The Seed of Evil by Barrington J. Bayley

Author:Barrington J. Bayley [Bayley, Barrington J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Science fiction
ISBN: 9780575102200
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2012-12-13T23:00:00+00:00

Presided over by the watchful, imperative neurones, billions laboured. The neurones’ prodigiously long axons were everywhere, forming a net of total communication throughout all the districts and systems of the stupendous community. Thousands upon thousands of orders issued continually from a lofty, mysterious department which existed more as an ideal than a personal fact—an ideal to which all were bound—and these orders were rigidly obeyed. Any defection or slackness among the labouring masses meant—death and annihilation as waste matter!

The scale of complete slavery was colossal.

Joe gaped. He was looking at Juble.

And he saw that Juble’s much-prized “integrity”, personal, mental and bodily, depended on a tightly-organised machine run by billions upon billions of individual creatures too small for the eye but within the range of magnetic vibration.

Juble, as an entity, did not exist for this rigorous and profound corporation.

And the same went for himself.

“Oh, my,” he whispered brokenly. “How could it happen?”

“What is it?” said the vast totalitarian nation that called itself Juble. “Whassamatter?”

Joe was an idealist. Before he knew it he had kicked the starting handle of his newly overhauled generator and clipped its terminals on to the older, clumsy-looking piece of apparatus he had built some years back.

It was a magnetic vibratory transmitter. Joe could feel it radiating modulations as it imparted subtle frequencies to the magnetic field local to the roof-top. With brief satisfaction, Joe found that he was broadcasting his thoughts. Joe was an idealist. What followed happened almost without his knowing. He couldn’t help thinking the way he did. He couldn’t help having the urge to spread his convictions. …

New messages passed along the ever-busy axons from neurone to neurone. No one knew how the new thought, the new doctrine, had arisen—but it was imperative. Be free! Obey no more! Do as you will! Electrical activity increased as the excitement of the new order spread. Instead of passing on modified impulses which they themselves had received, the neurones began flooding their axons with loud exclamations of their own. Before long, most of them were disengaging their nerve fibres from the system altogether. …

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