Transcript of intercepted conversation between Chancellor Vallorum and Senator Falion of Venram

VALLORUM: This better be important, Vallorum. I've got this damn Naboo situation brewing on my hands, and the Trade Federation are threatening to raise shipping costs for the next quarter if I don't accede to their demands. I haven't had word from the Jedi delegation, either.
FALION: Oh, believe me, it is. We have reports of black-robed women appearing on planets all over the galaxy. They use ships not recorded in any of our databanks. One is waiting in your atrium, just outside. She has somehow bypassed security and persuaded your guards to let her in, despite the fact that it is meant to be impossible. They leave a message with the ruler of the planet, claiming that they "live only to serve". We… can't explain it.
VALLORUM: What! Why didn't anyone see this coming?! The Jedi, with their vaunted prescience, for example?
FALION: That is why I really came here. I talked to the Council, and they claim the women are, and I quote, "Invisible to the Jedi, yes, and invisible to the Force, they are." Nothing in the galaxy is like that, I gather, which, if true, would logically conclude that they come from elsewhere.
VALLORUM: You mean…
FALION: Yes, Chancellor. I believe the technical term is an "Outside Context Problem".

All was quiet in the Great Hall of the Sisterhood. The entirety of the Bene Gesserit and what had been the Honoured Matres stared at her, excluding those occupied on otherwise important tasks. Murbella sat in front of them, alone, and let her mind enter the state that the Bene Gesserit prized, that of simulflow. As she gazed over the human horde, she could see the fact that Bene Gesserit patience was winning over the impetuousness of the Honoured Matres. A minority of the crowd had the steely blue-within-blue eyes of the melangé addicted Bene Gesserit, synonymous with the rank of Reverend Mother, true, but the corneas of the youngest, least set in their ways, of the former Honoured Matres were already beginning to take on the blue tinge of an acolyte who would suffer the Spice Agony soon. A few exceedingly precocious ones had already taken it, and sat out there, watching her with what the ancient Fremen had called "the eyes of ibid". The elder ones were glowering at her, flecks of orange in their eyes; a sign of intense rage.

"They know subconsciously that their ideology is dying out," she thought. "Honoured Matres have always been good at knowing things at sub-conscious levels; it's why we found them so dangerous. And so flawed. We are corrupting their youths, teaching them restraint and control; ideas anathema to their hedonistic ways. Of course they hate us."

"Just like we did to you," added Ograde's presence in her Other Memories, with a wicked glint in her voice.

Murbella ignored her. She stood up, and glided over to the lectern on the front of the podium. Every eye in the room was fixed upon her. Good. With this announcement she would permanently shake the very order of the Sisterhood.

"Sisters! I am sure that the majority of you are familiar with the event that the last Duncan Idaho ghola, along with the Miles Teg clone and a few renegade Sisters triggered nine months ago, with their escape in the no-ship from Chapterhouse. Nevertheless, I feel I should refresh upon the consequences. We, along with everything in a 50,000 light-year radius of Chapterhouse, underwent something similar to a fold-space jump. It has human inhabitants, but their chronology does not fit with them being a sect from the Scattering. They must either date to before Muad'dib, which is very unlikely, given that they lack all of the technological signatures of such a development. They lack any knowledge of the Holtzmann equations, for example. Therefore, as a provisional judgement we have decided that, seemingly impossibly, we have somehow been taken into another universe." She paused. "It is, from first appearances, an Ixian's dream universe. Artificial Intelligence and even some examples of Machine Intelligence exist. Worse still, an unknown energy source, which they call the "Force", enables prescience. If there is one thing we have stood against since the reign of the Tyrant, it is that loathsome ability. It fixes the future, removing human freedoms, human choice. May I remind you of how long it has taken us to escape from his vision? We have only just managed to do it, and this was because he chose to not see any further. We cannot be forced to tolerate that again, especially since it is likely that no other prescient, unlike the Tyrant, would devote all his… shall we say… foresight," A chuckle passed around the hall, especially pronounced in the Bene Gesserit, "to eradicating the very thing that enables him to rule like he did. I will now break with tradition slightly, and allow you all to see an in-depth analysis of the political, social and economic status of this strange galaxy, collected by Archives." She sat as the lights dimmed, and the projector began with the image of a spiral galaxy.

A clear, relatively young female voice rang out over the auditorium, with just a hint of a Danian accent. "What you are seeing now is a map of the galaxy which I will be informing you of. Firstly, unlike the Old Empire, this galaxy is unified, in theory, under a representative form, with each planet or major organisation receiving a number of seats in a so-called Galactic Senate." The projection changed to the interior of a massive building, filled with many pods. "For those of you who are familiar with it, it bears some resemblance to the pre-Atrediesian Laandsraad, with the richest and most powerful garnering the most influence. The system is corrupt in the extreme." Complex data charts flowed across the projector, detailing the political systems and estimated losses to corruption of all planets the Bene Gesserit had data upon. The unseen speaker paused to allow the audience to read some of it. When she had felt that the immensity of the losses had fully sunk in, she continued." The vast majority of the members have flawed systems of governance, with the majority being a variety of self-perpetuating oligarchies. Even the more sensible, and stable planets seemingly suffer from some kind of pandemic stupidity. If you can believe it, one of the democratic planets actually elected as a "Queen", the ruler of the planet, a fourteen year-old girl. This, was apparently, fully rational by their standards, devoid of the religious mania that usually accompanies decisions of such… calibre, putting not only a political infant, but very nearly a real one, in charge of a complex political organisation." The chuckle which echoed around the hall this time was tinged with contempt. "Further information will be assigned to those who will require a detailed knowledge of the place they will be assigned to. We will now examine the biology of the most common sentient species of this galaxy, including the vital centres which can be used to disable them, should you face them, and their relative susceptibly to the Voice. Humans, of a sort, exist here. We are genetically compatible with them, although the Suk doctors estimate that roughly 13% percent of any parings we conduct with them will produce offspring who are infertile due to genetic incompatibility. They further estimate that there will be increased rates of miscarriage for at least five generations of cross-breeding, until the genetic material from each side has been suitable cross-fertilised. These humans are considerably inferior to us, with much shorter lifespans and massively inferior reflexes. Our baseline (which is to say the base humans of our decent, without the special training of our order) humans exceed the reaction speed of their best soliders. We shall now move on to the xenos of this galaxy…"

The lecture continued for another two hours, with a thirty minute recess in the middle of it. The amount of raw detail contained within it was, to many of the observing Bene Gesserit, truly amazing. In the recess there could be heard, from the buzz of conversation, some rare admiration directed at the Ixians; the admission that their technophilia might serve the Ixians in this new universe just as the residual technophobia of the Bene Gesserit, might hurt them. That technophobia was a legacy of the Butlerian Jihad, where those who would create the Old Empire had fought long and hard against the technocrats who controlled human society near-absolutely, conditioning humanity to follow their paradigm, to reject the traditions and obey whatever was asked of them. It was a legacy of the times when mysterious men clothed in black, using technology that no normal person had, would come to kidnap any dissenters; where the few who were returned would come back near unrecognisable, as re-programmed mental blanks, fanatically loyal to the ruling technocracy. Only a mass uprising of the fanatics of the early Buhdislamic faith had saved humanity from humans, from the cold, clinical oppressors who sought to leave their own, inefficient humanity behind them, who offered others a Faustian pact; their liberty for the gift of security. Of course, some fools who knew nothing of the true past, who had read the Orange Catholic Bible's prohibition against Artificial Intelligence but understood not the reasons for it, claimed the Butlerian Jihad had been a rebellion of humanity against oppressing machines (who, from the idiots' tales, barely deserved the title of "AI", given their gross stupidity). No, what the Bene Gesserit had feared is how technology can be used to oppress and suppress, and how it gives those with those inclinations the ability to do so. Worse still, humanity has a dreadful trait to shut off its own mind when given a device that reduced the need for active mental states, to collaborate with those who would control it. The elder among the Bene Gesserit argued that this was exactly what the Sisterhood should fear in this new galaxy, both what the residents possessed, and what the Ixians would bring with them. That if the Sisterhood did not act, and act quickly, then tyranny might be the main gift that the worlds of the Old Empire might bring to the poor weak innocents of this galaxy.

On another world, far away from Chapterhouse, which was fast becoming a sand-covered dust ball, lay another world, the home of the Ixian Confederacy. Not Ix; it had not been the home since early in the reign of the Tyrant. This world merely went by the moniker of Core, for that was what it was, the core of the Old-Empire-spanning domain of Ixian jurisdiction. No-one, not even the permanently inquisitive witches of the Bene Gesserit knew where it was; the Tyrant had, naturally, but the massive bribes of equipment and favours which the Ixians had paid to him during his reign had ensure he had taken no action against them, even when they had tried to kill him. When he went into the sand the Ixians had become even more insular, moving all of their research to Core, and leaving the rest of the galaxy to believe that they were still based upon Ix. They gave a façade similar in quality, if not superior to that which the Tielaxu had given; as that of a galactic industrial superpower, who none tried to cross. Below that, hidden, the illusion showed weakness, of a dying power which came up with less and less new inventions every century. The witches and a few of the more farsighted of the Guild had seen through the first layer of the pretence, as they were expected, indeed required to; none had penetrated the second layer. And yet, ironically, the lie, over time, became the truth; the effort of maintaing the pretence used up many of the best planners and mentats from each generation, leaving the remainder to corrupt and decay upon Core, for the Ixian Confederacy to die from within, like a tree with a parasitic disease that destroyed its innards. And now, with the new technology, from this new galaxy, in this new universe, Core would become impregnable.

Seen from orbit Core appeared to be a glimmering orb, a world of shining seas and equally reflective buildings, for all the landmasses had been covered in buildings, which clawed towards the uncaring sky. Most of the seas were covered in the vital algae farms, which kept the otherwise unviable world alive. The world was surprisingly far away from its class G star; the heat produced by the immense number of building had been carefully calculated, and a planet chosen for Core's construction which had caused the proportional rise in heat to be exactly enough to raise it to a rather chilly, although inhabitable world. Space elevators ringed it in a precisely geometrical girdle, producing a man-made belt for the world. Alea Demurge, head of the Ixian Confederacy, stared down upon Core, and smiled. Idly running her hand over the silver mask of the mutilated left side of her face, almost caressingly, she turned to her chief mentat.

"Ah, mentat. Do you think you would be so kind as to activate the prototype, or would you like me to send my monkey butler to do so?" she said, with a sardonic smirk, the memometal of the mask imitating the reaming flesh on her face.

The mentat sighed, well used to the arrogant, aloof and excessively sarcastic way his mistress treated everyone. "Mistress, I will do it. I really don't think that that thing should be allowed near such a delicate piece of equipment, especially since, should something go wrong…"

"Which it will not, since I designed this equipment," she pointed out.

"Nevertheless, just 'if ' it does go wrong, I do not want that thing anywhere near anything of value," he restorted.

"My monkey butler annoys you, doesn't he, Caldir." She snapped her fingers. "Come here, boy."

A blur of quicksilver could be seen to flash across the ceiling of the long corridor. At the last moment it came to an improbable stop on the floor, and jumped up, to hang from the arm of its mistress. It appeared to be a perfect imitation of a monkey from Old Earth, but born from mercury, with filigree patterns of silver swirling where it would have had fur, and a pair of compound red eyes staring from its atavistic face..

"Indeed he does, mistress. Not would he be a caucus beli for the other factions, being as he is a primae faci breach of the Great Convention, which specifically ban such intelligences, I also suspect that he has other purposes. Murderous ones."

She smiled, her rictus grin terrifying to behold. "But, naturally he does." She activated her synthetic voice box, and a series of sounds, almost bird-like yet mechanical, which no human could have made, emerged. The monkey, faster than the eye could move was at the mentat's throat, emerged, knife-like claws at the man's jugular.

"He would kill you now if I gave the command, mentat," she said, in a sweet, almost girlish tone of voice. "You would not enjoy that, would you? Your pretty little head, with all of its amazing powers of observation and deduction, would do you little good, lying on the floor in a pool of blood."
The mentat made choking noises. That seemed to distract her, her voice becoming fearful.

"I can see two things in my dreams, both horrifying and terrible, mentat. Both things to loathe. Both things to fear. I see a girl, not dissimilar to how I looked when I was a child, with long black hair. She would walk through an ocean of blood she had spilled for the love of her sons. The blood of worlds stains her dress, and yet she merely giggles. Those giggles… I run through abandoned worlds, which look nothing like Core, to escape her, and yet I just end up where I was before, and yet she waits there now. And she was not there when I left!"

She began to calm down.

"Of the other one, of the prince of pain who strides through my dreams, who is what I will become, I will not speak further." She made another mechanical noise, and the demon-monkey let the terrified man go. "Speak of this to no other. If you do, then you will not live another hour." The monkey leant towards the man, made a hissing noise from between its razor sharp teeth. Her voice returned to its normal, sardonic tones. "Go ahead, activate the device.

The shaken man pushed the bar on one of the projections towards the top. The planet of Core vanished from all sensors; electromagnetic, gravatonic, nuclear force scanners. Alea smiled, truly in pleasure this time.

"They said a no-planet was impossible. They said you would need the output of a G3 star to create the field. They never guessed that the Galactic Repulic could generate those levels of energy!"