Something I'd like to evoke when I get a campaign going. (and the book!) Perhaps the servitors secretly have metings like this

". . . and when the first men to go Up and Out went to the Moon, what did they find?"
"Nothing," responded the silent chorus of lips.
"Therefore they went further, to Mars and to Venus. The ships went out year by year, but they did not come back until the Year One of Space. Then did a ship come back with the First Effect. Scanners, I ask you, what is the First Effect?"
"No one knows. No one knows."
"No one will ever know. Too many are the variables. By what do we know the First Effect?"
"By the Great Pain of Space," came the chorus.
"And by what further sign?"
"By the need, oh the need for death."
Vomact again: "And who stopped the need for death?"
"Henry Haberman conquered the first effect, in the Year 3 of Space."
"And, Scanners, I ask you, what did he do?"
"He made the habermans."
"How, O Scanners, are habermans made?"
"They are made with the cuts. The brain is cut from the heart, the lungs. The brain is cut from the ears, the nose. The brain is cut from the mouth, the belly. The brain is cut from desire, and pain. The brain is cut from the world. Save for the eyes. Save for the control of the living flesh."
"And how, O Scanners, is flesh controlled?"
"By the boxes set in the flesh, the controls set in the chest, the signs made to rule the living body, the signs by which the body lives."
"How does a haberman live and live?"
"The haberman lives by control of the boxes."
"Whence come the habermans?"
Martel felt in the coming response a great roar of broken voices echoing through the room as the Scanners, habermans themselves, put sound behind their mouthings:
"Habermans are the scum of Mankind. Habermans are the weak, the cruel, the credulous, and the unfit. Habermans are the sentenced-to-more-than-death. Habermans live in the mind alone. They are killed for Space but they live for Space. They master the ships that connect the Earths. They live in the Great Pain while ordinary men sleep in the cold cold sleep of the transit."
"Brothers and Scanners, I ask you now: are we habermans or are we not?"
"We are habermans in the flesh. We are cut apart, brain and flesh. We are ready to go to the Up-and-Out. All of us have gone through the Haberman Device."
"We are habermans then?" Vomact's eyes flashed and glittered as he asked the ritual question.
Again the chorused answer was accompanied by a roar of voices heard only by Martel: "Habermans we are, and more, and more. We are the Chosen who are habermans by our own free will. We are the Agents of the Instrumentality of Mankind."
"What must the others say to us?"
"They must say to us, 'You are the bravest of the brave, the most skillful of the skilled. All Mankind owes most honor to the Scanner, who unites the Earths of Mankind. Scanners are the protectors of the habermans. They are the judges in the Up-and-Out. They make men live in the place where men need desperately to die. They are the most honored of mankind, and even the Chiefs of the Instrumentality are delighted to pay them homage!'"

(From "scanners live in vain" by Cordwainer Smith)

Great. And very "inside the theme". Thank you for sharing this reference. Is it a book?

Paul M.A. Linebarger, diplomat, scholar, author of one of the most influential books on psychological warfare ever written and writer of some of the best science fiction I have ever read.

As Cordwainer Smith (his pen name) Linebarger only wrote one novel, Nostrillia. The rest of his short stories are collected into a volume called "The Instrumentality of Man".

Scanners Live in Vain is a classic short story that has frequently been reprinted over the years in a variety of science fiction anthologies.

"I tell you I must cranch!"

I have used aspects of the Instrumentality of Man as standins for the Imperium on occasion. This post would run far to long to tell you about how awesome Linebarger's work is. Go on a Google hunt - you won't regret it!

Thank you so much for that blast from the past.