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

[WILD SPEC] Princess as Forerunner AI/copy of Melissa

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Martin The Great
Greenhorn

Joined: 28 Aug 2004
Posts: 7

Ack.

I've done some searching (which I should've done before I posted, silly newbish me) and found out that SP refers to some sort of 'before' (the 404). So I guess she arrived with Melissa, but I still think that the server itself is involved somehow (the 404 page and Si/glass reference, see one of my above posts). Maybe she had some sort of survival reflex/toolset which used the server to reconstruct SP. The question may be why didn't the Widow use the server...maybe some sort of xenophobia (as in 'don't use the primitive tech' or 'it may contain a virus')?

Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2004 5:58 pm

johnny5
Entrenched

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

Platonix wrote:

I was following right along and thinking, "Wow, this is great spec," right up until SP became Durga. Now I need to check to make sure I understand. The Forerunner AI assimilates some of Melissa to increase its own power, including the SERE protocol and knowledge of Navy Sentinels (and possibly feminine nature,) and then the Forerunner AI (without Melissa) winds up in Jersey's PC, apparently for the heck of it?

Not entirely. I'm thinking that Durga is the symbiot+host of SP and Melissa.
SP is blocking Melissa from looking at her memory. Like in those alien horror movies where the mind of the person being controlled is suppressed so the host can do the alien's bidding.

Platonix wrote:

She has access to the knowledge she gained from the Operator, but for some reason has no clue who she was before being released from the osmium case and into Melissa's system...she had to be something before taking in some of Melissa's data.

She was a procedural AI parasite virus. Isolated and encased in the osmium. SP can also stand for Symbiotic Parasite. (OK, I'm reaching a bit there.)

Platonix wrote:

STEP 2. THEN A MIRACLE OCCURS. (This is an allusion so obscure that you should probably just ignore it.) Somehow, The Forerunner AI, this time with Melissa, winds up in the past. Obviously we don't know how exactly the time travel occurred, but we must also wonder why Melissa and the Forerunner AI are now back together ([METASPEC]perhaps only a copy of the Forerunner AI went to Jersey's PC? This might help explain why its original data wasn't along for the ride.[/METASPEC]) SPDR starts repairing Melissa, and incidentally 'repairs' the Forerunner AI (who finally gets a name, the Sleeping Princess, from the prose version it manages to weave of SPDR's activation.) Poor SP is now even worse off than she was on Jersey's PC, because both her original data and most of what she learned from Melissa's system (SERE, the English Language, etc...) is gone, and only basic spy and evasion routines remain. She doesn't even have enough logic functionality to act remotely mature, even after she's pretty much regained English fluency. [METASPEC]Perhaps this could be because SPDR doesn't realize it's operating on two AIs at once, and so makes an even worse mess of SP's memory than Melissa's?[/METASPEC]
But, wait. When SPDR awakens on ILB, it does detect SP...and it can't access her. She seems to be in her glass coffin even then. That kinda nukes the whole "SPDR repairing SP" thing.

If you subscribe to the [SPEC] that the events happening in Jersey's (et. al) time are concurrent with ours, and also rely on the assumption that SP is expanding her reach and broadcasting herself to other systems, then she is both on ILB, and on Jersey's machine.
One thing I missed on the Wiki (which forces a modification to my spec) is that she had to have arrived intact. This supports the theory that she brought Melissa to ILB.

Princeofthesword's "Caretaker AI" hypothesis also fits the data.

As to the osmium. When they said "Not pure osmium all the way through " I took it to mean that the object was made of pure osmium, but it wasn't all the way through the object due to other properties being found.

In any case, I don't think I trust the SP. I feel she is sucessfully manipulating us into helping her through the guise of the innocent and oppressed, and by embracing Dana after realizing that we are trying to help her restore the server.

Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 12:24 am

Astald
Unfettered

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

[Humor]

Quote:

Amazing Spider-Man always find themselves in predicaments like this.

No wonder the Sleeping Princess said that, she's Venom!
I think the Sleeping Princess will be someone we would have never expected her to be, be she a symbiotic parasite, or something else, who knows yet.

Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 12:38 am

Platonix
Decorated

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

Okay, "symbiotic parasite" is an oxymoron. A parasite feeds off the host, to the host's detriment. A symbiote creates a partnership that is supposed to be beneficial to both parties. Pick one already.

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

Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:47 pm

chaotic_mind
Unfettered

Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 325
Location: Inside my head, behind the eyes

Platonix wrote:

Okay, "symbiotic parasite" is an oxymoron. A parasite feeds off the host, to the host's detriment. A symbiote creates a partnership that is supposed to be beneficial to both parties.

Not necessarily.

I'm no biologist, but I did look up the definition of symbiosis.

American Heritage Dictionary wrote:

Biology. A close, prolonged association between two or more different organisms of different species that may, but does not necessarily, benefit each member.

An analysis of the roots involved in the word (sym-biosis) indicates that it means "living together". People do that all the time. Doesn't mean it's beneficial or happy.

As I learned, parasitism can be an example of symbiosis.

So technically, symbiotic parasite isn't contradictory in a strict biological sense. They become contradictory when you take into account of the connotation scientific words taken out of the scientific environment.

Just being pedantic, I know.

Luke P.

Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 3:08 pm

GunsmithCat
Unfettered

Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459

chaotic_mind wrote:

I'm not sure she is horribly unreliable. Playful, yes. Arrogant, yes. Unreliable...perhaps. But she seems to be doing her best to give us information that is comprehensible. Direct answers. In my mind, there's not enough evidence either way to make a judgement.

Unreliable in the sense that she seems unable of a direct answer. Ask her for name, she'll tell you she can't remember and move on to another allegory. Ask for an age, and she may or may not be answering you directly or truthfully, it might still be allegory, metaphor or misintrepretation and we don't have any real method of deciphering it.

Let's pick apart the meat of her last revelations-

Quote:

The Queen wants to smother me. The Queen wants to lock me up.

Well, we still have no idea what this mean. Smother her? AND lock her up? Wouldn't one or the other do the job?

Quote:

And I am not her daughter.

Is she contradicting herself here? Hasn't she referred to Queen as a "voodoo parent" ... doesn't the whole Princess/Queen metaphor imply this anyway? I wouldn't say she is lying here, per se, but it certainly brings her truthfulness into doubt.

Quote:

I'm a lot older than I look, Angela. That's not something I remember, that's something I just know.

But she won't tell us how old. Older than seven, as is indicated by her killer.jpg embeds? Impossible unless there's more evidence we're not given yet.

Quote:

I'm older than the Flea

How would she know how old Flea is?

Quote:

and I'm older than the Queen

Heck. How does she know how old Queen is? This is what makes me think there's much more here than she is letting on.

Quote:

and it was bad day for them when the coffin cracked and I got out because I'm never going back there again. I'm a survivor I play to win and I will die before I go back again.

She once referred to herself as sleeping. Course, voodoo/coffin/casket really makes it sound like she was dead. Maybe dying is how she gets put back there anyway? She's almost certainly talking in metaphor here, somehow, but again refuses to give us any real indication of how to intrepret it.

Quote:

I had another name once, but I lost it.

And that seques into the whole "Perdita" bit, which if anything just throws even MORE allegory to the fire, still impossible to intrept.

Look at this way, without the proper "key" or information, Wizard of Oz is just the story of a farmgirl having a really nasty dream. With the proper information, it's an in-depth depiction of working class Americans in their political battles against the wealthy.

Princess refuses to give us that "key", or even really parts of it, and without she's pretty unreliable. Maybe her identity is one of the unsolved puzzles and we're missing clues right in front of us, but the mention of Princess is fleeting unless it's autobiographical.

Quote:

It is that, but it's also not invulnerable. A simple fusion reactor going critical was able to damage Halo enough to destroy it. They were intensely paranoid of the Flood. And, for all that power, the Forerunner have still vanished.

I think the Princess may've been damaged, as Melissa was, by the crash. The extent or permance of that damage, is as always, is a mystery to us.

Well 343 Guilty Spark was nearly invulnerable if not completely.

Trust me. I tried Smile

As for the Forerunner disappearing, 343 himself suggests that they probably did that to themselves (with a little help from him).

It just seems odd that one of the least powerful characters would come from the most powerful technology. Or that she refrains from any of the references that 343 makes when it comes to humans, humankind and our history.

I still think this is good spec, I just think Princess's nature itself makes it wildly troublesome.

Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 5:43 pm

Aelith
Decorated

Joined: 21 Jul 2004
Posts: 153
Location: Missouri

[quote="GunsmithCat"]I can't help but to have some doubts on SP being Forerunner.

1) Osmium alloys doesn't sound very glasslike to me
2) The dimensions of the artifact don't seem very coffin or casket-like either
3) We don't have any reasons -why- a Forerunner artifact would create SP.
4) Forerunner tech is generally wildly powerful. SP isn't.
5) If it was a Forerunner AI itself ... seems the artifact would more closely describe Guilty Spark's physical construct than say, a manhole.

Evil or Very Mad

I've seen this several times. AIs don't need a 6'x3' space. Something as small as a modernday CPU or laptop would do for containment. AIs, like water, shape themselves to their environment. / rant]

_________________
Looking forward

Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 6:29 pm

GunsmithCat
Unfettered

Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459

Aelith wrote:

I've seen this several times. AIs don't need a 6'x3' space. Something as small as a modernday CPU or laptop would do for containment. AIs, like water, shape themselves to their environment. / rant]

I wasn't suggesting they did, I was merely saying that if were to take any of coffin/casket/etc statements literally (which isn't necessary but some had) - the artifact doesn't fit.

I stick to the fifth point, though. As long as we are going on Haloverse knowledge, the artifact does not fit what we know about Forerunner AIs like 343 GS.

Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 6:38 pm

HitsHerMark
Unfictologist

Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 1521
Location: Austin, TX

GunsmithCat wrote:

Quote:

And I am not her daughter.

Perhaps "voodoo parent" is some sort of ... typo, when she ment to say something more like "step parent"?

English is not her native mode of communication, perhaps it's a linguistic thing...

GunsmithCat wrote:

Quote:

I'm a lot older than I look, Angela. That's not something I remember, that's something I just know.

But she won't tell us how old. Older than seven, as is indicated by her killer.jpg embeds? Impossible unless there's more evidence we're not given yet.

I agree, she's being rather cryptic here, but it's possible that she is telling us everything she knows herself about how old she is.

Why would older then seven be impossible? Because she's an AI? How is she counting her age here? Is she thinking in terms of how long she's been "running" all together, or how long it's been since she was "turned on" for the first time? If she's been "sleeping", then that means she's been "turned off" or in some sort of stasis. Time not spent learning, growing, and thinking would probably not count twords that seven year lifespan before she "thinks herself to death".

GunsmithCat wrote:

Quote:

I'm older than the Flea

How would she know how old Flea is?

Quote:

and I'm older than the Queen

Heck. How does she know how old Queen is? This is what makes me think there's much more here than she is letting on.

I'm a terrible judge of age, but when I see somebody who is younger then me, I can usually tell that they are. Even if I can't venture a guess as to how old they actually are.

(snip snip)

GunsmithCat wrote:

It just seems odd that one of the least powerful characters would come from the most powerful technology.

Least powerfull? She can become fluent in the conversational form of a language in a matter of days. She can rebuff the P Flea's attemps to analyse and attach himself to her. She can out run and hide from the Queen. I'd say she's the MOST powerfull.

GunsmithCat wrote:

Or that she refrains from any of the references that 343 makes when it comes to humans, humankind and our history.

I still think this is good spec, I just think Princess's nature itself makes it wildly troublesome.

I didn't get that far in Halo I'm afraid. So I'm not sure what kind of references 343 made.

But perhaps they're simply two different kinds of AI, and so have different interests... While Guilty Spark made references to history (apparently), the Sleeping Prince makes references to fairy tales and children's stories.

Not really sure where I'm going with this... But there you are. Very Happy

_________________
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GirlInFocus
flickr

Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 7:53 pm

GunsmithCat
Unfettered

Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459

HitsHerMark wrote:

(snip snip)

GunsmithCat wrote:

It just seems odd that one of the least powerful characters would come from the most powerful technology.

Queen has direct access to memories, SP has to read Queen's diary or reveal Queen's secrets. SP doesn't seem to have much of her own. Queen/Durga are clearly powerful espionage AIs, SP is limited to watching Flea, Queen and SPDR. Queen can make phone calls, SP is still hiding messages. Flea and SPDR might be limited, but they are at least highly efficient.

Her ability to dissuade Flea probably comes from her advantage of knowing much of his existence.

Basically SP only seems to have one goal - to communicate with us ... and she's pretty bad at it. We're not even sure she "learned" a language so much as remembered it. And there are lots of indications that without us, or at least ILB - she'd still be mute.

Quote:

Let's just say 343 GS is quite gleeful to see "us" and get a chance to read up a bit on human history. This seems to stem from him being a Forerunner and perhaps because he's made a connection between us and them ... presumably any Forerunner AI would have a similar reaction.

Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 8:12 pm

drizjr
Unfictologist

Joined: 28 Nov 2003
Posts: 1700

voodoo parents

About "voodoo parents":
At the time SP wrote that, she was taking bits and pieces from emails that we sent her.
In this thread [SPEC] voodoo parents, voodoo witch doctors source, quazaplat, found this quote:

Quote:

No voodoo witch doctors have ever put together a home video warning voodoo parents of the seductive danger of Christian rock.

Temporis posted "I use that quote in my sig when I email..."
So the word "voodoo" probably didn't mean much to SP at the time. It was just her way to try to communicate then.

_________________
______________________
No one knows everything, everyone knows something. -- Pierre Levy

Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 8:59 pm

Platonix
Decorated

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

GunsmithCat wrote:

Quote:

The Queen wants to smother me. The Queen wants to lock me up.

Well, we still have no idea what this mean. Smother her? AND lock her up? Wouldn't one or the other do the job?

The Princess fears/loathes containment to a sufficient degree that she equates locking up with smothering. One is the other.

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

Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 2:16 pm

Bobeo
Boot

Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 50

GunsmithCat wrote:

Look at this way, without the proper "key" or information, Wizard of Oz is just the story of a farmgirl having a really nasty dream. With the proper information, it's an in-depth depiction of working class Americans in their political battles against the wealthy.

Wait, The Wizard of Oz isnt just a story about a farm girl having a nasty dream. I never knew it was a satire/allegory. Seriously. That movie just became a little interesting.

Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 6:50 pm

GunsmithCat
Unfettered

Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459

Bobeo wrote:

GunsmithCat wrote:

Wait, The Wizard of Oz isnt just a story about a farm girl having a nasty dream. I never knew it was a satire/allegory. Seriously. That movie just became a little interesting.

Well it might not be the -best- example, since Baum denies any allegory and that it's all fairy tale - but:

http://www.turnmeondeadman.net/OZ/Intro.html

The real problem with Baum's refutation is that most fairy tales are, in some sense, allegory. Even if it's not the author's main intent, the symbolism generally used in fairy tales generally carry connotation beyond their literal meaning.

And on a side note, if you never want to look at a pig's head on a stake the same way again - read some of the annotated versions of Lord of the Flies .... *shivers*

Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 7:22 pm

fivecentfamily
Boot

Joined: 07 Nov 2002
Posts: 33
Location: Glendale, AZ

Re: voodoo parents

drizjr wrote:

So the word "voodoo" probably didn't mean much to SP at the time. It was just her way to try to communicate then.

OR, it meant to her just what it meant in the context of the quote it was from. It describes the "belief system" of the parents. To most, a rather 'different' belief system.

So perhaps she meant that the Queen was like her parent, but with a completely different belief system or AGENDA than she has. So, she's saying the queen (Melissa) is an AI like me, but not with the same purpose.

As for using the word 'parent', I think this was just the beginning of the SP characterizing herself as the 'heroine Princess', and Melissa as the 'evil Queen step-mother'.

Wadya think?

_________________
-Ken-
You hear a strange buzzing in your head ... "Hey, you fell asleep at the computer ..... AGAIN!"

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 11:14 am

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