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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates
[SPEC] Piggyback virus and Melissa's transmission
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nova
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 		[SPEC] Piggyback virus and Melissa's transmission
OK, so after reading the August 10 monologue wiki update, it seems that the ship Melissa was operating within found something in space. Capt. Greene and Lt Sorenson wonder if it's Covenant tech. Melissa begins to sense that something isn't quite right, as if things are being 'moved around'. The possibility is raised that it might be a Covenant virus, piggybacking on a transmission that is mentioned.

She doesn't think she's behaving any differently, but then if something has changed she wouldn't know - the original data has been lost, so there's no way for her to tell that something has been changed. OK, not necessarily true, but that's certainly the way it seems from the monologue:

Quote:

Maybe they suspect were monitoring them.

A virus piggybacking, she said. Could they do that? Their systems are so much different than ours.

Weve reversed engineered their systems, I said. And they have clearly reverse engineered some of ours.

Have you done anything out of character, she asked.

Not yet, I said. I hoped it was true.



So - and here's where the spec comes in - it seems that now the Spider has done its job, or as much of its job as Melissa will allow, the Pious Flea has become her new adviser and is drilling into her its behavioural mantra. Perhaps the Flea is this Covenant virus, attempting to manipulate Melissa's behaviour? I suspect the Flea for two reasons - it's the one changing Melissa's behaviour, and it's pious, which I think is a pretty obvious link to the Covenant's religious fervour.

If the Covenant did do this, and somehow caused this ship to end up on Earth back in the 20th century, the big question is why? It seems that Melissa wants to transmit something. If it is the Flea that's convincing her to do this as part of its 'Seek Evade Reveal Escape' routine, perhaps the Covenant has something to gain from this transmission.

And so the spec gets wilder and wilder. Maybe I've watched ST: First Contact too many times, but the first thing that comes to mind is that if the Flea can put something into this transmission that the Covenant can recognize (presumably the Covenant have been around for a long time), the Covenant of the 20th century can show up and steamroll over Earth with much less hassle, what with the absence of a UNSC fleet and Super MAC guns defending her.

Which I guess leads back to these GPS coordinates. A simple way to increase the strength of a transmission would be to increase the size of a transmitter - by transmitting from a lot of sites over a large area, the effective size of the transmitter is increased. The same principle as is used in radio telescopes. A strong transmitter would enable the signal to be broadcast deep into space, where the UNSC (which doesn't yet exist, but Melissa doesn't know that) and the Covenant might hear it. A lot of small transmitters spread over a wide area would achieve the same effect as a single large transmitter.

I dunno, it's probably nothing, but there you go. Trout me if you like, I just thought I'd throw the idea out there. Smile

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 4:47 am
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nova
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 		Re: [SPEC] Piggyback virus and Melissa's transmission
nova wrote:

And so the spec gets wilder and wilder. Maybe I've watched ST: First Contact too many times, but the first thing that comes to mind is that if the Flea can put something into this transmission that the Covenant can recognize (presumably the Covenant have been around for a long time), the Covenant of the 20th century can show up and steamroll over Earth with much less hassle, what with the absence of a UNSC fleet and Super MAC guns defending her.


A second thought occurs. I seem to remember from "First Strike" that the Covenant's knowledge of Earth's location seemed to come out of the blue - perhaps I'm just forgetting the part of the book that explains how they figured it out. But, a radio signal might take a few hundred years to reach the nearest Covenant listener; perhaps it gets there in the future, during the events of First Strike, and -that's- how the Covenant figure out where Earth is.

Who knows. I'm just veering off on my own little tangent here, feel free to ignore it. Very Happy

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 4:54 am
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Lutzie
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 		The Covenant figured out Earths location via the Irioquois I think. I'm reading book 3 (again) now though…
Also the "moving things around" thing would fit in with the distortions caused by the Crystal. I don't think there's a Covenant virus. Covenant AI maybe, but they're seriously low powered. Cortana destroyed one quite easily in the 3rd book.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 6:18 am
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GunsmithCat
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Lutzie wrote:
The Covenant figured out Earths location via the Irioquois I think. I'm reading book 3 (again) now though…
Also the "moving things around" thing would fit in with the distortions caused by the Crystal. I don't think there's a Covenant virus. Covenant AI maybe, but they're seriously low powered. Cortana destroyed one quite easily in the 3rd book.


Thought someone mentioned that the Irioquois lead the Covenant to Reach, not to Earth.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 7:31 am
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Lutzie
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GunsmithCat wrote:
Thought someone mentioned that the Irioquois lead the Covenant to Reach, not to Earth.

Actually I think you're right...
I'm sure it mentions something near the end of book 3 though...

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 7:45 am
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nova
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Lutzie wrote:
The Covenant figured out Earths location via the Irioquois I think. I'm reading book 3 (again) now though…
Also the "moving things around" thing would fit in with the distortions caused by the Crystal. I don't think there's a Covenant virus. Covenant AI maybe, but they're seriously low powered. Cortana destroyed one quite easily in the 3rd book.


Cortana is something of a special case, though. We still don't know if Melissa is a "smart" AI or a "dumb" AI. Besides, if the virus implanted itself into Melissa instead of coexisting alongside her in the network as the Covenant AI did in FS, she might not have even known it was there. That's the impression the monologue gives - she has no way of knowing if she's acting "out of character", because she has no external frame of reference. If something has been changed within her and the original portion overwritten, she has no way of knowing that. How can she tell? There's no frame of reference for her.

Anyway, I'm wandering off from the original point that I wanted to make. Purely from a storytelling standpoint, there has to be conflict. This story has, most likely, a protagonist and an antagonist. We don't know yet who is who, but the most likely scenario is that one or more of these entities (Flea, Melissa, Spider, Princess) are working against the others. If they are all supposed to be there, there's no conflict, and no story.

And, in the Haloverse, when you're talking antagonists, you're talking Covenant. It just seems too much of a coincidence that they talk about viruses and the suspicion of Melissa's behaviour being modified. Perhaps her behaviour change was what caused the "crash" in the first place?

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:20 am
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Nova
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 		Made myself an account... too much of a pain not being able to edit my messages Smile

nova wrote:

Anyway, I'm wandering off from the original point that I wanted to make. Purely from a storytelling standpoint, there has to be conflict. This story has, most likely, a protagonist and an antagonist. We don't know yet who is who, but the most likely scenario is that one or more of these entities (Flea, Melissa, Spider, Princess) are working against the others. If they are all supposed to be there, there's no conflict, and no story.


This wasn't as clear as I would have liked it to be. If all four processes are supposed to be there, ie none of them are "antagonist" processes, then there's no real conflict. Why would the Spider attack the Flea if it was supposed to be there? Why would any of these processes feel the need to hide from each other?

I suppose you could argue that the Spider is not engineered well enough to recognise the Flea and treats it as a rogue process, or you could equally argue that the Spider is malevolent (perhaps repairing Melissa is just a means to an end to get the transmission sent?).

However, I think the more likely explanation is that the Flea is the "antagonist" process, and that it's avoiding the Spider because the spider knows it is a rogue process and will kill it if it can find it. Whereas Melissa is perhaps too damaged to realise that the Flea is a threat.

Any thoughts?

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:29 am
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Crzygeoff
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 		Nova,
I think thats some pretty good spec. I've felt the same thing, but you're putting it into words much better than I would have. I'm also thinking that the only way we may be able to stop Melissa from sending out the signal to the Cov. is to stop her all together and "awaken" the SP (so to speak) from her "coffin" and maybe overwrite Melissa and the PF with her (meaning the SP).
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:40 am
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jellyfish_green
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 		I had some of the same thoughts and dumped it into the Pious Flea page of the Wiki, I'll repaste it here for refinement:

Why is the "truth" sought by the Flea turning out to be Melissa's memories? If we entertain the idea of Flea as Covenant Trojan - arriving via piggybacked virus, maybe - then Melissa's memories would be possibly valuable info for the Covenant. Especially news of a Forerunner artifact recovered. SPECulative leap: The SPDR was trying to carry out the Cole Protocol on Melissa and has been derailed by the Flea, a Covenant AI. Both Melissa and the Flea share similar truthseeking drives - for perhaps opposite sides. PS. from dict.die.com: A flea in the ear, an unwelcome hint or unexpected reply, annoying like a flea; an irritating repulse; as, to put a flea in one's ear; to go away with a flea in one's ear. --Jellyfish green 05:20, 11 Aug 2004 (PDT)

NB. There is a "Flea as Covenant Trojan" page that would carry this nicely.
Melissa and the Flea might both be undercover intelligence programs - the Flea more of a subverting virus than a full intelligence.

(Which makes the Princess what? Forerunner? Confused )

I think the Artifact might be more related to time-travel than to the Flea; it may be an item of interest for the Flea but if he is a piggybacked virus he more likely arrived while Melissa was eavesdropping and storing Cove traffic.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 9:03 am
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Lutzie
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 		Actually...

Spec here right... but AFAIK it was never mentioned in the Halo books HOW the Covenant found Earth... maybe this is how... and on th 24th Bungie will release part of the story between Halo 1 and Halo 2...

/end spec

Smile

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 9:06 am
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eMouse
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 		It would help explain Melissa's antagonism toward the SPDR process. If SPDR suspects Melissa is infected, it is probably going through and wiping out Melissa's memories, starting with the most sensitive ones (Earth's location, technology information, etc).

And the location of Earth probably would be high on the list for such a Covenant AI.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 10:22 am
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Mr Pas
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 		Why infected?

It could be the completing the cole protocol that it failed to do in the first place. Of course this leads to the assumption that SPDR can still see a threat to the queen, maybe a covie presence

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 11:02 am
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werepanda
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Joined: 10 Aug 2004
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 		Can someone post a link to the Pious Flea Wiki page... I have a garbage computer at work and it crashes half the time trying to get to the wiki pages Sad
Onward! I completely agree with Nova and Jellyfish. I had been thinking along the same lines myself, but your posts allows me to raise the questions, "Was the Covenant's intercepted transmission about Troy (a perfect vehicle for a Trojan Horse) a calculated move (they did it on purpose)?"
I also wanted to reiterate on the Pious Flea being a Covenant Trojan Horse but I'll wait until after I see the wiki page- no sense in reposting available information...
Thanks,
(I'm new so please Trout me only if necessary...)

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 11:37 am
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GunsmithCat
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Mr Pas wrote:
Why infected?

It could be the completing the cole protocol that it failed to do in the first place. Of course this leads to the assumption that SPDR can still see a threat to the queen, maybe a covie presence


I started thinking about this here ... what if the Flea reversed the Cole Protocol in Melissa's programming?

So normally if attacked, Melissa would flee to an unknown coordinate away from Earth and failing that, self-destruct.

But now if attacked, Melissa would run directly to Earth and succeeding that, fight for self-preservation.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 11:42 am
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Shad0
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werepanda wrote:
Can someone post a link to the Pious Flea Wiki page... I have a garbage computer at work and it crashes half the time trying to get to the wiki pages Sad

Glad to oblige. Mr. Green
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2004 12:09 pm
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