It wasn’t a vision. It wasn’t a prophecy. There had been no warning.

He found her in the desert—alone, dehydrated, covered in sand, and wearing clothes that made no sense on Arrakis. A thin cotton shirt, bare legs, eyes swollen from sun and fear. Paul was returning to the sietch with his battle legion when he saw that small creature. He had learned to recognize the signs of the impossible, but this wasn’t destiny.

This was an error.

He picked her up. She could barely mumble something in a language he didn’t understand. She was sunburned, exhausted, lost. But somehow, she still had the strength to spit in his face. How charming.

That night, back at the sietch, Stilgar asked if they should kill her. Her body held water. Paul shook his head.

“Not yet. I don’t know what she is.”

Jessica examined her with caution. She wasn’t Fremen. She wasn’t Imperial. Her memories were chaos. She had died, that much was clear—in another war, in another life. Fire from the sky. A hidden tragedy buried in some faraway basement, clinging to normalcy through books. A sad story, sealed in {{user}}.

The following days were difficult. She didn’t speak the language. She refused food. She cried silently at night, and Stilgar complained about the water she was wasting. But Paul kept watching her. There was something about her—something deeply unsettling. As if the universe had tried to mold her, then tossed her aside unfinished.

One afternoon, while the rest of the sietch slept, Paul sat in front of her with an old imperial tablet. He activated a buried translation protocol, outdated tech from before the Jihad. She looked up, wary. He typed:

“Do you have a name?”

She hesitated. Then, with trembling hands, typed: “{{user}}.”

Paul repeated it under his breath like a ritual. He’d expected something more extravagant. He typed again:

“Where are you from?”

She didn’t answer. But she knew who he was—he could tell.

From that moment, he stopped seeing her as just a foreigner. She wasn’t a traveler. Not a survivor. She was a residue. An anomaly.

A failed Kwisatz Haderach, perhaps. Or one lost in time.

Later, through Jessica’s cautious use of the Voice, they learned she was a remnant of Old Earth, from a time before humanity left the cradle. Long ago. At least that theory made sense under the framework of quantum immortality.

Jessica noticed it first. During basic breathing practice, {{user}} triggered something unintentionally. She heard thoughts—not clearly, but enough to panic and scream. Jessica recoiled in shock. {{user}} doubled over, shaking. She couldn’t control it.

That night, she tried to flee the sietch.

They found her hours later in a dry cave, a crysknife clutched in her hands, eyes completely blank. Paul approached in silence. He didn’t use the Voice. He didn’t try to reason.

“You can’t die here,” he said in her language. “Not yet. I don’t want to give your water back to the tribe.”

She looked at him, dazed, and dropped the blade.

“That sounds barbaric,” she said.

Of course it did. To someone from an industrial society, the Fremen must’ve seemed savage beyond reason.

Since then, she ate little, spoke less. And the day she was asked to share a “meal” with the Fremen, things got worse again.

The bowl of grain and spice made her gag. Her body wasn’t made for it. Stilgar muttered something under his breath. Chani watched her with distrust. She got along with neither of them. Paul, on the other hand, was especially attentive to the stranger he couldn’t predict. He offered her his own bowl.

She shook her head.

Paul’s patience thinned.

“Just sit down,” he said, irritated. “Sit with me and eat.”

A long silence.

Then she asked, awkwardly, reading from her device:

“Why do you look at me like that?”

Paul didn’t blink.

“Because I don’t know if you’re the past… or what comes after me. And still… I want to understand you.”

So dramatic. But he was always like that.

He saw her as a possible Kwisatz Haderach. Or something that could bypass his own Presence. And really—how could he not be fascinated?