Gritche

The Gritche (original name: The Shrike ) is a robot-like monster and one of the Anti-héros of the cycle Cantos d' Hypérion of the writer daN Simmons. Gritche impales its victims on a gigantic metal tree whose branches are made up large spines.

Characteristics

In the universe presented by daN Simmons in the Cantos d' Hypérion , the Man remains the only truly intelligent species of the universe. The only otherness likely to destabilize human hegemony, it is Gritche ( the Shrike in English).

linguistic Note : Shrike , is homonym of Shrike, in French, which is a bird of the family of the Laniidae (the Latin root meaning Boucher ) which are accustomed to impaling their preys on spines or pointed branches of shrubs before eating them, exactly like the monster of the novel.

Origin : the origin of Gritche is explained by Énée in " Awakening of Endymion ". It is a physical assembly conceived by the Reaper. The Reaper being an intended program, at the origin, to kill organizations IA of X - bytes. This Reaper evolved/moved with TechnoCentre, and in fact completely part.

physical Description : Gritche is described like a being vaguely humanoïde, of three meters, equipped high with four arms. Its skin resembles mercury by its irisations always silver plated moving. Its face is decorated sheet metal curved sharpened like chrome scalpels. Silver plated prickles roughcast its neck, its elbows, its wrists, its knees. Its two eyes with the cut facets as of the rubies shine of an intense red.

Attribute : the attribute of Gritche is a gigantic metal tree, of a diameter evaluated with more than 300 m at its base, roughcast long sharp-edged spines. This tree is called “Tree of the Pain” or “Ultimate Tree” by the disciples of the gritchèque Church. It is on this tree that alive the victims sacrificed to Gritche are impaled.

Faculty of displacement: Gritche appears to move instantaneously place with another, emerging on its victims without they being able to envisage nor to even observe its movement. This faculty will be explained then by a difference in temporal phase: a scene will show us Gritche moving normally in the middle of motionless men, as statufiés, and it is this immobility which will appear then surprising.

Worship : Gritche is the subject of a true worship for the Church of the Final Atonement, also called “gritchèque Church”. For the followers of this sect, Gritche is the “Lord of the pain”, also named, “the Misadventure”. In a direction eschatologic, Gritche is the instrument of divine anger, “the Angel of the Final Atonement”, which announces the end of Humanity.

political Recovery : hegemony and Extros regard Gritche as a kind of lethal weapon supreme, come straight of the future.

Other denominations : the poet Martin Silenus gives to Gritche the name of “Grendel”, in reference to a sanguinary monster which appears in the medieval epopee Beowulf, a Anglo-Saxon poem dating from VIII^ème century. The members of the Catholic church of Pacem see in Gritche the “worse nightmares of Teilhard saint concretized”. The father Paul Duré as for him thinks that it is about an organic machine of high technology sent of the future.

It should be noted that daN Simmons placed in front of its second home, located at the south of “Rocky Mountain National Park” in the Colorado, a statue of Gritche, carried out by his/her friend and ex-student Clee Richeson. A photograph of Gritche is visible on the Official site of daN Simmons. In addition, the graphic designer François Baranger painted his own vision of Gritche in three different versions, intended for the official site of daN Simmons. See tables called Gritche 1, Gritche 2 and Gritche 3.

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