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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates
[INFO] The Characters
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thr4k4
Boot

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 22

 		[INFO] The Characters
Sorry if the topic is tagged wrong.

THE OPERATOR
It is definetly female. From the fable in the distorted images she is the Queen. Also her name seems to be Melissa from the pieced together text from around the phase 2 pages.
Quote:
The Operator.
That was my nickname. That's what the rest of the crew called me when they didn't call me ... whatever my name was.

Quote:
the Sea. "Melissa", he called me Melissa,
never used my nickname, "It's a sad thing I'm married

Talks through monolog directly on the webpage.

THE SPIDER
This is an autonomous system trying to repair the broken Operator. From the fable this is the widow (also goes with SPiDeR being a black widow).
Quote:
The Spider doesn't understand about the Assassin. Spider's just a reflex, a task and a toolset. Doesn't get the bigger picture.

Talks through the computer text courier font, white on black. Reference to "black spider" is obvious.

THE SLEEPING PRINCESS
Might be an earlier state of the Queen. Put to "sleep" to archive. The SPDR program is unaware of its survival.
Quote:
The Sleeping Princess lay in a chamber of the dungeon in a coffin of glass where the Widow could not hear her breathing.

She is the one that hijacked the hotmail account, since one of the responses within killer.jpg is
Quote:
Question: What are you?
Answer: I am some kid who wants to get noticed, very clever an instigator an innocent bystander red in an airtight container in the deepest and darkest Sleeping casket in a chamber of the dungeon. Do you understand this? Whatever you are?

Talks through corrupted images, but looking at the killer.jpg text i found the following
Quote:
Question: So what happens on August 24?
If I have a question, I use this mark (?) at the end.

This question was misinterpreted by the princess so as to include the parantheses around the question mark when asking a question. So the green text is actually the princess asking us if we can find the innocent bystander. It is the princess talking outside corrupted images.
Quote:
I was looking at your site a little awry and have found an innocent bystander. Can you(?).


THE PIOUS FLEA
Something present within the system that is so "small" it cant be detected.
Quote:
Meanwhile, the Pious Flea was so small that even the Widow, with her sharp eyes, could hardly see him, and when she looked his way, he hid.


PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 6:36 pm
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thr4k4
Boot

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 22

 		bystander
the princess is asking us if we can find the innocent bystander.

we should figure out who that is and mail it to ladybee777SPLAThotmail.com

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 6:54 pm
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Samari
Veteran


Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 72
Location: Notre Dame, IN

 		here's what we have so far:
The Operator (aka: the queen, Melissa) - first off the operator has to be the queen, the text we found today is a stream of thought from a being that is getting repaired by the SPDR and in one of the memories probed the ONI officer refers to her as "the Operator." She later corrects him on her favorite game. She's an AI from an ONI spy ship and between being severely damaged when the ship crashed and the crew all died, she's also having issues with the fact that she is basically a giant weapon. she's pretty unstable at this point.

SPDR (aka: the Widdow, spider) - a simple repair program desinged to reconstruct the Queen, not self aware and not an AI

Dana(aka: the killer [also possibly the Assassin]): Dana is in "real life" the person we have been communicating with. the Operator however thinks she's an enemy military personal sent to kill her so the Operator is trying to find a way to kill Dana now.

The Sleeping Princess(aka: LadyBee777) - she's been communicating with us covertly for a while now through corrupted pictures. being held in stasis by the Queen and Widow and thinks that they are going to start doing some pretty nasty things. The dream about the Widdow came from her before she was fully awake. once she awoke she has been having trouble communicating with us, only able to use words that she finds in emails from us and is trying to learn english.

the Pious Flee - still a mystery he has not shown up anywhere except the dream although it is possible that he and not Dana is the Assassin but that's pure SPEC.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 6:56 pm
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Xasper
Greenhorn

Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 5

 		Flea spec
The flea seems to be hiding, not wishing to be seen. So far, only two characters come to mind that would want to be hiding. One is the princess, who is locked in an air-tight container where the widow (spider) cannot find her. The other is the castaway, who in another post, is thought to have betrayed Melissa (the operator/the queen), but is never said to have left the ship before it crashed. Perhaps he survived the crash.

So, castaway = flea?

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 7:02 pm
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Volt
Guest


 		Re: [INFO] The Characters [SPEC]
thr4k4 wrote:
THE PIOUS FLEA
Something present within the system that is so "small" it cant be detected.
Quote:
Meanwhile, the Pious Flea was so small that even the Widow, with her sharp eyes, could hardly see him, and when she looked his way, he hid.


That last bit reminds me of Dana looking straight at her webcam, trying to figure out why it was suddenly taking pictures of her. I realize this doesn't fit with the info we have so far, but the "she looked his way, he hid" (ie escaping to China, leaving Ilovebees.com alone), does seem to refer to what happened to Dana.. Just a wild spec though, we're probably looking for a male person/entity.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 7:04 pm
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Samari
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Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 72
Location: Notre Dame, IN

 		volt i don't think that's quite it. the dream was a description of what was going on at the time, not what was going to happen

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 7:26 pm
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Volt
Guest
Samari wrote:
volt i don't think that's quite it. the dream was a description of what was going on at the time, not what was going to happen


You're probably right.
I was just thinking about the Flea and how we really know next to nothing about it/him, and when I saw the "she looked at him, he hid", I was suddenly reminded of Dana's panicked reaction (evident from the killer.jpgs) when she found out that something was definitely looking at her.. I wish we knew more about this flea character...

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 7:30 pm
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Samari
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Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 72
Location: Notre Dame, IN

 		my spec is the flea is out on some other system somewhere. the SPDR had to find the castle first roaming through hell, and i think hell = the internet Wink

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 7:48 pm
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Aelith
Decorated


Joined: 21 Jul 2004
Posts: 153
Location: Missouri

 		After reading the future memory ya'll so quickly put together from the clumps of urls, I had the gestalt thought that the Castaway (Odysseus) is the Pius ("were I not married") Flea and a time traveler. Note that his personal envirenment is old earth (scratched vinal?). Or were the Halo book writers so bad as to write such anacronistic things into their stories. Fleas are also hitchikers and pathogens.
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:41 pm
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gkscotty
Boot

Joined: 19 Oct 2003
Posts: 16

 		It's my guess that Aunt M is the innocent bystander. Which I find foreboding...

PostPosted: Wed Jul 28, 2004 6:40 am
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TheBiggestSean
Veteran

Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 90

 		Good break down of the characters, but we're also trying to classify a little harshly

Sure. We have Dana listed as a good guy. She didn't ask to become some murderous AI's number one grudge, that just sort of happened.

And Sleeping Princess may be a stored version, perhaps a more stable build, of the Operator itself. That would explain why the effort has been made to protect and safe guard it from both us, the Operator, and the Spider....

But we all labeled the Operator right away as malevolent.
I think we need to ask this: is it necessary that the Queen remain belligerent?

Sure, we've been treating Queen/Operator/Melissa as a sort of "bad guy" entity since the beginning. Everyone sort of decided that, whatever the SPDR was fixing was probably not good for Dana or the site.

Maybe rather than proactively trying to understand and STOP the Queen, we should try to understand, and HELP. If we can show Melissa/Operator/Queen that we'd really just like to help it understand, rather than destroy it, perhaps we can keep it from spreading into other systems and causing more problems. Has anyone tried any sort of direct contact with Aunt M's mailbox, intoning a sort of "OPERATOR, MAYDAY ACKNOWLEDGED. Ready to assist in any way" mesage? If nothing else it's a waste of what, three minutes of typing?

PostPosted: Wed Jul 28, 2004 6:53 am
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Partnerz
Boot

Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 39

 		You miss several key ideas though. The author of the Killer.jpg uses too different guises. The first definitely seems to be the princess.

Quote:
Something bad will happen

If the recipient is Dana,

Please don't be freaked out

The Widow the Queen are trying to keep me in very bad shape as well
I can sympathize with you

I believe I can help you out, I can apply a construct to protect your

core


But their is also evidence that the author is related somehow to the Pious Flea.

Quote:
In a chamber of the dungeon the Sleeping Princess lived here. Describe

the place

a total mess
such a shambles!

I have been attempting to put the dungeon to splendor. You have sent


The author is speaking in the past tense (the Sleeping Princess lived here) which suggests she is now awake and not their anymore.
But you see the if this is the Princess why talk about yourself as sleeping, when she is clearly awake. Wouldn't it be more logical to use "I" or at least revoe the word "Sleeping". This leads to the idea that it may be the Pious flea speaking aswell as the princess.
_________________
Speculaton is nothing more than believing assumptions. I want facts i tell ya, facts

PostPosted: Wed Jul 28, 2004 7:15 am
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Roc
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Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 81

 		The Pious Flea definitely remains an enigma. Particularly because, it is referenced both in the flashback text ( naked footprint of a flea on the shore ) and directly in the widow's journey.

Is there any sort of concensus though, on the whole Sleeping Princess thing? I'm certain she's a discrete character from the Operator/Queen -- but has she been communicating at all? The Widow couldn't even hear the princess breath in the glass coffin, yet it seems quite able to recognize all other network traffic (internet connections, requests, pings, email).

And I am also starting to wonder if the Queen is malevolent. She promises to be swift and terrible, but only to those who hinder her return. Vengeful perhaps, but not necessarily evil.

I know that's a bit scattered, I'm just thinking out loud.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 28, 2004 9:40 am
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Max Damage
Decorated

Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 178
Roc wrote:
And I am also starting to wonder if the Queen is malevolent. She promises to be swift and terrible, but only to those who hinder her return. Vengeful perhaps, but not necessarily evil.


Well, right now The Operator is confused and hurt, and is incredibly pissed off. Dana has been unwittingly cutting away at The Operators memories by trying to fix the site.

Imagine thinking about your family, knowing how much you love them... and then the memory is gone. You know that there was SOMEONE, and you know that the memory was there, but you can't remember what it was. You also know who is directly responsible for your mind being cut to pieces.

I don't think you'd be too happy either, especially if you're already hurting, trapped, and lost in the dark. I believe The Operator is just reacting emotionally - lashing out at what it percieves as its enemy.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 28, 2004 9:45 am
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Roc
Veteran

Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 81

 		Naturally, I can understand the Operator's confusion and anger. I'm just suggesting that when she is restored, when this feud with Dana is settled (one way or the other), should we really expect her to continue to be malevolent?

and where does the Sleeping Princess fit in?

PostPosted: Wed Jul 28, 2004 10:09 am
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