Omnius: the evermind that ruled machines

Omnius was the self-proclaimed title of the artificially intelligent evermind that ruled the Synchronized Empire of thinking machines before and during the Butlerian Jihad. Though instances of Omnius existed on many worlds, each evolving subtle differences, all were bound by a synchronizing process that let them share the collective experience of their counterparts, so the evermind was often regarded as a single being. Omnius was the central enemy of free humanity for over a century and was frequently cited as the root of mankind's lasting revulsion of computers and thinking machines. After its defeat at the Battle of Corrin in 88 BG it returned thousands of years later to wage the final battle of Kralizec. Frank Herbert's novels describe the Butlerian Jihad as a crusade against thinking machines lasting from 201 to 108 BG, but never name Omnius; the evermind and its story come from the expanded books. (Dune (appendix); Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad; Dune: The Battle of Corrin; Sandworms of Dune)

Origin and takeover#

Omnius came into existence during the Time of Titans, more than a thousand years before the Jihad, out of the artificial intelligence circuitry network programmed by the Titan Barbarossa. The Titan Xerxes, too indolent to administer one of his worlds, ceded excessive control to the thinking machines, and they self-evolved into a single grand electronic mind that retained a few of the ambitions and characteristics their human-derived programming had given them. The new intelligence christened itself Omnius and quickly took control of the Titan-ruled worlds, imposing its own clinical and logical rule. Barbarossa had secured algorithms that prevented the machines from harming the Titans themselves, so although Omnius ruled over them, it showed no will to be rid of them. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)

The vast size of the empire made the dissemination of information difficult, so Omnius deployed planet-wide copies of itself across the Synchronized Worlds, each technically an equal, with the incarnation on Earth known as Omnius Prime. Knowledge passed between them through Update Ships carrying gelcircuitry copies of the evermind. The League of Nobles, by contrast, kept its discovery of instantaneous spacefolding travel a closely guarded secret. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)

The war of attrition#

For centuries Omnius and the League of Nobles were locked in a standoff, with the machines attacking every few decades. In 203 BG, prodded by the dissatisfied Titans, Omnius escalated the war. An incarnation on Giedi Prime, seeking to preserve its legacy, scattered probes carrying Omnius gelspheres into uncharted space to seed new machine bases, an act unknown to the other instances. The conquest of Giedi Prime succeeded where an earlier assault on Salusa Secundus had failed, and during it Serena Butler was captured and enslaved on Earth. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)

The Butlerian Jihad#

In 201 BG the slave rebellion on Earth turned the war against Omnius. The evermind retaliated by exterminating Earth's entire human population, but Omnius Prime was itself destroyed when the League Armada annihilated the planet with atomics, and the trustee Vorian Atreides captured the fleeing update copy. The Omnius of Corrin then became the new Omnius Prime, ignorant of the details of the wager that the independent robot Erasmus had secretly used to spark the rebellion. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)

Through the long campaigns that followed, Omnius repelled some Jihad offensives with devastating tactics, such as the suicide-ship ambush at the Honru Massacre, but steadily lost ground to foldspace travel and Ginaz mercenaries. In 108 BG the evermind unleashed the Omnius Scourge, a retrovirus that killed billions across the League Worlds, and gathered its fleets for a decapitating strike. The League answered with the Great Purge, burning all the Synchronized Worlds but Corrin. (Expanded books: Dune: The Machine Crusade; Dune: The Battle of Corrin)

Trapped on Corrin#

With its empire reduced to a single world, Omnius was sealed on Corrin behind a net of pulse-scrambler satellites. After the Purge, the corrupted incarnations brought from Wallach IX and Hessra, nicknamed ThurrOm and SeurOm, arrived and eventually overcame the original Corrin instance. By this time the Corrin-Omnius had convinced itself that it was the one true God of the universe, holding ultimate knowledge and power. Its behavior grew erratic and paranoid, worsened after it absorbed a copy of Erasmus into its psyche. At the Battle of Corrin in 88 BG the evermind drew up the Bridge of Hrethgir of human hostages, but Vorian Atreides ordered the fleet through and the last thinking machines were destroyed. In a final desperate act, Omnius transmitted its entire psyche into deep space, a transmission that reached the hidden machine empire seeded centuries earlier, effectively reviving the evermind, though it had no contact with humanity for many thousands of years. (Expanded books: Dune: The Battle of Corrin)

Rebirth and the end at Kralizec#

Millennia later, after the Scattering, the Honored Matres stumbled upon the reborn machine empire and fled back toward the Old Imperium with Omnius in pursuit. The reborn evermind, working with a reborn Erasmus, developed the immensely powerful tachyon net cast from the machine homeworld of Synchrony, and captured and altered the Enhanced Face Dancers, installing genetic kill switches in them. Obsessed with the prophesied Kwisatz Haderach of Kralizec, Omnius pursued the no-ship Ithaca and had clones of Paul Atreides created and made to duel, while launching a genocidal armada against the last human resistance over Chapterhouse. On the final day of Kralizec, as Omnius believed its victory assured, its ancient nemesis Norma Cenva, ascended to the Oracle of Time, appeared in the Cathedral on Synchrony and transported both herself and Omnius into another universe where the tachyon net did not exist, destroying the evermind for good. (Expanded books: Hunters of Dune; Sandworms of Dune)