We live in a time when technology has finally shed all religious connotations. The Butlerian Jihad and the Great Convention are but ancient tales. Let me shock your mind. Even the God Emperor, in his self-proclaimed divinity, would have been destroyed by the firepower of atomics. The god of our times is no person; it is the Holzmann effect. Technology is more powerful than people. It commands, directs, influences people's lives. All other powers are just remnants, and will fade in time.
- THE IXIAN RENAISSANCE
"Could you please explain, Sage Visella?" Sage Rangrig inquired during the Six's plenary session. Once again, she found herself standing in the executive room, which was nothing but a humble wooden hut open to the elements, and with the only shelter of an ancient wooden roof. A gentle breeze caressed the dark floorboards, causing goosebumps to form on her sandaled feet. Through the enhanced senses enabled by the implant under her skin, Visella not only perceived the rundown temple they were gathered in but also a superposition of lights and data flowing among the Sages, imbuing every inch of the room with meaning. The projection of a leaflet floated in mid-air.
Knowing she couldn't evade the question, she swiftly responded, "That is my campaign for re-election."
"Elections are held weekly, with widespread access to objective information for voters to rely on. Is this promotional effort a vestige of your previous training?" Sage Rangrig inquired further.
"I am aware that leaders come and go in the Experiment," she acknowledged, glancing at the newly appointed Sages Skyanne and Kumuda, both androids, who had taken the place of Klondi and Arbatar. That was timely. Governing required steel nerves. Matters of the heart did not mesh well with what was required of her here, and she preferred Arbatar's absence to the top table, especially as she was tasked with delicate parts of her escape plan.
"Wanting to promote your candidacy implies you feel attachment to your post, because..."
"I am bringing a new voice to the table." Let them discuss her here, in the plenary sessions of the Sages which were openly broadcasted worldwide. Did they realize how they'd be elevating her in the eyes of humans and androids alike?
"Her political program, mmh, specifically calls out human representation at the top tables," Skyanne observed. As it should, Visella thought. Her escape plans notwithstanding, these androids had to be shocked into action.
"You can't dispute that, Sage Rangrig," Avatasuyara interjected, surprising Visella. Deep down he knows what I am pushing them to embrace, yet he likes it. She was still the only human among the Six, while humans represented half of the population. Steel nerves, that's what these androids bring; yet it's not enough.
"It is not our power to argue about elections, until they turn into religious contests," continued Skyanne, manifesting a floating report in the space between them. "This report highlights dangerous new trends. Crowds are now visiting places of worship where Sage Visella's image is venerated alongside a greater goddess of the Bene Gesserit."
Once again it was time to act quickly and with resolve. "I have no connection to this religious revival. Sage Avatasuyara, you reminded me that both androids and humans are free to pursue their own path to spirituality."
"Said the Missionaria agent," Skyanne sneered.
"Former Missionaria agent. All my life is public, you can review it the same way our voters can."
"Sages," Avatasuyara interceded once more, "We were aware of this potential risk. Humanity's religious history spans thousands of years, and it should come as no surprise that the presence of a former Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother stirs up legends old and new."
Again, why are you helping me?
Nevertheless, Skyanne persisted, pointing to the leaflet, "But Visella, are you aware the people in the streets call you a savior? And look at the content of your campaign," she said returning to the leaflet, "human representation at the top, promoting equality and enrichment through diversity, subtly suggesting the embrace of foreign faiths, and... urging us to open ourselves to the Scattering?" She concluded her observation with a penetrating gaze.
"I agree with these ideas. Why can't I make them my political platform?"
Avatasuyara intervened: "But our survival depends on hiding, Visella. The Scattering will wash us away like pebbles in the waves. The humans out there are not prepared for a mixed society."
"Well, you converted me to the idea. We must act before it's too late."
"Too late?"
"You said you have me here to bring new sensibilities. Let it be known," she paused for emphasis, her gaze sweeping across the room, ensuring that her words reached the entire planet via the broadcast, "that on this planet we govern toward homeostasis. We seek to maintain balance, leveling every spike and filling every trough. This policy can only lead to one outcome." She looked around the room, concealing her hesitation. Would these super human computers suspect she had an escape plan ready? Did they possess any prescience and if so, would Navigator Solideum's shroud be enough to conceal the escape path from them?
"Balance?" Skyanne asked.
That was the opening she had hoped for. "Decadence! You need no special aptitude to know that this planet, our planet, is consumed by its own isolation. It's a beautiful place. We care about individuals' growth and freedom. Life is easy. Too easy. We have become complacent and blind to our stagnation. Birth rates are falling. Even among androids! Discontent is funneled, released and then disposed of safely." Her eyes swept across the room, searching for any sign of understanding. "We have lost sight of the stars, forgotten our dreams of exploration and advancement. We revel in our splendid isolation, but it is an illusion. In three, four hundred years, this planet will be a decadent paradise of spirituality where nothing is achieved, until we are invaded by a greater power and left to wither and die in the space cemetery of anachronistic nations."
Visella's words hung in the air. Silence fell in the room. What she had said, had come through her via intuition, but she knew in an instant that it was the truth.
Visella turned to Avatasuyara. "You told me that our purpose is the progress of all sentient beings. Yet here you are, engrossed in your spiritual ambition, inward-looking, in an invisible cage you yourselves created. There is no spiritual elevation without hard work. The humanity that is out there needs us. You told me, Avatasuyara! When you have the power, it's nothing special! But when you have it, it is your duty to employ it. Avatasuyara, please."
Upset faces stared at her around the room. She steeled herself for the torrent of invectives. And just at that moment, when she thought they would forcibly ask her to leave, Sage Avatasuyara relaxed.
And now he and Rangrig were smiling.
"Visella, you should be smiling too."
"This is not another test!" she muttered bitterly, her cheeks turning red.
"Indeed it's not. It's a moment of significance."
"You know that deep down what I said is true!" Breaking through the last of her old Bene Gesserit conditioning, tears of frustration came to Visella's eyes.
Avatasuyara responded gently: "Sometimes the truth lies within, obscured by habit, and only a stick brought down with force on a lazy student can wake it up. We have this practice in our meditation halls. And this place," and he looked around, his gaze embracing the temple and its garden, "is the meditation hall of an entire culture. Thank you Visella, for bringing the awakening stick down hard on our lazy heads. I expected nothing less. We indeed have fashioned a prison of the mind, and it's time to break it."
Visella turned to her augmented senses to stare deeply at the entire planet. Once again, something discordant in the data pointed at an incomplete picture. She suspected she did not have complete access.
"We conclude here our session," the Sage continued.
Clap, answered the Sages' hands in unison, ending the broadcast.
Out of earshot of the rest of the world, Visella continued: "If you want me to be truly useful, Avatasuyara, then reveal to me all that you have been withholding."
"Very well," was his calm reply, and he waved a hand. All the Sages smiled, with the exception of the new ones. And just like that, Visella felt that a block had been removed. Something tugged against the crown of her brain. She extended an arm out to support herself against the nearby table while her consciousness was sucked up into a higher space, a hundredfold larger than before. Her eye pupils dilated. Vertigo overcame her. Immense data sources started to pour information in as she plugged once again into the planetary network via her augmented senses.
"What is this?" she staggered. "Wait... Delphyne is not the only planet! I see thousands of them!"
"Look again, Visella. Androids don't need planets," murmured Rangrig.
Lost in that higher space, she lost any awareness of her body. Endless data started pouring in, cataloging all the entries... habitable planets, rocky satellites, asteroid mining stations, orbital colonies... an outpost on a free-floating nomad planet..." The swirling vision manifested itself through data and images crowding her retinas. Visella's disembodied awareness found her organic body again only as strong hands broke its fall. Rangrig and Avatasuyara laid her safely on the floor as she finished absorbing the data.
It soon assembled itself into a beautiful picture. Resting on the floor, she opened her eyes, pupils shrinking in the light. "Why didn't you tell me before?"
"How could we know if you were one of us yet?"
"You have expanded for eleven hundred years. Undetected?"
"Isn't it marveling, how humans only investigate systems which can sustain DNA-like life?"
"While android production is only limited by ore mining and production facilities. How many sentient beings?" They did not need to answer. Her mind found the answer within the stream of data. She saw entire sectors of android-populated worlds, crowds on moons and planetoids.
Visella looked deeper at the network itself. Subtle threads as fine as spidersilk connected star systems across the distances of space: the androids' ever-present broadcast system and the knowledge network she could access via her implant, were now made completely visible. She saw a constellation of space emitters, repeaters and receivers - and decided to call them "no-antennas" - creating the fabric of the network; machinery devised to exploit the Holzmann effect to transport information, not matter, across vertiginous distances, almost instantaneously.
Across planets, and systems, and mining stations, orbital stations, space rocks, asteroid belts across countless red dwarves.
The Sages were smiling, now nervously.
That could not be.
That could not be.
And yet it was. Billions of sentient beings in the cold of space, thriving in the inhabitable systems the Scattered humans would ignore, plus a few humans in mixed societies on Goldilock planets. But how long until humanity found them? Discovering the mythical Agarttha kingdom of the fables, even by mistake? How wouldn't a stray CHOAM agent read through the deception of this planet's trade port alone?
They looked to her like sitting ducks, waiting to be slaughtered. Communication technology would never be enough to protect them from detection. And yet... was this all? Just another Aztec civilization waiting to be destroyed? A meek Tibetan kingdom waiting for a foreign invasion?
She raised up. The Sages still smiled, a little more nervously now. It gave Visella some satisfaction to know that they felt uneasy at the speed with which a human could compute new information. The meeting was over, and with the exception of Avatasuyara, they started walking away in pairs.
You know them well enough, and you know it's not all of it.
What do they hide still?
Or better, she thought as she was sending feelers through her augmented senses, what are they hiding in plain sight?
Avatasuyara took her hand gently as the Sages went their ways. "Come," he said with his somber masculine voice, "Arbatar awaits you outside this garden. Have you noticed how beautiful our sunsets are this summer?"
Visella accepted the Sage's guidance gracefully, feigning a casual conversation while her mind dived deeper, her awareness split.
What was hiding there still?
Lurking at the perimeter of her augmented vision, she saw hints of what protected that fragile network. Her mind issued the right data requests, and there it was. In her retina started to form three-dimensional images of what lurked there. She saw the self-aware sentinels - probes, recon ships, corvettes, battleships, swarm ships, their weaponry and shielding, the trained landing forces of android soldiers kept in stasis - thousands, millions of them, guarding it all, the true army defending the Sages' entire civilization.
Made with the inexhaustible resources of space.
Waiting, hiding. A war machine-to-be. A latent army.
A Doomsday army, Other Memory commented inside her mind.
"Come, Visella," was Avatasuyara's soothing voice. "Don't be impressed by our numbers. Power is but a coat, growing uglier the more you use it. Our aim is only protection. We stand our vigil. Awaiting to pursue a noble calling."
His words sobered her up from the data plunge she had just concluded. Visella thought: This would be wonderful to discuss, Avatasuyara. With your paradoxes and endless tests.
Except I do not plan to stay in your beautiful trap.
She stumbled, skipping a step. The implications of everything she had seen hit her like an incoming spaceship; her plans vaporized in the light of the opportunity that had just opened up.
Or should I?