Synchrony

Synchrony was the capital world of the reborn Thinking Machine empire, raised far from human-inhabited space after the machines' defeat at the Battle of Corrin. Its surface was a shifting expanse of free-moving flowmetal machines that assembled and reassembled themselves into shapes and buildings at the command of the evermind Omnius. Millennia after the Butlerian Jihad had seemingly ended the machine threat, Synchrony became the seat of a resurgent empire and the place where the final confrontation of Kralizec played out, drawing in Erasmus, Sheeana, Duncan Idaho, and the gholas of Paul Atreides.

Rebirth of the machine empire#

Before the Liberation of Giedi Prime, one of the copies of Omnius on that world launched thousands of deep-space probes into the far reaches of the cosmos. Each probe carried the complete machinery needed to build a machine society, and one of them landed on the planet that would come to be called Synchrony.

More than a hundred years later, near the end of the Battle of Corrin, the last copy of Omnius Prime electronically launched a signal copy of itself, along with all copies of the Thinking Machine empire, into deep space. The signal degraded as it sped outward, and just before it faded into oblivion it latched onto the machine society that had taken root on Synchrony. The signal re-created the Omnius Evermind and his counterpart Erasmus as the leaders of the reborn empire.

Capital of the machine empire#

Synchrony lay far from human-inhabited space, and for the first ten thousand years there was no contact between humankind and the machines. As humanity and the machine empire expanded toward one another over the following five thousand years, however, small amounts of contact began.

From Synchrony, Omnius and Erasmus intercepted and altered the Enhanced Face Dancers, sending them back into the Old Empire to infiltrate every level of human government. When the Honored Matres attacked a machine outpost during the Scattering, it was from Synchrony that the machines began their long war against humanity. That war drove the Honored Matres, who called the machines the Enemy, fleeing back into Known Space. Disguised as the elderly couple Daniel and Marty, Omnius and Erasmus also cast their tachyon net repeatedly from Synchrony for almost thirty years, attempting to capture the no-ship Ithaca and the Kwisatz Haderach they believed it carried.

Kralizec and the end of an age#

When the machines finally captured the Ithaca, it was brought to Synchrony, and the events of Kralizec unfolded there over the course of a single day. A ghola of Paul Atreides dueled the clone Paolo, who fell into an irreversible coma from an overdose of ultraspice. The Oracle of Infinity, Norma Cenva, permanently banished Omnius into another universe. The Enhanced Face Dancers died simultaneously across the galaxies when Erasmus activated a kill switch he had secretly installed in them centuries earlier, undoing the takeover planned by their leader Khrone.

Sheeana and a ghola of Leto II released sandworms into the sands of Synchrony, sowing havoc across the machine world. Finally, Duncan Idaho was revealed to be the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach, accepting the codes and traits of Erasmus into himself just as the flowmetal robot chose to end his own life.

The future of Synchrony#

While guided by Omnius, the machines and structures of Synchrony had followed the Evermind's commands exactly. After his banishment and the rise of the ultimate Kwisatz Haderach, the machines were granted far greater liberty to reconfigure themselves as they saw fit. It was on Synchrony, too, that a traditional Bene Gesserit order chose to re-establish itself, led by Sheeana and a ghola of Serena Butler. The sandworms released by Leto II and Sheeana continued to multiply and became part of the world's ecosystem.