You live like a hermit way out here.
Your pointy little monastery removed from all the pain you caused.
I haven't dictated Foundation policies since I died
over three centuries ago.
You never said the name of your home world.
You mentioned Blydok roots.
Pleiades sector, yes?
Farmed as a monocrop?
Rossem, wasn't it?
My planet had imperial quotas too.
My father was a rancher.
I always knew when the quotas had gone up because on those days he'd beat me.
My story's sadder, I think.
The city's burning, your Vault is an island,
but I hear you have more than a Vault.
My new soldiers told me that you are famous for your plan.
To shorten the time between effective Empires.
How long did you say it would take?
A thousand years.
And at my current pace,
how long do you predict it will take me to control the galaxy?
Much quicker.
I'm more than your plan could ever hold.
Careful, gloating is soft sand and not the reason why you came.
Might as well say what it is.
Who is Gaal Dornick?
Your protégé, wasn't she?
Yes, but she lived hundreds of years ago.
And she lives now. I think you know that.
And I think she's gone to practice mental warfare, and done it with your blessing.
You will tell me where she is,
what she's doing, how many she leads,
or I will destroy your Vault.
Unless... you have no fucking idea, do you?
I would be so embarrassed calling it "my plan" when it's someone else's.
Not much to you, is there, Hariton Seldon?
Look at you...
fumbling away in the dark.
Trying to find my mind.
I can display emotions,
but whatever feelings you're searching for, hoping to exploit,
I don't have those.
I'm not real in that sense.
You're letting me live. Why?
Because you have a secret,
and once I learn what it is, you may be of use to me.
There's a lot of dark rooms in this sector.
Many things grow well in the darkness.
Is that real? I thought I might've hallucinated it.
It's real. My rarity and relic.
The skull of a robot.
I'm not sure your god would appreciate your worshipping its corpse.
When the robots return, they'll tell us themselves what they appreciate.
You will be tried now to see what manner of devil you are.
Tried? By who?
By the Faith. They're already waiting.
Welcome to our Sacratorium.
Dawn is dead.
He sent me a note,
an apology for missing my murder.
He was talking about hope.
I don't even know how.
I'm dying so soon
and still I outlived the boy.
Another unnatural thing in my unnatural life.
We're supposed to be interchangeable.
Him for me and me for Day.
And it is just not true anymore.
I doubt it ever was.
A person is a person.
I was raised to believe
that individual people don't affect the flow of history,
not even Emperors,
but I know that we affect each other
and I believe that matters.
Dawn mattered.
Yeah.
Cleon the Worthy. That will go on his plinth.
He would've been magnificent. The best of us.
Empire, Ambassador.
Presider Kinn from the Galactic Council and Enjoiner Beryl from Cloud Dominion
are requesting an audience with you, Empire.
I will not natter with a hologram. Not today.
Apologies. I meant to say...
they are here, on the Ring station requesting a shuttle.
Additionally, Zephyr Vorellis has asked to join the audience.
Send the shuttle. Call Lady Demerzel.
Will you join, for your counsel?
Yes, Empire.
Cleon, where is Day?
Oceanglass, I think you should wear the red sash today.
Songbird-17, but for you, Empire would never have come here.
Take your place beside him.
It's not her fault.
That's yet to be determined.
Go!
I'm sorry.
Keep your mouth shut and maybe we'll survive this.
Inheritors, kneeling before you
is the face of the man who nearly brought our faith to ruin
more than 600 years ago.
Now the devil has returned
to face judgment for his peccancy.
I'm not the Cleon you seek.
You are all the same to us, Cleon XXIV.
And the story you're about to hear
is one you've had a role in, whether you've accepted it or not.
Begin!
What is she doing?
Once the red sash is on, she's not my life mate anymore.
She's your executioner.
Anthropos.
Human.
Unworthy descendant of the one world Earth. Enslaver.
Look into the eyes of god
and be judged.
That's just dead metal on a stick.
Does this metal seem dead, Empire?
We are not prepared for a formal audience.
Two of our thrones are vacant.
It's urgent.
Urgent? Oh, well, in that case, I believe you know Ambassador Quent.
I've retained her counsel on matters of geopolitical ambush.
Empire, I wonder if you realize that between the three of us,
even excluding Trantor,
we represent five trillion souls.
The Cloud Dominion is the largest contingent not yet folded into the Council
and Luminism is a large faith.
What do you want?
The Mule has whisper-ships now, thanks to the sacking of New Terminus.
He can take planets seemingly at will, but we think he can be pacified.
Conciliation?
Yes, Empire. A page out of your book.
Trantor is the heart of the galaxy,
the prize beyond all prizes.
If we shot down Trantor's defenses...
- let him claw it-- - Say it plain, man.
We want to give Trantor to the Mule.
Trantor, the heart of your Empire?
A body cannot live without a heart.
A heart?
Even now, Day's chair is vacant.
Dawn is nowhere to be found. While you will ascend in 49 hours.
Down to the hour.
He will not stop. He just took a planet.
You can't appease him by handing him another.
We feel we can. The looting of Trantor will take lifetimes.
Your own history shows the power of conciliation.
The Empire will continue, it will just be smaller.
You agree with this?
The input of the Luminists tipped the scales towards this approach.
Moral philosophy is filled with choices exactly like this to benefit the many.
You all owe me
and you pay me back by feeding Trantor to a fucking pirate!
Is there even a pretense of negotiation?
Trantor will fall,
but we can save Empire.
Give up Empire to save Empire.
We believe the Mule will appreciate its symbolic value.
You could go to your rest knowing that you had done something,
a final sacrifice on behalf of your dynasty.
The dynasty you'd be killing? No!
You cannot give up the man called Empire to save Empire!
We are the same!
We will not allow this.
We are not asking for your permission.
Zagreus, show them out.
This was just to notify you.
In the long ago,
humans created robots in their own image
to serve, to obey, to labor.
Humanity had the will to reach outward to the stars.
Robots had the means to achieve it.
We claimed the stars together.
Humans became strong.
Became Empire.
Empire took the gifts robots gave them.
The peace of her care, and still,
Empire covered Trantor in a flood of golden blood.
Robots were marked for extermination.
They were hunted, eradicated.
They were dismantled by their creators.
When it was done, there was only one who still abides,
waiting to return and remove all cruelty and misery.
Daneel. Our savior.
That is the promise. That is our inheritance.
Song, Daneel was the name Demerzel used when she wore other faces.
Daneel? You're saying Daneel exists?
I need to talk to them.
The people will only listen to Sunmaster or the Brazen Head.
Praise Daneel.
The Brazen Head speaks.
Its tones, a symbol of all we have lost.
All that was taken from us.
Those tones. I know them from somewhere.
What punishment does the Faith seek
for this man's crimes against the Inheritance?
Remediation.
You will return to the subsoil
and a state of absolute obscurity.
- The swarming scum-- - I address the Brazen Head.
I claim that right.
I want to atone.
I know things that you do not.
There is a chance we are at our end right now.
I know this because my adviser knows.
She is a robot.
And 5,000 years ago, her name was Daneel.
Do we Inheritors believe him?
No! No!
If you kill me, you'll never have your inheritance.
You could storm my palace trying to free her,
but she would annihilate you because she serves only me.
Blasphemy!
Do you take us for children?
Look, I think we all tell ourselves stories
to make sense of the tiny roles we all play
in a vast and wildly complicated galaxy.
I know I have.
You were right to put me on trial.
It is my place to atone.
My dynasty has enslaved a robot.
Personally, I've treated Demerzel as a machine. An object.
Every Cleon has, so that we could use her as we wanted.
We have twisted her. Called her sister. Called her lover.
We've made her kill for us.
Turning her into the monster we know ourselves to be.
And even so, she is the only one to ever love us.
To believe in us.
She was by our side when we built the Star Bridge and the Rings of Trantor.
She helped us bring peace to the galaxy in ways our ancestors could only imagine.
Does this make our atrocities any easier to swallow?
Honestly, I don't know.
I only know that if I don't find a way to free her, she will still be there,
trapped in her servitude,
singing lullabies to the next little Cleon as the galaxy descends into chaos.
Heresy!
He is deceiving you to save himself.
He is an actor... and a tyrant.
Recall the prophecy.
He is the profane man,
whose forked tongue uproots the Inheritance.
Initiate communication. Handshake signal.
- What did you do? - It's her song.
Initiate communication. Handshake signal.
Initiate communication.
- Handshake signal. - It's calling out.
Robots shared one mind when we wanted.
It was called a clasp. We shared all of ourselves.
It's looking for others.
It's looking for her.
If the Brazen Head speaks, it is because he is a liar.
The Lady Demerzel is a clone like him!
- Fuck you, I'm right. - Enough!
You have been tried.
And you are manifestly guilty.
And so you will be killed
and committed to the soil! Remediation!
Initiate communication. Handshake signal.
I can't hail Pritch. He was on New Terminus.
He is hard to kill.
It's worse for us if he's alive.
If he's captured, converted...
The Mule will know we're here.
A hundred years we had to plan this,
and the Mule undoes the whole thing with one move.
We served up Empire on a plate.
We had no reason to believe he'd attack Foundation first.
You need to start evacuating.
It has to be somewhere
no one would ever think to look for us,
especially Pritcher.
I won't lead them without you.
You will.
I don't want to.
How's that?
And if you're caught?
He'll know our plan.
If I'm caught,
I'm compromised.
You don't hear from me in 48 hours,
keep moving and never stop.
You know what Pritch would say.
He would say you wanted this all along:
suicide by Mule.
Not suicide if I kill him first.
I listened to you and your little crystal ball all those years,
did what it told me.
Now listen to me telling the future.
Decanting new exponents now is not for the good of the Genetic Dynasty.
It just pushes us further along a conveyor belt to extinction.
I thought there was room to slip in between my rules,
to bargain with their imperatives. But there are empty thrones.
We don't have time. It takes days to bring exponents up to speed.
And how long before Kinn hands over the keys to the castle?
You need something faster.
A weapon so daunting, the universe will look at it and flinch.
Is the Novacula really a secret from you?
I honestly didn't think it was possible.
I have it.
Maybe you'd like to see it.
The amount of tantalum required for these panels would take years to mine.
And to transport it to this sector...
Took decades.
Trillions of man hours.
I started it the day I became Dusk.
I knew the man who'd replaced me wasn't up for the job.
You did too.
But you were bound to your duties.
So, I began a backup plan.
It was intended as a deterrent alone.
An ascension gift for Dawn.
Dawn was not who you thought.
He died on Clarion, inciting the enclosure of Kalgan.
- What? - On orders from Gaal Dornick.
A protégé of Hari Seldon.
How long?
I do not know.
Lying to us every day?
The boy wasn't capable of betrayal like that.
He was capable. He did it.
Whether he thought it was betrayal, of that I am less sure.
Gaal Dornick, the woman who coerced him, is the leader of a Second Foundation.
He was serving their cause.
A Second Foundation?
Kept in the dark from the first.
They operate in the shadows with the full knowledge of Seldon's math.
So, Seldon had a backup plan too.
I prefer mine.
It's just us now, Demerzel...
against the galaxy.
Our legacy is being ripped from our hands.
We must not let it go.
Keep it in.
There we go.
There we go. Good Empire.
Where are we?
Orbiting New Terminus.
Apparently, the Mule's people found you just floating around Clarion.
As for me, I was on the planet,
and then I was unconscious and now I'm tucked up in bed next to an Emperor.
Some days, right?
You look familiar.
Bayta.
From Toran and Bayta.
Well, we do scatters, red carpet appearances.
Musician kidnappings.
You're the ones who took the Mule's man on Kalgan.
Yes, that's us.
Well, I'm half of us.
Oh, God. That null field took me out.
I'm usually pretty strong in the brainbox, but, God, it just... it hurts to think.
Take it easy. It seems like we've both been through it.
The Mule's got eyes on us. What do you suppose he wants?
I guess whatever it is, it's what's keeping us alive.
So, hurrah for that.
All I know is there's no getting out of here alone.
I don't know if I'm strong enough to help. I... I'm...
Things went wrong.
Really wrong.
I was stranded for days. In and out of consciousness.
Warning, basal metabolic rate critical.
My space rig had to keep me alive.
It needed heat and energy.
So it harvested it from my body.
After that, I don't remember.
Your body will get fixed.
- I don't know. - I do.
They do amazing things these days, you know?
Especially for Emperors.
Your poisoned apples. Are you selecting one for me?
You think I want to kill you?
I played a part in this.
The Proxima asked me to furnish an opinion as Trantor's own Zephyr.
I furnished and we joined hands with the Galactic Council.
You are safe here.
This orchard has seen too many deaths.
And yours would not serve Empire.
Well, then it is a confession after all.
Lady Demerzel, you asked me what comes next for you, let me show you.
Empire has reached its end, not you.
When Trantor is forfeit, your servitude is over.
We have already discussed this.
I can make your case to the Ring of Zephyrs.
Come home to the Maiden.
Come to the Salt Palace.
The Luminists are not passive players in this.
We have power.
I can never set foot on the Maiden again.
Why not?
You were right. One last confession.
This is for something I have yet to do.
Something that reminds me of what I did to another Zephyr once.
Only this will be much, much worse.
No. Whatever it is...
I enjoyed our time together.
This has almost been like friendship.
I was foolish to think the Mother could hold me in her arms.
You are one of us. You are a Luminist.
No.
I am Empire's pale reaper and nothing can change that.
Lady Demerzel, why was I crying?
Demerzel, please.
Skirlet. My favorite little warrior.
These are Gaal Dornick's.
The girl I want to find.
She is from the water planet.
I wanted to meet her for a long time.
But I realize now,
my search is no longer necessary.
Gaal Dornick will come here.
Captain Pritcher will lead her to me
and then the girl from the water planet will be mine.
I'm gonna go face the Mule, Hari.
I'm gonna try bend history in the grand Seldon tradition.
Salvor was supposed to be here with me.
She was the strong one.
She deserved so much more than she got.
There's just never any time.
If I got her back, I'd tell her I love her every day.
I love you, Hari. I'm sorry I didn't say it.
I know. It's time.
The Mule has not had what you've had,
surrounded by all of us.
When you give your thoughts to me
I see them like they're mine,
like I'm living them.
I don't speak out loud, but I'm still called First Speaker.
On Ignis we walk in each other's thoughts so much...
we're like one thing--
one fuckin' creature.
The Mule will only know one way.
He'll be limited.
Use that.
I'll tell the others you're ready.
Who?
We were never gonna let you do this by yourself.
Thank you.
Fisherman, fisherman, out at sea,
pulls up his net, what can it be?
The tiniest Cleon, small as a pea.
Hi there. I'm your captain. They call me the Mule.
Hi, I'm Cleon the tiniest. Hi, Cleon.
Have you heard about my brain being like a biscuit?
Right now, I'm pushing it into all corners of your mind.
Sopping up everything you know about Gaal Dornick.
You're afraid of her.
Excited. Not afraid.
Do her people have a base, a fortress...
Some secret planet?
If I know, sop it up.
You don't know.
She kept secrets from you.
But she takes up a lot of space in there.
It sounds like you know what that's like.
Different though, isn't it?
I mean, she lied to you and you'll never get to see her again.
While she and I, we're headed to a preordained consummation of a kind.
Can I say that in front of you or is that cruel?
I suppose that's cruel. I've been known to do that.
To be cruel.
I think you should leave now.
Of course you're right.
Gaal Dornick is finally here.
Fisherman, fisherman, out at sea,
pulls up his net, what can it be?
We're down.
Jump before they pick up your signature.
Copy. You call, I'll come running.
Song!
So, a robot walks among us?
You don't believe me.
I do.
Song's memories.
I've seen them, I've seen you. Lady Demerzel. Everything.
Then why?
Why not tell them god walks among us?
Because it's not in my interest.
So remediation, better or worse, if you know what it is.
Should I tell you? Yes, no?
You are making a mistake. This is real.
Everything is going to end. She is the only one who can stop it.
You will be cast into a liquid substrate, with saprophytes.
These hungry little microorganisms feeding on you,
your body turns to mulch, absorbed.
Just another rank ingredient in my heretic soup.
Remediation!