Savage Reflections

(For ABC Wednesday, Magpie 63 and Sunday Scribblings.)
"O" is for "Obedient"
“All I’m saying is, we follow the rule book. No deviations.”
“But the rules aren’t clear for everything. That means that sometimes we can decide ourselves what to do.”
“No, we can't. If any rule isn’t clear, we’re supposed to go to – you know who.”
“The Exalted.”
“Exactly. And when it comes to orders from the Exalted, we are one thing: obedient! Keep that word in mind! Trouble with you young guys, you want to see things happen. You get bored. Well, a lot of our work is boring – get used to it.”
“Excuse me, but this is the PDA, right? The Planet Destruction Agency?”
“Sure, but we destroy only the ‘U’ planets, the uninhabited ones. According to the Exalted, we leave the ‘I’ planets, the inhabited ones, alone. It’s all in the rule book.”
“Yeah, but what you seem to have missed is the section that says it’s okay to destroy an ‘I’ planet if it’s on the way to self-destruction on its own. In fact, technically speaking, eliminating an "I" planet is easy -- it's a piece of cake."
“You’re referring to Earth again, aren’t you? You keep bringing that up like a broken record. Listen. Our job is to find which ‘U’ planets are old, unable to keep up, and destroy them. That does not include Earth. I realize that you think you have all kinds of new, innovative ideas, but the PDA has been around for a long time and doesn’t need new ideas.”
“You know what it was like, where I was stationed before? I was in Universe Seven and let me tell you, it was a different world. They didn’t destroy old, useless planets the way you do, just turn them off the way you’d turn off a light bulb. They blew ‘em up! This made for a spectacular son et lumiere event that not only made an exciting show for everyone but served as a lesson for all the other planets.”
“The Exalted – he permitted that?”
“Permitted it? He loved it! Here, we’ve got tape; let me put it up on the screen.”

“My God! That is spectacular!”
“Right. Look at those colors and stroboscopic lights and all that movement; it’s marvelous! We could do that with Earth! Because it’s a fact that an inhabited planet makes for a better show when it’s blown up.”
“But there’s this… In recent centuries, there have been more and more attempts on the part of its inhabitants to destroy Earth on their own. With their never-ending fighting and so on, they’re going to blow the place up themselves; they don’t need our help.”
“Well, give me a ring when it’s about to happen. I wouldn’t want to miss it!”