View topic - [SPEC] The Durga<->Melissa connection through time

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Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates

[SPEC] The Durga<->Melissa connection through time

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Prisoner2401
Boot

Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 54
Location: In The Village

raw19 wrote:

from Dictionary.com:
in�ter�cept ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ntr-spt)
tr.v. in�ter�cept�ed, in�ter�cept�ing, in�ter�cepts
To stop, deflect, or interrupt the progress or intended course of: intercepted me with a message as I was leaving.
[...]
Archaic. To prevent.
Obsolete. To cut off from access or communication.

That's being too literal. During World War II, transcripts of eavesdropped coded communications were called "intercepts," despite the fact that the messages were of course not plucked from the airwaves just because an "interceptor" had heard them. They continued on to their destination. Thus the term "intercept" in modern cryptography does not necessarily imply preventing a transmission from reaching its intended destination.

Electronic and radio transmissions could perhaps be jammed or tampered with explicitly, but simply "intercepting" them does not get rid of them -- the literal interpretation of "intercept" notwithstanding.

_________________
"Last time, you asked me, if it was my choice, would I do it? Having considerable time to ponder your query, my answer has not changed."
"Make your decisions accordingly."

Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 7:52 pm

raw19
Boot

Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 61

GunsmithCat wrote:

No, because if she had the ability to beam herself like your suggesting, she would just beam herself to another construct, like the Pillar of Autumn.

If she was on a chip, she would be much more vulnerable. One bootstep, no Cortana.

To put it another way, 343 Guilty Spark is probably much more powerful than Cortana, and he is stuck to his globe.

The only evidence we've got to help explain the movement of AIs is the artifact, but the problem is that we've go pretty much no information about it.

a) the Pillar of Autumn was a little busy crashing to Halo to be a safe haven to Cortana to go to.

b) Who says the 343 Guilty spark's intelligence wasn't spread throughout the whole ring? He knew what was going on all over the entire ring. Maybe he just used the globe as an interface to talk to MC.

anyway, just because they didn't do it, doesn't mean they couldn't do it. We send packets of data all over the planet through the air using wireless internet connections. An AI is a program. I see no reason she couldn't transfer herself to the planet.

Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 7:53 pm

GunsmithCat
Unfettered

Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459

raw19 wrote:

a) the Pillar of Autumn was a little busy crashing to Halo to be a safe haven to Cortana to go to.

And later, when she decides to destroy the PoA ... He carries her there. When she learns of Halo's nature she can watches MC and waits for him. These are times when this beaming thing would really be handy, but she doesn't use it.

Quote:

b) Who says the 343 Guilty spark's intelligence wasn't spread throughout the whole ring? He knew what was going on all over the entire ring. Maybe he just used the globe as an interface to talk to MC.

Because that bastard left me waiting too many times to be true Smile

Quote:

anyway, just because they didn't do it, doesn't mean they couldn't do it. We send packets of data all over the planet through the air using wireless internet connections. An AI is a program. I see no reason she couldn't transfer herself to the planet.

Look, it's an invisible dragon argument. You say it's there, it's just not there right now. Maybe Jersey installed an AI antennae on his PC last week just in case he'd get lucky, but from what's before us it doesn't seem likely.

Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 8:03 pm

Extrasonic
Decorated

Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 233
Location: Suburban Chicago

Re: The Operator, Durga, and the Queen

xnbomb,

It seems like you wanted to dismiss what I was saying simply because it wasn't comprehensive and didn't address every one of your points. Fair enough; let me do that now.

xnbomb wrote:

My point is that the Covenant virus gets the Operator to make the transmission when she normally would not do so, and piggybacks a ride. I don't think the Covenant virus is worried about getting discovered or caught in the act, and thereby losing the advantage that he would gain should he manage to obtain the desired intelligence undetected. The Operator and Capt. Greene are already pretty certain of its existance in the ship's systems and its identity. The Covenant virus would have nothing to lose by getting the Operator and itself sent to Earth, and everything to gain at this point. So why wouldn't the Covenant virus do this exactly? If I understand you correctly, your objection rests on the virus remaining undetected and not doing anything to compromise its presence, but it already has been detected by the Operator because she knows something is awry, so it would be unconstrained in this regard.

With all due respect, I don't think you understand my objection correctly. Your speculation seemed to be based on "The Castaway made some transmissions of jazz music to his son on Earth, and The Flea got Melissa to follow along." The point of my response was to suggest that an intelligence officer (The Castaway) doing counter-intelligence work on board an ONI ship that's in deep cover, pretending to be a yacht but secretly spying on the Covenant is going to abandon years of training and risk not only the planet he's been fighting for but also his SON to share some jazz music with him is, in a word, absurd.

xnbomb wrote:

Extrasonic wrote:

The Castaway left Jersey some jazz, he didn't send it.

Whether he left it or sent it, the Jason-Jersey connection is one that the Operator would be interested in and might just follow up on. The Operator makes a point of how listening to the Castaway's music with him made her feel real. Is it so hard to believe that she'd want more of that to remind her of the experience, and that under the influence of a virus she might make some poor judgements about the relative importance of satisfying that desire compared to not comprimising her mission?

Yes, it is really so hard for me to believe that Melissa could be influenced by the Flea into doing something so wildly against her core programming. At a time when you contend that she was under the influence of The Flea, her memories still reveal that she will not compromise security protocol:

Melissa wrote:

"McKaskill", I said, "sending messages off to people without clearance, you know, that could be construed as treason."

"Op! Melissa! I didn't mean�"

"And we're at war, crewman. Which makes treason a capital offense."

You know what's also hard for me to believe? That nowhere - not the inner colonies, not the outer colonies, absolutely nowhere in the known Haloverse was there any other jazz produced or stored than on Jersey's computer. Still, this doesn't matter, because if Melissa is like any other known Haloverse AI, she doesn't have to physically travel to a computer to get information out of it. Even if she did decide that The Castaway's son was the one and only source of jazz in the universe and that she just had to have some more, she wouldn't "go" to his computer, she'd simply access it remotely.

xnbomb wrote:

The Operator actually seems attracted to the Castaway, and might want to learn more about him. Given the Operator's propensity for finding information that interests her, I don't find it at all hard to believe that she'd follow this path. You think it's a coincidence that Durga, a very Operator-like digital entity, shows up on Jersey's doorstep sometime after the Operator has a drink with his dad, the Castaway? That seems far-fetched to me.

This is based on a misinterpretation (in my opinion) of the text. In the only text we have about Melissa and The Castaway interacting, it seems like The Castaway is attracted to Melissa, that Melissa respects The Castaway's nobility, and that the experience of sitting down and swapping stories made her feel "real".

Melissa wrote:

"Humor me," the Castaway said, playing music in his room, ancient music, Jazz and Swing, all in the mood. "Melissa", he said, "Have a drink with me".

I don't drink, but I asked for something anyway and sat, holographically, and drank with him.

He wasn't regular crew, just along for the ride. We picked him up in deep space, where he deployed Buoys, sending out waves of sound to confuse the Enemy. A man that seemed noble, classical and pure. A sailor with Odysseus. He told stories about soldiers caught waist deep in water, facing the enemy, their backs to the Sea.

"Melissa", he called me Melissa, never used my nickname, "It's a sad thing I'm married, You could break my heart".

The weather was stormy, scratched vinyl and all of us, a long way from home: I felt real.

Just because he was getting something romantic out of it (or, more likely, joking that he was) doesn't mean she was. There's no text (or, I would contend, subtext) to imply it. With respect to your comments about Melissa's "propensity for finding information that interests her", that practically proves my point re:not having to resort to Jersey's computer to find jazz.

The striking similarity between Durga and Melissa? It could be explained a lot of ways (e.g. they are both the same type of AI with the same type of training/programming); I don't think it's because they are two portions of the same entity or that Durga is a sub-process. GunsmithCat has already devoted some time here in this thread to try to explain why AI's don't "move" to get information, but I'll get more specific to this story: Durga gets a lot of information while still "residing" on Jersey's computer. "What am I onboard? It feels small," she asks. She "wets" the system; she's there.

xnbomb wrote:

I notice you haven't objected to the only really important part of my speculation when it comes to The Operator ~ Durga. That is, that Durga could be a part of the Operator but does not know this by virtue of the fact that she cannot communicate with the rest of herself without a slipspace link being active. If we put aside whether or not she follows a transmission by the Castaway (which was not precisely my point anyways), that part of it stands on its own alright.

Ok, I formally lodge an objection. Smile

[start sarcasm]
"Hi Jersey, I'm... someone - the slipstream channel is closed, so I can't ask my name, but you can keep calling me Durga. I've retained all my former abilities (zap! there goes Genie! zap zap! there go two Navy Sentinels! let's go hack... anything) so I clearly can remember things (like that zapping business, what a Navy Sentinel is, what an admiral is, how to protect myself from whatever package you were going to use to initialize me, what it's like to be on a larger system since this one "feels small", etc.), just not my name. Also, apparently I can't remember that I was drinking with your father 15 minutes ago out of deference to xnbomb's spec, even though I just read his entire personnel file, and the whole purpose for my existence as a subprocess is to get more of his music. And you, Jersey, who have much more knowledge of contemporary computing than anyone on these forums since you're actually a character in this timeline and have reconditioned an avatar, have judged my inability to ask my own name "some spooky programming wierdness", not some spooky slipstream networking wierdness nor any other kind of spooky wierdness, but let's disregard this since authors often like to put meaningless statements in their dialogue."
[end sarcasm]

xnbomb wrote:

Your objection seems to be based on constraints on the Covenant virus' behavior that seem misapplied to me in this case, and how Jersey and his dad might or might not communicate, which is actually not critical.

Well, the idea that The Flea convinced Melissa to transfer herself to Earth, in whole or in part, would compromise her core programming, her mission, and her crew (not to mention what we know about the behavior of AIs). We have ample evidence that even after she's under the Flea's thrall, she still won't (or can't) do any of that. Suggesting that all of this happened while piggybacked ontop of a Castaway transmission of jazz to his son on Earth while strictly incommunicado on a covert mission was just sort of the piece de resistance of the speculation's improbabilty.

xnbomb wrote:

The critical points are:

-The Operator is infected by a Covenant virus
-The Covenant virus could make the Operator do things she would not otherwise do
-The Operator can use network connections to move through/access networked systems
-The Operator could move/travel from the spacecraft to Earth using slipstream packets
-The Operator meets the Castaway and enjoys her time with him
-Sometime later, Durga appears on the Castaway's son's doorstep not knowing who she is or why she is there, a state consistent with a subset process (Durga) being cut off from its master process (the Operator) by virtue of there not being an open slipstream link between them

-The Operator is under the influence of a foreign entity. It could be Forerunner, it could be Covenant - she seems to have been in contact with both (spying on the Covenant, the wierd object picked up in space). Covenant is more likely since she feels strange before finding the object, but it's hardly conclusive.
-The influence of the foreign entity can corrupt and co-opt Melissa's intended behavior, but cannot make her do things that are wildly out of character. If the foreign entity is The Flea, then he's been described as "whispering in her ear", not pulling her strings.
-The Operator can use network connections to access other systems, but she's still "grounded" onboard a ship.
-The Operator could not use slipstream to travel to Earth, and even if she could, there's no need to because of the previous point - she uses the slipstream as a network connection through which she can remotely access systems. No need to physically move or spawn and send a child process (which likely isn't possible or else other Haloverse AIs would have no need to copy themselves, which they have done)
-The Operator meets The Castaway and enjoys her time with him, but not enough to send a hardened military AI against all of her conditioning into a schoolgirl love-frenzy which requires her to rummage around his son's computer just to find some data with his signature on it, thereby compromising her crew - a crew that, after all this time under The Flea's influence she's still trying to find via the Axon process
-Sometime later, a coincidence we don't have enough information to so much as draw conclusions about, let alone explain occurs

Hopefully, xnbomb, this was more in line with your expectations.

Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 9:53 pm

Astald
Unfettered

Joined: 01 Aug 2004
Posts: 747
Location: Just outside of Pittsburgh (Go Steelers!)

The only information we have on Durga going into Jersey's computer was that she woke up after the reboot. She might have been there before, or else with his security down she just found her way there. There were two navy sentinels that made their way to his computer, but they were probably just programs, not smart AI. I personally don't think it would be possible for a smart AI like Cortana or Melissa to transmit themselves, just seems like they consist of too much data. Although, in examination of xnbomb's theory, if Durga was just part of Melissa, it could be possible.

Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 9:56 pm

johnny5
Entrenched

Joined: 17 Aug 2004
Posts: 995
Location: Elysian Fields

The fact that Melissa is on the ilovebees server is evidence that she can be transmitted without a hard medium.

We know there was an authorized transmission to HQ from the Operator's ship when the plan to glass Troy was discovered. Troy was evacuated, so HQ apparantly made the decision to compromise the mission to save Troy. If the Apocalypso was Melisssa's ship, could it have been recalled by HQ to defend Earth or something along those lines?

Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 10:32 pm

johnny5
Entrenched

Joined: 17 Aug 2004
Posts: 995
Location: Elysian Fields

Additional information:

Durga can tap into much more than chatter protocol, and the future contains much more monitoring technology than just chatter:

Operator's Monologue wrote:

There's a lot of ways to skin a - - can't even get to her stupid HOUSE through the stupid BOX: no central thermo controls, no slaved AI, nothing. Christ! No access to /// wiring. No access to vehicle controls. No access to medbots or pharm regimes. Damn it. Okay. Fine. Matter of ///time. I don't give up.

Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 10:42 pm

Platonix
Decorated

Joined: 28 Aug 2004
Posts: 174
Location: Keene, New Hampshire

johnny_Nitro wrote:

The fact that Melissa is on the ilovebees server is evidence that she can be transmitted without a hard medium.

Are you sure? There's SPEC around here that Melissa, etc. rode a hard medium back to 2004 and then somehow moved / were moved into our internet.

_________________
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 10:43 pm

Astald
Unfettered

Joined: 01 Aug 2004
Posts: 747
Location: Just outside of Pittsburgh (Go Steelers!)

Quote:

The fact that Melissa is on the ilovebees server is evidence that she can be transmitted without a hard medium.

There is nothing that specifies that Melissa exists solely on the ILB server, or if she is actually connected somehow through some device we have failed to discover. And I don't really know if Melissa's ship would really be the type of ship you called to defend a planet, sounds like it's mainly an intelligence ship to me.

Quote:

But after whatever virus Melissa picks up, she is questioned about whether she is speaking out of character, and when she says she hopes not, she isn't exactly sure. So if the character of her speech can be changed, why not the character of her programming?

Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 10:48 pm

xnbomb
Unfettered

Joined: 13 Oct 2003
Posts: 660
Location: J302B S8JDC

Re: The Operator, Durga, and the Queen

Extrasonic wrote:

Yep, I definitely didn't understand your objection, and you probably didn't understand my idea in the first place, at least not as I had intended it. I never meant to suggest the Castaway made some transmission that the Operator followed. Rather, I thought you meant that the 'other' intelligence agent on board was the Covenant virus. I realize I was not as clear as I should have been regarding the significance of the Castaway and son (more on this below).

Extrasonic wrote:

Yes, it is really so hard for me to believe that Melissa could be influenced by the Flea into doing something so wildly against her core programming.

This notion is based on an analogy to what's going on in the present day: The Pious Flea has got the Queen revealing instead of resisting. That strikes me as remarkably out of character for her, and yet she's doing it just the same. Perhaps the Flea is succeeding in influencing the Queen to this extent now because she is weak, whereas she was strong before and could not have been coerced in this way. There are no facts available that make this certainly right or wrong at this point. This is speculation after all, and we each have our own standards and notions of what is likely and what is not.

Extrasonic wrote:

I never meant to suggest that, and it's not really about the jazz ... it's about following connections and researching things or people connected to topics which pique her interest. Researching Jason Morelli is something that I imagine an entity like the Operator does routinely in such an instance (i.e. constructing a secondary ring, whatever that is). I only bring up the jazz and the familial relationship because they cement the connection between the Castaway and Jersey and provide a link between the two; a father and a son who both are on speaking terms with a certain kind of digital entity. That seems to me like something that is unlikely to be a coincidence.

Extrasonic wrote:

This is where the subjectivity comes in ... each and every one of us is going to read that the way we want to, and we don't have agree about that.

Extrasonic wrote:

The striking similarity between Durga and Melissa? It could be explained a lot of ways (e.g. they are both the same type of AI with the same type of training/programming); I don't think it's because they are two portions of the same entity or that Durga is a sub-process. GunsmithCat has already devoted some time here in this thread to try to explain why AI's don't "move" to get information, but I'll get more specific to this story: Durga gets a lot of information while still "residing" on Jersey's computer. "What am I onboard? It feels small," she asks. She "wets" the system; she's there.

No doubt, there are a large number of possible explanations. And I would never deign to suggest that mine is right, else it would not be speculation. My earlier response served mainly to suggest that they were not outside of the realm of possibility for the reasons you provided. What I am trying to say is I don't believe my explanation to be exclusively correct, but I do believe it to not be excluded from possibly correct explanations.

As to GunsmithCat's contribution, I'm very pleased to hear from those who knows something about digital entities in the Haloverse, but I feel the need to point out that the Operator is not Cortana, nor should we assume she is just like her or other AIs from the Haloverse. We won't know exactly what the Operator is until they tell us more about her (if they ever do so). Any notions about the Operator's nature that are based on what is known of other AIs in the Haloverse are speculative; albeit speculation that is backed by an existing canon. That does not make them certain, though.

Extrasonic wrote:

Suggesting that all of this happened while piggybacked ontop of a Castaway transmission of jazz to his son on Earth while strictly incommunicado on a covert mission was just sort of the piece de resistance of the speculation's improbabilty.

I didn't intend to suggest that, and I'm sorry it read that way. Your criticism has been useful to me in that it shows that I should have been more clear on why the Castaway<->Operator, Durga<->Jersey parallel matters; because it is a correlation between two pairs of entities that seems unlikely to be purely chance. The communication between father and son (or lack thereof) when father is in deep space, and the jazz itself are irrelevant. The jazz and mention of buoy-deployment are merely flags that allow us to see the connection. I have edited my original post to express that part of it more clearly, and I appreciate your input because it has shown me how poorly I expressed that part of my thinking.

Extrasonic wrote:

Hopefully, xnbomb, this was more in line with your expectations.

If someone is going to dismiss my ideas as ridiculous, I do expect their objections to be spelled out in detail rather than briefly and summarily. So, you're right, this is more in line with my expectations, and I'm very pleased we're having this discussion as we are, thank you. I would never suggest my ideas are exclusively correct, but I will defend them to the extent that I don't believe them to be so outside the realm of possibility as to be ridiculous, otherwise I would not have posted them. I do think we misunderstood each other quite badly initially, and things are getting clearer (at least for me). I think I can now see the fundamental points upon which we disagree, and I am comfortable with them being in the realm of interpretation and uncertainty that always accompanies speculation. I hope you feel the same way.

(Wow, five posts in one day. I've got to be more careful about posting my ideas, look what it leads to ... discussion of ideas Smile

)

_________________
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Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 11:00 pm

Extrasonic
Decorated

Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 233
Location: Suburban Chicago

Re: The Operator, Durga, and the Queen

xnbomb wrote:

Extrasonic wrote:

Ahh... now I get your meaning more clearly. This makes much more sense to me now, although I still can't agree that Melissa's curiosity would cause her to jeopardize her mission or her crew, Flea or no Flea, based on the in-game evidence. Even in her current state, reeling from whatever has happened to her, Melissa still recognizes that she's damaged, she still wants to repair herself, she still wants to find her crew, she still is prepared to use "shockingly excessive force" to protect the integrity of her mission, she still wants to keep a low profile and not expose herself to potential enemy detection, and she still wants to fight off whatever is that is causing her to regurgitate these memories. Her mantra/mission may have been corrupted to include "reveal", but she's a fighter. Again, I'll invoke the Sleeping Princess' description of the Flea "whispering in [Melissa's] ear" - it's curious that she chose that wording rather than any other metaphor. It would suggest (to me, anyway) that the Princess wanted to convey the concept that the Flea was providing unwise council more than asserting direct control.

xnbomb wrote:

As to GunsmithCat's contribution, I'm very pleased to hear from someone who knows something about digital entities in the Haloverse, but I feel the need to point out that the Operator is not Cortana, nor should we assume she is just like her or other AIs from the Haloverse. We won't know exactly what the Operator is until they tell us more about her (if they ever do so). Any notions about the Operator's nature that are based on what is known of other AIs in the Haloverse are speculative; albeit speculation that is backed by an existing canon. That does not make them certain, though.

I grant you that pre-existing Halo lore isn't enough to rule out possibilities within this story - the characters that we're dealing with could be unique or could posess previously unknown characteristics. This notion of Melissa "moving" to another system has more than that going against it, though - I don't think either GunsmithCat or I simply pointed to Cortana and said "QED". Excerpted from your own critical points:

xnbomb wrote:

-The Operator can use network connections to move through/access networked systems

It's a given using only ilovebees.com in-game clues that both Melissa and Durga can access other systems remotely, and both have a tie to a singular physical system at a time. (Melissa: Capt. Greene's ship, ilovebees.com; Durga: Jersey's computer)

If she didn't need to move to Jersey's computer to investigate, then why would she? This is especially difficult to accept as it would mean compromising her mission and her crew, neither of which she's given up on, right up to this very moment - despite her Flea infestation.

xnbomb wrote:

Your criticism has been useful to me in that it shows that I should have been more clear on why the Castaway<->Jersey, Operator<->Durga matters; because it is a correlation between two pairs of entities that seems unlikely to be purely chance. The communication between father and son (or lack thereof) when father is in deep space, and the jazz itself are irrelevant. The jazz and mention of buoy-deployment are merely flags that allow us to see the connection.

I agree, it is unlikely to be pure chance. The parallels are too strong. I even think that your ultimate conclusion - that Durga and Melissa are the same or parts of a whole - is a legitimate possibility (although I don't currently agree). I was merely taking issue with the way in which you reached that conclusion.

In the faux Durga monologue that you snipped, I raised some serious points that make the sequence of events leading up to your conclusion implausible to me:

Point one: Durga is too full-featured to be a subprocess, child process, or otherwise "part" of Melissa

-Durga has a wide range of skills that we presume Melissa also has, not the least of which are killing Genie and the two Navy sentinels, and one skill in particular - hacking - that we know they both share
-Durga also knows some things instinctually, like how to speak English, how to fight with other programs, how to hack, how to recognize naval ranks and software, what it feels like to be on a bigger system, how to defend herself, that she likes to find things out, that her name is important, etc.

Point two: Durga is too ignorant of The Castaway and too indifferent to his child to be a copy, subprocess, or other extension of Melissa devoted to researching The Castaway or his interests

-In the timing of your spec, Melissa had drinks with Jersey's dad (shortly?) before this event, which is why she's interested and sending a subprocess to get more
-Durga reads all of Jersey's dad's file and if anything rings a bell, she doesn't let on
-Durga doesn't hammer Jersey with a lot of questions, and in fact seemed content to ignore him before he asked her to "lock" on to him

Point three: Jersey suspects "programming wierdness" as the reason behind Durga's inability to make queries about herself.

-Jersey seems pretty technically competent, with the implication that he reconditioned his own avatar, and by nature of living with AIs everyday is probably more qualified than we are to spec on this
-Jersey suggests that Durga's condition is due to "spooky programming wierdness", not anything else
-Meta-wise, why would a writer add that dialogue if it wasn't meaningful?

xnbomb wrote:

(Wow, five posts in one day. I've got to be more careful about posting my ideas, look what it leads to ... discussion of ideas Smile

)

I think it's very useful to force people to think critically about things as it causes a more thorough re-examination of the evidence we've been provided and challenges people to deepen their understanding. Good spec, whether it's right or wrong, will make you understand the game better simply by virtue of thinking about things and deciding whether or not you agree or disagree with the view that's been presented. By that definition, this has most certainly been good spec.

Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 12:29 am

Extrasonic
Decorated

Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 233
Location: Suburban Chicago

raw19 wrote:

GunsmithCat wrote:

No, because if she had the ability to beam herself like your suggesting, she would just beam herself to another construct, like the Pillar of Autumn.

What do you mean? We all can see a reason she couldn't transfer herself to the planet... we're told that she can't. (Or it's at least strongly implied.)

Melissa wrote:

"I might be compromised," I said to her.

"I still want to know what you think. When could it have been introduced?"

"The Covenant transmission?"

"Maybe they suspect were monitoring them."

"A virus piggybacking," she said. "Could they do that? Their systems are so much different than ours."

"We've reverse engineered their systems," I said. "And they have clearly reverse engineered some of ours."

(emphasis added)

Capt. Greene says, unequivocally, that an AI or virus piggybacking on a transmission would be "so much different" than human technology that she wonders if the Covenant could even pull it off.

Therefore, human AIs don't move that way, using only in-game evidence. Hopefully this puts the "Melissa sent herself over slipspace" theory to rest. Maybe, maybe Melissa got moved around over slipspace due to the mysterious object in the hold, but it would have been due to an accident or sabotage; it couldn't have been her intention because it's beyond her capabilities.

Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 8:24 am

raw19
Boot

Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 61

Extrasonic wrote:

Melissa wrote:

"Could they do that? Their systems are so much different than ours"

"We've reverse engineered their systems," I said. "And they have clearly reverse engineered some of ours."

I understood these two quotes to bring quesiton to whether the Covenant have the ability to design a virus that would infect a human AI, not their ability to piggyback a transmission.

Even if it is about piggybacking, Capt. Greene uses the explanation that they reversed engineered our technology, so maybe it is possible. That would mean they figured out how we do it, so maybe they have the ability to do it too.

Think about it. Today we have the ability to send computer programs across the planet using wireless and satallite communications. If something goes wrong with the space station's computers, we can fix the programming, and send it new programming from the surface of the planet. Heck, we have the ability to upload new programming to the Mars Rover!
Granted, an AI is a far more advance program, but it's still a program. There's nothing physical about them. Software.
I'm not saying she was sent over slipstream from deep space, my theory goes she was sent from the Apacalypso while it was in orbit. She got onto Jersey's computer somehow. It is much more feasible that she got there remotely than someone breaking in and installing a chip onto his computer.

Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 9:59 am
Last edited by raw19 on Fri Sep 03, 2004 10:07 am; edited 1 time in total

gheritt
Boot

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 58

edit: Well shucks, raw19 and I were writing much the same thing, at the same time. Post withdrawn to reduce clutter.

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Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 10:00 am

Extrasonic
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Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 233
Location: Suburban Chicago

raw19 wrote:

I see how you could interpret the statement by Capt. Greene differently - that's reasonable. I still think the "that" about which Capt. Greene asked if they could do is piggybacking. Capt. Greene doesn't seem surprised when Melissa says she might be compromised - the good Captain simply asks "When could it have been introduced?" This tells me that the idea that an AI can get infected isn't news. The piggybacking comment, though, gets the "can they do that?" treatment. I dunno, that's just my interpretation.

I'm in complete agreement with you that Durga got on to Jersey's computer remotely and wasn't physically planted there. You think she came from the Apocolypso, I think she came from a virtual cage in the military base when the power went out (hence the chasing by the two Navy sentinels). Either way, I have to grant that she did move somehow, but as I said in my previous post, it was probably by accident or malicious design rather than by her own conscious intent, since that doesn't seem to be an inherent property of human AIs. Of course, if Durga isn't of human orgin, or was captured and reprogrammed/infected by the enemy, then all bets are off re:her capabilities.

Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 10:39 am

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