In a Lifeworker vessel, I meet for the last time with the Chakas, along with six other monitors commissioned as caretakers for the remaining Halos. The Lifeworker crèche has certified that they are all fit and ready for duty, preparing the seven activation indexes, one for each Halo. “I send you on your way, friend,” I tell Chakas. “Your new home will be Installation 04. I also give you a new designation. Henceforth, you will no longer be just a guide and assistant. You will be guardian and protector of an entire installation. You will be called 343 Guilty Spark.”

Chakas floats before me, still receiving the programming he will need for its new assignment. The others have received similar nomenclature, with escalating numeric delineation. Their new names are an omen as well as an epitaph for our people—and for my wife. Were there another way, we would have taken it.

“This is it,” he says. “The end?”

“You’ve traveled a long ways with me, old friend,” I say. “We were young and foolish when we met. So much has happened for both of us. We are not at all what we were, are we?”

“I will think on those good days,” he says. “I hope to find comfort in the memory.”

Comfort? An odd statement for a machine! But I am speaking in an equally odd way to a machine. Clearly, in my thoughts—in truth—this monitor is much more than a machine.

“Now, old friend, we have the most important job in history—perhaps in all time. You may very well outlast all of us here. You may see the new galaxy emerge.” I stop and turn away, looking out of the Ark’s citadel toward the now-cooling forge and the mining site beyond. “Tell me, Chakas, if this was your choice, after all we have seen and survived … would you fire the rings?”

He does not respond. I don’t know that I expected a response. It is a question asked by way of farewell. And much of his memory will be erased upon arrival at his new station in the name of compartmentalization, if ever the logic plague were to re-emerge. For a moment, I wonder if he will remember any of this at all.

The Halos have received their final preparation—six huge, deadly rings, as well as Installation 07, the former rogue Halo, which had already been placed years earlier.

Only a handful of Lifeworkers assemble in the ship’s command center, along with the seven monitors. Though it is unknown, it appears as though the most of the other rates perished on the greater Ark. The few Lifeworkers here are likely the last of our kind.

Except of course for my original and my wife.

I can only hope that …