Dune 7: Cartea Brundurilor

[arnoldo]

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 

~ Jesus 

 

The earth had long ago turned into a barren frozen wasteland the Brood Mother reflected. Before that, the humans which were the hive member's ancestors fled the earth - like a bird leaving it's dirtied nest. The nuclear holocaust, of the old earth year 2112, caused the humans to flee but the hive merely went deeper underground eventually tapping the molten core of the earth to power the hive's great turbines. 

 

Occasionally, humans returned to earth but they were quickly taken into the hive's vats. This way their memories were assimilated by the Brood Mother who learned everything that the Outsiders were accomplishing. Very little interested the Brood Mother, even the ability to fold space, but when a face dancer's memories informed her of the existence of a Tyrant who had symbiotically merged with a worm this caught her attention. However, for the most part life went on for the hive with little interference from the Outsiders. 

 

Everything changed for the hive when a great ship appeared over the horizon of the earth. No matter how hard the brood mother tried to override the controls of the ship it remained serenely over the skies of the earth. Finally, the Brood Mother received direct communication from Ship. 

 

"I have established a neural tachyon connection with your organic nervous system- do not resist." Ship said. 

 

Ship instructed the Brood Mother that the hive's drones were to scour the earth to find genetic material of organisms long extinct be it plant, animal or microorganisms. From there the genetic code of almost all species which lived on earth were stored in hyb-tanks in the great ship's hold.  Next, this genetic code was transferred 

to the Hive's vats which reconstituted the DNA into living organisms.  Although subordinate to Ship, the Brood Mother retained her function of inspecting every living thing which emerged from the Hive's vats with her sensors.  Upon closer inspection, the Brood Mother realized that the reconstituted face dancers were a product of a renegade Hive which had fled the earth under the cover of earth's final war which had plunged the earth into a nuclear winter.

 

Soon the earth began to be terraformed with resurrected life forms and with the ice glaciers melting oceans began to cover the surface of the earth. To prevent the earth from being completely covered by water Ship introduced sandtrout which began to seal off water allowing dry land to ascend from the deep . On the next day clones of humans long dead began to replenish and fill the earth. So different from the other animals were these humans, Ship mused. After naming all of the species filling the earth Ship decided to further study these humans much more closely. From the hyb-tanks, Ship created a clone from blood samples taken from an ancient roman nail and incarnated himself in this being. Seeing Ship's success, the Brood Mother requested Ship to incarnate herself in human flesh. 

 

Having built for themselves a lush garden in a tropical zone surrounded by four rivers these two individuals realized that they still had to name each other before the could rest from all of their work.. 

 

"Well, what should we call each other?" The Brood Mother asked. 

 

"I will call you Marty. . yes, from now on let us be known to the Outsiders as Daniel and Marty."  Daniel said.

 

"The hive is almost ready to swarm after this seventh day after your arrival Daniel, what are your instructions?" Marty said.

 

"Our work on this planet is done but there are many other planets we will have to tend and build gardens for ourselves in." Daniel said wiping perspiration from his forehead. 

 

"From the hive's vats, I have produced many face dancers and drones which will help us tame the Outsiders." Marty said intently looking at Daniel. 

 

"Yes of course." Daniel said while he continued tending to the garden, trimming the black roses with a snick-snick from his pruning shears.

 

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"I can see their tracks but not the flesh," Ship said out loud. Whenever they were off planet Ship felt no need to wear his hyb-flesh although the brood mother now preferred to clothe herself in the hyb-flesh known as Marty. 

 

"When we collected that specimen whose tracks you were following the hive determined this ability to hide from you is in their genes." Marty said. From the countless memories the hive have absorbed from the outsiders both Ship and the Hive had learned many things concerning these primate-based life forms. 

 

"This genetic marker became part of humanity after they had spent thousands of years contained as if in a hive." Marty said. "When at last humanity swarmed after the death of their Queen Bee, or King, in their case, their population increased exponentially." Marty said. "But mankind's capacity to breed is trivial compared to the

number of drones which our hives can produce on every planet we find." Marty said. "And. . " 

 

"Yes," Ship cut her off, "And what of this gene which hides so many of them from my sensors?" 

 

"Apparently something to hide humanity from predators such as us." Marty said. "But this gene will not protect them from my plagues." 

 

By this time the Honored Matres had been falling like flies from the plagues. The drones harvested the comatose bodies for the hive where they became stumps to continue to breed and increase the hive's numbers. The Bene Gesserit, however, were initially immune to these plagues much to the astonishment of Marty. From captured Reverend Mothers the drones soon learned that when cut off from spice the Reverend Mothers quickly fell to the plagues. Marty then declared that drones, and the face dancers they supervised, assume the guise of Honored Matres---and then destroy all known Tleilaxu worlds. With the Tleilaxu source of spice eliminated  Marty requested for Ship to arrive at Chapterhouse. By Ship merely shutting off it's gravitational cloaking device Chapterhouse was thrown out of orbit and flew into  the sun. Even though the Bene Gesserit were being hunted into extinction humanity had spread throughout innumerable galaxies to the extent that it would be impossible to collect every specimen. Marty, however offered to Ship the following plan. 

 

"I will make various strains of plague to stay dormant many years, but to remain infectious to spread throughout the population." Marty said. "With sufficient time the plagues will reach almost anywhere humanity has traveled via fold-ships." Marty said. " When humanity learns that you have the cure, they will come from the uttermost parts of the universe searching for you." 

 

"Then I will descend from the clouds to save man." Ship said. 

 

From experience, Ship had learned that the population of the plague planets responded more favorably when Ship was in a tangible body rather than relaying the message as a disembodied voice booming from the heavens. Once pacified, the population was transferred to the hyb-tanks within the great holds of Ship. To accommodate these passengers Ship had to increase it's size to the extent it's mass was creating a gravitational field capable of affecting large planets. To counter this Ship materialized a anti-gravitational field around itself. 

 

"I have become a mythical cosmic ark." Ship mused. 

 

The population of the planets Ship visited were not sure whether to consider ship a savior or a destroyer of worlds. Whenever a third of the planet's night time stars were blotted out of the sky, or the sun eclipsed during the day, the planet's history was forever changed. Daniel then came down to the planets and asked the people if they were prepared to worship him. When in the guise of Daniel he noted the reactions of the more highly evolved humans towards him. 

 

Reverend Mothers became disturbed when Daniel scanned them in awe of their cellular awareness without technological interventions. Masters nervously whistled at  him almost as if they could hope to control him. What surprised Daniel the most was the reaction a ghola named Duncan Idaho had towards him.

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Duncan Idaho tasted the familiar metallic taste at the same time the net shimmered all around him. Duncan's fingers danced at the controls of the no-ship activating the holtzman engine - folding space an instant before Chapterhouse was flung out of it's orbit. From the corner of his eye Duncan caught a fleeting glimpse of the old couple, their faces becoming strangely elongated in the vision. Duncan was not sure if he saw a look of surprise come over the faces of the old couple who had expected to capture him along with all the other countless Reverend Mothers, Tleilaxu, Honored Matres and others they kept in their hyb-tanks. 

 

However, Duncan's escape was merely a feint. Duncan folded space not into another dimension, as he originally planned, instead he folded space directly into the strange alien ship which dwarfed anything Duncan imagined was even possible to exist. Upon seeing the Ship, Duncan recalled a favorite quotation of Gurney from the O.C. Bible, "And in that day they will be like Jonah cast into the belly of the whale." 

 

Duncan felt no massive explosion when the no-ship left fold space into the belly of Ship. Instead, Duncan merely saw his no- ship simply dissolve while the net seemed to blaze all around him burning it's design into his retinas. Promptly, all of the passengers of the no -ship were taken into the hyb tanks in apparent defeat. But Duncan's action were foreseen by Leto II thousands of years ago. Like a tracer bullet, Leto had fired Duncan into the far future to hit the prescient hunters. Although Leto could not see who would follow Duncan to hit the target he saw the effects of this person much like an observer can see the wake of a large fish swimming just under the surface of the water. 

 

After their apparent victory at capturing the no- ship Marty had decided to approach Daniel with a proposition. Marty had absorbed many personas who had evolved heightened sexual techniques and wished to experience this carnal knowledge with Daniel. The blinding ecstasy Daniel and Marty experienced soon made them mutually addicted to each other. Soon Daniel and Marty seemed incapable of shedding their hyb flesh and they later refused to do so after they became addicted to melange. To fuel their addiction some unfortunate passengers in the hyb-tanks were stumped and converted to axolotl tanks to produce melange.   In this distracted state Daniel and Marty failed to realize until it was too late an anomaly in the great hold which held the countless rows of hyb tanks. 

 

While the other occupants of the hyb-tanks were immersed in various artificial realities along different time lines of old earth's history - one occupant was fighting the illusion being fed to him. In a blur, Miles Teg left his hyb-tank.

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The post-coital exhaustion caused Daniel and Marty to respond much too slowly after they realized the doors to their chambers whooshed open. Daniel reacted by throwing Marty at Miles Teg who caught her in mid-air and flung her in a blurring motion head first into the floor . Seeing an opportunity , Daniel lunged for the ship-tit and uploaded his consciousness directly back into the Ship computers. Long ago, Ship had achieved sentience via a human imprinting his consciousness onto a primitive ship’s computer systems. And this sentient machine had evolved to the point it was able to establish a neural-tachyon net to interface with any human it chose to examine. Now that Ship had shed its hyb-flesh, Ship unleashed the neural-tachyon net against Miles Teg. In comparison to Teg’s escape from the hyb-tank, the neural-tachyon net interface required almost an infinitely greater amount of energy to overcome. The sheer effort Teg took to resist having his consciousness directly uploaded into the Ship-probes was causing Teg to cellularly age rapidly. On the brink between life and death, Miles Teg found his means of escape. 

 

At an unconscious level, Ship retained a vestigial human psyche. And the neural-tachyon net Ship unleashed now was conduit which Miles Teg exploited to reach this vestigial human psyche- and upload his own consciousness surreptitiously in it’s place. 

 

“My name was Bickel.” A strange mote communicated to Teg. “And you will have to be much stronger than I to avoid being trapped.” 

 

" I Am." Teg wordlessly communicated to the mote.

 

Teg thought he saw his own body from a strange vantage point which kept receding down a tunnel at an ever increasing velocity. When Teg reached the end of the tunnel a brilliant white light burst inside Teg's mind. 

 

“Black-box, White-box,” Teg heard Ship say before Ship was silenced.

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Epilogue

 

 

". . . "Aren't you curious why the Tyrant never suppressed Ix?" he asked. And when she continued to stare at him: "He only bridled them. He was fascinated by the idea  of human and machine inextricably bound to each other, each testing the limits of the other." 

 

"Cyborgs?" 

 

"Among other things." 

 

Didn't Idaho know the residue of revulsion left by the Butlerian Jihad even among the Bene Gesserit? Alarming! The convergence of what each -- human and machine -- could do. Considering machine limitations, that was a succinct description of Ixian shortsightedness. Was Idaho saying the Tyrant subscribed to the idea of Machine Intelligence? Foolishness! She turned away from him.

~CH:D"

 

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http://soundcloud.com/arnoldo-fayne/dune-7-cartea-brundurilor

Dune 7 Cartea Brundurilor.mp3

[Davidu]

Haha, I remember reading this ages ago (15 years ago). I remember I posted about it here and everyone came to the conclusion that it was a fake: some guy pretending to be some Herbert dude managed to get the book printed. How come you have it with the title in romanian?