Ilium/Olympos - Voynix

The voynix are biomechanical, self-replicating, programmable robots. They originated in an alternate universe, and were brought into our universe before 3000 AD. The Global Caliphate, an Islamic organization obsessed with destroying the Jews, somehow gained access to these proto-voynix and after replicating 3 million of them, battled the New European Union around 3000 AD. In 3200 AD, the Global Caliphate upgraded the Voynix and programmed them to kill Jews. Using time travel technology acquired from the French (previously used to investigate the Voynich Manuscript), the Global Caliphate send the voynix (or perhaps a single voynix - although technically multiple voynix should be called voynices) forward in time to 4600 AD. Upon their arrival they begin to replicate rapidly in the Mediterranian Basin. As post-human operations there are put at risk, Prospero and Sycorax create the Calibani to fend off the voynix, and eventually Prospero reprograms them into inactivation. After the Final Fax they are reprogrammed to serve the new species of humans that arise. This programming is overriden when Setebos arrives back on Earth, and they begin to attack humans indescriminately.

Among the hypothosis concerning the origin of the Voynich Manuscript, two are relevant to the Ilium text. The first was that the manuscript was written by Roger Bacon. An authenticated cover letter that accompanies the manuscript was written in 1665 by Jan Marek Marci, and it theorizes that the book was a work by Bacon. John Dee, a mathematician and astrologer of the court Queen Elizabeth I, was known to possess many of the original works of Bacon in his extensive library. Since the manuscript is known to have been sold to Emperor Rudolph II during the lifetime of Dee, Voynich felt it likely that Dee was the seller of the manuscript. Others theorize that John Dee fabricated the manuscript himself in hopes of selling it as a work of Bacon's.

As the pre-eminent magus of Shakespeare's time, many scholars believe that John Dee is the inspiration for Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest. His library was the largest in England. The themes in Shakespeare's The Tempest have their roots in the colonization of the New World, and it was John Dee who trained most of the English navigators that traveled to the New World and established the country's sea power strategies.

"The Ninth of Av" contains the following clues about the voynix:

• A note left behind by Savi which reads "Voynix = Voynich Ms.?"
• During a party, a woman suggests that the voynix are aliens. A man named Caleb says "No, no, no. They're temporal incongruities and chronosynthetic artifacts." Then everyone laughs. It sounds like Caleb's response is the official explanation for the voynix, one that no one believes.

Ilium contains the following clues:

• When Harman asks Prospero where Setebos came from, he responds: "Brought in from the dark with the voynix and other things. A minor miscalculation.”
• Harman found no voynix in the Atlantic Breach.
• The Moravecs are aware of the voynix: "All most Jovian moravecs knew of the fabled voynix was that the planet Earth had radiated unprecedented quantum phase-shift activity when the creatures had first been mentioned in monitored post-human neutrino communications more than two thousand e-years earlier."
• Savi tells Harman that the voynix have been monitoring his movements and activities.
• Savi tells Harman: "You understand, don’t you, that the voynix popped out of the temporalclastic cloud two centuries before the final fax, but they were immobile — rust and iron statues — not the obedient servants you have now?"
• The voynix built the Third Temple on the Ninth of Av on the day of the final fax (Also seen in the short story).
• There are no voynix in the Mediterranean Basin.

Olympos contains the following clues:

• Harman states: " I know the voynix were sent forward through time by the Global Caliphate to kill Jews"
• Prospero states "the voynix reacted as programmed." to which Harman counters: "Programmed three thousand years ago"
• "We... the post-humans," said Moira, "asked Prospero and his... companion... to create a race of creatures ferocious enough to stop the replicating voynix from flooding the Mediterranean Basin and compromising our operations there.."
• "But the French and the New European Union gave the designs " (for the time machine) " to the Caliphate," said Harman. "Why?" Prospero: "The Palestinian scientists were their friends."
• He knew that less than a couple of hundred miles northeast of where the effelbahn ended there, there was a sixty-mile-wide circle of the terrain fused into glass where thiry-two hundred years ago the Global Caliphate had fought its determining battle with the N.E.U. - more than three million proto-voynix pouring over and past two hundred thousand doomed human mechanized-infantry knights.