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Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined only in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definition. —MENTAT TEXT ONE (DECTO)
“You think science holds the keys to utopia?” “And better organization for our affairs.” Remember: Bureaucracy elevates conformity . . . make that elevates “fatal stupidity” to the status of religion. “Paradox, Great Honored Matre. Science must be innovative. It brings change. That’s why science and bureaucracy fight a constant war.”
All states are abstractions. —OCTUN POLITICUS, BG ARCHIVES
“You said you were bureaucrats who rebelled. You know the flaw. A top-heavy bureaucracy the electorate cannot touch always expands to the system’s limits of energy. Steal it from the aged, from the retired, from anyone. Especially from those we once called middle class because that’s where most of the energy originates.” “You think of yourselves as . . . as middle class?” “We don’t think of ourselves in any fixed way. But Other Memory tells us the flaws of bureaucracy. I presume you have some form of civil service for the ‘lower orders.’” “We take care of our own.” That’s a nasty echo. “Then
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Her gaze went past the desert map to the Van Gogh painting in its protective frame and cover on the wall at the foot of her cot. Cottages at Cordeville. A better map than the one marking the growth of the desert, she thought. Remind me, Vincent, of where I came from and what I yet may do.
“‘I am not a river, I am a net.’ He spoke those words at Yasnaya Polyana when he was only twelve. You’ll not find them in his diaries but they are probably the most significant words he ever uttered.”
Recycle, though—Other Memory was not an attic storeroom then but something they considered as recycling. It meant they used their past only to change it and renew it. Getting in tune.
A Mentat came at his universe fresh in each instant. Nothing old, nothing new, nothing set in ancient adhesives, nothing truly known. You were the net and you existed only to examine the catch. What did not go through? How fine a mesh did I use on this lot? That was the Mentat view. But there was no way the Tleilaxu could have included all of those ghola-Idaho cells to recreate him. There had to be gaps in their serial collection of his cells. He had identified many of those gaps. But no gaps in my memory. I remember them all. He was a network linked outside of Time. That is how I can see the
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Duncan is like Tolstoy’s net, BG more like river? Mentat = net?
“We’ve been discussing the possibility that I might imprint Teg and restore the Bashar’s memories that way.”
Wait.. wtf?
“Your habits always come hunting after you. The self you construct will haunt you. A ghost wandering around in search of your body, eager to possess you. We are addicted to the self we construct. Slaves to what we have done. We are addicted to Honored Matres and they to us!”
Ish yara al-ahdab hadbat-u. (A hunchback does not see his own hunch.—Folk Saying.) Bene Gesserit Commentary: The hunch may be seen with the aid of mirrors but mirrors may show the whole being. —THE BASHAR TEG
“I am reminded of Jessica turning her back on the Mentat who would have killed her.” “The Mentat was immobilized by his own beliefs.” “Sometimes the bull gores the matador, Dar.” “More often he does not.”
The very essence of the Bene Gesserit was concealed in loves. Why else minister to those unspoken needs humanity always carried? Why else work for the perfectibility of humankind?
“Beware jargon. It usually hides ignorance and carries little knowledge.”
