unforum

[Rob]

So, for uncharted (ducking the flying trout), what do you make of this typo:

[Mazian]

Well, after a few people posting these, and for them all seemingly to be body part related, I think this should get moved to puzzle and a list of all the incorrect sentences put in one place to view/discuss. This whole "5 pages" to pick out the key phrases while people are debating whether this is actually a puzzle or not is mind-bending.

Edit: Whups, there already is one. Go here

[SuperJerms]

[Cherry Cotton]

Oooh! Oooh! I'm going to be self-indulgent and pat myself on the back for being the first to say...

"I AM SO GOING TO PUT A RED BALLOON AT EVERY AXON I VISIT"

...and then have the conclusion to the SP's story involve nothing less than a red balloon on a payphone. Yeah, it could be nothing and I may be engaging in arrogant self-promotion, but...

Isn't a payphone an "ancient piece of technology?" (haha, Kamal, you in-joker you) Didn't Perdita previously leave balloons at "comm panels?" If I leave a red balloon at an axon that I just made go hot, could it, concievably, turn into a dancing robot?

Just my thoughts. (And please, PLEASE, hold your "how would Microsoft check every payphone for balloons?" comments, because I know full well it's a silly idea... and silly ideas are always the most fun! Come on! Let's lead the Red Balloon Revolution! Besides... the end of SP's story MOVED me to do this...) And, congratulations, HitsHerMark! I always thought you had a cool name.

...after a few minutes...

Oooh! Oooh! The red balloon at the payphone was at the end of the trail... maybe it's a metaphor for the elusive 777th axon? Maybe? Maybe? (maybe not...)

[Platonix]

[beechaser]

[spec] a dark ending?

[FauxHammer]

may i summarize? i came up with this on my own before i came here and realized you guys had also came to the same conclusion... but maybe if i type it out, there will be some new bits that you guys haven't covered yet. or at least more context.

surely the spec police will call me for switching sides, but here we go.

Everyone seems to be under the assumption that the flea is covenant, melissa/operator/durga is a human made AI, and that the princess is forerunner.

Also, a while back there was a theory that i shot down (or at least shot AT) that Kamal's sis might have been made into an AI. If we assume for a moment that it IS true, it gives me a chance to dump some interesting new speculation. So here it is. We'll call it the Hybrid AI Theory

So lets say (hypothetically of course...darkphan) Yasmine, Kamals sister, against all odds, was kidnapped by ONI, replaced with a genetically retarded clone, and made into an ai. Since she was a child, they probably trained her, conditioned her, and possibly brainwashed her for several years in preparation for becoming the best AI she could possibly be. So they made her into an AI, and she became melissa, Apocalypso's AI. I'mma tie this in to a lot of the text bits and stories from earlier phases.

I think a lot of the stories and riddles we have been given are allegorical descriptions of the same event, or at least related events. Some parallels are more obvious than others. We have what we know from the operator, what we we know from the wavs about the apocalypso, and what we know from the Sleeping Princess.

So first, the apocalypso intercepts this covenant transmission about glassing Troy, but they also get a trojan covenant AI--the Pious Flea. They bug out but pick up a funky forerunner suitcase artifact before they leave. We assume that like the artifact from First Strike, this artifact is capable of screwing up slipspace. So then they enter slipspace, but because it as a small ship, unlike the Ascendent Justice, it does not have sufficient mass to remain stable in the altered slipspace that the artifact creates, Perhaps in the space/time weirdness(a fell enchantment) the hull of the Apocalypso is breached ( broke apart a mighty castle) and the crew is killed in an explosive decompression (slaying many guards), and Melissa herself is heavily damaged.

At the point where the fell enchantment/slipspace weirdness gets to the Melissa, it extracts much of her core logic and "leaves but a hollow crown behind. So Melissa the AI gets split into two pieces. One piece, the hollow crown, somehow winds up on Aunt Margaret's web site, while the other piece winds up stored in the forerunner artifact that produced the fell enchantment. The core logic piece of Melissa is probably the better part of her "brain" and the other piece is probably a much smaller part of her "brain" and is mostly comprised of data storage. So now we have a bisected AI. One piece is mostly memory and one piece is mostly intellect. The memory piece, for whatever reason, winds up on iLB, and the thinking piece stays on the forerunner artifact and gets recovered by ONI on earth. More than likely ONI wants to disect this piece by piece for information, but she escapes from them and winds up on Jersey's Palm Pilot. She is no longer connected to most of her databanks, so thats why she doesnt know who she is or where she came from, and Jersey names her Durga.

Then we got the other piece of Melissa. This piece somehow winds up in our time. It is pretty heavily damaged SPDR/Widow takes a long time to get it working again. Melissa is basically dead, but the widow slowly repairs her.

But the part of Melissa that winds up on ILB also has some other things that go with it... Namely the Princess and the Flea. So what happens when melissa is damaged, is the princess wakes up. She has said a couple times that she was sleeping until the damage occured and cannot remember what was before that.

What if the princess, durga, AND melissa are all just different parts of the same AI, which was based off of Yasmine. Melissa, after all, remembers being sombeone else, and remembers playing on the beach with her brother. Durga can't remember anything becuase she is cut off from the data storage parts of melissa. She does seem to have a vague interest in Kamal though. But then there is the Princess... the SLEEPING princess. Maybe the princess is the part of Yasmine that is still the Yasmine that Kamal remembers. The human part. That explains why SP acts like a little kid. Melissa has been programmed to suppress the Yasmine part of her mind, which is why SP has been sealed in coffin and only escapes when melissa is heavily damaged.


The Queen wants to smother me. The Queen wants to lock me up. And I am
not her daughter. I'm a lot older than I look, Angela. That's not
something I remember, that's something I just know. I'm older than the
Flea and I'm older than the Queen 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.

I had another name once, but I lost it

She is older because she is the foundation of the Queen. She's a survivor, and she plays to win. Sound a lot like Yasmine?

Then we also have these stories that the SP is telling us. Perhaps the SP is telling us Perdita's story as a sort of parable. Maybe she only sort of sub consciously remembers her human life, and those subconscious memories are influencing the story that she "makes up". Perhaps Perdita represents the Princess's--or Yasmine's--journey toward becoming an AI. That is she is separated from her family and slowly her human parts are replaced with the parts of a machine. It's a story about how Yasmine became Sleeping Princess. Maybe SP doesnt even realize that is what it is, stories aren't just "made up". They are always drawn from something, and inspired by something.

so here is the theory math.

Durga+Operator+Princess = Melissa
Princess = Yasmine
the fell enchantment = Slipspace altering powers of the Forerunner artifact
Apocalypso = the Queens "Castle"
castle guards = Apocalypso's crew
Hollow crown = operator part of melissa
durga = the part of melissa that was NOT left behind by the enchantment
Perdita represents Yasmine
Perdita's beauty and vanity represents Yasmine's above average-ness
Perdita's body parts being replaced with tools and utensils represents Yasmine's transformation into an AI


trout me if you like, but there was no way i was going to decide not to post that after spending half an hour typing it out :p

It does all tie together nicely though...

[Platonix]

Ah, there you are! Reposting my reply to the original posting:

How about "what happens to all lost children" = What happens to all kidnapped-and-flashcloned children that end up failing the SPARTAN program?

[clamatius]

My theory is that Perdita's story is simply an allegory of Melissa's story.

Breakdown of specifics is [URL=http://ilb.extrasonic.com/index.php/Spec:_Meaning_of_Perdita%27s_Story]here[/URL], on the [URL=http://ilb.extrasonic.com]Fireflies Wiki[/URL].

I'll fill in more details and matches between the two as time permits - I'm sure there's more I'm missing.

[Astald]

The SP uses the term 'buzz' again in this update.

[FauxHammer]

allrighty, i read the last 5 pages. IF you take out all the parts that repeat what has already been said, this is the gist of my theory.

What if SP is actually a PART of melissa. A repressed memory, so to speak, of what she was before she was an ai. SP could be the human part of the operator. She is the part of Melissa that is still Yasmine. So saying that melissa, durga, AND SP are all parts of the same whole, we can see why they ALL have evidence of being yasmine. Durga is fascinated with Kamal, Melissa has those memories of playing on the beach, and of course SP acts like a little girl and tells stories about little girls who are being slowly turned into machines. Just that Melissa has been programmed to suppress her childlike/human parts, hence SP was locked away in a glass coffin, only to escape when Melissa was damaged. The reason of course that she says she is OLDER than Melissa because she is the only part of the electronic trinity that still retains the heart and soul of what Yasmine was, and Yasmine is the foundation of the whole AI--Durga, Operator, and Sleeping Princess.

Possibly the reason SP was locked away is because ONI didn't want Melissa to have any emotional baggage that might distract her from her goals.

Make sense?

[Just_A_Memory]

The characters in these events are from close to 500 - 600 years in the future.. my speculation if it hasn't already been mentioned.. and if it has please overlook this.. my spec is that the sleeping princess could even possibly be dana.. in the future.. it is possible.. I mean the Queen is still angry with dana for trying to destroy her and deleting her memory.. what if after we hit 777 the queen admits that she has been on to us all along.. and instead of focusing on sp.. she focuses on dana.. this goes with my spec before about the lack of real bees ( queens crew ).. people have been talking about at the axons that people have come by and pick up and hang up the phones.. what if this in reality is her crew.. and she leading us with axons.. gaining OUR trust.. and she is just using us for location of dana.. I mean.. us the beekeepers brought dana back.. and her blog is at the very opening of the page.. why could the queen follow through that blog if the sp can read all of our emails? she could read it and know that dana is somewhere in Japan.. what if the whole time we have been trying to defend dana.. we are actually hurting her.. REVEALING her position.. the truth.

[Mazian]

[OT="majorly"]

[SuperJerms]

The point being, that if anything, Verizon is renting SBC's lines.

While I'm on the subject, Verizon will be going out of business in the next six years, unless there's a radical change in their business plan. You heard it here first.

Not that I can see any correlation in the line-owners to the game whatsoever. Even if the PM's wanted to make a puzzle from it, the telecom lines and service providers sheme is too convoluted for even Stephen Hawkings to figure it out

[Mazian]