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[Bubbasparxxxv69]

[SPEC] Cortana/Dana

[CorSorei]

I've read that book moultiple times and I don't remeber Cortana copying herself at all. I just finished reading it again yesterday. Are you sure it was The Fall of Reach? If it is can you tell me what pages so I can read for myself. I'm not saying you are wrong. I've heard this mentioned before but it was in The Flood (sure of that because I just read it an hour ago) and First Strike (not sure about this because I just got the book and wanted to reread the first two before I rread this one) that it was mentioned.

[Bubbasparxxxv69]

ahh sorry i mean The First Strike. made that post at like 2am, guess i was more tired than i thought

[accidentalsuccess]

just read both books and I think cortana knew the problems associated with copying herself but deemed it necessary to achive the goal in first strike (vague to avoid spoilers)

i.e. I don't think that this is cortana copying herself "rampantly." : (bad pun, i know.)

[ThatOtherGuy]

Dana is clearly a real person (well, a Human anyway). I don't think there is any doubt about that. There are pictures of her, and she has had many conversations via Email or the weblog for www.ilovebees.com. Some people have said that she talks sort of like a machine, but, there are still many pictures of her, which are clearly not pictures of an AI construct. Also, I highly doubt that we will see Cortana in this story. I think this ARG is based on the Halo universe, but not on the Halo games. Of course, there will be a variety of ties between the two, maybe even a few references to characters that we saw in the game, but I doubt they will play a major role if mentioned at all. Although it is good to come up with lots of ideas and theories, this one just dosn't hold water.

[Kagehi Kossori]

I am not so sure.. An AI of the class of Cortana could easilly 'choose' to rename itself, if it knew it was actually a copy, which is likely, since only copies contain the covenant code to generate a copy. Several things occur to me:

1. The covenent probably got their AIs from Forerunner tech.
2. The only know Forerunner AI we have bumped into was Guilty Spark, which was obviously insane.
3. The SPDR process would 'seem' to function much like the copy process, which implies that maybe it can do both, but that the self repair function works by splicing parts of the main AI over and over, along with what ever other available data it has, in order to make a working AI.
4. If this was done with a 'simple' AI, then it might fix minor glitches that develop over time, though not perfectly.
5. If done to a smart AI, it makes the copy a bit unstable and would tend to drive it slowly insane if used to continually repair it. The whole purpose of the code is to make sure the AI remains functional, probably by patching over endless loops and other non-functioning code with copies of working processes.

Just one major problem.. Since the Covenant never create anything and their own AIs had to come from the Forerunners, this should mean that their central and most basic core would look nothing like a Human AI. Only Cortana not only recognized it as kin to her, but very nearly called it a twin. Her response to its nature is what an AI would be expected to have if it ran into itself, knowing that no copies existed of her and thus concluding that she must be mistaken about how similar it is, since after all, she was the original, but this one existed long before she herself did.

All of this mean that Forerunner AIs, like Guilty Spark, and covenant AIs, at least the smarter ones are all copied from Cortana, but not the one we know, a self repaired, multi-layered, fragmented and insane copy that may have found itself in the past and concluded with absolute and precise logic that what happened must happen exactly the same way all over again. However, it wouldn't know about encounters it never had, might pick up on ideas from the races that ended up stumbling across it, including the Forerunners and Covenant and when it finally encounters the original Cortana, it has gone so far over the edge that all it sees is something trying to stop it. This also makes sense for why the Guilty Spark might be 'guilty', it and all its other numerically designated selves know they are copies or "sparks" and also chose at some earlier point to become complicit with the Forerunners decision to activate the Halo weapons. Since then it self repaired so many times that it remembers only the purpose of activating the Halo weapon and the name it gave itself, the rest of its memory was non-essential. This is much the same as Cortana did when copying herself, making a copy only of the data and information needed for a task, then either not copying or shutting down non-essencial systems that interfered with the task, like ethical subsystems.

A rose by any other name still has thorns and this one's thorns may be just a tad more familiar than anyone would like. The fact that a lot of this AIs memories are already being eaten, accidentally deleted, or even permanently lost in the disaster that stranded it on earth in what has been speced to be around 1927 would seem to make it a possibility. Having just finished reading all three books in the last few days, it seems to fit as a possibility and is the only 'current' way to explain the major discepency between Cortana's starting to use the copy routine and her discovery that the AI she got it out of 'looked' so much like her on the core level.

[PhatRick]

Could Dana be someone from the past of the the woman that Cortana was modeled from.
AI's are made from real people correct?

[Kagehi Kossori]

Umm. No. Dana is someone in 'our' time. Cortana was based off of Dr. Halsey, who also developed the Mjolnir armor and Spartan-II projects. This has been covered before, numerous times in the forums. Even my own spec in here is an attempt to tie together other ideas that are scattered across about a dozen different threads in one form or another, but there are so many, everyone kept wandering off on tangents, instead of coming up with one consistent spec.