Chapter 39

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Chapter 39

Post by Freakzilla »

You will learn the integrated communication methods as you complete the next
step in your mentat education. This is a gestalten function which will overlay
data paths in your awareness, resolving complexities and masses of input from
the mentat index-catalogue techniques which you already have mastered. Your
initial problem will be the breaking tensions arising from the divergent
assembly of minutiae/data on specialized subjects. Be warned. Without mentat
overlay integration, you can be immersed in the Babel Problem, which is the
label we give to the omnipresent dangers of achieving wrong combinations from
accurate information.

-The Mentat Handbook

Leto is brought to his senses by the russeling of fabric. His captor enters and removes his stilsuit mask, Leto is shocked to see it's Gurney Halleck. Gurney warns him that Namri will kill him should the need arise. Leto automatically accuses him of joining his enemies using Paul's voice. Gurney warns him not to try any tricks on him, he follows Jessicas orders and what comes next is her command. He's got a syringe of spice essence and says Leto is to take the "worm trip" and approaches. Leto is outraged. As if already in the trance, he can't speak or move. He feels pain from the injection shoot up his arm to his head.

He sees a girl roasting coffee and hears rebeck music, he feels large and his skin is not his own. THen he's in darkness, the stars falling like rain. Paul's persona says he will protect him while in the trance. Wind rolls Leto and the sand cuts him but it heals as soon as the cuts appear, his skin is not his own. His vision seperates into past and present, future and present, future and past, and they all combine in a "trinocular focus" to show him a relief map of the future. He realizes that time is a measure of space but measuring locks us into thoat place. Time moves constantly and he can't stop it. He sees what he and Ghani planned dominating the future. It's inevibility makes his ego cringe. He can't seperat past and present. Nothing stands still for him to label and he fears he'll lose his place in time. He tries to find the rythym of the change. He sees the past in the future, present in past, now in both. He sees many futures including Namri's "provisional future". Every inner life becomes his own.

Now Leto sees pats and future clearly and Paul no longer stands guard because there is no need. He sees his ultimate ancestor without whom there would be no future, Harum. Whatever future he chose, from now on he would live it with a trail of past lives. It is so powerfull it threatens to subdue him. It could make itself felt on the entire civilization. This is why Namri waits with the knife, he and Gurney could not find out about this. No one, not even Ghani could be allowed to.

Leto sits up and tells Namri, "There's no single set of limits for all men. Universal prescience is an empty myth. Only the most powerful local currents of Time may be foretold. But in an infinite universe, local can be so gigantic that your mind shrinks from it." Namri just shakes his head. Leto asks where Gurney is, Namri said he left in case Leto had to be killed. Leto asks Namri to kill him, but since he asked for it, he refuses. Leto asks if he was supposed to kill Leto if he was indifferent, and he lies and says it's a sign of unbriddled power. Leto says there was no moral grandure in Paul's life, just a local trap he built for himself.
They were destroyed because they lied pretentiously. Have no fear that my wrath
will fall upon you because of your innocent mistakes.

~Leto II, God Emperor
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