewed the universe. How it determined reality, within the confines of court-rooms the world over.

She was scared. She was right to be. She was being put on trial. Her crime? Murder. Or so, the prosecutors would have us believe.

He was lucky. Lucky to have found it. This thing shouldn't exist. According to the laws of physics, it couldn't. Or could it? It was highly unlikely, that's for sure. Even more unlikely that it should appear where it did.

In the corner of his living room stood a chair. An old chair. But for all intents and purposes, it was just a normal chair. But a new chair when he'd bought it a couple of weeks earlier. He never understood how or why it happened, in particular why it happened on that chair. But every now and again, an item would appear unannounced.

Now the things that would appear were fairly normal by most standards, and so he was willing to believe.

And yet it still didn't come close to explaining why the chair aged a little more whenever it happened.

The answer eventually came in the form of a newspaper. A fairly normal news paper. The story on the front page was something about a girl who'd been convicted of murder. Nothing particularly strange about that.

That is, until he noticed the date.

There was no other explanation. This newspaper had to have come from the future!

And so it was that the girl in the story was put on trial. On trial for a murder she hadn't committed. Yet. And so the trail proceeded as trials often do. Eventually, it was decided that while she couldn't be convicted for a murder she hadn't committed, she should be kept under surveillance until the date given by the paper had passed.

Her term was served and she was released early after a further review decided her conviction was preposterous. This was much to the man's dismay. So he fought against it, until it was finally agreed that she should be locked up for an extra month, at least. Just to be on the safe side.

She didn't like that. She hadn't done anything. Why was she being convicted?

They say the devil's in the detail. Had he looked closer, he would have noticed in the background, the outline of a man, not unlike himself, bleeding to death as the woman was being taken away. And the headline of that newspaper?

WHAT FREE WILL?

If she was going to be convicted, she thought, she might as well give them a reason. And with that thought, she grabbed a gun from one of her escorts, and shot the man thrice in the chest. And as the newspaper had foretold, she was convicted on the spot.

And the chair? A copy of the newspaper that had caused all the trouble had been laid on it. In a moment, it disappeared, leaving behind a slightly newer chair.