Morif Salazar loved white wine. He savored it, and he rinsed his mouth with it. Drinking fine wine on a space station was different from drinking wine on the planet. Every piece of mass was priced incredibly high due to the cost of hauling it from the planet in a rocket. Morif drank this wine whenever he wanted.
Ashur-5 has been losing Morif Salazar a lot of money for years. It's manufacturing plants failed to produce anything competitive in the galactic market. Even if they did, they were outcompeted in price since they had a harder time carrying them to their destination because they had no natural resources left to help them with that.
The answer was to produce products that have no mass. This included three things:
Media, data, and gene sequences.
He laughed It was the perfect plan. He launched the bioweapons he had procured through trade. Through a planetary surveillance system and sorting AI, he will be able to gather data and media. These are all valuable things that can be streamed throughout the galaxy in encryped form. Morif Salazar then sells the keys to the encrypted information. Thus, credits were earned in a way that included no mass.
The bieoweapon that had been launched at the planet's surface introduced random genetic codes that were in development throughout the universe. Most of these are randomized genetic codes that AI came up with. The goal of such randomized codes is to increase resilience against biohacking for their buyers.
Since the genetic codes are untested, they are prone to knocking the harmony of the body off balance. Which, in turn, would result in illnesses that vary in their symptoms.
He sighed.
"It's done. I did it."
Morif Salazar wasn't the sole owner of the planet. He had someone to answer to in the far reaches of space. He couldn't just let the planet fall in its quarterly earnings. It wouldn't look well in his employee evaluation.
He activated the AI and started recording data and scenes.
He could've refused the call from his employees. In that case, the planet would've been marked as a hermit planet, and galactic society would eventually deem it a threat. What followed would be total destruction. The galactic society doesn't take kindly to potential risks.
Morif filled his glass with wine again, and after thinking for a second, he started downing the whole bottle.
A blonde woman came in to placate him. She was both a concubine and a servant, and this was her job. She was to seek the moments when Morif was in distress and placate him. She moved like a white swan and placed her delicate hands on his shoulders.
"Your shoulders are so stiff."
She had a melodious voice. Everything she did was perfectly in line with the servant-concubine manual. There were millions of other women on the planet who yearned to have her job, but she has outdone all of them and secured this employment. She was now a concubine-servant, and she would be a fool if she let this status slip between her fingers. Thus, the real her was gone. Only the concubine-servant remained. She whispered into Morif's ear.
"I can help you with that."
Morif Salazar gently slapped her hand away.
"Not now, woman. This is a critical juncture in my plans. I need to focus."
She nodded and then slowly backed out, disappearing through the door.
Every population center on the planet has been engulfed in mutation agents. Such mutation agents included viruses. Soon enough, the entire biosphere of the planet would be subjected to the attack one way or another. There was no escape but up and away. The elite of the planet have already left. They left either to join Morif in his low orbit living station or they left the star system all together.
A small drone flew into the room. It projected scenes from the planet.
It started with coughing fits at first. The entire planet started coughing their lungs out. Five minutes after the attack, the weapons had emptied their payload, leaving no time for authorities to respond effectively. No one has the power to stop an apocalyptic event at five minutes notice.
Morif lifted his bottle and watched the first victims of the attack fall face down into the ground. The surveillance apparatus that has been embedded in everything gave him at least five different angles on whatever is happening on the planet. AI compiled similar events in seconds. The entire white wall, which was fairly large, was filled with video feeds of people lying face down, dead.
"Computer, report to our customers that the following genes cause instant death if implemented. Compile them into a file and send them out."
The vision switched to coughing people. Within twenty minutes, young people started looking sick.
"There are the beginnings of cancerous growths on half of the test subjects; most of the cancerous growths surfaced on the young first because their capability of cell division is better. It is expected that old people will die of the same causes in the following weeks. Computer, file the results, and send them to customers. "
Except for the projections on the wall, the room was eerily dark.
"Compputer, Are there any successes we could sell?"
The projections changed. It showed people who had no symptoms at all. That didn't mean these people weren't affected. They have been affected in a subtle way. An added gene packet laid dormant, hidden from the person's hallucination gland in their brain. It waited for the person to consume enough calories. When a person consumes enough calories for the metamorphosis, the metamorphosis triggers regardless of the individual's will.
"Computer, compile the genes that didn't cause death and sickness at the first infiltration. Our customers will be pleased with their initial success."
He cracked his fingers and yawned. He pulled up his bottle and started chugging.
"Now we wait."
Down on the planet, Kahara was sitting in her apartment, looking at her fridge. She had impulse-bought twenty bottles of soda and energy drinks. She picked some up with shaky hands and started to maniacally chug it. She belched and burped. She then cracked another one open.
She then slammed a large cut of beef on a pan. She doused the meat in sauces very liberally.
She tapped her leg down impatiently. Salvia pooled in her mouth.
Even though the meat was piping hot, she wolfed it down like it was the first meal she had in five weeks.
After she had done that, she finally understood what was going on. Her metamorphosis has been triggered. She didn't know what she was going to turn into, so she ran for the neighborhood metamorphosis pods.
When lungs, hearts, or brains are changed during a metamorphosis, the changing individual has to be in a life-support pod. Blacking out now and then, she threw herself into the pod. In the pod, her body melted to reform later according to her new genetic code.
Her vision darkened. Everything but her nervous system loosened from her body. When she woke up, she felt like a completely different woman. She was a completely different woman. She was searching for a mirror when she noticed that the streets were filled with cancerous corpses.
The manager from before lay dead in front of his computer.
She sheepishly walked among the dead for a while. She was in shock. She didn't know what to do. She looked at her skin. There was a green tint to it. She ran near a car and looked at its side mirrors.
She had feline eyes and prominent canine teeth. All her hair was gone. Her sense of smell and taste have been sharpened. She could taste metamorphosis goo residue on her teeth, and she didn't appreciate it.
She felt violated. She tried to use her hallucination gland. Her new modifications have been displayed in there, but they were blacked out. It meant she wasn't allowed to edit them away through another metamorphosis.
It read:
[Modified feline eyes: Genecorp]
[Modified lungs and digestive system: Genecorp]
[Modified photosynthetic skin: Genecorp]
[Modified muscular structure: Genecorp]
…
Filled with rage, she punched the car. The car dented, and its back end slid half a meter. After her anger had subsided, she sat down and started crying.
Far above her, in orbit, Morif was looking at those who had survived what he did. Among them were Kahara crying into her monstrous hands and Dwax pushing a limp man on a wheelbarrow.
Morif watched the visions with satisfaction. There was enough population density on the ground to repopulate the planet after the attack. That is, people were still capable of finding other survivors if they searched within a 1-kilometer radius. With that, the planet's citizens survived the galactic ire for another unknown period.
Morif felt like he was a good person. He had done it. He had saved the planet from the routine elimination of hermit domains that the galactic community dishes out!