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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates
[SPEC] (Long) A.I. & Cortana Tie-In re: "First Stri
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Primis
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 		[SPEC] (Long) A.I. & Cortana Tie-In re: "First Stri
I've got some thoughts for everyone. Yeah I'm unregged but I've been following this all closely for the past 24 hours (on here, on Bungie's forums, Slashdot, Wiki, you name it) and nobody's mentioned something pertinent I think and it's been NAGGING me to no end...

******
WARNING: IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE HALO BOOKS, SPOILERS A'PLENTY, DEAD AHEAD.

THIS STUFF ALSO BORDERS ON BEING POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR HALO 2 TOO SO.... YOU'VE BEEN WARNED. IT SEEMS PERTINENT TO ME THOUGH.
******

I'm not up on my Marathon or stuff from The Beast, but if anyone here has read the Halo books, you'll know that the third book (Nylund's second) "First Strike" takes place in the time between Halo and Halo 2. And since there's a lot of talk about A.I. rampancy and such, and Cortana's an A.I., there's some interesting stuff to be found in them. I'll try to sum up some pertinent and interesting things from the third book.

Re: A.I. Rampancy and whatnot. During the course of "First Strike" Cortana is laden with the data from Halo, and it's beginning to interfere with her processes. At several points she actual COPIES herself to accomplish tasks she couldn't otherwise do in order to help the other Reach survivors. At first, she's scared to do this because of the ramifications (corrupting the original, copies going insane), but in the end she ends up making tons of copies of herself to "free herself" so she doesn't have to purge some of the Halo data.

My first point is this: If it's Cortana, which one is it? The real one, or one of the copies? I don't recall there being much of a mention of her properly disposing of the copies once she'd used them, and at one point there were dozens, maybe hundreds of copies of her while she was trying to buy extra time on the Covenant starbase.

Another thing to consider from "First Strike"-- Cortana had a *serious* run-in with an alien A.I., on the Ascendant Justice, that was radical and insane in nature. This A.I. (was it even an A.I.? It was comparable but twisted, and was it just a similar entity?) basically screamed "DEATH! INFIDELS!! INFIDELS!!" a lot until it was disposed of. She (Cortana) is not even 100% certain it was a Covenant A.I. herself actually (going by her narrative), just that it was an enemy A.I. *most likely* set to be in her way. She disposed of it, but they left it at that, and there's never 100% proof that the enemy A.I. actually is truly gone. Especially since Cortana occasionally will mention that she feels like she's still being eyed or watched somehow... this would seem to somewhat match with the sense of a Queen or a "hive" mentality, that something's still watching, but out of reach.

So secondly, why the run-in with the insane A.I., and what effect has it had on her? We don't know yet. We just know that by copying herself many times over, holding so much Halo data, and via the run-in with the enemy A.I., she's most-likely shortening her lifespan exponentially.

If this really is something relating to an A.I., this would seem to be some sort of foreshadowing of Cortana's eventual fate. Or at least the fate of one of her copies or something. The book spends too much time explaining and detailing the copies and preaching the bad effects of A.I. copying for it to be just a simple one-shot element IMHO.

Also thirdly, there was the crystal artifact from the Ancients ("Great Ones") that they "destroyed" in the final battle from the book. Shards of it were returned to the Covenant Prophets, and the one Prophet remarked that "It may enough yet to serve our purposes". Is this artifact (or its shards -- it seemed to possess some sort of sense of self and being in the book) something that can be linked to any of these cryptic references yet?

And finally... again following the book, John (the Master Chief) is not *the* only missing SPARTAN. Kelly is. The Doctor whisked her away for some unknown purpose before the last battle of the book, seperate. The "Coffin of glass" comments not only struck me as matching Master Chief's time in cryo, but also that probably Kelly is somewhere still recovering in Cryo from her injuries (much as Linda still was). There's got to be a reason the Doctor whisked her away like that, away from the rest of the SPARTANS and other Reach survivors.

Just something for everyone to consider, since I see a lot of you seem quite up on your Marathon and Halo in-game info, but some info and trends from the books (where a LOT of stuff is revealed outside of the games) seem to be being ignored, which baffles me since the 3rd book in particular is supposed to be setting up Halo 2... hope maybe this helps somehow in the bigger scheme of things. If nothing else maybe it'll jog some other memories regarding the book.

Thanks for putting up with my ramblings.


-- Primis. (Different from that other Primus).

PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2004 10:47 pm
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regnevah
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Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 97

 		too bad the mayday flashbacks dont fit with cortana/hasley's memories being as she was never trained in the military....

PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 4:04 am
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stargazer
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 		The queen and the princess, in theory shouldn't they be related?or mention her as the princess?

PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 4:14 pm
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kalamazoo
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Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 83

 		To stargazer: I disagree. The Queen and the Princess do not have to be related biologically. However, they must be related somehow, as they are both survivors of the "great enchantment" that crashed the Operator and activated the Black Widow SPDR.

As to memories: Halsey was never trained in the military, but Cortana (as a military ship's AI) perforce would have had many military files uploaded. So I don't think the Operator could be Halsey, but she *could* be Cortana.

PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 5:17 pm
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Anton Sirius
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Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 18
Location: Toronto, ON, Canada

 		An Alternate Perspective
Speaking as someone who knows nothing about Halo, but was a Cloudmaker nearly from the beginning:

If this is the Beast II, the chances are very good that the storyline will be completely original. We've really got nothing to do but spec on what's going on right now, and you never know what ideas will become useful later, but it's also dangerous to lock yourself into certain assumptions that might end up being way off base.

The team behind the Beast included any number of extremely talented writers and creators. I can't see them simply tagging along after someone else's work -- for this to be worth their time, they'd have to be allowed to construct something entirely new within the Halo universe, just as they did with the AI universe.

That's my two cents, anyway.
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 6:04 pm
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Ragashingo
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Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 5
Location: Texas

 		Nice job on the summary of First Strike Primis, but I have some minor corrections:

1. You are correct that it never really tells about disposing of the cortana copies. But every place that a copy was made was destroyed by the end of the book. Both the covenant ship and the station were destroyed, thus no more copies left (probably...)

2. While we do not know the origins (as in who made it exactly) of the enemy AI we do know a few things about it. It was at least working for the covenant. We know this because it had covenant language databases and called other covenant ships to attack the ship the humans had taken over. It also sent some slipspace calculations of cortana's to the covenant as well as knowing how to sabotage the covenant ship the Humans were on.

3. That enemy AI was killed by cortana after it sent the slipspace calculations. She tore it apart and cataloged it as she killed it. This is where she found the copying program, covenant language databases and stuff. Of interest might be that code wise this enemy AI was similar to her own code, but badly twisted and mangled.

4. Cortana said that copying herself could not lengthen her life as the "clogging" that kills smart AI's would just be copied right along with everything else. Nowhere does it mention the copying process shortening her life. What might shorten her life is the huge chunk of Halo info and being inside Halo's computer systems, but not the copying.

PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 6:17 pm
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Stargazer
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 		I may have missed something but averyone assumes its describing a current event involving the ai, but an ai cannot dream (its said in the first paragraph of the story). My theory is it warns of a past event that is reoccuring,or occurring if it hasn't already happened.

PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 6:21 pm
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aliendial
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Joined: 29 Sep 2002
Posts: 3438
Location: Far Far Away. Nowhere Near You. Really.

 		Re: An Alternate Perspective
Anton Sirius wrote:
Speaking as someone who knows nothing about Halo, but was a Cloudmaker nearly from the beginning:

If this is the Beast II, the chances are very good that the storyline will be completely original.


This is a pretty single-minded crowd, Anton. But they can't say they weren't warned...
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 6:36 pm
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