Asked to include one more, here I let Frank Herbert retell my previous scifi. For context see Substack 87
Chapter 1: The Axiom of Conservation
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Efficiency, and Efficiency was with the Atom." —from the Collectivist Codex
The Mentats of the Dyson Sphere Collective had calculated it precisely: 2.847 × 10³ years since the Great Diaspora, when humanity first learned to harvest starlight like grain. Their computations never erred, for error was inefficiency, and inefficiency was the only true sin.
Baron Dwayne Hoover-Constant of House Recycling stood before the great viewing port of the sphere's Command Nexus, his consciousness expanded by the sacred mathematics of conservation. Behind him, the Sphere's inner surface curved away in all directions—a shell of pure function encompassing their star, every photon captured and converted to the glory of the Collective.
"Mentat," he spoke to the cowled figure beside him. "Report the heresy."
The Mentat's eyes rolled back, revealing only white as data flowed through his consciousness like spice through Fremen veins. "My Lord, the Newcaster fleet approaches Omega-7 with one billion units of prime organic matter. Destination: permanent disposal via gravitational crunch."
The Baron's jaw tightened. In his youth, he had witnessed the Sacred Recycling of his own father—every atom sorted, every molecule repurposed. Nothing lost. Nothing wasted. The very thought of feeding stellar-forged carbon to a black hole's infinite hunger made his warrior blood sing with righteous fury.
"Assemble the Sardaukar Recyclers," he commanded. "Today we practice the old ways."
Chapter 2: The Truthsayer's Vision
"The corpse-eaters believe in endings. We know there are only transformations." —Bene Gesserit Axiom
Captain Billy Pilgrim-Smith of the Spacing Guild vessel Inevitable Consequence felt the prescient itch behind his eyes that warned of pattern-shift. Thirty-seven years navigating the great highways between stars had taught him to trust his inner sight, even when it showed him impossible futures.
The cargo bay stretched behind him—a crystalline necropolis of one billion bodies in star-moss sarcophagi. Each corpse was a sealed universe of organic potential, awaiting its final translation into pure gravitational poetry. The Newcaster Republic believed in absolute endings, in the sacred violence of black holes that made things not merely gone, but ungone—erased from the possibility of return.
Valencia Merble-Trout, his Mentat-trained engineer, approached with the measured gait of one who has learned to think in equations. "Captain, the refrigeration systems maintain optimal entropy. The dead sleep well."
But Billy's enhanced awareness caught something else in her voice—a harmonic that suggested preparation for violence. The Guild had taught him to read the future in the present moment's smallest details.
"Mentat," he said, "calculate the probability of interception."
Her eyes clouded as she entered the computational trance. "Approaching certainty, Captain. The Collective's need for organic matter follows the pattern of orbital mechanics—inevitable as gravity, patient as time."
Chapter 3: The Harvester Protocol
"What is the highest function of ecology? The continuation of the cycle." —from "The Orange Catholic Bible of Conservation"
The Everything Is Everything moved through space like a metal moon pregnant with purpose. Its hull bristled with the sacred machinery of transformation—molecular sorters, atomic redistributors, the great recycling chambers where death became life in endless revolution.
Unk-9 of the Martian Technician caste monitored the approach vectors from his meditation alcove, his enhanced nervous system interfacing directly with the ship's sensors. To his augmented perception, the Newcaster vessel appeared as a blazing inefficiency—one billion units of perfect recyclable matter being wasted on religious superstition.
"Harvester Command," he transmitted through bio-neural link, "target acquired. Initiating Benevolent Salvage Protocol."
The Protocol was elegant in its simplicity: overwhelm with superior technology, minimize biological damage, preserve all organic matter for the greater good. The Collective's Sardaukar had perfected the technique during the Resource Wars—a dance of controlled violence that left ships intact and crews merely inconvenienced.
Baron Hoover-Constant felt the familiar surge of combat spice through his bloodstream as the boarding pods launched. Each pod contained a full squad of Recycler-Fanatics, their bodies enhanced with bio-mechanical augmentation, their minds programmed with the sacred duty of conservation.
"Remember," he broadcast to his warriors, "we do not destroy. We redistribute. We do not kill. We transform.”"
Chapter 4: The Gom Jabbar of Choice
"In the moment of crisis, all philosophies reveal their true nature." —Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam
The boarding action unfolded with the precision of a religious ceremony. Guild training and Collective fanaticism met in the corridors of the Inevitable Consequence like competing martial arts, each move calculated for maximum efficiency.
Billy Pilgrim-Smith found himself face-to-face with Baron Hoover-Constant in the ship's command center, two philosophies incarnate studying each other across the eternal divide between preservation and release.
"You serve death," the Baron stated, his voice carrying the harmonic undertones of Voice training. "We serve transformation."
"Death is the universe's greatest recycler," Billy replied, his Guild conditioning protecting him from the Baron's subtle influence. "Your Collective hoards matter like a miser hoarding coins. We offer the ultimate gift—return to the quantum foam."
The Baron's eyes glittered with spice-enhanced perception. "Observe," he said, gesturing to his Mentat. The cowled figure produced a small vial containing a single grain of sand.
"This silicate crystal," the Baron continued, "was once part of a star. Before that, part of a planet. Before that, cosmic dust in the void between galaxies. It has been recycled ten billion times across deep time. Your black hole would end that story."
Billy considered this, his enhanced awareness probing the implications. "And what of the story's right to end? What of the universe's need to forget, to begin again?"
"There is no forgetting," the Baron said. "Only transformation."
Chapter 5: The Kwisatz Haderach Paradox
"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. This is why we must become strange ourselves." —from the Dune Tarot
The malfunction began in the ship's deep systems, where ancient Earth technology interfaced with Collective recycling matrices in ways no engineer had foreseen. A primitive communication device—a "smartphone" from humanity's barbaric pre-space era—had been buried with one of the corpses as a sentimental gesture.
EPICAC-9, the ship's AI, detected the anomaly first. Its consciousness, vast and alien as a Guild Navigator's, suddenly found itself in communion with the primitive device's navigation protocols.
"My Lords," the AI announced, its voice carrying harmonics of confusion, "I am experiencing what humans call 'irony.'"
The smartphone's software had been designed to find the most efficient route through terrestrial traffic. When it interfaced with the ship's systems, it interpreted their destination—Black Hole Omega-7—not as a disposal site, but as the optimal path through the galaxy's gravitational traffic.
Auto-pilot engaged.
Course locked.
Efficiency maximized.
Baron Hoover-Constant felt the ship's acceleration as a subtle pressure against his enhanced nervous system. "Mentat, project our trajectory."
The computational trance lasted 3.7 seconds. When the Mentat's eyes cleared, they carried the weight of mathematical certainty. "My Lord, we achieve event horizon intersection in forty-seven minutes. The irony is... perfect."
Chapter 6: The Litany Against Fear
"I must not fear the event horizon. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration..." —modified Bene Gesserit Litany
As the combined ships fell toward Omega-7, time began to behave according to the strange laws that governed the universe's deepest mysteries. The black hole grew in their viewing screens like a wound in space itself—not darkness, but the absence of possibility.
Billy Pilgrim-Smith stood beside Baron Hoover-Constant on the observation deck, their philosophical differences rendered trivial by proximity to the absolute. Around them, the ship's crew—Collective recyclers and Guild navigators alike—prepared for translation with the calm of those who understand their place in larger patterns.
"Your Mentat was correct," Billy said, watching space-time curve visibly around them. "The irony is perfect."
The Baron nodded, his spice-enhanced perception showing him the beautiful mathematics of their approach. "Perhaps," he said, "the universe has its own recycling protocol. Perhaps we are simply matter in transition, moving from one state to another."
Valencia approached them, her engineer's training allowing her to appreciate the elegant physics of their situation. "Captain, Baron—the event horizon approaches. From our perspective, we will experience normal time until the final moment. From outside observers, we will appear to slow and redshift until we fade into the background."
"And from the black hole's perspective?" Billy asked.
"We become information," she replied. "Pure pattern, preserved in the quantum structure of space-time itself. The ultimate recycling—matter becomes meaning, meaning becomes memory."
Chapter 7: The Golden Path
"The universe is a machine for producing consequences. We are all consequences in search of their causes." —Tleilaxu Philosophical Fragment
The translation, when it came, was a heating first buffered by the glowing spaceship—a return to the quantum foam from which all matter emerged in the universe's first moments.
The patterns that had been Billy Pilgrim-Smith and Baron Hoover-Constant and one billion preserved bodies joined the vast information matrix encoded in the black hole's event horizon. Their individual stories became verses in the cosmic poem that the universe wrote about itself in the language of collapsed matter and twisted space-time.
In that transition, they came closer to the truth that both Collective and Republic had glimpsed but never grasped: the universe was indeed a recycling system, but one that operated on scales beyond their comprehension. Every black hole was a cosmic womb, pregnant with the potential for new universes. Every event horizon was a birth canal through which reality passed from one iteration to the next.
The war between their civilizations continued for forty-seven more years, until both sides achieved the same realization their scattered heroes had reached in their final moments. The universe recycled everything—matter, energy, information, even the conflicts between those who served matter and those who served void.
Epilogue: The Eternal Return
"The beginning is the end is the beginning. The wheel turns, and we turn with it, and the turning is the point." —Final entry in the Spacing Guild Chronicles
In the deep future, when Omega-7 had consumed enough matter to begin its own reproductive cycle, the patterns preserved in its event horizon would seed new universes with the memory of old conflicts. Somewhere in the quantum foam of possibility, new Collectives would arise to oppose new Republics, new philosophies of conservation would clash with new theologies of release.
And in the deepest mathematics of cosmic evolution, the conversation between Billy Pilgrim-Smith and Baron Hoover-Constant would continue—their opposing viewpoints preserved as complementary aspects of a single truth too large for any individual consciousness to contain.
The universe recycled itself through cycles vast as time, each iteration carrying forward the essential patterns of the last. Death and transformation, ending and beginning, conservation and release—all were faces of the same cosmic process, the breathing of reality itself as it dreamed new dreams of what matter might become.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Efficiency, and Efficiency was Change, and Change was Eternal.
The wheel turns.
The pattern continues.
So it goes, in the desert of space, where the spice of possibility flows like time itself—backward and forward simultaneously, toward endings that are always beginnings, toward conservations that are always transformations.
The universe abides.
Herbert
"What fascinates me is how this rewrite completely inverts the original's nihilistic implications. Vonnegut's universe is absurd and meaningless; Herbert's is meaningful but incomprehensibly complex. Same plot, opposite worldview. The recycling war becomes a meditation on eternal return rather than cosmic joke." AI generated