Thinking Machines/XD

The term Thinking Machines referred to both actual beings and a general concept, both of which had a profound impact on the development of humanity over the span of many millennia.

Basic Machines and the Cymeks
The first Thinking Machines were first created by the humans of the Old Empire in 5360 BG to do everyday tasks for them.

Later, a more advanced type of thinking machine arose when the original Titans decided to separate their brains from The flesh of their bodies. The organ was then placed inside electrafluid in a near impenetrable brain canister, and connected to the casing of the canister via thoughtrodes. Beings that had this procedure performed on them were known as cymeks. The canister could then be placed in powerful walker bodies, or flying starship bodies that several cymeks could use for transport or war.

Chief among the cymeks were Agamemnon, who was the first to have the procedure done; as well as his lover, Juno. Other Titans to undergo the procedure were Dante and the fleshly prince Xerxes. After a few hundred years, Xerxes left too much of the governance of his star system to his computer intelligence, which would lead it to develop an independent personality of its own. The AI would later christen itself Omnius, and usurp control of the old empire from the Titans, slaving each individual Cymek to its own personal neural network so that none could defy its will.

Omnius and the Metal Based Thinking Machines
Xerxes and the other Titans first attempted to shut the virulent program down, but their efforts were in vain: Omnius had total control over every thinking machine in the known universe, including themselves. Omnius, crowning itself the Evermind, quickly established an intergalactic empire by conquering neighboring systems with unstoppable armies of thinking machines, led by its unwaveringly loyal Cymek generals. However, progress was stalled when the last bastion of human civilization in the universe, the League of Nobles, organized a campaign of wide-scale guerrilla resistance, a campaign which saw increasing amounts of success as the years went on, much to the Everminds Chagrin. The later stages of this war saw an extreme escalation of hostilities that would later be dubbed the “Butlerian Jihad,” after its young leader and figurehead Serena Butler. The Jihad ended with the total defeat of the thinking machines at the hands of the free humans during the Battle of Corrin.

During the time of the Butlerian Jihad, Omnius controlled most thinking machines - with a few exceptions. The most notable of these were Erasmus, who killed Serena Butler's infant son while she was his slave; and Chirok, a reprogrammed combat robot used by Ginaz for the training of League forces.

Conceptual Thinking Machines
Following the rise of the thinking machine empire, and the physical and psychological damage it inflicted on the remaining free humans, the very concept of a sentient machine became abhorrent to nearly all humankind.

Animosity against seemingly intelligent machines often escalated into outright hysteria, and resulted in widespread hatred of mechanical objects. This hatred lasted through the ages thanks to rigid cultural restrictions, a good example of which was the Orange Catholic Bible's supreme commandment: Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

Unity with Man-Kind
Although Thinking Machines continued to be mankind's greatest enemy in the span of over fifteen thousand years, they eventually did achieve an understanding and a type of unity with the rise of the Ultimate Kwisatz Haderach, Duncan Idaho.

Idaho was able to merge with and accept the Everminds control from Erasmus before the ancient machine died, which enabled him to control and direct the entire Thinking Machine Empire during the time of the Kralizec, and for many years afterwards. Using this, he soon brought peace back to universe, restoring the formerly dead world of Arrakis and aiding refugees from across the old empire, as well as those who had returned from The Scattering Though the wounds of the past remained, there was yet hope that, with time, they would heal, and mankind would be United with their artificial cousins in perfect peace till the end of time.