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[hutchy43]

[UPDATE] Scarlet Email 30th September

[Jakeo]

Oooh, another death may be? Seems like everyone who hears the name 'Viendenbourg' winds up in sticky predicaments as a result.

[buzman]

Either that or Allain and the old man are one and the same person - perhaps some kind of embodied schizophrenia, or time travel, or something ...

[wiglaf]

[Mokey Fraggle]

[spugmeistress]

Re: [UPDATE] Scarlet Email 30th September

[cassandra]

[Arashi]

I'm personally thinking that it's some kind of hologram cloak device. Such technology probably wouldn't be past a civilization that developed artificial intelligence.

And since he knows about Viendenbourg - I wouldn't put it past him to have found something there and is using it.

Remember people:

"Viendenbourg, before everything changed"

Think Hiroshima, could Viendenbourg have been the site of a huge military clash and it was wiped out?

When we consider "V, before everything changed" in relation to the search for the cube - perhaps we are supposed to believe there could be records pertaining to (currently) unknown activities or properties of the cube, discovered pre-war.

[Mokey Fraggle]

Are we thinking, then, that the cloaking device is cloaking the fact that Allain and the old man are the same person? That still doesn't explain him talking in his compartment.

I suppose they could be the same person, but Allain really is confused about it. That way, when he so sincerely said he thought he might be going crazy, it would have been the truth. Maybe he believes the old man exists as another person just as much as Scarlett does, even if he and the old man are the same.

Or, as Cassandra said, they could just be related. Yet, I still think there's something going on with that unknown technology.

I just hope he isn't dead! *crushes on Allain* lol

[Rob_Riv]

If her key wasn't working properly how did she get onto the internet?? Maybe they just couldn't email it out in time or something and needed an excuse.

[Crane]

Well isn't the answer obvious?
Allain is a super-advanced AI construct! And the Cube is the CPU of the world-spanning AI control that they had before the War! Viendenbourg was where the built it's main control room, but then *starts muttering about conspiracies and self-aware computers*.

[Leeravitz]

No, actually, I like that last theory. In the broadest sense, it's certainly an interesting take on the Cube - we've always been told that it more or less appeared from nowhere, but if we work on the assumption that it was originally part of a military programme unknown to most Perplexians of the time, that 'AC' *does* equal the dating 'After Conflict' and that the Cube was discovered 7 years after the conflict ended, then, hell, maybe there was simply no - one on site any longer to tell those Perplexians what it actually was. Maybe everyone had been so shell - shocked by the War and its events that they'd automatically turned to religious doctrine, and were prepared to dismiss their technological background in favour of reinterpretation via metaphysical ideas?

Admitedly, that doesn't have much to do with the old man/Allain mystery. It seems evident that there is a conflict of interest between the 'pair' (very Jekyll and Hyde, no doubt) and that, as everyone is agreeing, the clues (such as blue eyes) that seem to indicate some kind of direct interaction between them. It seems to me that the options that make sense are:

1. The very straightforward: Allain and the old man are two separate people. They are both onboard together, but have never yet been seen in one another's company. They are probably related (maybe even father and son) which is where the genetic similarity comes in.

2. Allain is some kind of tech construct 'mask' for the old man. This begs the question as to why they look similar, but perhaps the tech operates on the principle of deriving a template from the cognitive patterns of the user. In that sense, what the old man has done is construct his 'mask' using the template of his own younger self (and maybe this was deliberate - he knew that Scarlett was prying into things, and he came up with a 'lure' - a young man to whom she might be attracted.) The main criticism with this theory is that, surely, there would be no difference of opinion between Allain and the old man, if they were truly one and the same.

3. Allain is a real person, who is not the old man as such, but is being used as some kind of 'walk in' for him. That is to say, Allain is possessed by the old man, who only subsists as an energy trace or something. That would explain well why there is a conflict of interest. It's intriguing to think that there might be a time travel element to all this - an older version of Allain latching on to his own younger self - but it would be a pretty convoluted set - up (worthy of a time paradox novel!). After all, it would appear that the old man remembers times long gone (perhaps he's far, far older than he looks even). And yet his 'youth' (if he is, indeed, an older version of Allain) is taking place in our present. So, the only conclusion would be that, in his future, young Allain travels back into the past where he grows old, before making his way back to his own youth, which is past to him, but now, relatively speaking, in the future. Which could be happening....but, hey...

[Mokey Fraggle]

Leeravitz wrote:

[Crane]

Aaaah! Allain is being assimilated by the AI! Kinda like the Borg and Skynet rolled into one!