Radiant

[He glanced at me; I assumed he was looking at the Balrog under my skin. To Ohpa’s expanded senses, the Balrog’s life force might have shone like a mossy red beacon. Perhaps Ohpa and the Balrog could even read each other’s thoughts to a small extent. That’s how Ohpa had known he needed to get bitten in order to acquire a load of spores and establish a full-bandwidth mental connection.]

But though I am more than I was [Ohpa said], I am not Tathagata. I am sufficiently Aware to know how Unaware I am — like someone blind from birth miraculously granted dark and blurry vision, allowing him to understand how much he still can’t see. You who are still blind can’t understand the torture. You have no hint of the glory beyond.

[Once again, he glanced in my direction. This time, he was looking at me — me, whose blindness had been lifted briefly, but who was now back in the dark. Did he mean I was a fool for rejecting the sixth sense? Or was he sharing a moment of sympathy with someone else who knew sensory loss?]

Despite such failures [he said], the experiments continued. With my spirit partly elevated, I became useful to the project. I was not wise, but I was wiser than the researchers. They sought my advice on particular efforts. They never really learned from my words, but they always found a way to twist what I said into confirmation of what they already intended to do. If I had truly become Tathagata, perhaps I would have had more effect… No. Now I am merely voicing self-pity. And pity for those who suffered what finally happened.

Through trial and error — many trials, many errors — our researchers developed a successful transformation process. It worked in two stages: first, breaking down the physical body; second, reconstituting the consciousness in a higher vessel. The process worked well in small trials. Individuals truly became Tathagata… whereupon they departed to other realms of existence, without a single word to those who remained behind. Buoyed by success, the project leaders decided to uplift everyone on the planet, all at once. The same process would then be implemented on every world inhabited by our species.

Stage One was controlled from this very center. A global transformation system was engineered. The system created biological agents that diffused across the entire planet: clouds of them targeting each individual. Every person’s DNA was automatically analyzed and duplicated by the microbial agents. Once the process was complete, the microbes infested the target’s body and channeled dark matter into each individual cell. As a result, the host bodies discorporated — became nothing but clouds of particles, still partly conjoined and imbued with the original person’s consciousness, but not yet transcendent.

[Oh shit, said Festina. Oh shit.

Not quite, Ohpa told her, but close.]

At that point [Ohpa continued], Stage Two would activate. The discorporate gas clouds, already half dark matter, would be imbued with more transformative energy, projected from facilities distributed around the world. The population would ascend as one… or so it was planned.

The plan failed. I don’t know why; I spent my time here, in the center that implemented Stage One. The center for Stage Two lies on a different continent… and the people there were distant from the people here, socially as well as geographically. A childish rivalry — mostly in jest, but the two teams viewed each other more as competitors than colleagues. They did not share confidences.

So I can’t tell why Stage Two failed. Stage One succeeded completely — every person on the planet was rendered into smoke. Except, of course, me. I am no longer normal; the experiment I underwent mutated my cells too little and too much. I did not become Tathagata… but my DNA became twisted and partly imbued with dark matter, to the point where the process that worked on everyone else cannot work on me. I was sent down a dead end. I cannot be pushed forward or brought back.

The people around me turned into smoke, then failed to proceed to full transcendence. Stage Two never activated. Those trapped in Stage One — deprived of physical bodies but denied a new state of being — soon went mad with frustration. Literally mad. People were never intended to remain in Stage One more than a few seconds; it’s not a condition where one can remain mentally stable. The tiniest emotion flies to extremes. Impatience becomes fury. Frustration becomes homicidal rage.

I watched it happen. I watched everyone in this center driven insane by their inability to move on. My eyes find it easy to see the wrath, even in placid-seeming smoke.

For some reason, the clouds feared me. Perhaps the dark matter in my body exerts a force on their own dark matter that they interpret as pain. Or perhaps they cannot stand my very aura. Though I am not Tathagata, I do possess a grain of enlightenment; perhaps that makes my presence intolerable to them. They cannot face what they themselves are denied. Whatever the reason, they keep their distance.

[Festina said, That explains why the clouds vandalized other rooms in this building but not this one. They hated what this place had done to them, and wanted to destroy it… but they couldn’t bear entering the room that contained Ohpa. Even if he was locked in stasis. Speaking of which, she said, turning to Ohpa, how did you come to be in the stasis sphere?]

I stopped time for myself [Ohpa said] because I had no other way to survive. My body is far from normal; it requires special food that combines dark matter with conventional nutrients. This center was the only place such food could be manufactured… but the clouds destroyed the machinery for doing so. I would starve if I did not take measures to preserve myself.

Since I am not Tathagata, a part of me still feared death. Besides, wisdom dictated I must not die until I had told my tale. My species still survived on other planets; they would come to investigate what had happened here. This was, after all, a project of great importance — its existence hadn’t been revealed to the general public, but the government kept close watch on everything we did. Government scientists monitored everything from offplanet via observation posts and broadcast relays. They would know that something had gone wrong. Help would arrive as soon as it could be arranged; I felt I had to survive to speak with those who came.

So I put myself into stasis. And waited.

I have waited a long time.

There was silence when Ohpa finished speaking. We all must have been sorting through the ramifications of what we’d heard.

Var-Lann’s theory about a defense system had been utterly wrong, yet not so far from the truth. The supposed 'planetary defense system' hadn’t been intended to destroy invaders; it was built to elevate the Fuentes. However, the effects were the same: the Fuentes turned to smoke, and so did every other race to colonize Muta. Stage One of the system continued to analyze newcomers’ DNA and create microbial agents to convert everybody into angry clouds. Each time new settlers arrived on Muta, the system stirred into action… and a few years later, the settlers would be vaporized, set drifting on the wind and waiting for a Stage Two that never came. As for what happened to Stage Two — who knew? Perhaps the researchers had made a simple but fatal mistake: they’d overlooked the EMP factor. Every Fuentes on the planet turned to smoke simultaneously. That must have caused a tremendous pulse, ripping wildly through every city. The researchers may have anticipated a radical surge of energy… but what if they’d underestimated its power? What if the machines controlling Stage Two weren’t sufficiently shielded? If the worldwide EMP caused a breakdown in a single critical logic circuit, a power generator, or enough electrical switches to prevent Stage Two from initiating…

…everyone would be trapped in Stage One forever. Including Team Esteem. Plus Festina and Tut as soon as the Stage One system devised a way to rip them into smoke.

The same must have happened sixty-five hundred years ago. As Ohpa had said, the Fuentes offplanet would surely send teams to see what went wrong. Unfortunately, Muta’s atmosphere was still chock-full of Stage One biological agents primed to work on Fuentes cells. Any team landing without protective equipment would turn to smoke immediately. Teams with protective equipment would get EMP’d and marooned, just like our own party. Soon, they’d be forced to take off their suits, whereupon they’d fall victim to the Stage One microbes.

How many teams had the Fuentes lost before they wrote Muta off? Possibly the government continued to formulate plans for reclaiming the planet — with suits better shielded from EMPs, or perhaps by releasing counteragents into the atmosphere, designed to destroy the Stage One microbes. But it had never happened. Circumstances must have prevented it. If, for example, the Fuentes had a shifty government like the Technocracy’s, a new party might have got voted into power, and the old government decided to destroy all records of Muta rather than taking blame for the disaster. On the other hand, maybe some new set of researchers had developed a different, more reliable process for ascending the evolutionary ladder. The Fuentes would then have no reason to return to Muta; they’d changed en masse into psionic purple jelly, conveniently forgetting the Fuentes on Muta still trapped as Stage One clouds.

They’d also ignored all future starfarers who might visit Muta and suffer the same fate. Muta was a death trap; how could a supposedly sentient race leave it like this, ready to disintegrate all visitors who dropped by? One could argue the original Fuentes researchers had been volunteers, aware their work was risky. But what about the Unity, the Greenstriders, and us? At the very least, why didn’t the Fuentes build a warning beacon, telling passersby the planet was dangerous?

Perhaps they did. I could imagine other races ignoring such a beacon and landing anyway. Muta was so desirable, colonists might choose to take their chances, especially if they didn’t know the exact nature of the problem. They might even dismantle the beacon to avoid attracting the attention of other races. The more I thought about it, the more likely that sounded. The recklessly territorial Greenstriders would immediately destroy any 'keep out' beacon, if the beacon hadn’t already been obliterated by species of similar temperament thousands of years earlier.

The Fuentes should have anticipated that… and in their elevated purple-jelly form, they should have taken steps to deal with the problem. If they now had godlike powers, why couldn’t they just teleport inside any ship approaching the Muta system and telepathically explain why the planet was dangerous? Wasn’t that basic courtesy? More important, wasn’t that what the League of Peoples might demand? Surely the Fuentes were required to stop people dying from the effects of the Stage One microbes.

Unless…

'Ohpa,' I said, 'how long can people survive in Stage One? Do the clouds eventually dissipate?'

'No,' the alien said. 'They absorb energy from light and nutrients from the atmosphere. I don’t know their maximum life span, but they can certainly remain alive for millions of years.'

'Millions?'

'Till the sun begins to fail and renders this planet uninhabitable.' Ohpa’s mandibles bent in a way that might have been a smile. 'In cloud form, my people are quite resilient. So are the others who’ve undergone Stage One. They may be insane, but they are definitely alive.'

'Bloody hell,' Festina murmured.

'Not bloody,' Ohpa replied, 'but most assuredly hell. Even with my meager awareness, I hear their screams of agony. To those with greater perception, the shrieks must be shrill indeed. But the enlightened beings of this galaxy must be inured to the sounds of suffering — they hear so much of it.'

Ohpa’s words left the rest of us silent… but the silence seemed to howl.