Thinking machines cared little for aesthetics, but the Omnius update ship was— by accident of design— a beautifully sleek silver-and-black vessel, dwarfed by the immensity of the cosmos as it journeyed from one Synchronized World to another. Finished with its current round of updates, the Dream Voyager was on its way back to Earth.

Vorian Atreides considered himself fortunate to be entrusted with such a vital assignment. Born from a female slave impregnated with Agamemnon’s preserved sperm, dark-haired Vorian could trace his lineage back past the Time of Titans, thousands of years to the House of Atreus in ancient Greece and another famous Agamemnon. Because of his father’s status, twenty-year-old Vor had been raised and indoctrinated on Earth under the thinking machines. He was one of the privileged “trustee” humans permitted to move about freely, serving Omnius.

He had read all the stories of his illustrious bloodline in the extensive memoirs his father had written to document his triumphs. Vor considered the Titan general’s great work to be more than a literary masterpiece, closer to a holy historical document.

Just forward of Vor’s work station, the Dream Voyager‘s captain, an autonomous robot, checked instruments unerringly. Seurat’s coppery-metal skinfilm flowed over a man-shaped body of polymer struts, alloy supports, gelcircuitry processors, and wound elastic-weave musculature.

While Seurat studied the instruments, he intermittently tapped into the ship’s long-range scanners or looked out the windowport with focused optic threads. Multiprocessing as he conversed, the robot captain continued the interplay with his subservient human copilot. Seurat had a strange and unfortunate penchant for telling odd jokes.

“Vorian, what do you get when you breed a pig with a human?”

“What?”

“A creature that still eats a great deal, still stinks, and still does no work!”

Vorian favored the captain with a polite chuckle. Most of the time, Seurat’s jokes only demonstrated that the robot did not truly understand humor. But if Vor didn’t laugh, Seurat would simply tell another one, and another, until he obtained the desired reaction. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll make an error by telling jokes while monitoring our navigation systems?”

“I don’t make mistakes,” Seurat said, in his staccato mechanical voice.

Vor brightened with the challenge. “Ah, but what if I sabotaged one of the ship’s vital functions? We’re the only ones aboard, and I am a deceitful human after all, your mortal enemy. It would serve you right for all those terrible jokes.”

“I might expect that of a lowly slave or even an artisan worker, but you would never do that, Vorian. You have too much to lose.” With an eerily smooth movement, Seurat turned his rippled coppery head, paying even less attention to the Dream Voyager‘s controls. “And even if you did, I would figure it out.”

“Don’t underestimate me, old Metalmind. My father teaches me that, despite our many weaknesses, we humans have a trump card with our very unpredictability.” Smiling, Vorian went to the robot captain’s side and studied the metric screens. “Why do you think Omnius asks me to throw a wrench into his careful simulations every time he plans an encounter with the hrethgir?”

“Your outrageous and reckless chaos is the only reason you are able to beat me in any strategy game,” Seurat said. “It certainly has nothing to do with your innate skills.”

“A winner has more skills than a loser,” Vor said, “no matter how you define the competition.”

The update ship traveled on a regular, continuous route throughout the Synchronized Worlds. One of fifteen such vessels, the Dream Voyager carried copies of the current version of Omnius to synchronize the separate computer everminds on widely separated planets.

Circuitry limitations and electronic transmission speeds constrained the physical size of any individual machine; thus, the same computer evermind could not viably extend beyond a single planet. Nonetheless, duplicate copies of Omnius existed everywhere, like mental clones. With regular updates continually exchanged by ships like the Dream Voyager, all the separate Omnius incarnations remained virtually identical across the machine-dominated autarchy.

After many voyages, Vor knew how to operate the ship and could access all onboard data banks using Seurat’s codes. Over the years, he and the robot captain had become fast friends in a way that others were not likely to understand. Because of the extended time they shared in deep space, talking about many things, playing games of skill, telling stories— they bridged much of the gap between machine and man.

Sometimes, for amusement, Vor and Seurat traded places, and Vor pretended to be the captain of the ship, while Seurat became his robotic underling, as in the days of the Old Empire. During one role-playing session, Vorian had impulsively christened the ship Dream Voyager, a bit of poetic nonsense that Seurat not only tolerated, but maintained.

As a sentient machine, Seurat routinely received new instructions and memory transfers from the overall Omnius brain, but because he spent so much time disconnected while journeying between the stars, he had developed his own personality and independence. In Vor’s opinion, Seurat was the best of the machine minds, although the robot could be irritating at times. Especially with that peculiar sense of humor.

Vor clasped his hands and cracked his knuckles. He sighed with pleasure. “Sure feels good to loosen up. Too bad it’s something you can’t do.”

“I do not require loosening up.”

Vorian didn’t admit that he, too, found his own organic body to be inferior in many ways, fragile and prone to aches, sicknesses, and injuries that any machine could have easily fixed. He hoped that his physical form would remain functional long enough for him to be made into one of the enduring neo-cymeks, all of whom had once been valued trustee humans, like himself. One day Agamemnon would receive permission from Omnius for that, if Vor worked very hard to serve the evermind.

The Dream Voyager had been in space on a long update run, and the young trustee was glad to be going home. He would see his eminent father soon.

As the Dream Voyager soared between stars, undisturbed, Seurat suggested a friendly competition. The two sat at a table and engaged in one of their customary diversions, an amusing private game they had developed through frequent practice. The strategy involved an imaginary space battle between two alien races— the “Vorians” and the “Seurats”— each of which had a space fleet with precise capabilities and limitations. Though the robot captain had a perfect machine memory, Vor still fared well, as he invariably came up with creative tactics that surprised his opponent.

Now, as they took turns placing warships in the various sectors of their fanciful space battlefield, Seurat reeled off an endless succession of human jokes and riddles he had found in his old databases. Annoyed, Vor finally said, “You’re making an overt attempt to distract me. Where did you learn to do that?”

“Why, from you, of course.” The robot proceeded to mention the many times in which Vor had teased him, threatening to sabotage the ship without ever really intending to do so, concocting extraordinarily unpredictable emergencies. “Do you consider it cheating? On your part, or on mine?”

This revelation astonished Vor. “It saddens me to think that, even in jest, I have taught you deception. It makes me ashamed to be human.” No doubt, Agamemnon would be disappointed in him.

After two more rounds, Vor lost the tactical game. His heart was no longer in it.