[Dune7: Advent]

*

[Book Three - Chapter Four]

The initial goal of the Kwisatz Haderach program was to find a genetic solution to the enduring problems of mankind. Achieving the Kwisatz Haderach was only the first step of the process towards a solution. Paul Atreides and his son, the God Emperor, did follow the second part of the plan, at least in intent - as much as they deviated from our original projections, they did follow that part of their genetic programming quite nicely. What they lacked, however, was the necessary perspective to continue the plan in a proper manner - a perspective that the Sisterhood, as the originator of the program, does possess. We suspect The Tyrant’s Ancestral Memories, as described in the recently discovered journals at Dar-es-Balat, failed to integrate some of the better-guarded subtleties of the Bene Gesserit plans from the memories of the Sisters in his ancestry - the contrast with the living, continuously developing tradition of the Sisterhood with his static, consistently overestimated array of Ancestral Memories is clear. It appears even The Tyrant himself overestimated the lucidity and comprehensiveness of his access to his ancestry, a realisation that to us has both positive and negative aspects: it allows us to silence most of our fears about his powers and his resemblance to us, but it also increases the potential damage his mismanagement has done to our breeding program. However, the biggest mistake The Tyrant made was to accept his metamorphosis before reaching the age of sexual maturity. The use of his sister as the basis of his breeding program has proven to be misguided: her mastering of the Ancestral Memories involved a method that locked them away rather than allowing them to develop, thus minimising the desirable traits the Kwisatz Haderach’s seed would have perpetuated.

-from “Atreides Atrocity - An Analysis”, Bene Gesserit Archives.

            “I’ve lost her,” Duncan despaired. For all intents and purposes, my love is dead.

            “I don’t care, ghola,” Scytale said. “We have more pressing matters to take care of.”

            They were in the hold with the axolotl tanks, the five bloated, malformed bodies floating in the Melange liquid, creating new life out of old cells. What had once been Sheeana was ready to give birth again.

            Scytale took a large syringe filled with a light-blue substance, and injected the contents straight into a tube that led into Sheeana’s skull through one of her temples. Soon after, labour began, and the head of the new ghola became visible. Despite the differences in appearance, Duncan immediately recognised the face from his distant past. Why would he resurrect him, of all people?, he wondered.

            Idaho decided to ask. “What purpose does giving him new life serve?”

            “It was foretold in a prophecy that it would have to be this way,”Scytale answered. “I am merely performing the task I have been given.”

            The very moment the ghola was born, loud noises reached them from the adjoining hold, where the worm was being kept - a bonking sound, over and over again. Without fully realising why he did it, Idaho cradled the crying baby - still wet with axolotl-tank fluid - in his arms and took it to the worm.

            As soon as they entered the hold, the worm stopped its violent movements, turning its head to the two gholas. Idaho walked over to the pen and lay the baby on the bed of Spice. The infant was completely calm now.

            “Our new son,” he whispered.

            The worm carefully moved closer to the small form, appearing to determine what kind of strange object it was that had entered his territory. Some of the sandtrout that formed its front segment partly detached and encapsulated the ghola baby, completely hiding it from view.

**  **  **  **  **

Finally… Your mind, still undeveloped but full of potential, is available to me. Your young limbs I will reconfigure, and soon I will have my true body again!

**  **  **  **  **

“Where is our son?”

Sheeana came storming from the house, in panic, looking for Duncan. She found him in the garden next to the house, where they grew the giant pumpkins and the baby carrots and the candy tree.

          “What’s the matter?”, Duncan asked.

          “Paul! Paul is gone!”

          Duncan knew they had raised their son to be responsible, and always do the right thing. “Where could he have gone? He doesn’t know the way around here. He is just a little boy.”

          Pulling Duncan’s arm, trying to get him to stop his work, she yelled: “Perhaps he is lost, or Shaitan came and kidnapped him!”

          Duncan appeared not to share her concern. “If that’s true, I’m sure we will get a new one. Waldemar will come again.”

          “You don’t love our son! I hate you!” Sheeana dashed off towards the woods, where she thought Paul could have ran away to, when suddenly she tripped and fell. A severe illness overcame her.

          Duncan walked over, and said: “Something’s not right.”

**  **  **  **  **

“The new Teg gholas are almost ready to be born,” Scytale said, inspecting the readouts on some of the strange-looking displays he had attached to the tanks. “We will soon have a small army of our own.”

Will that be enough?, Idaho wondered. The power of the Prometheans might be too great.

            Suddenly, violent convulsions shook the axolotl tank that had once been Sheeana. Scytale pushed Idaho aside as he approached the tank. He looked at Idaho. “Something’s not right.”

**  **  **  **  **

As Solar the firefly started his climb up to the roof of the sky again, Sheeana realised this day would bring many changes. She had been ill for a few days, but was starting to feel a bit better now. She got up out of bed and looked for Duncan, but she couldn’t find him anywhere in the house. She was starting to get a little worried.

Suddenly, immense pain shot through Sheeana’s body, causing her to collapse onto the floor of the kitchen. Duncan rushed over from outside, alarmed by Sheeana’s cry for help, and supported her while she tried to stand up. “What’s the matter, my love?”, he asked.

          Another jolt of pain shook Sheeana. His hands felt very uncomfortable on her body. “Don’t touch me!”, she screamed, breaking free of Duncan’s embrace. She turned to look at his face, finding genuine concern there, and something… more. For a brief moment, Sheeana understood what he felt for the very first time. He loves me!  However, she could not bring herself to admit to feeling the same. “I… Don’t follow me. Please?”, she stammered. She hesitated for a moment, then ran out the door, crying loudly.

          She passed the vegetable gardens with the giant pumpkins and the baby carrots and the candy tree, entered the Forest Of The Howling Spirits, and didn’t stop until she reached the small lake where the fairies lived, occasionally stumbling as pain once more seared through her body.

Strange visions flared up inside her mind, the pain providing her with moments of perceptional clarity. Through rifts in the sky, she could see Shaitan trying to reach her, hunting her, his crystal teeth tearing the clouds. The trees that surrounded her dissolved, and dunes of red sand rose up all around her.

          Then the thoughts came.

Shaitan killed my parents - devoured my village!

Shaitan listened to me.

The black-robed women made me one of them. She remembered a face. Her name was… Odrade?

A brief flash of clarity pervaded her mind then, the memory of a former life restoring some of her old thoughts, elements of the suppressed Odrade-within attempting to reassert her influence over Sheeana’s traumatised consciousness. For a few short moments, she almost realised what was happening to her, and what was supposed to have happened to her, if the Sisterhood had had its way.

I’m… an axolotl tank. Resignation in her fate filled her mind, a powerlessness that wasn’t depressing but made her understand something of the motion of the allstream, and her role in history.

Odrade… What was it that she wanted from me? Sheeana remembered she was an important part of a plan this woman had hatched. Why? What did she want me to do?

            The contours of a structure of actions and reactions appeared. A religion? Shaitan… his world had been destroyed, all but one of the giant worms killed.

            Shaitan listened to me.

            There lies the value I had to the Sisterhood.

They needed the Missionaria Protectiva to reach a new stage… The Sisterhood has been manipulating many cultures for millennia by infecting them with religious dogmas, preparing those societies for exploitation. The Atreides Manifesto had been the final element of the old strategy, preparing the Tleilaxu to share their valuable knowledge with the Sisterhood.     

            The painting! “Thatched Cottages At Cordeville” - it pointed out the new path. This artist of long ago, a deeply disturbed individual by normal standards, was the hunter that captured this array of emotions and locked it inside an object for us to look at and relive some of the most basic sensations we are capable of having. Irrationality and raw creative expression frozen in a carefully composed manner - the chaos not contained but not allowed to run rampant either.

            I have to make the choice. Bene Gesserit rationality, or raw emotion, or perhaps a combination of the two? Or… Is there a fourth choice?

            Sheeana. The voice sounded soothing.

            Who is that?, Sheeana wondered.

            I have found you again.

            Odrade?

            Yes. I’m here to remind you of your duties as a Bene Gesserit. You have been given immense knowledge, and unique abilities. Remember the obligations the acquisition of power force upon you. You have sworn to serve mankind, to carve out a better future for humanity.

            I see no future for humanity.

            You cannot think such things!

            I will think whichever way I want. I have made my choice.

            You are the centrepiece of the Sisterhood’s future!

            Not any longer. I’m taking back my own life.

            A dark shape appeared, for both Odrade and Sheeana to see: a large piece of black plaz, sharp tentacles reaching upward as if in despair from a massive curved base.

Odrade recognised the object, and remembered feeling the danger and pain encapsulated in the sculpture when she first saw it in Sheeana’s quarters, such a long time ago. ‘Void’.

It moved, the rigid material having gained malleability. The tentacles shot out, encircling the concepts, emotions and sensations in Sheeana’s mind, and then capturing her will to live.

Sheeana returned to her vision, the tangible appearance of the house in the distance, the one she had lived in with Duncan, losing its consistency, the painting’s crude brushstrokes and vibrant colours reappearing.

The water of the lake called her, invited her to enter it. Looking back one more time, silently saying goodbye to all that she had loved and hated in her life, she walked forward. With each step, the water rose higher around her legs and chest, until it reached her chin.

She hesitated. She heard footsteps approaching, and Duncan’s voice calling out to her. She ignored him.

Suddenly, she was submerged, looking upwards to the light, seeing the air bubbles rising to the surface.

What a strange sensation…, she thought. A Fremen drowning.

Slowly, she felt her mind go black, the oxygen in her lungs running out, until finally she embraced the darkness, and was no more.

**  **  **  **  **

Because of the connection he had with the tanks through his peculiar devices, Scytale sensed what had happened, and ran towards the hold where the axolotl tanks were. When he arrived he saw that Idaho was already there, standing next to the tank with the monstrously deformed body of Sheeana. He was stroking her face, gently wiping her long hair away from her eyes, his hands wet with the fluid that filled the tank. Her hair had started falling out and her face was bloated and carried an expression of pain, but Idaho looked at her as if she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

He lifted his head towards Scytale, and spoke softly. “She’s dead.”

[Dune7: Advent]

*

[Book Three - Chapter Five]

Always keep your opponent off balance - uncertainty makes one susceptable to suggestions that appear to restore order, and this hope causes carelessness. Use every tool at your disposal to attain your goals - everything from all-out terror and blackmail to a carefully dosed use of certain key words. Even a virtually undetectable mannerism or the way you dress can be highly effective. Offend your enemy when it’s safe to do so. Causing changes in the distribution of power is a game, and, as is the case with every game, the goal is to increase pleasure - your own. Control of the distribution of pleasure and displeasure is the ultimate power.

-Siridar Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

            Inside the cocoon formed by the sandtrout, the baby ghola’s body was changing, merging with the worm, the limbs and head developing at an increased rate. The Melange supply in the pen was quickly growing smaller as well, the substance being an integral fuel source for the drastic transformations.

            Slowly but steadily, the past was opening up to him, both Other Memory and Ancestral Memory unfolding in his mind, giving him the access even his recent reawakening hadn’t been able to give him, the ghola baby’s brain giving him the neural potential needed to properly organise and store the inpouring knowledge.

            He felt confident enough now to dare to look back, tracing history to its earliest stages, and beyond into prehistory. The events of the past millennia revealed themselves to him, how the discovery of the Spice had created a structure in which certain developments were unavoidable. He understood that the events that had taken place were supposed to have happened, all developments converging at this point in history, all processes leading to the same goal.

            Does the Spice have a plan of its own?, he wondered. Does its power serve the purposes of a higher will or order?

            Looking farther back, a pattern emerged, suggesting this was indeed the case. Soon, I will know the designer of this pattern. I will be the designer of the pattern!

            The earliest stages of evolution flashed in front of his mind’s eye, the most distant points to which he was permitted to see. The circle appeared again, and this strenghtened his resolve to remove himself from that damnable structure forever.

            All the elements are in place now: my servant and the powers I helped unlock, my new body, my recaptured awareness… I still need to find a way for him to unleash his full potential, but that is merely a matter of time.

            A new sensation arose in his mind - an awareness of a new presence. Ah, the kindred spirit arrives!

            The image was unclear - muddled by the limitations of his prescience. The presence carried with it the unknown beyond. However, this did not fill him with fear. My new existence - I cannot see there. For now…

            A dominant persona of his Ancestral Memory protested. Your plan is evil!

            My plan is necessary!, he responded.

            Your actions will make you worse than your great-grandfather. He was a glutton: power, young bodies, food - he devoured everything, but at least he knew he was evil. I know my actions were wrong - I had the power to stop the Jihad, and I didn’t. I mourn for my ignorance and lack of willpower every day. Your Golden Path was even worse, but you understood its cruelty. What you’re planning now transcends all that!

            Of course it does! One final act of cruelty to end all cruelty. The universe will be a better place once I’m done.

[Dune7: Advent]

*

[Book Three - Chapter Six]

Memories populate the continuum formed by our understanding of our personal history. The way this continuum is constructed is highly subjective, due to the unique blend of presuppositions, opinions and fragments of knowledge each of us possesses. This means that, barring the use of more or less objective recording tools, the way we’re situated in reference to the past as well as the future is highly subjective as well. The past is only know to us in memories, the future is only understood by us based on extrapolations of the now that use our understanding of the way similar situations developed in the past. In other words: our memories define our understanding of time. Events that were personally important will be remembered well and will be appointed a relatively large amount of “memory space”, but might be altered considerably due to our constant revisiting and modifying those events in memories - after all, we perceive those scenes from the past through the filter of the present: the way we understand and rate those memories is influenced by our current mood and intellectual advancement. Occurances we considered unimportant will be remembered poorly or not at all and will be appointed very little “memory space”, but might survive relatively unscathed if inadvertantly remembered much later in life. This way meaningful periods in effect expand in our memories, and meaningless periods deflate. Strangely enough the inverse is true for the immediate appraisal of such periods as we experience them, which becomes clear when you consider the ancient saying “time flies when you’re having fun”, which is still in use today. Conversely, when living it, a boring period lasts unbearably long, but in retrospect such a period will have flown by because nothing of importance happened in it. This is how normal memory works - how different it is for me, in whom prescience and ancestral memory reaching back to the earliest evolutionary stages meet! There is no qualitative criterium to differentiate the memories of my physical life from my boundless knowledge of the past as well as the future. Do you understand my godhood now? Do you see my terrible burden?

-Leto II, the God Emperor. From The Stolen Journals.

            Almost a week had passed since the Prometheans first attacked Chapter House. After the first devastating assault, many small Bene Gesserit and Honoured Matre groups had scattered across the habitable parts of the planet, launching counterattacks where they could. Despite the valiant efforts of the defenders, the invaders were simply too powerful: now all but a few groups had been either eradicated or captured.

            Idaho and Scytale were still inside the no-ship, having been spared from detection by the many patrols of the Prometheans. The axolotl tanks had generated a small army of Teg gholas, each of them as malformed and diseased as the first one, but staggeringly powerful and fast.

Leto had awakened the day before: the ghola-baby’s limbs had grown larger and stronger and the vocal chords had developed, but he was still weak. He now resembled a smaller version of what he had looked like while he ruled his Empire, up to a millennium-and-a-half before.

Only the face is not Leto’s, Duncan realised at their first meeting.

            A warning light flashed on the main console on the bridge of the ship. Idaho checked the readings, an angry frown appearing on his face.

            “What is it?”, the Tleilaxu Master asked.

            “Yesterday I managed to establish an uplink with one of the few no-sattelites that is still functional. It was keeping an eye on the enemy flagship for me.”

            “Has something happened to it?”

            “You could say that. A large section has separated from it, and is descending towards the planet.”

            Another screen came alive, displaying several lines of symbols and the images delivered to them by a returning spy drone. “It seems we have more immediate problems,” Duncan said. “There’s an enemy patrol out there, and they’ve found us.”

**  **  **  **  **

            A groundcar carrying Idaho, Scytale, the reborn Leto and five Teg gholas burst from a hatch in the no-ship, crashing through the Promethean patrol. The troopers got up, not one of them injured, and gave pursuit.

            “Wait,” the leader said, a strange accent modifying his pronunciation of Galach. “There’s a Bagishar amongst them.”

            Another trooper checked a small sensor device. “It does appear consistent with a Bagishar’s signature, but it’s lacking all implants and enhancements. It could be just a worm.”

            “No matter. Follow them!”

            They pursued on foot, quickly lagging behind, but moving much faster than any human could. They were quickly joined by an actual Bagishar, one of the armoured worm-human hybrids who functioned as generals in the invaders’ army, whose affinity with the sand enabled them to travel much more quickly. The strange creature was catching up with the heavily burdened groundcar.

            Leto looked back, and saw the Bagishar approaching. Part of him is probably part of me, he realised.

Leto attempted to contact the shadows of his mind within the sandtrout that covered the pursuer. He felt the few regular sandworms still alive on the planet responding, and he shared in the pain caused by the injuries they had sustained during the attacks they had been forced to carry out under the Bagishars’ influence, but could not penetrate the pearls of his consciousness in the sandtrout covering the officer itself.

            What manner of beast is that? He resembles me, but the parts of my mind that should be present in him have been changed.

            For a brief moment, Leto could sense the truth about these creatures. Machines have been fused with organics, keeping the transformation from man to worm at an equilibrium. There’s another mind beyond that, controlling the worms! He’s the one I’m looking for.

            At that moment, the pursueing Bagishar fired two well-placed shots at the groundcar with a side-mounted energy discharge weapon, causing it to crash.

**  **  **  **  **

            “We should attack once more!” The Mother Superior’s mind had been made up. “We cannot allow these filthy creatures to win this easily!”

            A Proctor - Dional - was attempting to reason with her superior. “We have suffered terrible losses. The only course of action is to evacuate. If we can only reach the no-ship…”

            “I will not retreat,” Murbella screamed. “This planet is mine.”

            “Clearly your primitive Honoured Matre rhetoric has contaminated your capacity for rational thought.”

            As soon Dional had said this, she realised the mistake she had made. Even though she was an accomplished fighter amongst the Bene Gesserit, she knew she would not stand a chance against an infuriated Murbella.

            Murbella was ready to pounce, when the discharge of an energy weapon could be heard outside the room’s entrance. A Promethean trooper entered. In Galach, barely understandable because of the heavy accent, he said: “The Bene Gesserit Mother Superior will come with me.”

            “I will do no such thing,” Murbella said. In an impossibly quick movement, she lunged at the trooper, her hand outstretched. The trooper casually stepped aside, evading the attack effortlessly, paralysing Murbella with a small dart ejected from a hidden launcher on his right arm.

            “Bah!”, the Promethean exclaimed. “Obsolescent organic.”

continue

                                                                Last modified: May 24, 2000