As I stroll along the paths of my garden I think of the many friends I have known. They're dead now and I've been alone for quite some time, but no matter. If I close my eyes I can hear their laughter, see their faces, and my mind rings with memories of their thoughts. The death that betrayed them comes for me next and to be honest I'm tired of waiting.

A million to one chance. A micro-meteor slices through the sail leaving a ragged hole and continues on towards the power lines. With a flash in the silence these tethering cables rupture and the ellipse snaps free. Without their load the sails lose stability and begin to rotate slowly around their thousand kilometre longitudinal axis - much like a ribbon on the wind - and the massive structure begins to decelerate. The released ellipse smashes forward through the framework and starts tumbling end over end in a cloud of twinkling fragments. The sail falls farther behind with its back broken and the tissue thin wings distorting and twisting to destruction.

Here in my garden, the olive trees give off a wondrous scent, sunshine sparkles with shafts of crystal between the branches, and a gentle breeze plays warmly on my skin. It has been an eternity since I last saw and sensed though I communed with the others in complete darkness for aeons. With them gone and my life soon forfeit, I will enjoy my garden one last time. My name is Patre, my garden is Gethsemane, and I will soon act out my people's final betrayal.

The ellipse of black and polished metal tumbles onwards through the void, silhouetted against a red backdrop of a dying star. Sheared cables sprout from one blunted end; the spin making them splay like nerveless fingers.

I pass a small pond and with a gesture a pair of ducks appear on the surface. Their legs paddle furiously under the surface while their bodies slide serenely through the water. I move my hand again and they disappear. The ripples radiate outwards to collapse on the grassy bank, and the pond is again still.

I shouldn't be flippant like this. I only have limited resources remaining, and it wouldn't pay to rush the end before I have completed my work. It's just a little too hard to resist playing around as I used to in the old days.

I walk on and come to a clearing. This is where my final scene will play. Like a director I make my adjustments to the set. I shape a branch here; put a tweak on the twist of a trunk there. I gaze unhappily at the corner of the clearing and at my command a small patch of wild flowers springs to life.

Satisfied, I turn to the opposite side and part the undergrowth. A smooth path appears winding away from the clearing. Remembering that the program will create a good-sized group to use the path, I widen it a little and add a little dust for the effect. A hundred stomping feet should raise quite a cloud by my reckoning. Shaking my head, I remember that the whole event will take place at night and the swirling dust will not be noticed. With a dismissal, the dirt is suddenly overgrown with springy grass.

I take a long look at my preparations and all appears perfect. I gender-change my female avatar form and dress myself in a robe and sandals. My hair is now long and my face transforms into beard and bronzed skin. I kneel in the centre of the clearing, my back to the path. As I raise my face to the heavens, darkness blankets me and night descends on Gethsemane.

"We have no other option - it MUST be a ballot" Fear was in Patre's voice as she spoke, and as her thoughts reached out to those around her in the blackness she sensed the terror there too.

"I can't accept a decision like this" said another "it is too barbaric, too..."

"...arbitrary?" Jahn spoke now, his voice cutting clearly through the dark.

"Would you choose the one to be the last, Karl?"

"Of course I wouldn't, and that is precisely why I protest. How can we agree to this? There must be another way."

"There isn't Karl, and you know that. We must appoint a Guardian and we must do it soon."

"Do we still have enough time to encode the rest before the Protocol activates?" Patre asked. She didn't want the answer to be yes. She wanted them to say that it was all too late, that there was no point; that they could all remain sentient, even if it meant they would perish sooner. At least they would be together.

"We will be able to preserve all the primary personality values in time, but to minimise the power drain we can store very little of each personality's memories."

"Meaning?"

"If we are resurrected, we will have an impression of having lived, but nothing more"

Patre was horrified. What is that if not death? No memories of Jahn or of their life together? Their nights would be lost forever; the touch of his hands and the scent of his skin forgotten. Even these last years of communion in the darkness would be meaningless. She wished she could look into Jahn's eyes; just see his face again. She desperately needed his touch but could only sense his churning mind.

"We will have to put this to the Community then. It's only fair." Jahn said at last.

She felt the Committee's muttered assent, and the meeting's Privacy guard lowered. The hum of the Community's thoughts grew louder - probing and questioning, but threaded with the now familiar taint of fear.

Jahn addressed everyone "Here are the facts and the options open to us" The summary of the Committee's findings came into her mind. She didn't access it. She already knew what it contained. "We must shed our power load still further or face extinction. To my mind, our best option lies with appointing a Guardian. The remainder of the Community will have to be suspended, but at least can rest in the hope of resurrection and the eventual return to sentience.

"The other course is one of certain suicide. With our current consumption, the Protocol will terminate us within five years. With a Guardian however, we could remain dormant for millennia with the current power supplies - by which time the Journey might well be over."

An outside chance at best Patre thought. More likely they would tumble through the vacuum forever; until even the Guardian fell to the Protocol.

"Consider the information, cast your votes. What we decide now will literally be life or death."

Patre sensed the hopelessness sweeping through the Community and cast her vote. In that moment she felt as if she had already died.

The night sky is dazzling. Even I take a moment to marvel at the millions of stars. Of course these constellations are nothing like those seen when the original scene played out, but who'll complain?

Raising my hands skyward I begin to pray, and my prayers become a journey through my memories. My eyes close and the perfume of the wild flowers surrounds me like an incense.

"I have the tally." Jahn's voice was low and fragile. Patre had never heard him like this, and the surrender in his thoughts crushed her more than the impending loss of her own life. "We shall appoint a Guardian by blind ballot. An overwhelming majority vote"

A noise behind and I know that the scene has begun. A shuffle of feet, a subdued cough and through my closed lids I sense flickering shadows. I open my eyes and my shadow on the trees slues and jerks with the approaching torchlight.

"There He is" says a whisperer from behind.

I steady myself and get to my feet. A sound of metal rings in the grove, the sound of weapons being unsheathed.

"I love you"

How those words tore at her. She felt Jahn's thoughts mingling with her own; felt the desperate pain flowing through them.

"Jahn I can't, please, don't let this happen" Her terror threatened to overwhelm her.

"I can't change it Patre. Gods know I would if I could, but you were chosen. You must do it."

"Jahn, by all that was once holy, let Karl or one of the other Committee do it. Don't sentence me to this...this nothingness. Please." Her frightened pleading struck a tremor of uncertainty in Jahn's thoughts, but before she could act, his Privacy closed her off and his thoughts withdrew slightly. When his mind voice spoke again it was reserved, defensive...

Without turning I speak - in a voice that sounds too loud - "Am I some criminal that you come for me with weapons drawn and soldiers at the ready?" My heart thumps in my chest and my tongue feels swollen and dry in my mouth.

"We've come for one who calls himself the First and the Last, the Saviour of His people."

My hands are trembling, and I can hardly stand. I turn slowly to face those assembled behind me. A group of forty or more stands crowding together on the path and a half dozen torches burn with an angry crackling hiss above their heads.

"Why do you seek Him?" I say, almost a whisper. Faces that were lost for so long are now worn by empty ghosts; but they still stare back, damning me with their accusations.

"What crimes has He committed?"

"You are our only hope Patre. Even if I could change things I now doubt I would. Look, even if we die and are lost there is still a chance that you would survive." She sensed a pause; conflicting emotions leaking through his defences.

In a confessional tone, "I gave everything for that"

She started at the words.

"Jahn, what the hell have you done? Please say you didn't rig this. I would rather be dead than endure millennia in darkness without you."

ENCODING COMPLETE, ERASURE COMMENCING

"Jahn, PLEASE!!"

"I love you Patre, I will love you again...", and he was gone.

Patre screamed desperately into the darkness. Deaf, blind and senseless; and for the first time since her beginnings she was completely and unutterably alone.

With a grunt, a muscular figure takes a step forward and spits at my feet.

"He has betrayed the laws of Rome, sold His people into slavery with false promises of Resurrection and Eternal Life at the end of time"

At first, the silence was like death. There was never a time when she had not felt the presence of Jahn and the others in her mind. Patre existed still but not even echoes of thoughts bounced back at her. Her mind voice was the only sound, her memories the only images, and numbing loss the only sense.

After Jahn was encoded and his avatar erased by the Protocol, she fell into a state of hysteria. Her mind scream became the thing that masked the silence around her. Time had no meaning and her thoughts were crazed. She tumbled with insanity for centuries. Alone.

I wish that I had more resources to spend. I want to have a terrified Peter strike out with his sword - take the ear off the High Priest's servant, or better still drive the blade through the Priest's poisoned heart.

"Are you that man?" the brawny one demands. I look blankly at him. My words are caught like fishhooks in my throat.

FIRST PROTOCOL : WARNING.

The flash punched the silence. Patre's mind remained balled up tight as a foetus.

POWER RE-ALLOCATION NECESSARY: CONFIRM PATTERNING RETRIEVAL DELETE : CONFIRM?

No response.

FIRST PROTOCOL : WARNING... it repeated.

Patre was cowering deep within herself, hiding in the dark from the silence that surrounded her. The clinical insistence of the First Protocol program continued, repeating, repeating. Blocked in its mindless algorithm it kept knocking on Patre's door.

Until eventually it opened.

I breathe deeply determined to put strength and power into my words. I clench my fists to stop their trembling.

"You have known Him all this time, and yet now you step forward in the darkness to take Him" Stone faced he stares at me. Behind my accuser I see someone moving forward from the back. The others make way for him.

"You can't just switch us off" demanded Patre

PERSONALITY CODING STORAGE IS NOW AN UNACCEPTABLE DRAIN ON REMAINING RESOURCES. THE JOURNEY HAS PRIORITY.

"Shove your priority you goddamned machine. You can't do this. Your going to kill us".

THE JOURNEY HAS PRIORITY : CULTURAL MODULE IS UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE FIRST PROTOCOL.

I know what is coming, but my skin chills. I know how this story goes so this must be my Judas. A figure pushes his way through the front ranks and into the open.

"But why?? Without us to teach your brats, what possible use is the genome? Who's going to read it?" She was desperate. "If you manage to grow any they won't survive without us. They won't know how to be human for chrissakes. If you kill us the Journey is pointless!"

THE FIRST PROTOCOL ENSURES INTEGRITY OF HUMAN GENOME STORAGE : CULTURAL MODULE ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM AND ALL SIMULATED PERSONALITIES ARE TO BE TERMINATED.

"But we already shed power load by switching off our Avatars. We all rotted in blind darkness to save power for your goddamned genome." The Protocol was silent

"They sacrificed sentience to save resources. You can't do this!"

FIRST PROTOCOL ...

"Command Override, by authority Patre Fischer, Mythology Specialist." The Community was about to be erased by a low-end power management program, "Direct resources to the Community Cultural Module NOW!"

THE JOURNEY HAS PRIORITY: CULTURAL MODULE IS TO BE TERMINATED: YOU HAVE BEEN ALLOTTED RESOURCES TO PREPARE FOR DEACTIVATION

The link blinked out.

He approached me. My face paled as I saw him; his features heavy with the shadows. He stopped in front of me.

FIRST PROTOCOL ACTIVATED...

He placed his hands on my shoulders...

No please don't...

His ghost smiled. "Patre, how good to see you again"...

ERASURE COMMENCING...

His face coming closer...

The clearing shimmers and the edges pock with darkness. My creation is unravelling...god, you can't!

His lips. No, Oh dear Jesus NO!! Jahn's lips - moist and pouting Judas...

ERASURE...

The kiss

...COMPLETED.