unforum

[Heresiarch]

[SPEC] Melissa.Now vs. Melissa.Then

[princeofthesword]

You beat me to the post, Heresiarch! At least, I had thought about it. I keep calling her Frankenqueen in my head (weird I know, but to remind me) because of the Widow's Tale. That's what she ended up as by the end, and we're way past that because the Widow's "Dead." Her story's over, and the Flea is in control it seems. So yes, at this point, we're on an uneven playing field. We don't know what she's been up to other than making axons, but there's spec on that elsewhere.

So yes, poor Melissa is gone, or scattered about the net in such a way that we might never get her back (part of the story/puzzle, maybe? Later perhaps? Agh...Save Op!) We have the Queen. Who has the Flea. Who's considered dumb by SP, and they all live in the virtual house that Dana built. I'm really getting frustrated, because there's so much we're not understanding and I feel that we should.

Another thing that's bothering me is the list of "amazing facts about bees" on the axon/funstuff page that may or may not have anything to do with any of this. It starts out with In the summer, a single beehive has:

1 queen
250 drones
20,000 female foragers
40,000 female house-bees
5,000 to 7,000 eggs
7,000 to 11,000 larvae being fed
16,000 to 24,000 larvae developing into adults in sealed cells

***
The average worker bee makes 1 1/2 teaspoons of honey in her lifetime.

***
Bees are fully grown when they are born.

There's more of course, but those'r the parts that are bothering me. We have one Queen, who dwells in a castle metaphor, but is she also in the prevalent bee metaphor too? If so, where's everything else? Or is this a threat as to what's going to happen on the 24th? She's making a hive, perhaps? But we can't get too literal, or think too narrowly. There's Spiders and Fleas, as far as bugs go, and a Sleeping Princess as far as fairy tales go. Can we tie them together, somehow, WITHOUT using Melissa? Or is the Queen our only link? Is there a reason for the two "clear" perspectives on the story? Our "castaway" Melissa is gone, and now we've got fairy tales and (bitter laugh) hives.

Please, spec, someone. This has been irritating the heck out of me, as we wait for an update to help. Dana, help. There's too many odd references on Aunt Margaret's site to begin with for the paralleling stories to not mean the tiniest thing. There's got to be a reason for it, the bees, the Castle, even if it's just an in-story lure that got the AIs here.

Or a PM got stung the day they were supposed to come up with this really cool Halo 2 ARG, and swore "DANG! I HATE BEES!!....hey waitaminute....." Farewell.

--FRUSTRATED--

[Howdareyou]

Perhaps (and this is obviously wild spec) the SP considers the flea to be dumb because he's not self-aware? His only purpose so far appears to be to alter Melissa - in a different yet similar way to the widow, who the princess considered stupid as well.

As for the information about bees, I'm pretty sure that before the co-ordinates had times on them, part of the operator's monologue was part of the list. I can't be certain because the page has been updated since then and I didn't keep the cache because I'm quite new to this.

The reason why I don't think the bee information is a 'clue' as such is that there appears to be nothing wrong with it. There's nothing out of the ordinary. If the sentence structure was odd, for instance, or if there was odd capitalisation... but it seems to just be a list of facts. There isn't anything which sets it apart from any other list about some random thing. Then again, I'm convinced that na-cat.gif (on the contact page) has more than one version, and since none of the variations have part of the widow's story in them any more, I am sure that something is up.

I suppose the only thing which could really give us a clue is if we found other sources for information about hive structures and got different sets of numbers - then we could try subtracting them from each other or trying crazed numerical possibilities to get them to equal 7, which appears to be bungie's trademark number.

I think we're all getting to tied up about the 'Axons' thing because the counter keeps ticking down. I, for one, spent the last evening turning the difference in distance between the sets of co-ordinates into binary and seeing if they turned into anything legible in an ascii translator.

As to the story... I don't think there's any way to tie the story together without using Melissa in some way. But ever since we've seen her turn into the current 'villain' of the piece, we haven't really seen any advance in the story - due, in my mind, to her 'frankenqueen'-ness (as you so aptly put it). The only entity who seems to be in the least bit co-operative with us is the Princess. Maybe we should send more emails to Ladybee777?

[Revealer]

Re: Melissa.Now vs. Melissa.Then

[GunsmithCat]

Getting Dana is probably only a side goal of Mellisa.Now ...

Her first goal is probably to send a signal for help and get off this rock.

Her second goal, rapidly making it's way up the charts, is to seek the truth.
Only Flea probably knows what that means, since it's really his goal.

If she can get a better body, that would be grand too.

And if she can eliminate any threat (a la Dana) that would probably be sweet.

[Shad0]

Re: Melissa.Now vs. Melissa.Then

[Jacqueline]

Was it after the Flea came in that she started babbling about the coming Apocalypse? And that whole 'dark dove descending' part sure sounded like she was planning on having something to do with it.

*sigh* And I still can't shake the notion that it sounds like she's building a physical body, even though I know that doesn't make any sense and would be impossible for an incorporeal being inside a computer. (though before her ship was probably something like a body, she needed somebody to build it for her first)

[clamatius]

[Heresiarch]

It's true, we know a lot more about Melissa than just that she's after Dana. What I meant was that we haven't gotten anything from the Queen since then.

Of course, when I wrote that I hadn't read the Phase III Monologue yet. Whoops. But what we've learned since then isn't encouraging. Sounds like she's totally under the control of the Flea ("I establish my covenant with you") and searching for the location of Earth ("It is imperative that all records that might lead to //the truth be revealed.") If the Flea is a Covenant AI, then the "truth" it seeks is likely Earth's location. It would also explain "but the stupid Spider appears not to have recognized the supreme importance of all memories associated with the truth": the spider did understand the importance of the "truth," and deleted it in accordance with the Cole Protocols.

Oh, and one other thing worth noting:

[Usernames]

The parent!

[Revealer]

Re: Melissa.Now vs. Melissa.Then

[chaotic_mind]

I realize this comes a little late, but I seem to have missed this when it first appeared.

[Heresiarch]

[chaotic_mind]

You do make a good point. The Flea was active before phrase three, but I really think the fact that the Princess made a poem about it indicates that the Flea's stature in these events changed tremendously. Probably because, since the SPDR is gone, the Flea is much freer to operate.

Luke P.

edit- Plus I remember the white coats memory, and how Melissa said she didn't recognize where it came from. I'd elaborate more, but the Wiki seems to be on the fritz again.

[Howdareyou]

With regards to the white coats memory, chaotic_mind:

Do you think that it's an actual memory? If so, I would assume that Melissa was once human, and became and A.I from a brain scan. If it was, then perhaps SPDR removed her knowledge of the memory because it was related to earth (and people have been speculating that the widow edited Melissa's memories in accordance with the Cole Protocols).

Then again, it could just be a metaphor for being operated on by SPDR.