Firebombing

Torsevia Colony was today. This is a note to history, nothing more.

I spent the first 26 years of my life living on a small colony. You get to know people there. In 26 years you learn at least the families of everyone you see. No one is more than three social steps away from you, and other than people you know over the network, it's no exaggeration to say that the people in your colony become your whole world. Nothing outside the colony seems completely real, and all the people inside dance and smile and live and grow up and have children. My student Samuel was just six months older than me, and I can remember him as a baby.

He is dead. His daughter Laura is dead. Every human I ever knew on that colony is dead nine thousand years ago. I know what it means to lose your world.

I expect some of these colonist understood what was happening in the brief moments before the fire overtook them. A few realized that they were about to lose their world. I don't know if his was bearable to most of them, when their world included their parents and children, but I know they did not bear it long. I promise there was no way to kill them faster.