Seurat (Dune)

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Seurat is a fictional character of the Dune novels. In the Legends of Dune prequels of Dune, Seurat was an independent thinking machine who pilots an update ship through the Synchronized Worlds with the help of the son of Titan Agamemnon, Vorian Atreides.

In the Butlerian Jihad, Seurat delivers his Omnius updates with the help of Vorian Atreides, a high ranking trustee and son of the Cymek Titan General Agamemnon. Seurat delivers copies of Omnius to each and every world controlled by Omnius. These copies are downloaded into the Omnius system on each planet thus updating them.

Update ships constantly move throughout the Synchronized Worlds keeping the Omnius copies in sync. On several of these trips he is accompanied by Vorian Atreides where they play several different mentally challenging games in order to train Vorian's mental capacity. Vorian affectionally refers to Seurat as "Old Metalmind." When Vorian defects to the human alliance he disables Seurat and leaves him drifting in space for several decades after taking with him a full copy of the Earth Omnius.

Twenty-five years after being disabled, Seurat awakes and his programming reboots completely. He checks the storage compartment, where he finds the Omnius copy in place, not knowing that Vorian Atreides has modified it with alternate programming and computer viruses. He continues on his update trip towards the rest of the Synchronised Worlds with the tainted Earth Omnius copy. Soon after delivering the updates to the first set of Synchronised Worlds severe malfunctions begin hindering and later threaten the Synchronised Worlds. The planet Bela Tegeuse was hit hardest, while on Corrin, Erasmus was clever enough to minimize the damage.

Seurat was detained by a security detachment of robots sent by Erasmus and the infected copy of Omnius was destroyed. Since Seurat was a victim of deceit, as well as a good pilot, Omnius installed him in a new update ship to make the circuit of the Synchronised Worlds. On one of those missions to the Richese system, the robot captain was attacked and captured by the cymek Agamemnon whom at this time in history had begun their own rebellion against Omnius.

For 56 years, Seurat remained a prisoner of the cymeks until he saw a chance to steal a ship and flee to Bela Tegeuse during an attack by a thinking machine fleet. Again he was given a ship to make update trips to the Synchronised Worlds.

During the great purging that destroyed all the Synchronised Worlds but Corrin, Seurat saved one of two Omnius copies from destruction by the human nuclear storms and brought it to Corrin where it was updated with the Corrin Omnius. Since Corrin is the only Synchronised world left, Seurat had no more missions.

Seurat was apparently destroyed during the Battle at Corrin when he suddenly attacked Vorian Atreides' ship LS Serena Victory after Seurat asked Vorian to turn off his ship's Holtzman shield in order for them to negotiate a peace agreement between the Army of Humanity and the forces of the thinking machines.