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[stolen journal 21||voice]
Apr. 7th, 2009 08:02 am[The voice is a woman's, melodic, deep and powerful. This is someone who led a crusade that reshaped the social structure of the known universe for thousands of years. It is a leader's voice, capable of starting and stopping wars. So not all that different from Leto. After all, she is his ancestor. But it's clearly a different person of a different gender.]
My name is Jehanne Serena Butler. I was born on the planet Komos, in the year 240 B.G. My husband, Xavier Thet'r was a pacifist political activist who sought to end the exploitation of our peaceful farming world by thinking machine-controlled Richese.
In 195 B.G., he was arrested on charges of sedition by the machine overlords of that planet. He was brought to stand trial on Richese. Noone was allowed to see him.
In the meantime, I was pregnant with the product of our love, a baby we had both longed for for years. I named him Manion, after my father. He was a bright, expressive child. Before a year, he was walking. In a year and a half, he said his first word while he held his chubby little fingers up to our main window: Light. He loved sunbeams most of all.
In 193 B.G., I was visited by Richesian cymek-inquisitors. [Here the voice becomes more emotional.] They took my child from me, giving in return a lot of empty noise about bad genes and improving the stock in their mechanical voices. I tried to shield him, but I was pinioned to the ground by metal arms. I screamed for my child as they carried him out.
I would later find out they had brought him to one of their 'reprocessing centers'. And murdered him.
A black pit of grief opened up inside me and I stumbled at the edge of it. The only thing that kept me from tumbling in was a burning desire to save any more parents from having to go through that.
[Once again it is factual but still compelling.]
I gathered together my husband's former associates. Together, we seized control of the Richesan tribute fleet in a bloodless coup. On Richese, we found the upper class of that planet had either fused to mechanical bodies or served the thinking machines that controlled the galaxy.
We liberated Richese. On the final day of the battle, a squad found my husband.
He too was merged to a machine, but forcibly. A coffin sized apparatus had been attached to his body. Wires had been run into his body, stimulating his pain centers constantly. His eyes had been removed as he was forced to watch a holo of our son's death over and over again. His heart and lungs were replaced with machines too, so he was utterly dependant on the device for life.
In the end, he begged for death. With all my love, I gave it to him.
I would lead a crusade that removed machine tyrants from a number of worlds. I saw the humans slaved to thinking machines, or simply slaughtered when it was decided they were too inefficient to be allowed to live. I was killed in battle over Wallach IX. I never remarried, though I donated eggs on the request of the Bene Gesserit. The Crusade that would follow me and bear my name impressed the importance of this one credo on the whole galaxy:
Thou shall not make a machine in the shape of a human mind.
I do not know what my distant descendant has done, besides that he fought a thinking machine. And while it appears he is an impetuous youth, sometimes foolishly so, I cannot disapprove of him.
[Yep, that was one of Leto's ancestral memories, having temporarily taken over his headspace. Feel free to comment, but you might not actually get a comment back from him as he has no memory of making this post.]
My name is Jehanne Serena Butler. I was born on the planet Komos, in the year 240 B.G. My husband, Xavier Thet'r was a pacifist political activist who sought to end the exploitation of our peaceful farming world by thinking machine-controlled Richese.
In 195 B.G., he was arrested on charges of sedition by the machine overlords of that planet. He was brought to stand trial on Richese. Noone was allowed to see him.
In the meantime, I was pregnant with the product of our love, a baby we had both longed for for years. I named him Manion, after my father. He was a bright, expressive child. Before a year, he was walking. In a year and a half, he said his first word while he held his chubby little fingers up to our main window: Light. He loved sunbeams most of all.
In 193 B.G., I was visited by Richesian cymek-inquisitors. [Here the voice becomes more emotional.] They took my child from me, giving in return a lot of empty noise about bad genes and improving the stock in their mechanical voices. I tried to shield him, but I was pinioned to the ground by metal arms. I screamed for my child as they carried him out.
I would later find out they had brought him to one of their 'reprocessing centers'. And murdered him.
A black pit of grief opened up inside me and I stumbled at the edge of it. The only thing that kept me from tumbling in was a burning desire to save any more parents from having to go through that.
[Once again it is factual but still compelling.]
I gathered together my husband's former associates. Together, we seized control of the Richesan tribute fleet in a bloodless coup. On Richese, we found the upper class of that planet had either fused to mechanical bodies or served the thinking machines that controlled the galaxy.
We liberated Richese. On the final day of the battle, a squad found my husband.
He too was merged to a machine, but forcibly. A coffin sized apparatus had been attached to his body. Wires had been run into his body, stimulating his pain centers constantly. His eyes had been removed as he was forced to watch a holo of our son's death over and over again. His heart and lungs were replaced with machines too, so he was utterly dependant on the device for life.
In the end, he begged for death. With all my love, I gave it to him.
I would lead a crusade that removed machine tyrants from a number of worlds. I saw the humans slaved to thinking machines, or simply slaughtered when it was decided they were too inefficient to be allowed to live. I was killed in battle over Wallach IX. I never remarried, though I donated eggs on the request of the Bene Gesserit. The Crusade that would follow me and bear my name impressed the importance of this one credo on the whole galaxy:
Thou shall not make a machine in the shape of a human mind.
I do not know what my distant descendant has done, besides that he fought a thinking machine. And while it appears he is an impetuous youth, sometimes foolishly so, I cannot disapprove of him.
[Yep, that was one of Leto's ancestral memories, having temporarily taken over his headspace. Feel free to comment, but you might not actually get a comment back from him as he has no memory of making this post.]
