⚖️ The Trial of Nothing at All 🕳️

The summons arrived like a bad omen.

Folded into a crisp white envelope, slipped under Rowan’s apartment door sometime between the dawn traffic and the neighbor’s dog barking at ghosts. The paper was heavy, official, the kind that made your stomach flip even before you read a single word. At the top, in blocky lettering that looked far too confident in itself, were the words:

MANDATORY APPEARANCE — COMMUNITY REVIEW HEARING

Rowan blinked at it, reread the name, checked the address twice. Yep. That was him. And apparently, he was wanted at the Hall of Civic Conduct in less than an hour.

Perfect. Just the way he wanted to spend a Tuesday morning.

He threw on a shirt that probably needed ironing, grabbed a granola bar that tasted like sadness, and walked out the door, trying not to imagine handcuffs or spotlights or people shouting shame like an over-the-top medieval festival.

As usual, his imagination did not listen.

The Hall of Civic Conduct looked like something built for a sci-fi movie villain: towering dark walls, tall arched windows, and a main entryway guarded by two people who looked like they hadn’t blinked since last April. One of them checked his summons, nodded with grim approval, and motioned him through metal detectors that whirred like irritated wasps.

Inside, the building was quieter than a library at midnight. Every footstep echoed like it was being graded.

A woman in a charcoal-gray suit approached him with a smile that somehow conveyed both hospitality and subtle threat.

“Rowan Thatch?” she asked.

“Uh… yes?” he tried.

“Good. They’re waiting for you.”

They.

Always a comforting word when used vaguely by someone too calm.

She led him to a pair of enormous double doors that opened not with hinges but with a low hydraulic sigh, like the building was rolling its eyes at him for showing up unprepared.

The room inside was shaped like a half-circle, with a raised platform for the panel of adjudicators. Five of them sat there, each wearing the same stern robe, the same severe expression, the same aura that said, We haven’t laughed since the invention of the lightbulb.

A single chair awaited Rowan at the center of the room.

Spotlit.

Lonely.

Accusatory.

He swallowed. Hard.

“Please take your seat,” said the woman in the center, her tone making it sound less like a request and more like an inevitability.

Rowan sat. The chair was surprisingly uncomfortable, like it had been engineered specifically for maximum self-doubt.

The woman folded her hands. “This is a disciplinary hearing addressing your recent conduct.”

He waited.

Nothing.

Just five judge-like figures staring at him.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Um… what conduct?”

Another ripple of irritated energy moved through the panel. One judge leaned to whisper to another. The man on the far left pinched the bridge of his nose. The woman in the center tilted her head as if Rowan had spoken in ancient Sumerian.

“You know why you’re here, Mr. Thatch,” she said.

“No,” Rowan insisted. “Really. I don’t.”

A judge on the right raised an eyebrow so sharply it could’ve cut fruit.

The woman sighed. “Very well. If you insist, we will begin with evidence.”

She nodded to a clerk, who pressed a button on a remote. A projection screen lit up behind them.

Rowan braced.

The screen showed a hallway. Plain beige walls. A drinking fountain that always tasted faintly metallic. A set of stairs everyone avoided because they smelled permanently of gym socks.

Rowan blinked. “That’s the stairwell by my office.”

“Yes,” the woman said.

A blurry figure appeared on screen. Very blurry. The camera clearly hadn’t updated since the era of rotary phones.

“Do you recognize this person?” the woman asked.

“I mean… they’ve got arms and legs, so yes? But that could be anyone.”

“It is you,” she said flatly. “Walking down the hallway at 6:42 p.m. last Thursday.”

He frowned. “I left at five on Thursday.”

“You think you did,” said the judge on the far right, his tone so condescending Rowan wanted to throw a shoe at him. “Memory is fallible.”

Rowan’s jaw tightened. “What exactly do you think I was doing?”

The woman tapped her pen. “Approaching the Restricted Access Office.”

He blinked. “The what?”

The man on the left gave a slight scoff. “As if he doesn’t know.”

“I don’t!” Rowan protested. “Where even is that?”

“Beyond the stairwell,” the woman answered. “Past the door with the gold plaque.”

“The one that’s always locked?” Rowan asked. “I’ve never even been near it.”

“Yet,” she said, “you were captured on footage walking past it.”

“That’s not illegal!” Rowan exclaimed. “It’s a hallway! That’s what hallways are for!”

The panel exchanged looks heavy with disapproval.

Another judge leaned forward. “Mr. Thatch, your refusal to acknowledge the gravity of your actions is concerning.”

Rowan nearly laughed. “I still don’t know what action I’m being accused of!”

A new image flashed on the screen: a small room. A desk. A filing cabinet. Papers scattered across the floor.

Rowan squinted. “Okay… what am I supposed to be seeing?”

“This,” the woman said solemnly, “was the state of the Restricted Access Office the morning after you were seen near it.”

“Alright,” Rowan said slowly, “but that doesn’t mean I did it. I didn’t even know the room existed.”

The man on the right shook his head. “Denial is the first stage of accountability.”

“No, it’s the first stage of not knowing what the hell is going on!”

Gasps. Multiple. One judge clutched his chest dramatically.

The woman raised a hand. “Mr. Thatch. Your tone is not helping you.”

“I’m sorry,” Rowan said. “I really am. I’m just confused.”

“Then apologize,” the woman said simply.

“For what?” he yelled, exasperated.

“For the incident.”

Rowan felt heat crawl up his neck. “You still haven’t explained what the ‘incident’ is!”

“It is not our responsibility,” another judge said primly, “to narrate your actions back to you.”

“It kind of is!” Rowan shot back.

The woman gave a disappointed sigh that sounded like a parent discovering their child had colored on the walls again.

“You were present. You were near the scene. Your attitude suggests guilt. The simplest solution is an apology.”

“But—”

“Once you apologize,” she continued smoothly, “we can all go home.”

He stared at them, stunned. “You want me to apologize for something you can’t even clearly define?”

“We expect you to acknowledge the harm,” she said.

“What harm?”

Silence thickened the air.

A thin man in the back, likely an intern, timidly raised a folder. “Panel members,” he said softly, “there’s a new report from Facilities.”

“Not now,” the woman snapped.

“But… it’s about the Restricted Access Office.”

The panel stiffened.

The intern swallowed and continued quickly before they could stop him. “It says the cleaning crew was conducting their quarterly safety inspection. The cabinet was emptied for inventory. The papers were scattered accidentally when a supply bin tipped. And the camera timestamp shows the event occurred two hours after Rowan left the building.”

Silence. Again. But this time an embarrassed kind.

The woman’s jaw tightened. “That… contradicts earlier assumptions.”

One judge muttered, “I told you the camera glitch would cause problems.”

Rowan stood slowly. “So… I didn’t do anything.”

The intern nodded. “Correct.”

The panel shifted, uncomfortable as cats in a bathtub.

Finally, the woman spoke. “Mr. Thatch… while you may not have been directly involved, your demeanor today suggests resistance to the community’s expectations.”

Rowan blinked. “You mean I didn’t apologize fast enough for something I didn’t do?”

Her expression softened into something almost pitying. “You showed defensiveness. Defensiveness erodes trust. Trust must be restored.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “Are you saying I still need to apologize?”

The woman folded her hands. “Only if you wish this matter to conclude amicably.”

He laughed. Not a polite laugh. A bewildered, tired, fed-up laugh that echoed too long in the chamber.

“No,” he said finally. “No, I’m not apologizing. Not for a crime that didn’t happen, in a room I’ve never entered, on a night I wasn’t there, because of a mess made by a tipped supply bin. Absolutely not.”

The woman’s lips tightened. “Very well. The panel notes your refusal to offer restorative closure.”

“What does that even mean?” Rowan asked.

“It means,” she said coolly, “you are free to go.”

He frowned. “That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“Will there be a record?”

“A partial one,” she said. “Not unfavorable. Not favorable.”

“A shrug on paper,” Rowan muttered.

The panel did not respond.

He walked toward the exit. The intern shot him a sympathetic look. The panel avoided his eyes. The woman already wrote something on her clipboard like he had ceased existing.

The doors hissed open. Rowan stepped into the hallway, the stale air warming slightly.

He exhaled.

A long, shaky breath of someone who had been shoved onto a stage to be judged for a play he never performed.

He left the Hall knowing one thing:

Next time someone demanded an apology without cause, without clarity, without courage—

They’d get silence instead.