Take It All

"Would the Radiant Ones, with such technology, have failed to anticipate the illnesses afflicting the patients treated in the laboratory? Would they have taken no precautions? Would they have failed to consider any possible emergencies? Although the spiritual realm could not cure these illnesses completely in one go, physical isolation would not have been difficult. I do not believe the Radiant Ones would make such a basic mistake."

To most Collectors, such an error was indeed exceedingly basic. When the Radiant Ones brought patients near the laboratory, they had clearly understood the dangers posed by those patients' illnesses. Yet they had done so anyway. Therefore, it could be inferred that the Radiant Ones had the means to guard against them and were highly confident in those safeguards.

Otherwise, there would have been no need to bring them into the laboratory. Given the industrial capabilities of the Radiant civilization, how difficult would it have been to build a separate containment facility? Not difficult at all!

"That is why I said it was an accident. Some minor accident caused the mechanisms meant to prevent those illnesses from spreading to fail, which in turn led to the Radiant Ones in the laboratory committing collective suicide."

The one who raised this opinion thought much the same as most Collectors. It believed the Radiant Ones should have found it very easy to defend against illnesses capable of crossing species barriers and even spreading through nonliving objects. However, it had considered one more possibility than its fellows: while the Radiant Ones confidently continued receiving patients and treating them to recovery, some factor had rendered their defenses ineffective.

Because it had happened so suddenly, the Radiant Ones had been unprepared. It was highly possible that they had all been wiped out.

"...What do you think?" Chu asked