Commander of Dune

Chapter 3

Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. 
All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short. 

~ Mentat Handbook

The Kwisatz Mother Farrah swept down the hall of the Ancestral Home of House Atreides.  She was on a mission.  One would think that after eons of this jihad being in place on Caladan that the Sisterhood would have found a way to get her and the new Kwisatz Haderach project off the planet.

Since the emergence of the “new” sisterhood that had evolved from the merging of the Bene Gesserit and the Honoured Matres things just were not the same or so her memories kept telling her.

She entered the training room and watched silently.  It never failed to amaze her, though she kept the wonder to herself, at how this child seemed to be a clone of The Lady Jessica Atreides.  At twenty years of age this young woman carried the hope of the Bene Gesserit on her shoulders.

Could she be the one? Could Acolyte Alexi be the re-engineered Kwisatz Haderach?

Having lost complete control of the program by the one act of Lady Jessica, and the millennia and a half that followed under the control of the God Emperor, the Sisterhood decided to try again this time with a fundamental difference – a female.

Men had proved to be unpredictable and uncontrollable hence – Alexi.

Farrah sensed the exact moment that the Acolyte stopped concentrating on the lesson.  She’s watching me.

Alexi noticed the moment that the Reverend Mother had walked into the room, as had her tutors.  With the discipline instilled in all, they had ignored Farrah. She had come to observe not interrupt.

But Alexi was still in training and her mind wandered.  They thought that she didn’t know but she did.  They thought that she was The One but she was not.  What they had yet to compute was that she was to be the Mother to the Kwisatz Haderach and not the Kwisatz Haderach.

In a way it was amusing – well amazing really that the Reverend Mothers had not come to the same conclusion.  After all they been at this for Millennia and she a mere slip of a thing and yet she had managed to figured this out. Why not them?

'I am not the Kwisatz Haderach!' She thought.  She wanted to stop there and then and do a jig.  It was a bit much to be considered to be the Kwisatz Haderach.

She dodged the hunter seeker, spun on the spot then neutralized it with lightening speed and accuracy. Her train of thought continued, 'Having seen what a super being could do. Kwisatz Haderach – the one who could be in more than one place why oh why are we doing this again?'

The battle machine was next.  The evil tower was a collection of swords, darts, needles and any other item of destruction that could be attached.  She moved in.  'What we need is new Atreides DNA.  They have always been the key to the program.'

Her attention sharpened when a dart hit her on her forearm.

The instructor clucked.  “Focus, Alexi!”

She grimaced and continued both her line of thought and the exercise.  'We have plenty of samples of the Great Houses in stock – but the Atreides batch is no longer viable. Even I know that. Of course this is assuming that the genetics classes were accurate.'