The Bet

Photo by: Al Forbes

The guards led former Prime Minister Gallaway through Traiter’s Gate. Senator Broughton looked smug as he walked beside him, pleased with his victory. “What’s in it for you?” said Gallaway.

“You think I’ll actually reveal my plans?” snorted Broughton.

The two entered the gate and it clanged behind them. “True. I could still mousetrap you, and make a dollar out of it.”

“Ha!” scoffed Broughton. “Your Technology Party doesn’t own all the high-tech. Your party’s snooping nano-flys are all disabled. These guards are hand-picked loyalists. You’ve got nothing!”

“So it’s true. The Ptolemy Federation does own you.”

“Of course. My populist ideals appealed to common-folk’s paranoia enough to establish my power base. The Ptolemy Federation will soon employ our computer codes which I leaked to them. I’ll blame it all on your Technology Party, of course. In a few weeks their hackers will take over our systems and we’ll be ripe for invasion.”

“You’re the real traitor here!”

“So?” smirked Broughton. “My proper title will be Planetary Governor.”

“Excellent,” grinned Gallaway.

“Eh?”

“I told you I could mousetrap you.”

Broughton’s smirk fell. “But we swept for bugs! Your nanos are destroyed!”

“Oh yes, you did get them. But you just walked into Traitor’s Gate with one…” The bodies of Gallaway and the “loyal guards” began to break apart. They collapsed into clouds of nano-dust drifting in the breeze.

As Senator Broughton howled in the dungeons beyond Traitor’s Gate, the real Prime Minister Gallaway stood in a control room watching the scene beside Foreign Minister Gloucester.

“Told you I’d get him to walk through Traitor’s Gate,” said Gallaway.

Gloucester shook his head. “He did it with a smile too!”

“A bet’s a bet,” reminded Gallaway.

Wordlessly, Gloucester handed him a measly, piddling, dollar bill.
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Written for Sunday Photo Fiction: https://sundayphotofictioner.wordpress.com/2017/05/21/sunday-photo-fiction-may-21st-2017/