With all the hatred concealed inside his mind, Agamemnon took special precautions wherever Omnius could spy on him. This meant almost always, and almost everywhere— even when Agamemnon and Juno had passionate sex. Or at least what passed for sex among the Titans.

For their tryst, walker bodies brought the two ancient cymeks into a maintenance chamber within the control pavilion on Earth. Around them, tubes of nutrient liquids snaked toward storage tanks in the ceiling. Robotic tenders moved from life-support generators to analysis banks, skimming data from thoughtrodes, ensuring that all systems remained within normal parameters.

Agamemnon and Juno conversed with each other on a private short-range band, twitching their respective sensors and sparking each other’s thoughtrodes through the electrafluid. Foreplay. Even without physical bodies, the cymek minds could still experience intense pleasure.

Automated lifters disengaged his preservation canister smoothly from its walking body, then set the thinking core on a clean chrome pedestal beside the container that held Juno’s pinkish gray brain. With the accessible optic threads and computer comparison grids, he recognized the distinctive folds and lobes of his lover’s mind. Still beautiful after all these centuries.

Agamemnon remembered how lovely she had been back in the beginning: obsidian-black hair that shimmered with blue highlights. Her nose had been pointed, her face narrow, with eyebrows that arched in a mysterious way. He always thought of her as Cleopatra, another military genius from the mists of history, just like the first Agamemnon in the Trojan War.

Long ago, during the eyeblink of time when he had worn a frail human physique, Agamemnon had fallen in love with this woman. Though Juno was extremely desirable sexually, he had been attracted to her mind before ever meeting her in person. He had first become aware of her on a complex virtual network through tactical simulations and wargames he had fought with her on the Old Empire’s docile computers. The two of them had been teenagers then, back when age mattered.

As a boy, Agamemnon had been raised on pampered Earth, with the name of Andrew Skouros. His parents had led a hedonistic but passionless lifestyle, as had so many other citizens. They existed, they dabbled . . . but none of them really lived. Across the depths of time, he barely remembered the faces of his parents. All weak and feeble humans looked the same to him now.

Andrew Skouros had always been restless. He had asked uncomfortable questions that no one could answer. While the others played frivolous parlor games, the young man dug into archival databases, where he uncovered history and legends. He found heroic tales of real people who had existed so long ago they seemed as mythical as the race of Titans, the earliest gods overthrown by Zeus and a pantheon of Greek deities. He analyzed military conquests and came to understand tactics at a time when it was an obsolete skill in the peace-strangled Empire.

Under the alias “Agamemnon,” he became interested in strategic games played across the computer network that monitored the activities of ennui-enslaved humanity. There he had encountered another person as skilled and talented as himself, a rare soulmate who shared his restless interests. The mysterious player’s wild and unexpected ideas caused her campaigns to fail as often as they succeeded— but her surprising successes more than made up for the spectacular failures. Her intriguing alias was “Juno,” taken from the queen of the Roman gods, wife of Jupiter.

Drawn together by their common ambition, their relationship was fiery and challenging, more than just sex. They pleasured themselves by developing thought-experiments. It was a game at first . . . and then much more than that.

Their lives changed dramatically when they had heard Tlaloc speak.

The offworld visionary, with his disturbing, chastising accusations against complacent humanity on Earth, made the two young schemers realize that their plans could blossom into more than just imaginative adventures.

Juno, whose real name was Julianna Parhi, had brought the three of them together. She and Andrew Skouros arranged to speak with Tlaloc, who was excited to learn that they shared his dreams. “We may be few,” Tlaloc had said, “but in Earth’s forests full of deadwood, three matches may be enough to spark a conflagration.”

Meeting secretly, the rebellious trio plotted to overthrow the sleeping Empire. Using Andrew’s military expertise, they saw that a small investment of hardware and manpower could take over many worlds that had fallen into apathetic stupor. With a little luck and acceptable tactics, like-minded leaders could form an iron grip around the Old Empire. In fact, if the plans were properly set in motion, the conquerors could achieve victory before anyone even noticed.

“It is for humanity’s own good,” Tlaloc had said, his eyes sparkling.

“And for ours,” Juno added. “Just a little.”

In one of her innovative plans, Juno utilized the pervasive network of thinking machines and their servile robots. The docile computers had been given artificial intelligence to watch over every aspect of human society, but Julianna saw them as an invasion army already in place . . . if only they could be reprogrammed, given a taste for conquest and human ambition. It was then that they had brought in a computer specialist named Vilhelm Jayther— who called himself Barbarossa on computer networks— to implement the technical details.

Thus began the Time of Titans, during which a handful of enthusiastic humans controlled the sleeping populace. They had work to do, an empire to rule.

During their planning stages, Julianna Parhi often queried a reluctant Cogitor advisor, Eklo. While consulting the ancient Cogitor, one of many spiritual minds who contemplated esoteric questions, she had seen the possibilities of living as a disembodied brain. Not just for introspection, but for action. She realized the advantages a cymek tyrant would have over simple humans, able to switch mechanical bodies as circumstances changed. As cymeks, the Titans could live and rule for thousands of years.

Perhaps that would be long enough.

Agamemnon had immediately agreed with Juno’s concept, though he faced a primitive fear of the surgery itself. He and Juno knew that as the Titans experienced the dangers of the universe and the fragility of their human bodies, they would all come around.

To show faith in his lover, Agamemnon was the first to undergo the cymek process. He and Juno had spent a last heated night together, naked and touching, storing memories of nerve sensations that would have to last for millennia. Juno had tossed her raven hair, given him a final, tender kiss, and led him into the surgical chamber. There, computerized medical apparatus, robotic surgeons, and dozens of life-support systems waited for him.

The Cogitor Eklo had observed and assisted, offering advice whenever necessary, providing precise instructions for the robotic surgeons. Juno had watched her lover, eyes misty as she witnessed the transformation process. Agamemnon feared that she would become squeamish after that and renege on her own plans. But once his brain hung suspended in dynamic electrafluid, once the thoughtrodes were activated and he could “see” again through a galaxy of optic threads, Juno was there admiring him, studying the brain canister.

She had touched his transparent case with her fingertips. Agamemnon watched it all, focusing and adjusting his new and unfamiliar sensors, enthralled with the ability to observe everything at once.

A week later, when he felt competent enough with his new mechanical systems, Agamemnon had returned the favor, watching over Juno as the robotic surgeons sawed open her skull and removed her talented brain, discarding forever the fallible female body of Julianna Parhi. . . .

CENTURIES LATER, EVEN without biological bodies, he and Juno remained side by side on their chrome pedestals, connected by receptors and stimulus patches.

Agamemnon knew precisely which parts of Juno’s brain to pulse in order to activate pleasure centers, and how long to maintain the stimulation. She responded in kind, bringing forth his stored memories of human lovemaking and then amplifying the remembered sensations, stunning him with new heights of euphoria. He struck back with a bolt of his own, causing her brain to quiver.

Through it all, the information-gathering watcheyes of Omnius observed intently, like a mechanized voyeur. Even in a time such as this, Agamemnon and Juno were never alone.

She pleasured him twice more, making his mind throb; he wanted her to stop so that he could rest, but also longed for her to continue. Agamemnon reciprocated, causing a thin, vibrating sound to pulse from the speakers attached to the canisters, an eerie warbling music that symbolized their merging orgasms. He could barely think through the haze of delight.

But his brooding anger continued in the background. Though Omnius allowed him and Juno to have their ecstasy as often as they wished, Agamemnon would have derived even greater pleasure if they could permanently escape the domination of the damned thinking machines.