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The door to Sheeana's headspace is a rubber iris, incongrously decorated with Arabic-looking designs.

Step into it and the door hovers in the air over a vast desert at twilight. Looking over the dunes, the pink and purple light makes them look like the backs of great pods of candy whales frozen in migration. There are the ghosts of great sandworms there, translucent bodies miles long, roaring hauntingly.

There is a small, hardscrabble village, sorrounded by a moat of moist sand. The dwellings are simple hovels. Their inhabitants are fremen (http://www.lisashea.com/hobbies/dune/scifi/fremen2.jpg) in stillsuits. They are simple but honest folk, tenders of their desert home.

In the middle is a vaguely churchish looking building (http://www.rrp.lv/images/ropazi.jpg). Inside, women in black robes train in obscure martial arts, talk over spicecoffee, read and eat together.

All of these people are fully independent personalities and can talk to you themselves.

Sheeana could be anywhere.

Tess moves across the sand with her suit sealed, shimmering a soft yellow-green in the soft light. Behind and around her like a particularly voluminous cloak, a trail of similar-seeming material flutters, venting concentrated heat back out into the air.

She pauses at the edge of the village, looking around.

Inside the faux-church, a motherly looking woman (http://izar.deviantart.com/art/Miles-Teg-and-Darwi-Odrade-35482347) looks up from her game of pyramid chess.

"You should see what that is, Sheeana."

"I don't want to." Pawn moves en gravitant.

"You're the dominant personality here. This is your responsibility."

Sheeana sighs, pulls her robe up over her stillsuit and looks out the door. "You're going to get very hot very quickly in that!" She calls to the figure.

"I'm fine!" a girlish voice calls back, with the faint tinge and slightly warped tone of a quiet voice given artificial amplification. "I've got good refrigeration."

Tess heads towards the little church structure, feet moving in a slightly rolling way that suggests heavy weight and a certain practice in making sure not to sink unduly into soft materials.

The Fremen have, by this point, gathered around her, looking suspicious. Who is this stranger with her odd stillsuit?

"And eventually your refrigerant will run out. I must take you in and see to your equipment, traveller." Enough Voice to disperse the fremen villagers.

"Shucks, not for longer'n I'll be staying around," she says, quite honestly. An odd manner of speaking, too.

As she approaches closer, the waves of heat rolling off the shapeless material draped around her shoulders are more noticeable, as if the whole mass was some sort of radiator.

"Well at least pull down your face-cover so I can see to whom I am speaking." So she's not planning on staying for very long? Because even at dusk, the sun on Arrakis gets hot very quickly.

The faceplate slides open--splitting in two vertically, with the sides sliding apart and retracting. Not the most practical design, perhaps, but it certainly looks interesting. The face thus revealed (as echoed by the form-fitting, except for certain extra panels and elements, traits of the suit) is that of a young woman. There's something strangely plasticine about her skin: to the cunning eyes of a Bene Gesserit, it doesn't take a second glance to tell that there's some transparent film fitted over her face, even stretching near-invisibly over her mouth and eyes, and far too well-fitted to seem like it could have come from a hand-performed process. Some esoteric method of water containment, perhaps?

"Nice to meetcha," she says brightly, takes a step forward, and offers a hand.

Indeed, Sheeana wonders. It's like a stillsuit but not. Sheeana remembers the archaic custom and shakes the offered hand. "I am Sheeana, of the Bene Gesserit." The villagers, seeing their leader does not consider the girl is threat, look a little bit less moblike.

The cloak is pumping out less heat now, but it's slowly changing color, with mottled and softly expanding patches tinging paler and glinting a little against the light.

Tess has a firm (but not uncomfortably so) grip. "Tennessee Lee, atcher service." She does have a weapon, it would seem--a funny-looking thing halfway between a sidearm and a longarm sitting on her hip, all in bright matte colors--but she's given it no attention.

Sheeana notes it...the girl has Murbella's fiery red hair but none of her twitchy musculature. "You should come inside. A Bene Gesserit learning temple will be more hospitable to a sophisticated traveler like yourself."

Tess moves with a kind of rough grace that suggests much more natural aptitude than actual training or experience. And she lets out a little bit of a laugh at that, half-suppressed, as she moves to follow Sheeana.

The cloak is almost all white now, shining a little iridescently in the dim light.

Oh. Brain-diving; Motoko's second favorite sport, right after making her subordinates cry, and just before long-winded explanations on the meaning of self. She spots Sheeana's 'portal,' and with hardly a second thought pushes her was through. Nosey? Why yes, yes she is.

And then she hit sand, sinking instantly up to her knees with the impact of the drop to ground-level. It's not that that startles her, however, it's that the simulation is more like a hack— it's taking into account her real, physical limitations....which shouldn't logically apply here. So, it's just another one of the oddities of this place.

Also, there's sand. Rapture.

So it is with a sigh that she pulled herself out of the pit she'd planted both feet into, and made her way as inconspicuously as possible towards the Fremen village. The fact that her clothing is wildly inappropriate (http://www.productionig.com/contents/works_sp/images/gits4/GITS_SAC_2nd_overview.jpg) for the setting doesn't do much to help her stealth capabilities.

What a coincidence. Long winded explanations on the nature of self are Sheeana's favorite sport too, right after watching Duncan train half naked and right before playing pranks on Bellonda.

Something that heavy moving across the sands, however, attracts the attention of something else. A ghost-worm thunders out of the sand with an eerie cry, attracted by her rythm. Who knows what kind of damage it can do, if any?

Sheeana is out the door of the church in an instant, moving faster than a human should be able to.

The worm is closing in. Sheeana could stop it of course, but she knows the Amtal rule: You do not know a person or thing until you know their limits

Instead she stood on the other side of the moat of moist sand. "Get over here!" She extended her hand.

For a heartbeat, Motoko blinked at Sheeana, realizing swiftly that this was her headspace. And then she turned and saw the oncoming worm.

Son of a Bitch.

The servos in her legs powered up with a whine, but the sand was too soft to support a full leap. Dry sand spilled over her boot toes as she started off towards that beckoning hand. Impacting moistened ground made movement come easier, and in a moment she'd cleared it.

Sheeana caught her hand and yanked. She was immediately surprised by the weight but also much stronger than her small size would indicate. Soon they were both stumbling onto the relatively safe ground of the village.

The worm roared away, churning up sand in its wake despite its seeming insubstantiality. The Fremen, suspicious, came behind her. She gestured for them to stay back. Still suspicious, they obeyed. They could tell by the way the Major had sunk that she did not weigh as much as a normal human. Sheeana smiled and cocked her head.

Motoko did not smile. But then, that was hardly surprising given the circumstances, and herself. As a queen overlooks her domain— or a wolf the sheep's pen— Motoko looked out over the village.

"So, this is Sheeana," She mused, low and idle, "Your home, isn't it?"

The Fremen did not fail to notice the inappropriately dressed outfreyn woman surveying them haughtily.

"It is my village on Rakis, the planet I grew up on. Though that building is a learning hall from Chapterhouse." She took Motoko's arm and led her up towards it. There was pain to these memories, but she was very, very good at hiding it.

It wasn't that Motoko was unaware of their disapproving stares, it was that she utterly failed to care. Dress had little to do with it— Motoko was neither overheated, nor sweating, nor would she be for some time if the readouts had any accuracy to them. Full-body replacement Cyborgs do not lose water.

Deliberately, but without force, Motoko took her arm back. Even if she hadn't a cultural aversion to unnecessary contact, she hardly enjoyed being led along like a child.

I must not facepalm. Facepalming is the mindkiller...Oh you sophisticated one, cyborg and enforcer, you understand but you do not understand. Sheeana had no wish to find out what the consequences of a fight between a powerful cyborg and a troop of desert warrior-tribesmen inside her brain would be.

"Won't you please come inside, my honored guest? Our village is a humble one, boasting only a small Bene Gesserit outpost to distinguish it, but still you must be tired from your journey and would enjoy some spicecoffee and baklawa, no?" There. That ought to have gotten the message across.

"Thank you, I'd appreciate it," the polite reply— almost demure. Even Motoko can see when social backpedaling was in order, even if she was only engaging in it out of perverse desire to see Sheeana squirm.

Following the woman across the burning sand she eased her step, moving more surely at software and experience adapted her step to remove the awkwardness that had been wrought. Motoko cursed her lack of external memory, but kept her expression serene. What a strange place.

Thank Shai-Halud.

Inside the school was a psuedo-religious place, imitating a humble country church in its architecture. There were no rows of pews though. Candles, yes, but no shrines. Women in black robes sat and talked, practiced martial arts that caused them to blur, read, conversed. Sheeana too took one of the robes from a hook on the wall and threw it over her stillsuit. "This is a Bene Gesserit building, like where I had my classes on Chapterhouse."

The Major took in all this with a glance, filing it automatically in her buffer for later reexamination. The religions of earth had never held her interest for longer than it took to disprove what of their faith Motoko might have held precious. The architecture faintly touched that, some forgotten memory, but it was nothing and she deleted the process that was feeding nostalgia into her consciousness without a qualm.

But there was one thing that needed comment, "Always women?"

"We have had men within our organization, but in all history only two men have been able to access Other Memory, becoming Reverend Mothers...Or Fathers, you might say." She made a sweeping gesture. "These are Reverend Mothers from various points in my past."

'We have merged with many intelligences, along the way...'

And why did that line spring to mind? The voice of the puppeteer's dying self was haunting as he merged and separated, whirling away into nothingness even as they linked, dragging Motoko with him. But that was only memory, and none of it showed on her face, only in the way she hesitated before speaking.

"I've always found gender to be irrelevant," she murmured in reply, following or seeming to follow Sheeana's directional gesture.