Under the Sea by Mark Leidner

Author:Mark Leidner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tyrant Books
Published: 2019-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

ONE’S ANTENNAE HOUSED ONE’S MEMORY and established a neural connection to every other consciousness in the colony. Every experience of every individual was encoded in coils of nerves within. This coiling, royal researchers had discovered, transmitted a two-way signal between every other member’s antennae. The network meant an individual’s private and social memories were unified in the psychology of the colony, but the network wasn’t always easy to access. Generally speaking, only the queen could experience these memories, and, although she was typically too busy to snoop through private memories one by one, a general feeling—anxiety, conspiracy, lust, murderous rage—could be felt by anyone whose antennae were functioning properly. Colonial lore was replete, therefore, with villains who’d escaped the influence of or even gained influence over higher authorities by modifying or otherwise tampering with their antennae. Some cut them off to forget trauma, or to disconnect from the colony before doing works of great evil. In the past, antennae loss had been seen as a sure sign of moral degeneracy, if not intentional heresy; recent attitudes, however, had liberalized. A damaged antenna was less and less an emblem of wickedness and more and more simply a risk to public health. Thus the rationale for culling the antennaeless had become more humane even if the result was the same. Many opposed the policy of quarantining and incarcerating or executing the abnormally antennaed, of course, arguing such workers and soldiers were perfectly capable of living normal lives; however, because most of this opposition came from older members of the colony whose antennae had been degraded by labor or combat or the passage of time, antennae reform was often seen by the mainstream as a way for has-beens to hang on and unduly shape colonial policy long after their relevance had lapsed. Infrequently, some members of the colony were permitted to live on in a state of partial or complete antennae loss, if they knew the right royal member or were seen as feeble enough to simply disregard. Other amputees fled the colony to live beyond its walls. They were then considered “bugs,” a catch-all slur usually reserved for rival species, particularly termites. But to put any antennae, even one’s own, at risk—for any reason—generally made others uncomfortable. Because antennae were a network, whenever any antenna was knocked, twisted, crushed, or otherwise twanged, there was a chance that another nearby would sense it. That Tzara-9 would risk breaking this taboo to goad Lnzt-16 was, in the eyes of Rxgr-14, half her charm. She was a total maniac, and Rxgr-14 idolized her willingness to shred the expectations of those around her, even as it made him feel uncomfortable, not to mention cowardly by comparison. Outwardly, at least, Lnzt-16 seemed to regard Tzara-9 as a lazy and unvigilant soldier, and he often accused her of getting by on brashness alone, which he had characterized as “all well and good… during peacetime” in those exact words so many times that the phrase was as maddening to Tzara-9 as mon frère was to Rxgr-14.

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