unforum

[GunsmithCat]

[princeofthesword]

Hey GC, thanks for reading the megapost in the Haloverse topic. But I'm with you, there's too much allegorical info floating around on Aunt M's site to begin with for it to not have any impact now. Unless it was just random weirdness that somehow attracted the AIs to this site in the first place.

We need to put our heads together and figure out what the Castaway has to do with this. I don't like his treatment of Melissa, as I've said before, he acts too...persuasive, seductive? To an AI! I don't trust him, just a feeling, heh and he might be our best friend by the time we're done. I'm wondering if Odysseus was an AI of the Castaway's, maybe a virus scanner of sorts that was there to check up on everybody after the artifact/Covenant Transmission. (See Haloverse, wild or otherwise spec topic) Maybe when the "whatever" happened to transport the AIs to our timeline, Odysseus didn't make it and he's the "boy." Wild spec there.

I'm starting to think the SP MIGHT have thought of us as bees, feeding her "honey" (stories, emails) while she was still shut up in her whatever casket. She certainly loves bees, based on the Killer texts. Likes, at least. Melissa seems to now, as well. I'm still annoyed at the fact that she's saying "I love bees" over and over again now. The PMs are messing with our heads! Jk. Might mean something though. Too many allegories and metaphors floating around, we need to tie them together somehow.

Gunsmith Cat I've got a lot of respect for your ability to float around, read all of this stuff, and piece together some great spec. Keep at it, there's something we're missing! Duh, but I mean, you know.

Everybody blank on the technical stuff (Me!) keep working on storyline, meaning, and metaphor! There's motive going on with each character, but we're missing some stuff. I think there's something we've got to get done by Tuesday, "Or Else." Spec is good, it helps us think from lots of angles, and we've got lots of perspectives to deal with to begin with. Try not to clutter up stuff with New Topics, everyone (reciting the forum mantra). Find a relevant topic and post there *nods* Search before you post! Lots of stuff here, but if you don't have time to lurk and read, at least search and read those that seem most relevant to your thoughts. Bring on the spec!

Oh yeah, those not following the axons much, read Sherpa's posts about Axons http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5697&start=225&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight= in there somewhere, everywhere. I don't think it's a literal thing we're supposed to show up at either, but that's just my thought. Even if you're not technical, there's some great thinking going on there, everybody check it out for some different perspectives.

Some clever person had crossed wires about Halo AI info, but he was spec-ing that maybe a DANA brain had something to do with these AIs, or something of that nature. Sounds wild, but something there is appealing. Genetic tracing through time? Doubtful, but why Dana? We need more interaction with Dana, btw. One AI hates her, one loves her, heh and one of those two is our true ally. Farewell.

[GunsmithCat]

[thebruce]

3 things...

1: Odysseus - "a sailor with Odysseus" she says... I don't think that's a literal phrase. Saying "a warrior with Spartacus" could just as well mean that he's on equal ground with Spartacus, respected by him, a friend, similar morals, ethics, etc... I think Odysseus is just a reference to help us raise the bar as to who the Castaway is - at least from Melissa's recollection and memory (it may have been his front). There's one other reference to Odysseus in Melissa's phase 3 monologue "like the blood Odysseus spilled" - which again can be an allegorical reference to the literature... I think treating Odysseus as an in-game character is a dead end...

2: The Manticore - is nothing but an 'enchanted guard', an altered/damaged security process ('sec proc 4'- dmg unk). I don't believe this is any other in-game character, just an allegorical reference made by the princess to visualize the roadblock.

3: There are a number of characters mentioned in passing, other than the boy on the beach...
- Arachne ("Arachne hung herself you know" - Phase1 Monologue)
- the boy on the beach (discussed above)
- Shipwrecked Sailor (believed to be the Castaway)
- old guy/old man (believed to be the Castaway)

as for the boy on the beach, it's hard to pass it off as just a visualization of herself in the dream... the description seems to specific...

[Anton P. Nym]

I definitely agree with you about the Manticore; it has to be a leftover process damaged or corrupted in the accident. I'm holding the tentative theory that it was perhaps an agent of the system's firewall, but that's wild spec. It's also not terribly important to my overall understanding of what's happening, but of course that could be wrong.

It's been determined by Melissa's monologue that SPDR isn't an AI and is "just a set of reflexes", and that the Sleeping Princess doesn't think that the Flea "can write his name or read a book" and so probably isn't an AI. It looks to me like we're dealing with two AIs (Melissa and the Princess) right now.

My theory is that the Flea is a trojan horse; it's been theorised (can't remember by whom... I mourn the Wiki) that it was piggybacked by the Covenant onto one of the intercepts Melissa processed. (That's gained more support from the Princess's latest email.) It's not an AI, but an advanced expert system designed to infiltrate networks (seek), gather valuable intelligence (behold), and transmit it back to a waiting receiver (reveal). My guess is that it can't do much else. (That is the law and the whole of the law.) The crash gave the Flea a great opportunity to take over... as SPDR wasn't able to deploy adequate countermeasures during the reconstruction and Melissa was in no shape to detect the intrusion until it was too late.

The beach dream sequence I'm now seeing as a memory of Melissa's human prototype being dismantled by SPDR (a wave of spiders) as too encumbering for the core AI in our primitive network (sand). Or as a metaphor for non-critical memories dissolving as SPDR strips them away to rebuild the core AI processes. (cutting off a foot to sew on as a nose.)

As far as the Princess goes... I'm with you. I think her glass coffin is actually made of osmium. And something that dense, and that could endure c.100,000 years of exposure in deep space (WAG based on the Halo novels for the last time the Forerunners were in this neck of the woods) would almost certainly have endured the crash reasonably intact.

We need more evidence, though... everything here could be overturned by the next update.

-- Steve is jonesing for another fact fix. C'mon, you know he's good for it... just a little taste...

[thebruce]

agreed on everything... perhaps I shouldn't have said the Flea or SPDR 'AI'... it's covenant, but we're battling with Melissa, and 2 'processes' that seem to want her pretty badly... the Flea's mantra beat out the SPDR's though. I still think that SPDR may have been an enemy of some form, as well as the Flea, who is now 'guiding' (I don't want to assume it's taken control just yet) of Melissa. The Princess still seems to be the only one separate from all of this, and based on her 'observations', she does seem to be a little higher up the ladder of AI's, even though she hasn't really done anything yet...

and BTW, I now have the Full text compilation in HTML form see my sig...

[Anton P. Nym]

Dang, thought I'd forgotten something. Though that post was getting long enough.

Way back just after the start of Phase 2 when it became certain that Halo backstory was involved, I speculated that SPDR was an in-built repair system that fixed AIs suffering catastrophic damage. Of course, such should have been disabled according to the Cole Protocol (same post as in the linky, for folks who don't follow Halo) but it appears that the accident, or perhaps the Flea, circumvented this.

Now, I do see SPDR/Flea in a tug-of-war over Melissa, but not of two hostiles over a 3rd-party prize. I think that SPDR was built in by UNSC, a set of low-level routines that act much like platelets and scar tissue do in the human body to repair or work around damage... it was, in its own dim little way, on "our" side.

The Flea, however, works in its dim little way for "the other guys."

So far this view stands up on its own, but it's far from the only possible one.

-- Steve finds himself nodding over his keyboard... time to go nighty-night before idiocy kicks in. Will read the HTML timeline after the First Coffee tomorrow.

[thebruce]

how would that then fit in with the dream of the wave of spider taking away her 'brother's face, who also is alluded to being an AI? And I'm gathering that the 'wave' is the spider... otherwise, what does water represent if it's detroying the 'sand castles'?

I still think the SPDR is both capable of deconstructions and/or construction, whether for a good or evil purpose, I'm not 100% positive yet...

[princeofthesword]

Great spec guys, I love hearing from you two. Check out the Haloverse spec, wild or otherwise thread for weird thoughts if you haven't already. And thanks Gunsmith Cat, too. FYI, GC, there's some spec in the Haloverse about a man named Ackerson, ONI, MAYBE being a Covie traitor. Or at least that SOMEONE maybe, but we have NO proof, just the usual conspiracy stuff. But onward!

I like the thought of a bunch of rogue process SPDRs causing havoc in the future against the AIs, sort of like a repair program gone bad, The Bruce. An almost viral- like con/restruction process becomes an actual virus to AIs, so simple minded that its very nature to rewrite and "fix" something makes it dangerous. Not sure how relevant this is in the end, but it's a cool thought.

I think the "spiders washing away his face" or what not was a metaphor about how SPDR was dumping and repairing Melissa's memories, and that the boy could've been from the Melissa brain, or from wherever. Or, as nightmares go, it could've just been when Dana purged the site, and Melissa was already dealing with SPDR, so things just blurred in her "mind." Just spec.

(As an aside, I've always felt sorry for Melissa. In the Widow's tale the Queen will return, but as some horrible Frankenstein's monster type thing. I keep having the feeling that, she being a human AI to begin with, she's really someone we're supposed to help and befriend somehow. But then again, Tycho was our pal too...oh, yes, that went well. Fickle as people, aren't they? )

Anton (loved Enkidu), while you're here, I posted this elsewhere asking if you've heard anything about AIs having "field expedient bodies" in the Haloverse. The only reference I can draw in my head is Cortana sometimes offhandedly referring to the Autumn as her "body," in a sense. What does the Op mean about a body, in this sense? So far, all the Halo AIs I can recall show themselves in computer activity and, for our sakes, vocal and holographic interaction. Aside from neural interfaces. Any spec on what she means? I feel I'm forgetting something.

Oh, and in case anyone doesn't notice, the Widow's story seems to stop once she gets the Queen back together. Rather obvious, I know, but our narration's gone. SP needs to give us some more stuff, else we're writing it from here on out perhaps? Since SPDRs "gone," Queen's semi-active, and Flea is whispering evil nothings in her ear, I think we've moved past it into something else, uncharted territory for us in a way. I keep remembering somewhere in the phase 3 text that there's something about an Apocalypse (I know, I keep saying this, but those pesky apocalypses!). Normally, those bother me, and billions of others, so I'm just wondering why we don't hear more about it. Unless she's just being random again. I would swear I saw it. Please, someone tell me I'm not crazy. About the Apocalypse thing, at least. Don't want to make you lie, or anything.

By the way, The Bruce, great take on the Odysseus referrence, I hadn't really thought of that, it shames me to admit. I kept wanting it to be a character! I've always loved Odysseus. But yeah, and in that vein, now I'm wondering if she might've meant something else about "reach, burning like a candle in the distance," now too. Or however she said it. Dang, she might not have meant our Reach at all, she might've been spouting her stuff again! Isn't that a big monkey wrench.

I'll keep thinking on all the phase's texts, and try to piece together something coherent. Great perspectives! Farewell.

[Ghost77]

[SPEC] boy AI

[Cherry Cotton]

In defense of him being the Manticore, the manticore's minor role in the story indicates that he's overdue for a reappearance and an explanation; besides, the story's other established characters are all taken. Also, the story says that the Manticore was once a guard, who was enchanted to become a hideous Manticore, and so the Spider had no choice but to kill him; so, it makes sense that the Manticore would be present in the Operator's memories and that the Operator would be frustrated over "spiders washing over his face."

However, I do think that the emerging theory, that the "spiders washing" part merely refers to a memory being erased by the Spider, seems to fit better poetically then my concept of the Spider killing him outright. I'll throw my chips in with you guys.

[gheritt]

[chaotic_mind]

[Jacqueline]

Just some general thoughts on some of the stuff that's been brought up so far:

There do seem to be some parallels between the 'casket' and the capsule, but at this point I think the capsule is more likely to be the Forerunner artifact everyone's been talking about. I don't have time to lay out all the reasons right now, but mainly it's because the Princess is obviously inside the server with the Operator and the Flea and whoever else. (Dana didn't mention a metal capsule crashing into her aunt's house, and as far as we know there was no way for Melissa to interact with the capsule and somehow 'download' the Princess that way) Plus she says the Queen was the one that had her put in the casket; if she was already in the capsule when the ship found it that couldn't be the case.

I don't think the Spider was an enemy, just a little program that was supposed to repair the Operator if she got damaged (no matter how unpleasant the experience might be for her). And it seemed to follow orders from her, building the roads, etc., even if it wasn't very good at it. On the other hand, I think that while the Flea isn't anymore intelligent than the Spider was, it's an evil little f***** and is corrupting the heck out of Melissa. The fact that she doesn't seem to know it's there or even realize the changes it's making (seek, reveal, etc.) seems pretty sinister to me.

Back on the topic of the boy, I'm guessing that because he was washed away, and his castle wasn't as good as hers, he may be an AI that was just not able to survive the damage, and/or was taken apart by the Spider to repair the Operator. (cutting new eyes and ears from her most trusted servants?) Anyway, I just went for the straightforward approach and asked the Princess about him. I don't know if I'll hear back from her or not, but it was worth a shot.

[princeofthesword]

My shortest post yet maybe?!? Could it be? But here goes....I LIKE IT, Jacqueline! Good thoughts. Yes, I've temporarily demoted myself to cheerleader, but maybe I'll be president someday. Seriously though, I love both sides, CM's points and then your own take on the situation J. CM's right about the AIs on the ships (they USUALLY have one, usually dumb, but performs very useful tasks).

Gherrit! Not the Johnny 5's again!! Robots, no! Heh that's funny though. But seriously, what does she mean? I have no recollection about AIs having ANY kind of bodies in Haloverse, physical I mean. CM, thoughts please, as you're well up on the books. I haven't read them in a while.

But the boy, sadly I shall temporarily relegate him to a past memory, rather than an AI or metaphor. For the moment. If something else comes up, then the fire'll be burnin' again. Poor kid.