Humans are blessed with the urge to bestow their human nature to the objects that surround us, on Nature's forces, on Fate itself. They came alive, personified. And of course, we serve an ancestral compulsion to see our own selves, to project them, to create doubles, give them life...
- THE GOD-EMPEROR, FROM THE THE DAR-ES-BALAT DIARIES
Leerna's eyes shot wide open, but they were not just the luminous brown eyes that had smitten more than a man or android; now a deep blue circled the brown irises, like oceans of fathomless depth. She stared in the distance through those bicolor eyes, as if she could see through the mundane reality and far into incommensurable worlds.
She could still feel the spice quickening the pulse in her veins. A taste of cinnamon lingered in her mouth.
Visella rushed to Leerna's bed, then stepped aside to make room for Tregon, Leerna's android companion. The room around them did not look so much like a hospital room, but more like a security cell, staffed with cameras and instrumentation, everything being meticulously recorded and broadcast to the outside world from multiple angles. And in real time the entire world of Agarath was learning the mystery of the spice trance, while trillions of Solaris of the substance orbited the planet above them within Solideum's heighliner, and other ships brought over from Tupile. The spice was up there, waiting for more humans to volunteer for the Bene Gesserit Way. Visella didn't think it would take long for others to step forward.
Leerna's face looked transfigured in Tregon's embrace. Visella waited impatiently for her turn, smiling, smiling, like she had all the time in this world. "Welcome back a human being, my dear," she smiled again.
"Look at me!" Leerna exclaimed, ecstatic. "I am a million souls, Reverend Mother!"
"And many millions more, my Sister." Visella composed herself and hugged her disciple.
"You will not believe..." Leerna continued, recalling a dream. "I saw how it started, Reverend Mother. How the androids came to be! And we... my ancestor... designed them. One of us! From Ix!" She paused. "I can feel her benevolent presence in my mind."
Visella's smile froze for a moment, then quickly relaxed, retreating to a seat and holding Leerna's hands in hers. "It will take time to recompose all the shards of awareness that have unlocked inside you. Don't pay attention to any one of them for too long, yet. We will talk about memory integration, separating yourself from the flow. Meantime, hear these eventful words."
"I stand in the sacred human presence," Visella continued. "As I do now, so should you stand some day. I pray to your presence that it be so. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create."
Leerna smiled. Her doll, the protective charm, was still tucked in her armpit.
Visella smiled again, squeezed her disciple's hands, and then very deliberately picked the doll and gave it to Tregon...
"Now burn it," Visella intimated, not unkindly.
... keep smiling...
"Why?"
"A crutch is helpful so long as you grow out of it," she replied, "this is just a simulacrum for folk's magic - a Full Bene Gesserit needs not develop attachment to comforting illusions!"
And while Leerna stood there, confused for a moment, chided like a child, Visella leaned in close until their foreheads touched.
Share with me, now, she thought imperiously.
In an instant, her pulse quickened, and the air became charged with electricity. The two minds joining together, naked like two suns radiating blinding light, unleashed an explosion of memories. It was the Sharing of old, the exchange of each other's consciousness, and while from the world outside it lasted an instant, it felt to the two of them like the world had turned a million revolutions. Both Reverend Mothers knew the experience had not changed in a thousand years.
Still smiling, Visella opened her eyes, breathed in, and caressed Leerna's hair which had stood up like it was charged by static. Tears veiled Leerna's blue/brown eyes now. She now knew everything; Visella's little and big deeds, the small and the large misgivings, the fear, hope, joy, the acts of defilement, and the little crimes she was hiding there; likewise, her disciple was now an open book. And they shared all the lives they carried, too. Leerna looked afraid, certainly now aware of Visella's escape plans, made to speak first...
"Hush, girl," Visella admonished, "and remember your vows. You have just finished your training, and the next one is about to start."
"But, Reverend Mother..." Leerna said, alarmed, looking at the comeyes.
Now you know my plan.
"All will be fine. In due time," Visella replied.
"Serving two masters, and yet no one" Leerna whispered. Visella stood right in front of her, to block the view of the comeyes so that they would not record what her disciple had said.
"Sage Visella," Tregon started, alarmed by the tears that were sliding down Leerna's distressed face.
"The Sharing is customary," Visella lied. "I will let you two take all the time that you rightfully deserve". And she excused herself from the room, walking briskly through the dimly lit corridors. With one mind she was walking, the other she explored her inner senses, probing the depths of her new knowledge, the long string of lives that flooded her awareness. What an unexpected find! She sifted and sifted and until she found one of Leerna's ancestors, one whose impression was starkingly full of light, a mohalata soul, and the most formidable inventor of the last millennium.
"Teach me." Visella murmured. "Show me how."
A Bene Gesserit, echoed an elegant contralto voice inside her. The Other Memory in her mind. 'How come I have become but a reflection in the mind of a superstitious luddite?'
You are a scientist, thought Visella, so show me my limits. And teach me all about the androids.
'I see the other lives you store in here. You are a memory-stealer. Aah,' replied the inventor's voice. 'Now I see what world we live in. Marvelous."
Night had already fallen. Curiosity brought her to use her connection to the global network to get the map of the medical facility where she was, noticing it was close to Solideum's residence. She looked for weaknesses she could exploit to extract him out and into this facility which included several underground levels. Amused, she realized that hospitals on Agarath served both humans and androids, despite the obvious difference in the underlying constituents. It was a subtle message about parity: coupling medical equipment for biological beings with equally subtle mechanical tools.
'I would expect nothing less from my creations.'
Following the map she had retrieved, she descended two flights of stairs and found the way out, into the warm night air.
Somebody was waiting by the courtyard.
'Pleased to see how far they have come,' continued the inner voice. Visella's awareness was flooded with mother's pride. 'My artificial offspring.'
"She did it," said Visella aloud, releasing the tension she had not been allowed to show through in the hospital. Leerna had descended into the abyss and come back. It was good news.
"I am glad she made it," replied Arbatar, looking up from the roots of a tree. "A strong one, that Leerna Noree. Or so we have always thought."
Visella's augmentations had gone silent. She realized they were alone. Not only physically alone, but away from monitoring cameras and microphones, and disconnected from the planet grid. Only the Sages had that ability.
But Arbatar was no longer one.
"Confide in me," Visella invited.
"Perceptive," Arbatar replied, putting her arm around her shoulders. "Yes, I can still invoke my own privacy like Sages do. I have not been deprived of this capability yet."
"Are you sure it is not another test?"
Arbatar nodded quietly. "We are truly alone".
'Yes, you two, and millions of us in here,' echoed the scientist in Other Memory. 'Set me free'.
Visella shot back, time go back into the background. But she was surprised to find, it was not as easy as for her other Memories. The scientist's soul remained there in the spotlight, clinging to the mirror of her awareness. 'I scanned your experiences. Let it be know that I think of you as a bigot, and a stealer of memories.' A fresh Sharing would cause something like that.
"The choice of this medical facility for Leerna's ordeal," Visella observed. "You selected it, Arbatar?"
"You do know, my love, that if you decided to leave, well, to escape this place, I would follow you. And before you even bring it up, it would not be as a willing or unwilling agent of the Experiment. Nor will I attempt to make you reconsider your choice. But yes, I did select this facility, for us; and not for Leerna." She added: "There is something." Visella shook her head, suddenly concerned about an upcoming revelation.
The android continued: "There won't be another reason for us two to linger here, and I owe you to show something unsettling that you should nevertheless be alerted of." Visella just wanted her to quit with the preambles.
"This way, please, my love. We don't have much time before the androids detect a blind spot in their detection system, and take root access away from me."
They walked back into the dimly lit corridors but this time they descended through the many underground levels of the facility. Automatic doors opened ahead of their footsteps, and silently closed behind. Lines of neon lights turned on at their passage, illuminating entire departments completely deserted, then dimmed back into the darkness, so quickly they barely showed the way ahead. Visella had never been afraid of the dark, but her mind started to wonder what the darkness was there to hide.
"What is this place really?" Visella probed. An old style analog clock tick-tocked on a wall as they dived deeper into the android wing. Each tick seemed to slow down into infinity. Visella could not place the antique clock in time.
"I can assure you I had no part in this," Arbatar spoke uncertainly.
"You'd better show me quick, then."
"Further down."
Then entered an elevator, down a few levels, then through a tunnel that smelled of short-circuited electronics.
'Familiar smells,' thought the scientist inside her. 'I know where this leads.'
Be gone. And just like that the awareness of the scientist receded in the background. Her mind was finally quiet.
But outside, it was quiet no longer. Imperceptible noises. Mice? They walked some more.
Incoherent echoes came up from not far ahead.
It was a noise, maybe or a voice, incoherent words? More words. Or animal noises? No: words. Visella felt something was very wrong. A gulping down a maniac's broken words. A high pitch voice, blabbering, vaguely familiar.
Visella tensed as she glimpsed movement in the darkness ahead. She left the floodlights of the hallway and strode into the room briskly, waving a hand to turn on the grim yellow lights. But nothing happened. Broken?
Something dangled from the far wall; it was shaking in the dark, convulsively. Visella took three steps forward while Arbatar searched for a switch.
"Who is there?" the Reverend Mother asked the darkness, her senses on high alert, fists clenching, her muscles primed for action.
"AAAH," an animal-like rasp erupted in the dark. Visella's skin crawled.
"Who is it?" she asked, her voice shaking.
Blessfully, the lights blinked on. And then she saw it.
A life-size, doll-like mannequin dangled from the wall, a mix of flesh and crude mechanical parts protruding out, silky brown hair in disarray. Her limbs moved about, disconnected. Tleilaxu? No, no, a mix of flesh and metal. A caricature of a human. Half human? Ooze came out of what looked like disgorged flesh spilling out of mechanical frames. Disgust made Visella step back. The doll's fake eyes rolled over, the clenched steel jaw snapped open, and the crude figure boomed with an unnaturally deep, metallic voice: "I AM VISELLA, REVEREND MOTHER."
"You are..." Visella's voice stumbled.
Meet your simulacrum, awareness-stealer, commented a voice deep in Other Memory.