"How do you plan to do that?"

"With enough ships and enough coordination we can prevent civilizations from falling. I've done it a couple times. The difficulty is the cost and being there at the right time. Having an edge can help make that easier, can help reduce the costs. Maybe enough to bring the dream into reality. Sometimes though the cost of having an edge is itself too high. And the only edge I presently know of has a terrible cost. Perhaps I'll meet someone here with a better one."

"Our civilization possesses faster-than-light ships. They are all controlled by the Guild, and transport is expensive, but they exist."

So that failed dream isn't failed everywhere. "Do you know how they work or how they're made?"

"The Guild keeps most details a secret. What is known is that its navigators, through the use of the Spice Melange that gives them limited prescience, fold space to shorten the way between two points.

It would be an impossible task for normal humans, and that's why the Guild was founded after the Butlerian Jihad."

"Prescience is also regarded as impossible in my world. What was The Butlerian Jihad?"

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. Humanity had created machines that could think, and that were making us delegate our thinking and corroding our society, so a great revolt started until the last thinking machine was destroyed."

That... sounds like an edge more useful and potentially less fraught than focus. Pham wonders why that worked for them and has failed for millennia in his universe. "I see. You're welcome to take a seat or take some time to get refreshments from the bar. The first drink is free and apparently she will accept any form of currency or readily tradable valuables for further comestibles."

"I wonder if... Bar, could I have a Melange Chai?"

They sit at Nuwen's table.

An ornately decorated mug appears on the surface of the bar. It's steaming just a little.

Interesting. He smells it. Yes, it is proper Spice.

"Since then, we have replaced thinking machines in spaceships with Guild navigators, and calculators with Mentats, who are humans trained from young age to think clearly and quickly, remember facts, and analyze data."

Pham can't help but let a little of his surprise show on his face. They have starships without using even calculators. "How interesting. What is involved in training these Mentats?" They sound a little like Focused people.

"It's... not widely shared. But it's mostly what you would expect, exercise to sharpen the mind and body."

"Understandable. How independent are Mentats? It sounds like a very useful set of abilities, I would expect that to lead people to leadership positions."

"They usually take the role of key advisors, not leaders. Each Lord of the Great Houses has at least one in His employ."

"That makes it sound like there aren't very many Mentats. Is that the case?"

"It is. It's rare for person to have the potential to become one. It takes mental discipline and rigorous training."

Pham really doesn't understand how you would manage a large civilization like that. "What's the overall structure of your society? You mentioned great houses are those large merchant houses or nobles or something else?" He's betting on nobles just based on their titles and bearing.

"There are three main powers in known space: the Landsraad - the assembly of noble Houses, the Padishah Emperor and the Spacing Guild. They balance each other, preventing excesses.

What about where you come from? I'm guessing it's less centralized, based on what you told us about space travel."

"That would be an understatement. The Qeng Ho communications net is the closest thing to a centralized structure that exists. We set it up to help civilizations recover faster after falls and to make the civilizations that do recover more compatible with our systems and more likely to speak our language so trade is easier."

"How does it work? Do you just leave satellites around worlds, hoping that future civilizations will find a way to contact them?

How... old are you?"

"We invest in interstellar transmitters and when a civilization reinvents radio they can pick up those transmissions. As for myself, I've lived a bit under 6000 megaseconds but between coldsleep and relativity it's been around 300 gigaseconds now since I was born."

"Could you count out ten seconds for me, please?" Whatever this place is doing for translating the language has probably picked up the correct definition of "second", but he has never heard anyone refer to long periods of time as "gigaseconds", and it's very cheap to test.

If it's the same "second" though... 6000 megaseconds would be 100 megaminutes would be ~50% more than 1 megahour - 1000 kilohours, would be ~20% less than 50 kilodays, which is... approximately 150 years. Minus 20% plus 50% that's approximately 180 years. And Nuwen didn't seem to know about the spice.

Interesting.

Pham decides it would be best not to get out a terminal and does his best to count out ten seconds based on his own sense of time. "It's at least a little like that. I don't know if you have an Earth or if it's solar system was substantially the same but there were about 31 and a half megaseconds in a year there."

"We did have a planet called Earth, thousands of years ago..." 86400 seconds in a day by 365 days is... "and yes, 31 and a half megaseconds sounds about right for a Standard Year."

Weird. That's probably not a coincidence.

"So you are... 180 Standard Years old? Most of our population doesn't get half that." Unless you have access to the Spice, that is.