This Weeks Rule

There was only one rule: don’t open the door. At least that was this week’s rule. Last week the rule was: only eat the red berries and the rule the week before was only walk on the even numbered side of the corridor. Every week our masters devised a new rule for us to follow and a new punishment to be administered if the latest rule was broken. Just to keep life as confusing as possible various old rules were randomly discarded only to be reinstated at a future time. There was only one rule that the master’s would never cancel. Under penalty of excruciating torture and death would anyone be allowed to open the door at the far end of the galley way.

It would have been easier to enforce that rule if along with the edict came an explanation as to why it was so important that the door remain closed. Humans are by nature a curious animal. If we are told something is forbidden but not offered a plausible explanation as to why, we will ignore the rule. It was this total lack of understanding of the human psyche that created the disaster.

When the human cargo was beamed aboard the year was 1313. Beings from other planets, traveling among the stars, and the vacuum of space had never been dreamed of. The Ploutonion’s needed laborers for their mines and these creatures filled their needs. They never expected that a band of renegade humans would do the very thing they were instructed not to do, and force open the door depressurizing the ship. Now humans and Ploutonions are floating lifelessly in the vastness of space. Only the rules of physics applied.