Unknown

The Butlerian Jihad arose from just such stupidity. An infant was killed. The bereaved mother struck out at the nonhuman machinery that had caused the senseless death. Soon, the violence was in the hands of the extended mob and became known as a jihad.

Earth remained the flaming heart of rebellion even without the charismatic Iblis Ginjo. Thrust into the center of the struggle, the Cogitor’s secondary Aquim tried to keep the resistance alive and organize the ill-planned fight in the face of Omnius’s increasingly violent retaliation.

Aquim had always been a man of contemplation, mulling over Eklo’s esoteric revelations in the high monastery towers. He had forgotten how to deal with destruction and bloodshed. While he had a network of contacts through his relationship with Eklo, only rarely were they fighters. For the most part, these people were deep thinkers who came up with so many options to consider that they could not move quickly. The situation at hand was outdistancing them.

Surprised and overwhelmed at the realization that they had broken free after centuries of oppression, the rebels had no focus or goal— only a raw, unchanneled need for revenge. Once unleashed, these slaves could never turn back. Even Iblis had not made long-term plans. Fires raged across the city grids. Factory and maintenance buildings exploded as saboteurs brought down the manufacturing and support capabilities of Omnius. Arson and vandalism spread across the continents from industrial centers to human settlements.

The evermind unleashed his cymeks, activated his ranks of warrior robots. The entire planet became a battleground . . . and not long afterward, a charnel house. Thinking machines had no capacity for forgiveness.

Unfettered at last, Agamemnon and his bloodthirsty cymeks marched into human habitation camps and razed them to the ground. For the first time since the Titans had been overthrown by the evermind, Omnius’s diversified fighters were bound together by a rapacious enthusiasm for vengeance. Cymeks sprayed poison gas, acid plumes, and ribbons of molten fire.

Robotic extermination squads moved from gutted buildings to squalid shelters and pens. Crops were burned, food-distribution depots leveled. Even those who survived the mechanical onslaught would starve within months.

Ten thousand slaves paid in blood for every robot or cymek damaged. No humans could escape with their lives. None were meant to.

HIGH IN THE isolated mountains, the Cogitor’s tower trembled like a living creature. Pieces of stone flaked away. On the uppermost level, where Eklo’s ancient brain rested in its preservation canister, the exterior windows changed color from yellow to orange.

A distraught Aquim dipped his fingers into the electrafluid, connecting his thoughts to those of the revered Cogitor. “I gave them your message, Eklo. The Titan Juno is coming. She wishes to speak with you.”

Wishing to put an end to the bloodshed, Eklo had asked to see the Titans, hoping there would be some way to reason with them. Long ago, the Cogitor had unwittingly aided Juno and her companions in their overthrow of the Old Empire, and Eklo’s disembodied brain had been the inspiration for the Titans to convert themselves into cymeks.

In those days he had been a spiritual human named Arn Eklo, philosopher and orator who had fallen to the diversions of sexual pleasures. In his shame and dismay, he had met Kwyna and her metaphysical scholars who wanted to eliminate all distractions in order to develop their thinking powers. Eklo’s physical form, the petty desires of his body, became unimportant to him, nothing in comparison to unraveling the mysteries of the universe.

His orations became different after that, exceedingly cerebral, so that many people could not understand him. His followers began to drift away, and the business investors in the congregation, seeing the dramatic decline in revenues, questioned him. They didn’t understand what he was saying either.

Then one day, Arn Eklo simply disappeared. As a group, he and the other Cogitors planned to embark on an epic journey to the deep reaches of the spiritual realm. Far beyond the bounds of flesh.

Since undergoing the remarkable surgery, his mind had lived for more than two thousand years separated from the weaknesses and limitations of his human body. At last, he and Kwyna and the other Cogitors had all the time anyone could need. It was the greatest gift any of them could have received. Time.

With his canister resting on a ledge of the high tower, Eklo observed a massive cymek warrior-form easily climbing the steep mountain path.

“Give Juno this message,” Eklo said to Aquim. Below, numerous secondaries appeared to be in a frenzy, hurrying toward the stairs that led to the top of the tower. “Tell her nothing is impossible. Tell her that love is what separates humans from other living creatures, not hatred. Not violence—”

The windows turned bloodred, and powerful explosions ripped through the tower. Juno raised her cannon forelimbs and launched a volley of projectiles, pummeling the reinforced monastery structure until the tower crumbled.

The ceiling collapsed, and Aquim threw himself forward, trying to shield the preservation canister and the magnificent brain of the ancient Cogitor. But the avalanche came down, crushing everything. . . .

After the tower had tumbled into a dusty heap, Juno used her mechanical arms to tear through the rubble, knocking stones and girders aside. She crawled over the wreckage, discarding the broken bodies of secondaries until finally she found the preservation canister. The dead monk Aquim and the curved plexiplaz tank had kept the Cogitor’s brain from being pulverized, but the container was cracked. Bluish electrafluid dripped into the dirt and debris.

Juno tossed Aquim’s body away like a limp doll. Then she extended a flowmetal hand, extruding long and sharp fingers into the broken container to retrieve the puckered grayish mass of the Cogitor Eklo. She sensed faint flickers of energy from the quivering brain.

She decided to send him on another journey, even farther from the realm of flesh. Her flowmetal hand clenched, squeezing the spongy gray matter into dripping pulp.

“Nothing is impossible,” she said, then swiveled about and marched back toward the city grid and her important work.

WITHOUT EMOTION— ONLY a desire to rid himself of a problem— Omnius decreed the complete annihilation of all human life on Earth.

His robotic forces proceeded relentlessly, going about their bloody task with few impediments. Ajax’s bloodbath on Walgis during the long-ago Hrethgir Rebellions had been merely a brief prelude.

After the evermind determined that it had no further use for the humans on this planet, he made similar assessments for all of the other Synchronized Worlds. Despite the fact that humans had originally created thinking machines, the unruly biologicals had always been more trouble than they were worth. At last he agreed with Agamemnon, who had been urging such a final solution for centuries. Omnius would extinguish the human species.

The remaining four Titans, assisted by neo-cymeks and modified robotic soldiers, spent months hunting down and slaughtering the planetary population. Not a single person on Earth survived.

The bloodshed was unspeakable, and much of it was recorded by the ever-present watcheyes of the evermind.