Week 6 Story: The Thief

 There was once a great king on the planet Nimbus Nine, his riches were so vast that the banks could not hold them. He sought for an idea to keep his riches safe and polled his closest advisors. The chief architect presented him with a grand vault that touched the clouds and went as far as the eye could see. The king liked this plan and proceeded with it. He forced all his people to work on the vault, even the architect was forced into manual labor! The architect was angered by this and installed a secret passage right to the heart of the vault. The key was a retinal scan that opened a door from the sewers underneath the city. Before he could use this to avenge deeds done against him he was diagnosed with stage four cancer. He died one week later with his two sons and wife by his side. He said, "To my wife I love you and will miss you dearly. To my sons I love you even more! Before I die I must tell you of the secret passage to the kings vault. Go down into the sewers and go to where the dead goldfish lay and the waste is mixed, there you will push in the third brick from the top with the marking of the beast, six six six. Then you will scan in my eye and the door will open towards vast riches." 

So the two sons did just this, plucking out their fathers eye and venturing into the sewers. They opened the door and came upon a gold pile so huge, a dragon could not even safely guard it. They took as much as they could, coming back six or seven times with no bad luck. But they came back yet again, some could say through greed as they had stolen enough to live among the aristocracy of the planet. As the first brother entered he was immediately shot dead numerous times by a gatling gun. Through this sad event, the brothers came to know the king had taken notice of his disappearing wealth. The king had installed immense security features ranging from gatling gun turrets to moving laser walls. Thinking quickly he chopped of his brothers head so he would not be identified. He then fled as the guards were now alerted and quickly approaching.

Gatling Turret
Source

The king was happy that he had stopped the robbery against him, but was dumbfounded at the body left behind. The king strung up the body in hopes that someone would come to mourn, but no one did so. The mother who became so grief stricken she could barely move, pleaded with her son to retrieve the body so that he could be buried properly. Against his conscience he did so. He staged a daring midnight robbery when the guards were tired. Approaching in a black cloak, the guards yelled for him to stop. Continuing on he came within spitting distance of them. He ripped off his cloak, two chrome forty fives glistening in the moonlight. Many shots rang out until all the guards were dead. He disappeared with his brothers body into the blackness of night.

The king sent his daughter out to the taverns in hopes to coerce the truth out of this wrong doer. She eventually happened upon the son in a tavern, who was drinking away his sorrows. She asked him what his greatest accomplishment and his most evil dead was. As he was a little tipsy, he truthfully said "For I have robbed the great king, but beheaded my own brother! For now I must live with this shame. But with this shame came great riches!". The king's daughter tried to seize the man, but she shrieked as she grabbed his arm. For it was not his arm that she grabbed, but the severed arm of the mans brother. The man again escaped his captors.

The king who heard of this story, was shocked at the lengths this man had gone to to keep his freedom. The king wanted someone as smart and decadent on his staff, so he offered the man his daughters hand in marriage. Along with a chair in his royal court, and the ability to keep the riches he had stole. All he asked of the man was to owe his allegiance to the king, and to help the king become the most tyrannical dictator in the galaxy. With an evil laugh the man agreed.

This story sticks closely to the central plot of The Tale of King Rhampsinitus. Nothing really was changed except the location the story takes place with all its modern amenities, and the original guards were distracted by beer instead of being shot to death. This story is odd in that the king ended up welcoming his robber into his family, totally opposite of what a rational person would do. 

The Tale of King Rhampsinitus retold by Donald Mackenzie in Egyptian Myth and Legend