Month: March 2021

When the sandworms cry I

Please do not deplore yourself.

Even if the world does not forgive you, I will forgive you.

Please do not deplore yourself.

Even if you do not forgive the world, I will forgive you.

So please tell me.

What will it take for you, to forgive me?

—From “The Shintosunni Sutras Book I” by Frederica Bernkastel

Satoko sipped her Sapho juice with great care, she had tried to keep her lips clean from the stains, but they always showed, with her great care at least Satoko could make it seem as if she was wearing lipstick. Before her there were different filmbooks regarding the Zensunni religion and the Fremen, the history of House Atreides, and of course the propaganda that now flooded the empire.

Satoko had been serving House Furude for less than 2 years, but she was as trusted as any other older servant. A young teen in fact, though she was already a fully formed Mentat of the Bene Gesserit. Born from Lady Fenring, the child of the now dead Feyd Rautha, Satoko had those Harkonnen eyes and lips, typical of the family. She was given at birth to the sisterhood, and at an early age she showed great signs of intelligence, so she was sent to Lampadas to be raised and trained to become a proper Mentat.

As soon as she was fully trained Abulurd Rabban bought her, the last branch of the Harkonnen bloodline had to survive at all costs. His plan was to wait for Satoko to grow of age so that she could sire a son, train him as a mentat and let him rebuild the House Harkonnen from the ground.

The only person who took issue with this was Lady Rika Furude, the high Priestess and Earl of Oyashiro. She waged a war of assassins against house Harkonnen to retrieve Satoko before she could be forced to do anything. House Furude was a minor, small and poor house, but they had the backing of House Sonozaki, a house minor but their smuggling business gave them a lot of riches and influence.

In the end they were victorious, Satoko was now in service of Rika, and for them it was as good as it could get, even with the Jihad still a looming threat in a Shintosunni planet like their own. House Furude could be called a house minor, albeit it was hardly part of the Faufreluches, long ago they held great influence, though in these current times House Furude was composed only of Rika and lately, Satoko. The war of assassins against House Harkonnen was mainly led by the Sonozaki.

Neither of the Houses had any CHOAM holdings, out of the three houses in planet Tanna only House Kimiyoshi had a small number of shares in CHOAM. House Furude’s main income was voluntary donations made by the people of Tanna, which were mostly in species since money was often used to buy farming equipment. Rika had the Furude shrine, a temple back from the days of glory, which also worked as her living quarters. Nobody would expect for such a House, a House of the Landsraad in name only to have a Mentat, but Satoko was there, and her skill could not be doubted.

A year ago, Rika arrived with a rather small child, barely a teen, purple hair and eyes. Rika had begun training her, this day it was Satoko’s turn to overlook the little girl’s exercises. Satoko stopped looking at her filmbook and raised her hand to call the girl’s attention. “Not like that Hanyuu, you must be relaxed until the time to strike. Start over”

“Hau hau!!! It is so hard, to be relaxed but awaiting?!” Hanyuu slumped onto the floor, her muscles were screaming from the training.

Satoko looked at her, it had been hours since Rika had left, and training in these conditions would begin to harm Hanyuu more than helping her Yes perhaps she should take a break… No, we should take a break. I had been working too much lately. Satoko sat up “I’ll go get some tea. You can take a break”

Hanyuu slowly neared Satoko’s working area and began reading the filmbooks, Arrakis the capital of the Imperium, the holy war that began from said planet, the billions of lives lost to the Jihad. Planet after planet cleansed and converted, Hanyuu felt an instinctive disgust for the bloodshed, and out of reflex she dropped the filmbook on the ground and began trampling on it, the sight of it, the idea of blood itself made Hanyuu feel uneasy, something in her body rejected the very concept of violence, she stopped until Satoko pulled her in an embrace.

Satoko did not understand how primal Hanyuu’s reaction had been, she began to cry, she felt sorry for making a mess of Satoko’s working place, but she was not punished.

Satoko did not know what made Hanyuu do it, but she knew what could had been, she had lived in such stress lately. The threat of the Jihad had not gone away for planets like Tanna, a small population who would rather die than to betray their priestess Rika in favor of Emperor Muad’Dib and St. Alia of the Knife. What have you done to this child Rika, bringing her to a world like this? I was already dead, but this child still had hope.

The secret leader of the order

I

She was before a great tree, it moved as if it had flesh as parts of it, exposed flesh that oozed a red sap, every fruit known to men, and some lost to time dangling from the branches. She stood in a great garden, the leaves cracked when she moved, it had been ages since someone had set foot on that ground. She felt the insects walking happily around her feet, the  trees around them all bearing different fruits, from the tree’s sap one red river was  born, it  then divided into four currents, the trees around clearing the sap leaving it as water when it finally came out of the garden.

Even in this digested state said water fed earth’s rivers with life. The source of 8MS as a whole, the creator of life as we know it on earth, and of course its protector. The tree of life, in a world between worlds, where the small streams fed great rivers, the Ganges, the Amazon, the Yang Tze and of course the Nile spreading through earth feeding humans as a gift, a promise made by the tree eons ago. Seshat held her sandals on her left hand, she had taken them off before coming before the great tree.

A fruit dropped before Seshat, a golden fruit with a sweet smell. She bit into it, then could hear the tree inside of her mind. “Has our debugger succeeded?”

Seshat nodded, of course it had succeeded, it had even sealed its fate, its father too had complied fully knowing what would happen next “LD 2001 has complied too as well as her mate”

Seshat continued eating the fruit, she felt how it gave her strength

“I wish we could save them all, but shielding them too much will regress the species. Only now had that damage been done” The tree said with a sad voice. It had given humans fruits to make them powerful, to make them smarter, and they built great cities with that knowledge, two capitals, Lemuria and Atlantis, but said cities began relying on the tree for sustenance, hedonism took over their society. When the tree stopped feeding them their cities collapsed, Lemuria, located in Yucatan exploded causing a massive extinction event, Atlantis was less impressive, it did not go out with a bang but a wimper, it slowly declined until its society had completely forgotten about their wonders.

Just now had humans learned how to manipulate nature again, then war struck and killed most of them, then they learned how to control the tree’s own pollen, 8MS, the gift allowed them to survive, but it had to be taken away again. Gladly LD 2001 had planned accordingly and worked in said plan independently. Humans themselves knew that they were relying too much on it. The three of life, yes it had helped them, but if LD 2001 did not work with her servants to undo the human actions with its pollen, the tree would have turned it poisonous. There was no way of predicting that, but humans had passed the test.

Now it was all on the debugger, and it was working fine, the supervisors of the tree of life, the council of god, would see that their project was working. After all they had succeeded in producing more angels, LD prime, BC 00, Aurum, EUA, all of them products of said project, all of them far more powerful than the tree. Of course the tree was a God, an angel of ancient times, a Seraphim who had taken upon the task of working with the failed human project. Seshat was her acolyte, and both had seen it succeed. Though humanity was not stable, it would be the second time humans would die. Why were gods creating a species that could create things more powerful than them? Because the Gods believed in something greater, and feared it, and hope that one day they will produce something powerful enough to make themselves be noticed by the entity that has ignored them, that or actually creating said entity, to be proper angels, and serve a God, even if they had to work directly to create it.

Another fruit fell before Seshat, it was a  fruit she had already eaten, she knew it, the fruit of life, the peach of immortality, in legend even if you had offended the gods you could not die by their hand if you ate said peach. Of course immortality is an illusion, it just means you cannot die by common means, though this fruit made the one who consumed it so resistant to everything, that it made them virtually immortal for 10 thousand years. It had been less than that since Seshat had eaten the fruit, it was not for her.

Seshat took another bite, and another thought of the tree came into her mind “It is a failsafe, save whoever needs to be saved so our project does not fail”

“Is this allowed?” Sheshat said to the tree, then took another bite of her fruit

“There is no rule forbidding it, perhaps it will not be allowed after we do it”

Seshat nodded and took another bite “That’s all” The tree said, Seshat respectfully finished her fruit, and planted the seed on her way out. She took the fruit into her pocket, PH426, the most dangerous artifact of the tree of life. So this was their plan, have the debugger wipe humanity, and let Seshat save those who deserved to be saved. After all its promise after flooding the earth was that the next wave would be of fire. Only those who deserve to live would survive. What a terrible fate for humans, though this was the only way to spare them from the tree’s equal.

The face angel, the hand of destruction, it would come soon if everything they did had failed, only the fruit would be the salvation of humanity, though how many people could take a bite of a peach? How many bites does a peach have? Seshat, now out checked that very question in her mind, but no answer came, just recipes for peach pie. Perhaps she could take the juice out and feed a few drops to as many people as she could. That would work, but she had to see who drank said juice, one wrong person and the whole plan would fail.