Earth: Criminal Rehab

Prologue

In the beginning there was nothing.

No space, no light, no matter at all. Depending on what you believe, something was created by someone or something. Planets, galaxies, stars and so on were formed into existence. One planet, Earth, was made perfectly for life. Plants, animals and humans began shaping the Earth to their convenience.

But all things created are eventually destroyed. The Earth that was habitable to beings of all shapes and colors and sizes for about 3 million years was obliterated back in the early 2080s.

Textbooks and people old enough say that we got too irritable with each other and started a war. They called this war World War III. A bomb was developed and dropped down in what was once known as a continent called Europe. Nobody knows who did it or what side of the war they were on, but most people didn't get much time to think.

Radiation filled the air and killed up to 7 billion people within a matter of a few hours. In countries furthest from the wreck, plans were quickly devised to leave the Earth. They fit as many people as they could in a spaceship and sent it off into space.

That ship is what we call the Legacy. Its name symbolizes the effect we will have on the rest of humanity. We will survive and continue the rest of our lives in peace. Although, not everyone understands what 'peace' really means.

During the years in the Legacy, people are born and die just as they have on Earth in the past. The problem is, space is running out. The ship was full as it started and the population has only continued to grow. Strict rules were placed to ensure that we would have enough oxygen and food for everyone:

• A married couple could have only one child.
• Each family was only allowed to eat a small portion of food in the mess hall twice a day.
• Everyone over the age of 16 must have a job or help out in some way.
• Monthly room sweeps would take place to ensure that nobody was hiding anything.
• If a crime was committed by a person older than 21 years, they would be ejected into space and instantly killed. If they were younger than 21, they were locked up and put on trial.

Many people took advantage of these rules. Young children and adolescents became thieves and were sent to a prison cell until their justice was served or the leader decided to eject them.

Ejection was quickly becoming a popular method of punishment. It's quick and clean, but completely inhumane. If anyone even suspected you'd done the tiniest crime, you were shoved into a room with a door that sucked you out into space. The oxygen gets immediately pulled out of your body and you float, lifeless amongst the stars forever. No one has ever lived after an ejection and no one ever will.

The fear of ejection grew in the hearts of many, but caused more people to rebel against the system and get themselves killed. Children of ejected parents almost always found a way to get themselves in trouble.

We couldn't live like this much longer. There had to be another place to live. The only planet capable of life was the one we destroyed. That was 100 years ago. Could the Earth be ready for us to come back? Would it ever be?

That's where we came in. There's no way to test if life was possible from space. A group of 50 names were formed behind the backs of our people. They used the only people they could risk losing - the criminals. All 50 of us had committed crimes at a young age and were kept in cells for our life. Our leader had started this plan with us in mind and our time has come. We were involuntarily shoved into an escape pod on a mission:

Earth or Bust?