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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates
[SPEC] The Truth - Central Story of ILB
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clamatius
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 		[SPEC] The Truth - Central Story of ILB
There's a lot of talking in ILB about "The Truth". The Flea wants to reveal it. Melissa doesn't want Durga to know it. And so on.

Here's the spec: "The Truth" is simply that ONI knew about Troy being attacked before it was glassed, but didn't reveal it to protect their intelligence source. Millions of innocent lives sacrificed.

Given that one piece of spec a lot of things fall into place. Now the main characters in the story are really Herzog and Standish - the whole story is about the conflict between them. Almost all the characters stories now fit together.

Standish represents the faction of ONI that wants to cover-up the Truth - ends justify the means and he wants to win the war no matter what. Herzog wants to reveal the Truth - he is angry and disgusted that this sacrifice could be made.

Herzog leaks information indirectly so that a junior investigator (Rani) in another department finds out about marines on Troy - the first step to the Truth. Standish tries to have Rani killed to cover up the leak but Herzog's security saves her - Herzog has justification since Standish's "wetwork" wasn't authorized. Jan, Gillie and James James story ties in because of James James's "black taxi" carrying McKaskill, who's in hiding. Standish's cover-up operation has already killed Captain Greene of the Apocalypso and tried but failed to take out McKaskill too.

Jersey's story is tied in because his father is the Castaway, Jason Morelli. It also gives us information on Durga and some justification for the Melissa in our time hearing all this stuff.

Ok, now a little more spec.

  • In this version, the Pious Flea is probably not a Covenant AI after all, but a human-made AI introduced into Melissa's system intended to rewrite her secrecy goals to reveal the Truth. The Flea would be introduced by one of Herzog's faction, probably Herzog himself (see Shad0's spec) Jason Morelli but possibly McKaskill. Remember that Melissa is very ruthless and would almost certainly be in Standish's camp.
  • Durga is probably a copy of Melissa sent to Jersey by Jason - and it may well be that the mysterious Artifact caused the copy to split in time, one part landing in 2004 and one in the future.


There are two major missing pieces remaining: the nature of the Sleeping Princess and the link to Kamal's story. Aside from that, the Truth spec I describe seems to tie up most of the missing information. I think to join those final pieces you have to make some pretty wild spec without more information.

{edit}Added link to Shad0's relevant and likely spec.{/edit}

>I want the truth!
You can't handle the truth!
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 2:38 pm
Last edited by clamatius on Tue Oct 05, 2004 3:56 pm; edited 1 time in total
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SuperJerms
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 		Good stuff.

I was looking into the idea that ONI could be the makers of PF, and two things occured to me. First, there's ONI Tech Kowalski. We know he's a fibber. The question might be, is he a spook? It can go either way:


1) He's a spook with a mission to slip a virus into Melissa's system. Intel Tech makes the perfect cover identity. He's installing the PF into Melissa's mainframe, when along wanders Midshipman Arrelts. Uh-oh, she saw you tinkering with the mainframe. Quick! Be dashing! Distract her from asking what you were doing! Hit on her! ... <Spin the Bottle lie>

2) He's a low-level technician. Herzog's M.O. is to pass along smaller tasks to low-level ONI personel. He arranged for Kowalski to install an update/patch/fix for the Operator (with a small PF encoded into the fix). Along comes Arrelts, he starts hitting on her.


Ok, second. I found this little snippet before the Kowalski stuff:

Quote:
A patient should be able to stop the doctor from /// cutting off her foot to make a new nose or


[SPDR: INTERRUPT]

[SURRENDER CONTROL]

[PROBE IN PROGRESS]


the white coats

coming at you with

their needles and

knives, their kind

and serious voices.

Their heartfelt

belief that it's

all for a good

cause.


[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]

[RESUME CONTROL]


elbow or... Jesus.

Where did THAT come from?

Spider stuck a probe into SOMETHING I don't recognize at all.

Of course, what do I /// recognize?


Could this unrecognized memory dump be related to the Princess (following the spec that SP is a part of Melissa)? That would explain why M doesn't recognize it...it's been locked away inside of her for her entire existence.


One thing this theory doesn't do is address how Melissa ended up back in our time. And maybe the truth includes the artifact?

(all of the above was pulled from http://ilb.extrasonic.com/index.php/Phase_2_Operator%27s_Monologue
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 3:00 pm
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Arana
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 		Re: [SPEC] The Truth - Central Story of ILB
clamatius wrote:
There's a lot of talking in ILB about "The Truth". The Flea wants to reveal it. Melissa doesn't want Durga to know it. And so on.

Here's the spec: "The Truth" is simply that ONI knew about Troy being attacked before it was glassed, but didn't reveal it to protect their intelligence source. Millions of innocent lives sacrificed.

Given that one piece of spec a lot of things fall into place. Now the main characters in the story are really Herzog and Standish - the whole story is about the conflict between them. Almost all the characters stories now fit together.

Standish represents the faction of ONI that wants to cover-up the Truth - ends justify the means and he wants to win the war no matter what. Herzog wants to reveal the Truth - he is angry and disgusted that this sacrifice could be made.

Herzog leaks information indirectly so that a junior investigator (Rani) in another department finds out about marines on Troy - the first step to the Truth. Standish tries to have Rani killed to cover up the leak but Herzog's security saves her - Herzog has justification since Standish's "wetwork" wasn't authorized. Jan, Gillie and James James story ties in because of James James's "black taxi" carrying McKaskill, who's in hiding. Standish's cover-up operation has already killed Captain Greene of the Apocalypso and tried but failed to take out McKaskill too.

Jersey's story is tied in because his father is the Castaway, Jason Morelli. It also gives us information on Durga and some justification for the Melissa in our time hearing all this stuff.

Ok, now a little more spec.

  • In this version, the Pious Flea is probably not a Covenant AI after all, but a human-made AI introduced into Melissa's system intended to rewrite her secrecy goals to reveal the Truth. The Flea would be introduced by one of Herzog's faction, probably Jason Morelli but possibly McKaskill. Remember that Melissa is very ruthless and would almost certainly be in Standish's camp.
  • Durga is probably a copy of Melissa sent to Jersey by Jason - and it may well be that the mysterious Artifact caused the copy to split in time, one part landing in 2004 and one in the future.


There are two major missing pieces remaining: the nature of the Sleeping Princess and the link to Kamal's story. Aside from that, the Truth spec I describe seems to tie up most of the missing information. I think to join those final pieces you have to make some pretty wild spec without more information.

>I want the truth!
You can't handle the truth!


There is a lot of great stuff in your post. I like your overall theory a lot. However, I really disagree with Melissa being on Standish's side. First she is more loyal to her crew than to anything else. She cried when she learned of Greene's death, and Standish was very likely the one who ordered that (consistent your overall theory). Melissa would kill Standish for this. Also, in this_new_voice Durga says "someone almost killed me". Durga/Melissa/SP was part of the crew and probably Standish was trying to eliminate her just like McKaskill, Greene and Rani! It just didn't work. I like your idea of PF coming from Herzog!

SP is likely the persona of Yasmine, Kamal's sister. As Kamal learns about flash clones from his interactions with Aiden in the current clips he will eventually put two and two together with the information from Durga about how brain ninjas steal kids at age 6 to make AI's to figure this out! Also, the SP may be the voices that Durga is hearing, and these will clue her in independently. I can't wait to hear "Yasmine" later today!
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 3:17 pm
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TridenT
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 		Re: [SPEC] The Truth - Central Story of ILB
Arana wrote:

SP is likely the persona of Yasmine, Kamal's sister. As Kamal learns about flash clones from his interactions with Aiden in the current clips he will eventually put two and two together with the information from Durga about how brain ninjas steal kids at age 6 to make AI's to figure this out! Also, the SP may be the voices that Durga is hearing, and these will clue her in independently. I can't wait to hear "Yasmine" later today!


We were already pretty certain of this, but now it's becoming more and more apparent.

However, I am almost certain that the voices Durga is hearing is PF, doing his !transmit Sector 5 stuff. Now Durga can hear him talking in herear, too.

PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 3:29 pm
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clamatius
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 		Yep, the Yasmine thing sounds about right. That would also conveniently wrap up the two missing things I mentioned in one shot.

Yes, I realise that Melissa wants to protect her crew - she'd almost certainly not be with Standish on that (he'd have to keep it from her). But she is very ruthless and I definitely think she's in the "ends justifies the means" camp. Also, if she was on Herzog's side, there'd be no need for the Flea.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 3:47 pm
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Ceantari
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 		Re: [SPEC] The Truth - Central Story of ILB
clamatius wrote:
Jersey's story is tied in because his father is the Castaway, Jason Morelli. It also gives us information on Durga and some justification for the Melissa in our time hearing all this stuff.


So if Durga was dropped by Jersey's father, wouldn't she have recognized his dad by now or remembered stuff regarding him? All she's done was kept data on his current status away from Jersey. Nothing about his past connections/associations. Why hasn't Jason Morelli ran the bell yet in Durga's memories?

Kinda unsual way to drop your son an AI: have it infilitrate into an existing computer system, purge its AI, and dwell in its spot. Why not deliver the memory crystal? Much survelliance difficulty enroute? And crashing a system isn't any suspicious?
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 3:54 pm
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clamatius
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 		You are correct in that this is a weak point. I'm not sure that it is Jason who sends Durga to Jersey. Someone clearly does though!

But you would agree that the links from Jersey to the other stories are (a) Durga and (b) Jersey's father being the Castaway? It does seem to me that these have to be the key tie-ins for that section of the story.

On a sidenote, I would like to apologise to our moderators for starting a new thread on this - I looked but missed the thread [URL=http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6871]here[/URL] that my post should have gone in. Embarassed
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 4:07 pm
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SuperJerms
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 		How about, she sent herself to Jersey.

Standish tried to kill her. She doesn't know who it was. She needed to escape. She needed someone she could trust.

Melissa said that the Castaway was the sort of man that you knew was a good guy...but he's in outer space.

Maybe she could trust his son...
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 4:18 pm
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clamatius
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 		Not bad. Standish would certainly think of Melissa as another potential leak and try to tidy up that "loose end" too.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 4:20 pm
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SuperJerms
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http://www.thebruce.ca/ilovebees/TheAxons_TheCorps.asp wrote:
Lieutenant: Except that's not what you think.
Herzog: Of course it is.
Lieutenant: You think the records have been erased.
Herzog: Not at all.
Lieutenant: By someone from Section 3. Someone like Standish.
Herzog: Perish the thought.

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 4:24 pm
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Alzheimers
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 		I'm pretty sure this spec has been mentioned before, but it's a bit too general for search to find:

Quote:

courtesy dictionary.com:

Durga
n : goddess of war; a malevolent aspect of Devi; "the inaccessible"

Pious
adj: Having or exhibiting religious reverence; earnestly compliant in the observance of religion; devout.


Is it plausable that, due to damage sustained in the crash, the PF might just actually *be* an upgraded SPDR and that the goal 'modifications' we see the PF making to Melissa are actually part of Durga's search functions? If we take the SPEC that Durga and Melissa (and the SP) originate from the same AI, and that they maintain a communication link despite time and space differences, then it stands to reason that an unrecognized subroutine in Melissa's memory space that has a name that's religious in nature but not Alien in design would come from a source who's name corresponds to a Goddess?

Thus, the PF isn't malicious at all to humanity -- it's simply doing it's intended function now, which is to !transmit truth to the source -- Durga. So then what's SP's role in this? Why does she need to instigate the PF to send the Subject 5 data to Durga, instead of the flea doing it's job on it's own?

My guess is that while Melissa might be the one "hearing voices in its head", the Princess is the part of the AI that is responsible for making decisions and creating tasks for itself. Melissa would be the part responsible for acting on those decisions, and Durga would be the data organization function upon which the decisions are made.

Thus, the voices Melissa hears are actually data sent by the Durga AI (data) to the Sleeping Princess AI (processing), which would then make a decision based on that data and send the result to Melissa (execution creepy).

But, as a result of the crash and the damage sustained, each splinter of AI has instituted damage control in an effort to accomplish each's mission. The Durga AI, for example, is very good at finding information, but not good at making decisions on its own (hence, her reliance on Jersey) or executing more complicated escape maneuver (again, her reliance on Jersey). The Melissa AI is good at executing instructions (building bridges, transmitting data to it's crew) but not good at receiving data (crew members must submit requested info via phone) and *definitely* not good at processing the data (hence the easy takeover by PF). Finally, the Sleeping Princess had to regurgitate data that we sent (in previous phases) before it could even communicate, but just by the volume of data we sent her was able to generate an entire new Com protocol (English) to talk to us with. She has only recently started to generate her own data (Perdita's Story), before just intercepting from Melissa or being forcefed by us, and is still unable to do execute any commands herself.

The only link that they all have is the PF. I believe it's origin in from Durga, in an attempt to reconnect the fragments of the primary AI. However, because each fragment is now self-aware, it's functions may not be looked upon as friendly, and it's limited intelligence is mostly due to it's purpose -- only to "persuade", by lies or subversion or pleas to sanity, each piece of the puzzle to pull itself back together again, and not to become another competitor in this struggle for control.

Then again, I could be wrong.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 4:25 pm
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CountZero
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 		Re: [SPEC] The Truth - Central Story of ILB
Ceantari wrote:
clamatius wrote:
Jersey's story is tied in because his father is the Castaway, Jason Morelli. It also gives us information on Durga and some justification for the Melissa in our time hearing all this stuff.


So if Durga was dropped by Jersey's father, wouldn't she have recognized his dad by now or remembered stuff regarding him? All she's done was kept data on his current status away from Jersey. Nothing about his past connections/associations. Why hasn't Jason Morelli ran the bell yet in Durga's memories?

Kinda unsual way to drop your son an AI: have it infilitrate into an existing computer system, purge its AI, and dwell in its spot. Why not deliver the memory crystal? Much survelliance difficulty enroute? And crashing a system isn't any suspicious?


If Jersey's dad is the Castaway, and he sent Durga to Jersey, I think the 'memory block' that Durga is experiencing regarding Jersey's dad was intentionally placed there.

If Jersey knew that his dad was on the Apocalypso, he would probably start poking around to find out if he was alive. This would eventually have drawn the attention of Standish and his goons. So, not wanting to endanger his son he sends Durga to silently infiltrate and hide out in Jersey's system. Now Durga is in the hands of someone he can trust (his own son), and in a position to reveal the truth.

Not the most airtight of reasons, but it's serviceable.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 4:34 pm
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devolver
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 		Re: [SPEC] The Truth - Central Story of ILB
clamatius wrote:
There's a lot of talking in ILB about "The Truth". The Flea wants to reveal it. Melissa doesn't want Durga to know it.


THis is an interesting theory. On the Hives page, Melissa says:

The voices are related to the truth.
Durga does not understand the nature of the truth.
Durga must not interfere with the consummation of the truth.

So if the consummation of the truth is Troy being glassed, this would mean that Melissa wants it to happen, and Durga wants it to be stopped. It also seems to say that Durga already knows the truth--or at least Melissa thinks Durga does. Durga just doesn't understand why it's important that the truth "happens."

Not sure what this adds to the discussion, but I thought I'd point it out.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 4:36 pm
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clamatius
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Quote:
So if the consummation of the truth is Troy being glassed, this would mean that Melissa wants it to happen, and Durga wants it to be stopped.

No, Troy is already gone. I think the consummation of the truth may be that the same thing may be about to happen again.

If you want some wild spec, the end point of the game may be that the players manage to reveal the Truth and Harmony is evacuated, or that we do not reveal the Truth and Harmony is glassed with millions more dying. I could be completely off track with that one, of course. Smile

{edit}But if I'm not, that's some extra pressure for you crew members. Millions of lives depend on you! Surprised{/edit}
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 4:41 pm
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devolver
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clamatius wrote:

No, Troy is already gone. I think the consummation of the truth may be that the same thing may be about to happen again.


I was thinking that Troy is only gone for Durga--for Melissa, Troy won't be glassed for 500 years. What does that have to do with anything, you ask? I'm not sure. The phrase "consummation of truth" always sticks in my head, since--to me--it means that Melissa knows what happens, and wants it to make sure Durga doesn't interfere with it happening. How that works out time-wise, I'm not sure. And actually, just thinking about all the possible permutations makes my head hurt and I don't think any of them really make sense.

Oh well. I guess we'll find out! Very Happy
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 4:56 pm
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