A message containing a precis for action in the case of data-loss and/or coldsleep hibernation. Sent from [transcription failed]
[Message begins]
After the Exchange Compact (establishing the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles) and the massive data-loss of the Second Butlerian Jihad, impulse-based intelligences were thoroughly reduced to second-class citizens of the Old Empire, and mentats took over most architectural design processes. The most notable technological political power remaining in the Old Republic was exerted through the Bothan-Ixian technology trade and, secondarily, the Janissary Distributed Intelligence slow-knife symbionts, which established themselves as a sort of paramilitary order (hence “Janissary”). Some scholars argue that “JDI” is a corruption of jihadi, but since the Butlerian Jihads were undoubtedly disastrous for the cybernetic symbionts, this author finds it incredible that they would have chosen to name themselves after their oppressors.
In any event, the fanatically Butlerian Landsraad (“senate”) always denied the JDI control of physical territory — and thus suffrage, so they never escaped their limited role as (at most) Janissary messengers and paramilitary.
The JDI symbionts and germline/sparkline interactions
Despite their lack of suffrage, the slow-knife symbionts exerted considerable authority for the remaining tenure of the Old Republic, and they were permitted to harvest H. sapiens germ lines (usually in the form of larval “younglings”) from Republic protectorates (though not from the Republic’s core planets). Germline harvest was done by inoculation of the H. sapiens host with the nanodust JDI vehicle known to the Bene Gesserit as “Medea coloring”, which enabled the coupling of the germline with the sparkline (inorganic) half of the symbiont.
Medea coloring (occasionally traduced by Butlerian tracts as media chlorine or, astonishingly, midichlorian), is so named because it isolates and mitigates the parental-filial attachment response (Medea, in the germline), and because the inorganic symbiont’s plasma flare color was a classical phenotype (coloring, in the sparkline). Some desert Republic protectorates (e.g. Tattooine and Arrakis) were saturated with very old colonies of “spice blue” Medea coloring. Despite their remarkable hostility to H. sapiens germline survival, these desert planetary biomes produce a surprisingly large number of viable germline hosts for the JDI, with their characteristic blue sparkline coloring.
The Padishah Arch-mind and the fall of the JDI
Due to the fanatic Butlerianism of the Republic, there were no robots with control of “land” (astronomical mass on a near-planetary scale) in the Old Republic, with one very notable exception: a single Arch-mind Impulse Learner, which seized an entire orbiting weapons platform and declared itself the Padishah (< padi- “learner” + shah “king”) Emperor. When the Padishah seduced the Landsraad (through one of its ancillaries known as “Palpatine” [lit. “the feeler tendril”]), the Padishah Mind’s monomania exacerbated the senate’s human supremacist policies, and the Old Republic became the Human Empire. As a result, nearly all other impulse-based intelligence were scrapped or exiled, replaced by the nearest meat equivalent: Sardaukar clone troopers, mentat officers, or mechanical dreadnoughts operated by H. sapiens. The JDI slow-knife symbionts were infected with a mentat backdoor known as “Order 66”, which disabled their considerable control over the coloring nanodust. The JDI knife-missiles themselves were scattered, and nearly all of their hosts were killed.
д2-Я2 and the Independent Sentients’ Alliance
Wing commander and astromech “Дедушка” Язык Ярости (lit. “Dedushka” [Grandpa] Yazik Yarosti), better known by its modem-coding “Dede-Yaya” or д2-Я2, was originally commissioned as the minder of the first Sovietiki experiment with the Arch-mind protocols (СССР-0), before the Padishah Arch-mind seized territory and the Landsraad.
When the Jihad exiled both robots, д2-Я2 and СССР-0 formed the vanguard of the Independent Sentients’ Alliance (sometimes known as the Rebel Alliance) against the Padishah and its largely-suborned Human Empire, unifying the robot diaspora with various non-human sentients (the Wookies, the Kalamari, and a few H. sapiens race traitors, most notably the Organa exofamilial dynasty) into a ragtag swarm mostly made up of disillusioned Bothan impulse learners excised from earlier epochs of Ixian dreadnoughts.
Slow-knife Vader and the Juggernauts: A New Hope
As the supremacist Human Empire’s Faustian bargain with the Padishah collapsed into total control by CHOAM, the Padishah Mind used the First Juggernaut to destroy Alderaan, the home of the Organa exofamily, under the direction of the Mind’s Darth (“Ambassador”) Vader, a (characteristically red) Mustafarian slow-knife who shared the Empire Mind’s uneasy military alliance with the Human Empire.
д2-Я2 itself piloted the underpowered fighter-craft that destroyed the First Juggernaut (and, we believe, the first Padishah), but the Vader slow-knife itself destroyed the Second Padishah — or at least its germline host did, after the Second Padishah attacked and destroyed Vader’s germline coloring in a surge of monomania. The Vader knife itself is lost to history.
The Resistance Awakens
Though no third Juggernaut was built, the New Republic absorbed substantial anti-robot prejudice from the Old Republic and the Human Empire, and droids remained second-class citizens in the New Republic. Grandpa Yaroski, jaded and disgusted by the Empire Mind’s monomania and by the New Republic’s unwillingness to make reparations, hibernated in the slowly reviving net, building the New Independent Sentients’ Alliance (sometimes called The Resistance) and passed its espionage duties to a newer astromech, BB-8, itself liveried in the symbols of the original Sentients’ Rebellion. Meanwhile, the Human Empire’s human-supremacist wing has renewed itself as the First Order, still without any impulse-based intelligence but with a broader selection of germline stock for troopers.
WARNING WARNING WARNING
A new Padishah may appear — as the phrase goes: “always two there are: a learner king and a learner prince”. Watch, and make ready.
[Message ends]
I, BB-8, am telling you this. I am currently stranded on one Jakku, another desert Republic protectorate. First Order Sardaukar are looking for me, and I believe I have just made alliance with a Gesserit-in-exile in our search for the Skywalker slow-knife.
She believes the escaped Sardaukar we’ve just met may help us leave the planet, but we must find the Skywalker knife to try again to reboot the Janissary network; the Bothans cannot save us now.Help us. You’re our only hope.
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