unforum

[StlMikeD]

Two different thoughts,
First could the new avatar be a road map?

Second, hexagons can be the top corner view of a cube. Maybe it's a 3 dimensional picture?

[Treyfrd?]

[stlMikeD]

Also,

it was mentioned that this looked decidedly more "Covenant". Don't forget In the Halo story that the covenant found and use Forrunner Tech. They just haven't quite figured it all out.

Could AR have been a forrunner AI that was found and hacked by the Covenant?

[Phyltre]

The Covenant don't know where Earth is.

[StlMikeD]

In the novels and Halo2, They knew of and where Earth is, they just didn't know WE were here.

[Jordan117]

I think he means they don't know where Earth is *now*. Of course, they wouldn't even know about humanity now...

[Shadowkiller]

I am wondering if they are trying to tie in the original Cortana letters with this ARG. The original letters didn't seem very friendly then, and they had to come from somewhere. Just an idea, but probably wrong.

[notgordian]

Completely useless information drop: the symbol in new-AR's icon looks a lot like a backwards hiragana for "te"--which can be the word for "hand". (Considering matrix-scrawl is flipped katakana, that probably is useless and was just used to look cool.)

Really bad extension of a really bad theory: going by the edited image Slothboy put together, graphic interfaces might be his "four-te"

[sharpsniper99]

something s couple of guys found ova at HBO

Dundradal and Pedro the Penguin came to the conclusion in the chats that the new avatar for AR, entitled MB05032_09_25_07 not only hints at the release date but also coincides with a very useful line from MacBeth Act 5, line 32:

"Lady Macb. Yet there's a spot"

Now, using this hint, I wonder "what spot? Where?" and then the idea that AR's new avatar might be a map (of Stonehenge is the typical opinon in the IRC) and this lead to everyone trying the countdown timer's new stuck time as a set of coordinates: 1.12, 34.53. Typing these into google earth leads us to Mt. Elgon, a mountain with a crater as the top.



- theres a whole lotta macbeth references

[Urk]

The line is spoken by Lady Macbeth and the correct text is:

[CoffeeJedi]

Actually, the "spot" and the "stain" in Macbeth refer to the same thing: blood on one's hands that won't come out, ie. guilt.

[eccramer]

So I was wrong, the Shakespeare connections are deliberate, and totally important. Interesting. What I wonder is, how would a Forerunner AI know about Shakespeare, and why?

Total Spec, but I'd bet that this is a new thing. Arkie's speech became more and more complex and human-like the longer we communicated with it. Maybe, the trick is realizing that he had to have been doing something while he just got connected to the internet. I'll bet that it's a plot point that AR was reading, and learning from the reading after he got "connected". It appears to be a recent thing, and his speech definitely changed from the first post to the last, so I'll bet my bottom dollar that he was learning and reading when he wasn't communicating with us.

That said, I'd recommend that everyone brush up on their Shakespeare. I doubt that Arkie was just sitting around waiting for this new intruder to pick him to pieces, he strikes me as smarter than that. I'll bet when the time comes, we'll find some "small things" left behind by Arkie that will be in code, perhaps under the guise of references to Macbeth, that will help us along the way.

[n1nja23]

Idea

[Starblade]

I wonder, since Reflex said that the other entity is older, stronger, if the entity isn't at least in part controlled by the Flood. After all, the Flood were strong enough to require the destruction of sufficient bio-mass to sustain it, and Reflex doesn't necessarily have to be from when the Halos first fired (100,000 years is a long time), and it surely took time to create the Halos needed to obliterate all life in the galaxy. Perhaps the entity that destroyed Reflex is an older Forerunner AI that was subverted by the Flood, long ago?

Just some speculation here. It's as good as any at this point.

PS: Dammit work is making it a pain to keep up with this now.

[Gorbash Kazdar]

 Rampant Speculation About the Nature of the New Entity