Siona's vision

[ThighPadz66]

So, a lot of people that I have read have said the justification for Brian and Kevin's Terminator ENDING to Frank's "excruciating" cliff-hanger was the vision that Siona had of humanity huddled in dark places hiding from a bloody killer stalking it. Obviously, the self-aware, self-repairing hunter-seekers that Leto told Hwi about.
I've never read God Emperor that way, though. First of all, Frank wrote nothing that would justify what Bri and Kev did.
Secondly, you have to take it all together.
Siona's vision is meant to acclimatize her to the necessity of the Golden Path and her duties as an Atriedes, right? But her test comes late in book.
Earlier in the book, Leto tells Hwi about the Ixian hunter-seeker program. Self-repairing hunter-seekers. The Ixians had no concept of the danger of that program, and if it started, it would get away from them and of course be the end of humanity.
But he talks about it fully in the past tense. He doesn't say he ended it, but he implies it. He brings it up because he is wanting Anteac to go to Ix and find the no-chamber he has suspicions about. He basically tells Hwi that this OLD program of the Ixians will be the pretext that he can use to get Anteac on the ground to conduct the real search ... for the no-chamber and for Malky.
So why then does Siona see that vision, which seems to be the Ixian plan come to life in a seeming future?
The first part of Siona's vision is for her to see what Leto saw .. the thing he saw that made his Golden Path necessary. And that there are further dangers to the human race, certainly.
I don't know what else she saw. But her words to Duncan and I think Moneo after her testing confirm, to me, my theory.
She says even if he was justified in doing what he did, it's no excuse for what he's become.
She saw a horrible extinction of humanity at the hands of hunter-seekers. She must know like Leto knows that that danger is passed.
I think there was a pressing danger. Ix and hunter-seekers. I think that was the "Krazilec" that he promised the Jacurites was coming. But he handled that.
Then there is the danger that can only be cured by 4,000 years of despotism, followed by famine, followed by ESCAPE out into infinity.
So as he's dying, he thinks that he has to deliver one last message to lock his Golden Path, one last threat to humanity.
And he tells Siona and Duncan not to fear the Ixians. They can't create arafel. But they can create the machines.
or, in this case, the machine. The navigation machine.
That's my theory.
And Heretics and Chapterhouse are just the last gasps of the Old Empire, with the Honored Matres, who couldn't defeat the dangers of the Scattering, falling back on the OE, giving the last vital folks in the Old Empire their last chance to Scatter. I think there was no "cliff-hanger."
Just a little bit more from Frank, and an open-ended conclusion. Life is open-ended. Not everything is wrapped up in a bow.