Father's Fault

T-1522 never would have imagined that something as innocent as a fable would get him arrested and sent to 10 years on the asteroids to mine for Prafvalorium.

He had composed it one night after finishing reading the last of the Official Fables for Children to his two daughters.

"Long time ago, in a world full of wonder there were people living on our moon, which was then called Earth. It was a blue planet, with oceans and forests and animals. At the edge of a forested volcano, on a lonely island in the middle of the Ocean, people arrived on a large ship named after a dead queen. What was particularly wonderful about these people was that they had been eating three meals a day for as long as they remembered…"

But T-1522's wife barged into their night cage and stopped T-1522 mid-sentence.

"What are you doing, you fool! Putting forbidden ideas in their heads? Don't you know that the night cages were also bugged last month?"

T-1522 had forgotten. He realized he was doomed, and with his last breaths of freedom until the Bots arrived, he finished the fable, to his daughters' delight.