Open Sesame!

The 40 thieves returned to the cave loaded after a night of plunder.

"Open sesame!" one of them commanded.  

"I'm sorry, that password is incorrect. Please try again. You have two more chances," a voice that seemed to come from the entrance said. 

The thieves were shocked! One of them even fell off his donkey. They all looked at each other seemingly looking for answers. They also couldn't trace the exact spot the voice was coming from. It was only the day before that they had accessed the cave with no issue. 

" What sorcery is this?" their leader roared after wondering for a moment. " Open sesame!" he roared again. 

"I'm sorry, that password is incorrect. You have one more chance," came the voice again. 

" We have all these gold and several other goods that we need to secure before the sun rises," they told each in confusion. "What is that voice? And what happens when we use all the chances?" 

Their leader moved nearer to the mouth of the cave. He banged on it, with fists clutched tight and his neck raised high he uttered once more, deep anger registered in his voice. 

" Open sesame!" 

"I'm sorry, that password is incorrect. You have zero more chances," came the voice again. " Please reset your password." 

" Open sesame. Open sesame. Open sesame. Open sesame …" they were all shouting banging on the mouth of the cave with their hands and feet. Some even pelted rocks at it. 

The cave's entrance did not make way for them. They could only hear the voice repeating the instructions over and over again. 

" I'm sorry, that password is incorrect. Please reset your password." 

Had anyone learnt the secret to their cave full of fortunes and changed the magic word? And how could they have? They all wondered. 

After fighting in vain for a while, and being unable to find a solution for their predicament, the thieves had no choice but to return to their homes each responsible for the loot on their individual donkeys. Their leader had sternly warned them should any of them fail to show up with the exact quantity of the loot when summoned. 

He on the other hand would embark on a mission to find the reason behind the incident at their secret cave. He knew he was not to tell anyone that a cave was speaking back to him, otherwise, he would have been branded as having gone mad. 

Ali the time traveller had been hiding in the near bushes all this time watching silently. He was careful not to be spotted. Satisfied that the security system he had installed had worked, he returned to his timeline to plan out his life moving forward. 

After reading the story of the 40 thieves as a child, he had been completely fascinated. A secret cave full of treasures!? No one could convince him that it had been a work of fiction. There is some truth to every story you hear he believed. And he was determined to find the truth to this one.

He had worked on his time travelling determined to find this very cave. And using the technology of his time secure its contents for himself. He claimed the unexplained logs at Spacetime Inc, the firm he worked at as a time travelling machine tester and repair person were jams in the system's updates that he was sorting out. 

He had been tracing the cave for years and had found himself in different places and timelines sometimes just a little bit far off. Initially, he had found the cave but at a different timeline. After finding it in the right one, he studied the mechanism behind the workings of the cave's password, then embarked on changing it to his own.

A few times it had not worked. But this time around it finally did. The 40 thieves had failed to successfully open the cave right in front of him. Now, only he could access it and all its contents. 

All he needed was to find a secret way to transport the treasure to his time, sell them as antiques to collectors, and he would be set for life. 

The 40 thieves had no clue what had just hit them!