Microstory 610: Body of Water Turns Red

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After learning the news of the Pantheonist tribe meeting house’s destruction, a group of overzealous Lightseers took it upon themselves to instigate the tenth taikon. Unfortunately, these people either did not carefully read The Book of Light, or they failed to interpret it properly. The Book states that a body of water will inexplicably turn red, not just that it will turn. Thousands of years ago, such an event would have been considered witchcraft by our ancestors. They would have been baffled by something like that happening. Through science and discovery, however, we could propose a number of explanations. Actually, water changes into unusual colors all the time. It can come from pollution, algae waste, or maybe just a trick of the light on a planet orbiting two stars. And, of course, technology could accomplish something like this, which is what the overzealots ultimately used, the details of which are unimportant. A quick survey of an unnamed pond on an outer planet called Roepl made it clear to scientists and taikon verifiers that the water’s transformation was completed using purely artificial means, which did not qualify. As the verifiers were leaving the system, disappointed by a seeming failure, they noticed something strange happening on the surface of Roepl’s moons. They landed to find that Lake Wurveol had turned red as well. They assumed this to be another attempt by the same group of overzealots, or some other group, but they were obligated to investigate either way. What they found perplexed them to no end. Even to this day, no one knows how the lake turned red. No microorganism, or dye, or light trickery could explain the phenomenon. It just was red—blood red—with no apparent reason behind it. Any water removed from the site would return to a clear state, but as long as it was within the confines of the source, it remained in this new and incomprehensible state. The tenth taikon actually was realized on that day, which allowed for the eleventh to be as well.