The Magic Ring

The Magic Ring

The committee sat at a long table. There were five. Anatole, Greogria, Maio, Ophr, and Nox. And what a motley crew it was. I shuddered to think of any decision they would make.

Maio spoke first. My magic decoder ring helped. Yes, it really worked. That plastic thing I’d had from childhood.

“We’ve been expecting you. What took you so long to get here?” Maio looked to me like a creature a small child would draw. All arms and legs put together in interesting combinations and colors. No hair, no clothes, no two eyes the same, in fact there were five eyes, and they all looked at me at different times. The mouth, if you wanted to call it that, maybe orifice was a better term, was situated where a breast should be. I had a hard time not laughing.

“Well, you see, there was the space-time continuum to deal with, then the whole black hole thing and then my trouble with depth perception as I fell into the waters of Pluto thing on that one planet and then……”

“Enough!” Ophr interrupted me. “Excuses we don’t need. Did you bring it?” The purple people eater, because I had no other term to describe this being, asked me again. “Where is it?”

“It? What is it?”

The five space oddities gargled and gaggled like geese on earth.

“It. Why you were sent to us. You know what it is.” Nox now spoke. This one was a real blob. Really. Gelatinous. Blob. Ick.

“Okay, well, all I have is this.” I held up the magic decoder ring, found one day in a box of Cracker Jacks. “Is this what you mean?”

“All hail the magic ring. All hail the King!” The aliens bowed before me.

I saluted in return.

W/C 298