Gilbertus Albans/XD

"I'm a thinker. That is what I do, in great depth and detail, every working moment of the day. I like to believe it's worhtwile. And yet, I can't help but recall something Erasmus said to me once when I was young, and he was my master: "All of these things with which we occupy ourselves don't amount to much in the cosmic scale of things, do they? No matter how much we ponder any particular topic, there is really very little there.""

- Gilbertus Albans, Reflections in the Mirror of the Mind

Gilbertus Albans (185-3 BG) was a savage hrethgir toddler born among the slaves of Erasmus on his villa on Corrin; he was the subject of a second bet between Erasmus and Omnius about whether the way humans could function can be altered.

Omnius wagered that no matter how hard Erasmus tried, he would never turn a feral human child into a logical being. Erasmus took up the challenge, and Omnius chose the blonde-haired boy who appeared to be the wildest and most unkempt of all, in the animalistic lower social orders of the slave pens. Eventually Erasmus educated the little human, and Gilbertus became the first mentat.

History
Gilbertus was born in the cruel slave pens in Erasmus' villa to a slave family. In a conversation with Omnius, Erasmus claimed that any feral human could be trained to become brilliant, almost the equal of thinking machines. Omnius chose one of the most unkempt of all the humans in a nearby slave pen and challenged Earsmus to turn that boy into a civilized, educated person. Earsmus accepted the challenge and chose for the high-sounding name 'Gilbertus Albans' that carried respectable and important tonalities so that it would evoke such behavior in the then nine-year-old child.

After initially failing to make progress by using a system of benevolence and rewards, he switched to a system of strict supervision and punishment as well as behaviour-altering drugs. These alternate methods prove to be successful. By emulating Erasmus, whom he has come to consider his father, Albans becomes the first to display computer-like cognitive and calculation capacity on the level of thinking machines.

After that was accomplished, he then trained Gilbertus to think logically and organize his thoughts, in the same way a computer did. This allowed Gilbertus to remember everything, recite observations at a moment's notice, and rapidly perform computer-like calculations. He was also able to maintain several lines of thought and think in hyper speed.

Maturity
To his own surprise, Erasmus also developed a fatherly attachment to the boy; when Gilbertus was about 20 years old, Erasmus performed a life-extension procedure on him without permission from Omnius. Because of Gilbertus' remarkable memory-organizational ability and capacity for logical thinking, Erasmus nicknamed him "Mentat", created from the words mentor, mentee and mentation, all coming from the Latin root for mind (mens).

Having already won the bet, Erasmus was determined to make him into the pinnacle of human ability. Soon Gilbertus was also doing physical exercises until his physique was as close to perfection as possible.

During the blockade following the Great Purge, Gilbertus enjoyed to spend time with clones of Serena Butler, while Erasmus attempted to reach the quality of the prototype. He was fond of one of them, and liked to talk with and teach her.and eventually had a child with her

When the Battle of Corrin begun, Gilbertus felt bothered with the concept of the Bridge of Hrethgir; he didn't like the idea that Erasmus would be responsible for the deaths of millions. Therefore he programmed a trigger mechanism that would detonate the cargoes automatically, without Erasmus' input.

Erasmus then put the clone of Serena in one of the cargoes, and then Gilbertus in a safe basement. However Gilbertus realized the truth, and decided to join Serena as a slave. He then managed to contact Erasmus through a watcheye and tell him where he was. Erasmus, to save his ward, reprogrammed and nullified the mechanism. The Army of Humanity fleet then passed through the Bridge without the expected losses.

Gilbertus returned to Erasmus with the help of a combat robot that Erasmus apprehended, but could not take Serena with him. When the end of the machines was close, he escaped with the memory core of Erasmus and joined a team of soldiers and Martyrists who devastated the structures.

After the Battle of Corrin
For the first two decades after escaping Corrin to freedom, Gilbertus lived under an alias, convincing others that he was a normal human being. He made his way to the remote planet of Lecter, where he was hired as a farmer. He lived a quiet life on Lecter for seven years, while continuing to protect Erasmus’s hidden memory core. He fell in love with a young woman called Juellia, but eventually she married someone else, leaving him heartbroken.

Order of Mentats
Gilbertus departed Lecter, following Erasmus’s dreams and encouragement to form a school that would surreptitiously teach thinking machine techniques, the Mentat school on the planet of Lampadas. Erasmus also convinced him to reclaim his original name of Gilbertus Albans.

Sixty-three years after the founding of his Mentat school, he was dragged into the Butlerian movement's anti-technology campaign by the fanaticism of his most vocal students, and the furor of Manford Torondo, who coerced him to serve as his special advisor. He found himself forced into a confrontation with his best student and friend, Draigo, who was in the service of Josef Venport's VenHold shipping conglomerate.

Some time later, Manford Torondo demanded that everyone in the Imperium reaffirm their loyalty to him personally and the Butlerian cause in general through a vaguely-worded pledge. When Butlerian representatives came to the Mentat school, the Butlerian Mentats immediately gave their pledge, but Gilbertus, pointing out hundreds of possible loopholes and potential errors in the wording, refused to sign. Infuriated, Manford brought thousands of fanatics to lay siege to the school. After several days, Gilbertus went to Manford's tent to discuss what can be done to de-escalate the situation. During their conversation, Deacon Harian revealed that he had discovered Gilbertus's true identity after analyzing Jihad-era records. Unable to lie in front of a Truthsayer, Gilbertus admitted that he was indeed trained by Erasmus. Manford publicly revealed who Gilbertus really was and sentenced the "machine collaborator" to death on the following day. Draigo managed to sneak into the Butlerian camp and tried to free his mentor, but Gilbertus had given his word to Manford that he would not attempt to flee in return for Manford sparing his school and students. Instead, Draigo rescues Anna Corrino, the Emperor's sister, and Erasmus's memory core. Gilbertus was beheaded by Anari Idaho the following morning. Watching through his spy-eyes, Erasmus privately swore vengeance on the fanatics for the death of his adopted son.

Shortly afterwards, Erasmus demands a new body for his memory core in order to assist the Venport Holdings researchers on Denali in developing better weapons and defenses. He asks that a clone be made using Gilbertus's genetic material, recovered by Draigo, where his memory core could be installed instead of a brain. Thus, Erasmus gains a human body, while looking like his late ward.

Legacy
Ten thousand years later, the Tleilaxu Kwisatz Haderach candidate, Thallo, told Marie Fenring that the Tleilaxu Masters had intentionally put cerebral matter of famous humans into his brain tissue to improve his cognitive reasoning. He told Marie that one such individual had been Gilbertus Albans, founder of the Mentat order.

Behind the Scenes
Gilbertus Albans made his first appearance in The Dune Encyclopedia, and some time after he was quoted by Duncan Idaho in Chapterhouse: Dune. This fact placed Gilbertus Albans as the founder of the Mentats at Canon status, and his history, told us by the Encyclopedia, probably as truth. However it isn't known whether Albans was created by Frank Herbert and added later to his novel, or was he originally developed by Frank, who gave the information about Albans to be inserted in The Dune Encyclopedia.

Such information given in the Encyclopedia concerns a different version of Albans. That information can be combined with the above to give a possible full picture.

Appearances

 * Dune: The Machine Crusade
 * Dune: The Battle of Corrin
 * Sisterhood of Dune
 * Mentats of Dune
 * Navigators of Dune (Clone)
 * Paul of Dune
 * Chapterhouse: Dune