by Davina Lee
A large part of the idea for the story came from a transphobic social media rant and a beautifully constructed rebuttal. Yeah, social media, the echo chamber of our generation. I’ve read that no one ever convinces anyone of anything with a social media post, that it only serves to harden one’s preexisting beliefs, but these two sure tried.
The transphobic rant was the usual. There are only two sexes, male and female, it’s what nature intended, etc. etc. The rebuttal was brilliant. Purported to be written by a biologist (but who really knows social media) it went to great lengths to point out ways that nature is definitely not a world as rigidly divided as the original poster would have you believe.
The parts that stuck with me were the examples given of bee colonies and shoals of fish.
Bees reproduce in a process called haplodiploidy. Say that three times fast! You may recall Lina with her smaller stature being mistaken for a haploid until her true status was revealed. (And if you’re one of those people skipping ahead to the end, I will not be revealing that here. Sorry.) Haploids have half the genetic material as diploids and are smaller in size.
Lina’s colony also has a queen, because that’s how bees operate. Only the queen lays eggs. There are a handful of haploid drones whose only purpose in life is to mate with the queen and fertilize the eggs, but they are in the minority. The rest of the colony is made up of non-egg laying females, like Lina and Arabel and all the other diploids.
Did you notice how Lina had a mentor and not a mother? That’s because the queen is the only egg layer and is everyone’s mother. The other non-egg laying females are tasked with looking after the young, just like bees do.
Three classifications: fertile queen, infertile females, drone males. Biologist argument number one is in the bag.
The next rebuttal argument that stuck with me was one concerning fish. There are several species of fish that can change sex, in adulthood, if the need arises. These species are called protogynous hermaphrodites.
Groups of these fish are usually protected by a large, dominant male. If that protector should die, it is entirely possible for a female in the group to grow larger and actually transform into a male, thus taking on the protector role. This was news to me so I looked it up. Sure enough, there it was, staring me in the face. Score: Biology 2, Transphobe: 0.
Do you recall when Lina and Arabel met the character I on the island of drones? When Arabel asks where I came from, I responds, “I does not know. One day I is not here. The next day I is. Sent by Great Tree, I suppose.”
I has no gender-specific pronouns, because I is in all likelihood a protogynous hermaphrodite. Though, unlike a fish transitioning from smaller female to larger male, I transitions from haploid drone to diploid in order to be the protector of the drone colony. According to I, this is the will of the Great Tree, making it one-hundred percent natural or at least something not questioned by I.
And what is this Great Tree? As cited in the opening bits of scripture, the Great Tree has been around for eternity and is the source of all things. The Great Tree idea is present in religions around the world, many times referred to as the Tree of Life.
Every colony in Lina and Arabel’s world has a tree at its core. This is not a symbolic tree, but a tree one can touch, and its health reflects the health of the colony. Think of bees again for a moment. If you’re a bee, with your hive hanging from a branch, the health of your tree determines the fate of your colony. If your tree falls, you’re in trouble.
But the Great Tree is also more mystical than this. The Great Tree talks to Lina in dreams. The Wise Queen An Ming, gains wisdom by listening to the Great Tree, while the queen of Lina’s colony, too absorbed in herself, ignores the Great Tree and her colony suffers because of it.
“Wait a minute!” you might be saying. “If the Tree is a religious symbol and Lina, Arabel, and ‘I’ are definitely not model citizens of a traditional male-female society, does this mean that religion can be okay with all this uniqueness?”
I suppose it all depends on your Great Tree. The Tree Lina speaks with in her visions is kind and understanding. The Tree even has a sense of humor and speaks of love and how she dotes on her children.
And that, dear reader, brings us around to sub-Saharan Africa, where Lina first speaks to the Great Tree in a vision. This area of the African continent has long been thought to be the cradle of the human race, so no big surprise there. Though Lina is surprised.
“The air is so clean and clear. How can it be, so far into the abyss?” she says to the Great Tree.
That’s because Lina lives above the clouds. She refers to the land we humans live on today as the abyss. Following the bits of scripture at the beginning of each chapter gives some insight into why Lina has this reaction.
Lina’s distant ancestors (us) lived on land. The Great Tree tells a story of the Wise Queen of the East and describes how humanity strayed from the path while the Wise Queen stayed true. This, together with the scripture excerpts are my way of hinting at a runaway global warming event that sent humanity racing for the clouds.
And this leads us to the planet Venus and oceans. What? Yes, Venus and oceans. Stay with me here.
Venus suffers from runaway global warming. It is hot and toxic to human life. The atmosphere is over ninety percent carbon-dioxide at a pressure of ninety-three bars. Compare that to Earth’s atmospheric pressure of one bar. It’s ninety-three times as dense on Venus! It’s so dense it would feel like being under 3,000 feet of water.
Do you see the ocean correlation now?
If the atmosphere of Lina’s world has taken on even half the characteristics of Venus, the air would be as thick as water and unbreathable. Of course, it wouldn’t be uniform. Just like the ocean, it would be more crushing at great depths. And, like the ocean, theoretically, one could float on top of it.
In fact, the ocean itself is not one uniform layer of water, but rather has been divided into five distinct layers. The topmost is called the sunlight layer. That’s the layer we swim in and where most of the cute little fish we’re familiar with live.
Below that is the twilight layer, and home to some odd-looking creatures. Things get darker and stranger the deeper you go. Keep going, and you get to the trenches, like the Mariana that’s over 35,000 feet deep. Compare that to Everest’s 29,000 foot peak, and you get an idea of the difference between top and bottom.
In Lina’s world, however, the abyss is at what we would call sea level. Clouds are her ocean. Mountain tops of the Himalayan range are her islands. The atmosphere below these peaks is so thick it can support boat-like craft, the cloud skimmers.
Is it a stretch of imagination? Perhaps, but at least there is some plausibility behind it.
The cloud skimmers have a little bit of science behind them as well. They’re a mash-up of the venerable Chinese junk design coupled with hot air balloons to add buoyancy. The balloons are kept inflated using solar power. When you live above the clouds, the sun is always shining, so why not? Except at night. And that’s where I’s furnace contraption comes into play.
So here we are, back with Lina and Arabel sailing a cloud skimmer back home, at night, huddled by the glow of a peat burning furnace. And as two lovers sailing under the stars, they engage in some pleasures of the flesh. In fact, these two seem to excel in that area. And what’s with all the scenting?
And now, dear reader, we are back to bees again. Bees and other insects communicate by scents and pheromones. Ants lead one another to food this way. Bees will dance and scent to communicate. They probably find flowers intoxicating as well (just a guess.) Bees have been found in one-hundred million year old fossils. We Homo sapiens count our ancestry in hundreds of thousands of years.
What this means to me is that bees must be doing something right to have been around so long. I thought it would be interesting to apply some of their traits onto human evolution. Not only is Lina’s colony social structure like bees, but they’re all capable of scenting as well. And of course,
we know they love to dance.
So there you have it, dear reader—a brief look into how Lina and Arabel’s world came into being. From social media…to bees…to fish…to Venus…to the ocean…and back to bees. I hope it answered a few questions for you or at least provided some entertaining insights. Thanks for reading!
—Davina Lee
ABOUT DAVINA LEE
Davina Lee is a writer of sappy lesbian romance and erotic fiction. A resident of Wisconsin, Davina can be found enjoying a local micro-brew, squeaky-fresh cheese curds, or a good protest march down at the capital.
ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC
JMS Books LLC is a small queer press with competitive royalty rates publishing LGBT romance, erotic romance, and young adult fiction. Visit jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!