unforum

[Motoss]

[SPEC] Final Flea Theories?

[WhiteGulls]

Chaotic Neutral.

He's definitely working to his own ends, which somehow invoulves Melissa+, so who knows what he's trying to do. He hasn't given us any hints aside from the 'truth' mantra, and the giving the 'sere' mantra to the Princess.

[thunderclap8]

this is partially my own [SPEC] and partially [SPEC] taken from conversations with very nice people on IRC who I can't remember the names of at the moment.

I still believe the flea is the covenant virus we've seen referenced a few times now. The covenant as a society seem to be very, well, not simplistic exactly but they tend to boil concepts down to their core. I imagine that their viruses would be programmed in a similar way. Thus the flea's mantra to "reveal the truth" etc. is his mission as a virus. The Covies meant that to be interpreted as "steal information ('the truth') from a human AI and report back to us".

But after infecting the Operator, the flea reexamined it's own coding and interpreted it differently. It saw the fact that melissa and the SP were parts of the same whole as 'the truth'. To 'reveal' that truth, they needed to be rejoined.

Now that the halves are reintegrated, what will the flea try to do next? Return to its intended mission of intelligence gathering? Something more vicious I haven't thought of?

No idea, but I can't wait to find out

[Shad0]

Re: [SPEC] Final Flea Theories?

[Astald]

Then again, the virus could be the Manticore. It really could have been a Covenant virus, just something that was destroyed by the SPDR in the very beginning of the ARG. That is from the Widow's Journey by the way.

[ABoxInABox]

Flea was made by Herzog. He told to go get the truth, but then the Apocolyoso crashed. The Flea just wants to give the truth to Herzog now.

One minute thinking, half of one typing.

[jr748]

This has been buzzing around in my head for a while but why would the flea want to rescue Yasmine? If doing so would help reveal what's on the apocalypso then disregard the rest of this post.

Again, hoping I won't get flamed, but here goes.

here's a weird theory to add to all the other pieces of speculation out there.

I don't know why Herzog would make a program that would want to help Yasmine, because on the contactme page(October 29) it seemed like that's what the flea wanted to do.

It seems to me that the flea may have been created by Kamal, he does have a bit of knowledge with programming.

On http://www.ilovebees.com/honey.html the flea says:

[Astald]

But Kamal didn't know Yasmine was an AI until the most recent .wavs. Plus, you would think it would know Yasmine's name then if it was a program to help her.

[jr748]

dammit you're right, i'm still thinking we're on one timeline not two parallel ones

damn you temporal physics & dynamics

but it still doesn't figure, why would the flea want to help SP?

[d.mauro]

[kingchaos2]

My thing is, if the flea is a covenant virus how could it have traveled through time with Melissa, if the only thing sent back was Melissa? I read the memory and there's nothing stating that Melissa herself was infected. That's why I stand by the whole Herzog theory. (Not to be a jerk or anything, but I think the PMs meant for that to be obvious after the wav file where Herzog starts speaking like the flea).

edit: okay I re-read the memory thing on the wiki and I see why there is still some SPEC on the subject. Why would they have put that in the story if it wasn't supposed to mean anything, right? I got ya, but I think there must be something we're missing if a virus did get sent through time, because I still don't think it's the flea.

[chaotic_mind]

Um...How could Herzog's program get sent back?

Or the Manticore for that matter.

Ignoring the Herzog comments, obviously if Herzog's spyware could get sent back, then so could a Covenant virus.

And, yeah, the .wavs do hint strongly, but there are strong hints the other way.

If it ends and there is no more information given about the Flea, I will declare him to Herzogian. But there's still more game, and thus the jury will stay out.

[wild idle spec] Besides, Herzog is no innocent. He said as much himself. What does it matter if the Flea is a Covenant or human malware. It's still malware [/wild idle spec]

Luke P.

[vector]

[Rogue Element]

When I set off to my axon on Tuesday I would have sworn the flea to be covenant, because all the sparse evidence seemed to point that way. After listening to the latest subject 5 stuff I am converted. I really don't think we could have got a clearer connection between Herzog and the flea.

There have been two objections to the Hertzog--Flea theory that I am aware of.

Firstly, Mellissa's suspicions as related in the phase 2 memories. While she assumes the infection to be Covenant she offers no evidence beyond the circumstantial. The Flea may have around since Hertzog's visit and lain dormant, it may have been active and unnoticed or it may have been introduced later when the Op intercepted Mckaskill's communicae.

I don't think the evidence of Covenant infiltration is very strong. Remember that Mellissa also accused the SP of being a virus, no reason she could not have miscast the flea aswell.

The second objection is the suspicious way the Flea behaved early on. If we assume that the Flea's primary task was to gather information and report back, his actions have all eventualy played to that goal by saving his host AI and transmitting pertinent information to the interested parties.

The destruction of the SPDR seems to have worked out all right. It was making a fairly bodge job of the reconstruction and may have hampered the Flea's mission. On all recent occasions he has aided the Princess who lead the revalation of the truth about the artifact to Durga. This seems consistent with his assumed purpose.

In conclusion, I'm satisfied that the Flea is of section zero origin. Of course at one point I thought he was Covenant and SP was Forerunner which either shows how dumb I am or how little evidence you need to support a great deal of spec.

[BeeNetter]