Catalog goes with them, still disoriented. Again, my machine nature weighs on me—but I am certain I already feel lonely. Six hoops are spread out across the blue sky.

This weapon array is different than the others; designed to purge everything. The true destructive potential that the Didact had always feared, finally unleashed. If the Forerunners fire their Halos, only machine intelligence will survive within the galaxy.

Just beings like me, or nothing at all.

Lonely indeed.

String 36

STRING 36

ISODIDACT

THE PEACEFUL LULL could not last long.

Portal sensors near the lesser Ark tell us that space-time near our position is changing. That was inevitable. Time will soon tangle horribly, and there will be no counting the hours we have left.

I fear the worst for my wife.

This Ark has the most extensive command facility of any I have seen. Builders have, I must admit (and perhaps with a little deep pride) outdone themselves with this installation, both in the record time they took to complete it and the changes and improvements they have made over the previous Ark. Nevertheless, the newer Ark is unproven. Controlling the smaller Halos, designed to be more swiftly and flexibly dispatched, will require tremendous coordination, and communications across those distances could soon be compromised.

The newer Halos have been designed to fire simultaneously and in every direction; they are much more powerful than older Halos. Once distributed, their energies will cover the entire galaxy, overlapping and triggering each other until there is no space that has not been cleansed of the Flood.

There is uncertainty whether star roads in transit through slipspace will be eliminated as well. Some say they will, others, not. And so, we are attempting to gauge, through very suspect data, when the maximum number of star roads and other Precursor constructs will emerge and occupy status space.

The Halos must be dispersed as soon as possible. I cannot trust that my wife’s feint will have any effect on the Gravemind or on Mendicant Bias. She has told the Lifeworkers that they must give me all assistance, must follow my orders—orders that were approved by the Council, whatever remained of it, before she left the greater Ark. She has told them, explicitly, with all the authority of her rank, that triumph of the Flood would be a violation of the Rule of the Mantle. She has traveled a long, hard course to reach this decision, obviously, and I suspect it was the example of my original that finally tipped the scales.

* * *