" To stand at time 10 and look ahead to time 50 was one thing; if he could be at time 10, envision time 50 and, from time 50 look back at time 40, then he would be assured that his over-the-shoulder vision-within-a-vision-seeing the past from the future-was accurate. This procedure looked sensible, but the discovery occurred within the framework of a prescient vision. Therefore, it should have been treated skeptically. Yet the implication ATREIDES, PAUL 92 ATREIDES, PAUL of determined path, the logical deduction that what he saw to have happened must have happened, and therefore will happen, appears to have underlain Paul's binding choice of an inevitable course when he became emperor. It is important to note here the seductiveness of prescience: Paul could extrapolate from existing fact, he could look ahead, he did go ahead to look back; at each stage he sought more accuracy about the future. He explained his increasing success to himself by way of the logic provided by his civilization's conception of time. It is also important to note that the ever-expanding discoveries occurred after larger and larger doses of the spice. He needed stronger and stronger triggers as he moved deeper and deeper into prophetic techniques. Paul Muad'LWs prescience was not vol: untary. He could not see ahead in time by will alone. The drug was necessary. Whether his addiction was to the drug or to his visions is an unresolvable question. Melange is addictive, in the sense that ceasing to ingest it shortens the life it extends. But Paul's need seems to have been for ever-larger doses, which suggests that he had become dependent on knowing as much as he could of what was to come, frustrated by Gurney Hallcck's threat to Jessica's life-no line of the future he had ever seen carried that moment of peril from Gurney Halleck- Paul decided to drown a Maker. His body had become tolerant to the spice, his visions were fewer and dimmer, but more than ever he needed to see ahead. He would see if he could sarvive the final test for the Kwisatz Haderach. Paul did survive. He believed, at last, that he was the Kwisatz Haderach sought by the Bene Gesserit. Jessica beHeved, too. He reported that he had been many places, that he was both Taker and Giver, and that he saw the Now, not the future. Seeing the Now, the limits of the present extended into the future and into the past, was the culmiaatioii of the .visionary sequence. At first, with the spice in his diet, he knew hidden facts in the past and thus saw a future mat differed from the expectations of people who did not know those secrets. After just drinking the Water of Life he glimpsed the future as history. When he executed the transformation himself, Paul balanced at the assured Now, with the cause-effect paradox suspended. The past has created the present (implying that will and choice have some effect on what has happened and will happen), and Hie future has created the pretient (implying that what occurs is predetermined, happens only because of what is destined to eventuate).