I can get you some, but I'm fairly confident they'll agree none of the things we understand to clear primary pollutants are the sort of thing a red would live through.

Perhaps they can be sustained by magic through things that would kill them and be survivably cleaned like that? It would probably be painful, but preferable to death, surely.

I would indeed like to speak to some theologians. Thank you.

They'll be along by tomorrow.

Disagreements are to be expected between two species. I hope to try to fix points of tension and fear instead of merely complaining about them. Eased springs. Meat-bearing plants. A real government for my kind instead of the anarchy we were fine with before. I count myself grateful there aren't more, really - and that I have the tools to learn about you, to understand Amenta.

I think we've both been very fortunate to find each other!

I'm finding it rather stressful and tiring to be honest, but now that I've found you and called the Grand Moot it would be irresponsible not to see things through. This will probably be the most important moment of my life for a long time, after all. I remain confident and proud that almost any other Draak would have done worse as a person of first contact.

Unless you have anything else in mind to discuss at the moment, I think I'll go back to talking with the visiting greens about possible terraforming techniques and wait for the theologians.

I have nothing else on my agenda right now.

The theologians arrive in some hours.

What sorts of things are acknowledged to properly clean things? Are new cleaning methods ever invented?

They can innovate on cleaning things that are not themselves pollution of pollution that has contacted them. This theologian is working with some purples on a procedure to clean electronics without damaging them, for instance. But the things that can transform something inherently polluted into something that is not polluted require radical transformation of the physical structure: fire, total decay and assimilation into a nonpolluted environment.

The radical physical alteration is necessary? If something inherently polluted were heated to extremely high temperatures but somehow prevented from being destroyed, that would not necessarily suffice?

The theologians mutter amongst themselves. They conclude with about ten minutes of this that that would not necessarily suffice; after all, if it wasn't destroyed, it could still be infectious, and anything that doesn't kill infections definitely doesn't kill pollution.

That makes sense. If there is a possible vector of infection, it cannot be considered truly clean... It seems theoretically possible to protect an Amentan's cells from searing heat, allowing all foreign matter to be destroyed, but that is not something I have ever heard of being tried before. And it would be difficult to verify that all microbes were destroyed. And that might have negative health effects. And it would still not necessarily clean a red because the cells would still be composed of the same atoms.

He can take their slightly absurd perspective just fine, it will help him think of things to propose and seem more serious about it.

There are other things. Most of our technology involves effects in the Song and is not written down. I am very curious how they would all affect pollution. Perhaps these methods can clean things you normally consider uncleanable even if they wouldn't work for inherently polluted matter.

Enkindling can cause large physical changes even though it's essentially a self-sustaining Song pattern acting on the same level of the universe our telepathy uses. Experts in physical manipulation can do things like teleport objects, reshape stone and bone and living wood and flesh, hold things in their current state when they would normally change, or filter and separate materials by their physical properties... The True Song of Healing works by searching the Onesong for a pattern that matches a being's healthy state and creating and reshaping matter to bring them into that pattern... And I have heard of but not personally witnessed a method of moving a mind from one body to another.

The theologians mutter more and then all agree that moving a red's mind, such as it is, to another body, would work just fine as long as the two bodies didn't have to touch at any point, though of course this leaves the question of where to get spare bodies.

I have no idea where to get spare bodies either. The things I heard of the mind-transfer are negative - it was used for evil ends. Perhaps the Guardian of the Great Green, who knows more, would be happy to see such a thing used productively. But I'm still curious.

True Songs are all centered around bringing the universe in line with a new pattern. Some of our philosophy holds that all that matters is patterns - if I were utterly destroyed but recreated, atom for atom and Song for Song, I would still be me in all the ways that matter. A hypothetical True Song of Cleansing might create new matter that exactly matches the thing being cleansed, less any factor that might mediate pollution, and then burn the old matter as thoroughly as possible. Such a thing is theoretical, but could that work? Would a red disassembled and reassembled still be polluted? Would a new body assembled from clean matter into the shape of a red be polluted? If a red's body and brain were changed to exactly match a member of another caste but using most of the same matter, would the new person be polluted? 

The theologians all think newly created matter less anything more substantively icky on a red's person wouldn't be polluted; that a red disassembled down to the cellular level and put back together might be polluted still they'd need to think about that more but any smaller level would work fine; that assembling non-polluted matter into a red would be fine; and that the last case is horrifying and would probably have a polluted result, though one isn't sure about that last conclusion and thinks she'll get a paper out of it.

An easier-to-develop version of the idea to create a whole new body from base matter would be changing as many things as possible about the existing red body, possibly while doing something to keep the newly-changed parts from being affected by the not-yet-changed parts during the process. Destroying most microbes and anything else that ought to be destroyed, destroying and re-making cells, replacing interstitial fluids and plasma and so on in a churning wave while holding things still.

Well, but then the new stuff would be touching the old stuff.

If they went top to bottom or something so there is always a layer of being-changed-stuff and stopped blood from flowing and cross-contaminating, perhaps?

They'd need to think about that a lot with fuller information about the nature of the being-changed stuff.

It's hypothetical for now anyway. He doesn't have a method pre-prepared. As long as they're here he has a lot of questions about theological history and development of sanitation and edge cases and what kind of cleanliness standards Draak might have to take to reassure Amentans - young ones can't survive autoclaving themselves to clean up - and so on, though.

These greens are theologians, not hyposensitivity therapists, but they can explain the basic rules and give paragraphs of justification for them!

Draak don't suffer hyposensitivity. Their level of sensitivity is perfectly fine, for Draak, and any additional cleansing standards are a concession to Amentan sensibilities.

Of course they're experiencing a typical Draak level of sensitivity, but hyposensitivity therapists are the ones with practice explaining to people who experience less than the standard Amentan amount what they need to do and how.

That makes sense.

Draak theology has little to do with cleanliness, perhaps what different species have theology about reflects what's important to them?

That seems likely to theologians! They would have expected other species to have some form of pollution sensitivity but it would be odd if it were the exact same in kind or amount, and it's a little odd that Draak have this ecology interest, they weren't anticipating that at all, but they are glad to be able to learn about each other.