The Mystic and the Scout

The guards pushed the scout roughly forward through the ancient stone walls. He assumed they were ancient, anyway; he’d barely had time to get readings on the place before he’d been attacked. The computer back at the ship would be doing scans as well, of course, and if he could get back there, he’d have all the information he wanted about this crummy little rock on the edge of known space.

Of course, right now, that if was looking more than a little dodgy.

The corridor ended at massive carved doors, maybe wood, maybe some sort of dark rock; he couldn’t tell and the guards weren’t in a mood to let him pause for a closer look. One of them knocked heavily on the doors, which were pulled back from inside. The scout was unceremoniously shoved through.

He’d expected this planet’s equivalent of an Earth Corps’ brig, or worse. What he got, to his surprise, was a vast hall, complete with vaulted ceilings, tall pillars behind which the planet swept in all its debatable splendor, a gathering of beings in glittering clothes, the works. On a raised dais at the far end sat a vaguely humanoid being clad in piles of mauve and off-white robes, wearing a shining crown. It croaked something at him, which his Galactic Translator-Matic promptly sorted out into standard Earth. “I am the Great Mystic of An-Dimasah,” it said. “I see all within this sector and beyond. The very stars speak to me. I see time, the past, the future, I know all, I-”

“LOOK OUT IT’S A GIANT PHONE BOOK!”

“What?” the Great Mystic said, utterly bewildered. Even so, the scout spoke with such urgency and gestured so animatedly that the Great Mystic turned to see whatever this strange apparition might be.

The scout immediately took that opportunity to whip around and charge right back through the great hall’s doors, which the guards had unfortunately forgotten to close behind him. He ran as fast as he could down the corridor, leaped out a window, sprinted pell-mell through the garden, ran right over the Great Mystic’s prized frintalias, and scrambled aboard his ship, firing it up and blasting away free into the sky.

The scout would rise through the ranks of EarthCorps after that, but he never forgot one simple lesson which the Great Mystic had forgotten: whenever one puts into a a room a prisoner one doesn’t wish to escape, be sure to close the door behind them.

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Editorial Note: this was written in response to

Scoot

‘s prompt, which was to write about Aesop’s fable of the Fox and the Mask:

Fable: The Scrambled Eggs