THE PRISON THAT NO ONE ESCAPES FROM

The Earth was destroyed. Can you believe that?

The Earth was destroyed. Can you believe that? Five billion years of quiet solitude passed and then one day a fleet of galactic pirates intent on grandstanding popped out of hyperspeed. Before anyone could figure out what the pale, spidery shapes filling the horizon were the weapon was switched on and everything that was once Earth was suddenly cold gas and rock spinning off into space. No time to negotiate or to be afraid. Most people thought they were clouds.

Of course the silencing of Earth-originating radio signals and corona of debris was detected by sensors elsewhere in the galaxy and the pirates' message was received with consternation by those further-flung and more advanced civilizations. They told the pirates: "This act of ruthlessness towards a primitive world is condemned strongly." And of course the pirates didn't care. Why should they? They sent out an all bands transmission: "The dominant civilization of Earth displayed a drive for conquest and without our action would have someday presented a threat to civilizations across the galaxy", and also added "Those who doubt our organization's capabilities should now be silenced." And that was that for an unremarkable world.

But that wasn't that. It turned out that there was a spacefaring race who bore a slight physical similarity to humans, and had taken an interest in them. They found them amusing. Over centuries they had assembled a study of humanity, including photographs, written history, samples of literature, songs and video, all intercepted by the spacefaring race's deep net receivers from broadcasts originating from Earth. And in the aftermath of the news of its destruction, a video of a small Earth boy began to circulate. In the video, the boy wears the intricate ceremonial dress of a Western man and stands in a busy human marketplace singing a strange whooping song while ducking and dancing like a bird. At once comical, sad and vulnerable, it amused millions. The boy danced with such feeling... yet he was so ridiculous! It stoked a wider interest in humanity. Who were the humans? What did they do? What did they like, and what did they hate? What were their principal foods? Which emperors did they serve? Did they have any other videos as amusing as the small boy? It turned out that they did. A wave of interest in human behaviours spread across the galaxy. Teenagers from Antares to Betelgeuse began listening to rock n' roll. A cafeteria on 51 Pegasi b created a version of butter chicken and it sparked a craving that swept the systems. 

Eventually the tide of affection rolled into the galactic centres of power who placed a bounty on the heads of the pirate chiefs. Not that they cared about what the pirates had done. The galaxy was full of pirates. Millions upon millions of marauding bands who roamed the systems, occasionally ransacking worlds, occasionally destroying them to experiment or to give their soldiers something to do or to send a message to rival groups. Same as it had ever been. But it was politically popular to place a bounty on these specific pirates and so it was placed.

Fifty Earth years passed. A hundred. A long time on Earth but a short time in the galaxy. The pirates found a quiet moon orbiting a gas giant and hunkered down for a generation. But a pirate's a pirate and eventually they returned to their old ways, more cautious but otherwise unchanged. And in the space between star systems those who do not want to be found are usually not. They jumped a system, raided a mine, hijacked some transports, jumped again, liquidated their haul at a remote trading post, ambushed a military patrol, jumped again, rearmed themselves, spent their loot at casinos and on questionable investments at deep space tissue growing farms and so on. Seventy Earth years was not a long time for the pirates, who were siliconoid beings that lived long and regenerated cells easily, and for seventy Earth years they conducted their business as normal. But one day they converged on a defenseless solar farm only to find that it was really a well-staged trap. Bad luck. Their ships were gravityscrapped, the rank-and-file were sold to work camps and the leaders were put on trial. The case against them was so comprehensive, quietly assembled by advanced research algorithms over decades, that there was no way they could win and they did not win. The leaders were taken to a prison from which no one ever escaped.

But that wasn't the end of the story. Which is not to say that the leaders escaped from the prison. They did not. No one ever does. In a sense, with apologies, the end of this story occurred in the first line. The Earth was destroyed. Of course once it was gone there were those who expressed a wistful, ain't-it-a-shame fondness for Earth culture which, it’s true, eventually blossomed into a less complicated fad. And then the blossom dried and wilted, which is the story of blossoms anywhere in the galaxy, and the Earth was still gone, its memory confined to a few explanatory paragraphs in a dark little scripture on some distant server. The pirate leaders remained in their prison until their crimes had been forgotten. Until they themselves had been forgotten. Until they had even forgotten themselves. And then longer still, until the day they crumbled into chalk and were hosed away. They were hosed off into the scarred grey prison drains and collected in a trash capsule and shot out of an air lock. In time the capsule disintegrated and the dust floated free into the wide black galaxy. Same as the rocks and gases of once-Earth. Some of it curved toward asteroid belts and distant moons. But most of it’s still spinning. Spinning and waiting for something to happen.