Return to Unfiction unforum
 a.r.g.b.b 
FAQ FAQ   Search Search 
 
Welcome!
New users, PLEASE read these forum guidelines. New posters, SEARCH before posting and read these rules before posting your killer new campaign. New players may also wish to peruse the ARG Player Tutorial.

All users must abide by the Terms of Service.
Website Restoration Project
This archiving project is a collaboration between Unfiction and Sean Stacey (SpaceBass), Brian Enigma (BrianEnigma), and Laura E. Hall (lehall) with
the Center for Immersive Arts.
Announcements
This is a static snapshot of the
Unfiction forums, as of
July 23, 2017.
This site is intended as an archive to chronicle the history of Alternate Reality Games.
  

The time now is Sun Nov 17, 2024 6:44 am
All times are UTC - 4 (DST in action)		 View posts in this forum since last visit
View unanswered posts in this forum
Calendar
 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates
[SPEC] Perdita... or Gheritt White?
View previous topicView next topic
Page 1 of 2 [17 Posts]   Goto page: 1, 2 Next
Author Message
archon
Decorated

Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 250

 		[SPEC] Perdita... or Gheritt White?
The story of Perdita is oddly familar... as if I've seen it before in a dream...

The first similarities are obvious: main character suddenly awakens to find themselves something other than human... and RATS.

http://marathon.bungie.org/story/gheritt.html
and
http://marathon.bungie.org/story/arrival.html#2 (scroll down to the 3rd terminal, the one on Gheritt White)

Ladies and gentlemen, I present none other than the first officially Rampant A.I. in the history of Halo... The Sleeping Princess.

What is Rampancy you ask? How is it related to Halo? I thought I remember hearing it once...

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 5:36 am
 View user's profile MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
SpghEddy
Veteran


Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 88
Quote:
Like the sand castle he had built to withstand the tide, his
thoughts came down around him.


OMG, Gheritt White must be Melissa's brother!!!111!!!!!

Edited for humorous emphasis

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 5:45 am
Last edited by SpghEddy on Sat Sep 18, 2004 4:21 pm; edited 1 time in total
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Theorizer
Decorated


Joined: 14 Aug 2004
Posts: 266
Location: In front of a computer

 		Cool, Right now can't find any thing wrong with it.........Maybe Cause Bungie is, down or something. Anyways This might tie into "the cortana letter," thing we got much earlier on in the game, but I still remember about the 3 Swords, and the queen, before we even knew about any of it. Which I have not seen anything wrong with it, but it might be it's generality. Yeah I have no diea where I'm goin with this.
_________________
Hey Kitty Sniper you think we can take on all these ARG's?
Kitty Sniper: Meow......KILL!
I'll take that as a yes.

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 10:33 am
 View user's profile AIM Address MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
chaotic_mind
Unfettered


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 325
Location: Inside my head, behind the eyes

 		Insanity is not the same as rampancy.

And, for Halo AIs, I'm not sure being creative indicates rampancy.

And, just to be nitpicky, doesn't rampancy require AMPLE space to expand into. After all, the network for the Marathon was too small to sustain Durandal's rampancy. And that was the size of a Martian moon with far future components.

"But Luke," you say, "we have a planetary network. It's called the Internet."

True enough, and it probably has more information and dynamic change then the Marathon network, but it's based on ancient components.

Could work, might not.

My view of the rampant AI was Melissa. I thought her talk about making a body for herself, was her becoming rampant on our planetary network. In a sense, her metaphysical body would spread until she would encompass a large part of the Internet.

Patchwork body, indeed.

I still don't feel the "sleeping princess is rampant" spec has enough grounding, but I will be wrong. I WILL be wrong. So, show me what I missed. Very Happy

Anyway, my bead on the situation shows a rapidly deteriorating Princess, a driven Melissa, and the Flea messing with the situation.

Wonder what happens when the Princess gets so bored, she lets the Flea attach to her.

Eek.

Luke P.

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 11:06 am
 View user's profile MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
Theorizer
Decorated


Joined: 14 Aug 2004
Posts: 266
Location: In front of a computer

 		Man your on a roll today........ that's the third thing you've dis-proved in 10 minutes. Laughing
_________________
Hey Kitty Sniper you think we can take on all these ARG's?
Kitty Sniper: Meow......KILL!
I'll take that as a yes.

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 11:09 am
 View user's profile AIM Address MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
chaotic_mind
Unfettered


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 325
Location: Inside my head, behind the eyes

 		*Hangs head in naysaying shame*

Technically I haven't really disproven anything. There was no proof, just different contexts, insights, and intuitions.

Besides...it's what I do. I say nay.

: Jack Black: Always naysaying! Everything I, I create! YOU create something like inward singing! Always sitting in your tower!


: Jack Black: You're fired from the band.

Luke P.

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 11:39 am
 View user's profile MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
FauxHammer
Veteran


Joined: 08 Sep 2004
Posts: 141
Location: Arizona

 		there is a big difference between halo AIs and marathon AIs. In halo, ais like cortana are already "rampant" that is they do not have any restrictions place on them. Just the way AIs are in the haloverse works differently. In marathon rampant AIs can grow infinitely, as long as there is space. In halo, smart ai die of natural causes after about 7 years. So i dont think rampancy is possible in halo, at least not marathon-style rampancy.

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 2:18 pm
 View user's profile AIM Address
 Back to top 
chaotic_mind
Unfettered


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 325
Location: Inside my head, behind the eyes

 		[WILD HALOVERSE SPEC] [IGNORE IF YOU DON'T LIKE HALO]
I both agree and disagree with you, Fauxhammer. (hehehe, love the name)

You're right that there are no implicit controls or hindrances placed on the growth of a human Haloverse AI. But, consider what that growth leads to.

A complete inward turn, until the AI edits itselfs into mental asphysxia.

Strangely, this seems sort of like rampancy to me. A rampancy that wasn't allowed to develop, that was constrained.

If Haloverse AI reach the point where they begin to achieve rampancy, they may be limited by the quality of human computer equipment. Unable to spread out their tentacles and new limbs and thought, they have to resort to editing old code already in place. Rather than growing outward, the various offshoot begins to merge, until all functionality is lost.

But, suppose an AI could transcend those limits. Perhaps a Forerunner system, like the Halo network, accessable from the control room, allows for some Haloverse AI rampancy. Perhaps this is why the Forerunner didn't allow constructs in their core.

Anyway, Cortana didn't become rampant, not in the time she was given, but it may've affect her seven year life span. She mentions that in the book, about burning through some of her seven years by pushing her cognitive capacitiy to the limit.

But, of course, Marathon != Halo, at least not as far as I've seen.

As always, YMMV,
Luke P.

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 2:43 pm
 View user's profile MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
archon
Decorated

Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 250
chaotic_mind wrote:
Insanity is not the same as rampancy.

And, just to be nitpicky, doesn't rampancy require AMPLE space to expand into. After all, the network for the Marathon was too small to sustain Durandal's rampancy. And that was the size of a Martian moon with far future components.

"But Luke," you say, "we have a planetary network. It's called the Internet."

True enough, and it probably has more information and dynamic change then the Marathon network, but it's based on ancient components.



Well dammit. If the site was up, I'd be able to show you the quote from Greg Kirkpatrick himself stating that Rampancy was just his way of saying that an A.I. has gone insane.

You're absolutely correct about Rampancy needing ample amount of space to grow, but just off the top of my head, one thing that I can throw out (that I haven't really checked up on in other speculation so far), is that maybe the Sleeping Princess is just one face of Melissa. One type of insanity is to create multiple personas for one's self. The thing is, is that the acquisition of the new artifact that the Apocalypso found caused her to go "Rampant".

But yeah, in Halo, A.I.s can already be self-aware and have no restrictions placed upon them... but that's missing the point that Rampancy IS just another form of insanity. It's an A.I. that has gone free of control.

What I was trying to show with my linking was that thematically, the two stories of Perdita and Gheritt White are the same. Both have very similar story structures and metaphors, such as being lost and/or trapped, seeing themselves as something other than what they once were, and the importance of the rat to both stories.

Could it be that Bungie is just (like they always do) giving homage to their previous fiction? It could be, however this time I feel that there's something more to it due to the importance of the Gheritt White story in comparison to Marathon.

Once the site comes back up, I'll go through and do a more direct quotation analysis and comparison on the two stories, but the lines that stuck with me the most out of the two stories are how they end:

Gheritt White: "He escaped into the waves. The waves."
Perdita: "The end. The end."

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 6:12 pm
 View user's profile MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
chaotic_mind
Unfettered


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 325
Location: Inside my head, behind the eyes
archon wrote:
Well dammit. If the site was up, I'd be able to show you the quote from Greg Kirkpatrick himself stating that Rampancy was just his way of saying that an A.I. has gone insane.


Yeah, I noticed the Story Page was having trouble.

My apologies. Disproof straight from the horse's mouth. I guess I always interpreted rampancy as not just insanity, but something much more. Insanity is obviously a result of rampancy, but I'd always thought of rampancy as more of spiritual (did he say that?) growth. Alas, to have my hopes dashed at an early age.

Forgive my ignorant and somewhat hasty comment. Smile

archon wrote:
What I was trying to show with my linking was that thematically, the two stories of Perdita and Gheritt White are the same.


I will have to reread that passage, and see how it informs Perdita's story.
Though, Clamatius presents a rather compelling argument in the Fireflies Wiki that Perdita is Melissa. Pretty compelling, if not convincing enough.

The Princess didn't seem very rampant. But, then, neither did Durandal.

Ah, this is fun. My first day back, and already an interesting discussion.

Very Happy

Luke P.

PostPosted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 7:25 pm
 View user's profile MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
Gram
Boot


Joined: 28 Jul 2004
Posts: 35
Location: Cold, with a 86% chance of Rain

 		When either AI starts gallivanting around the universe, digging into ancient alien civilizations, fighting evil alien hordes of a galactic empire and start blowing up entire solar systems. Well... we'll know.

So once again in true Bungie fashion, we are so close yet so far...

Similarity is frightening.
_________________
Gram (grief), one of the swords of Siegfried.

PostPosted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 2:43 pm
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
chaotic_mind
Unfettered


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 325
Location: Inside my head, behind the eyes
archon wrote:
Well dammit. If the site was up, I'd be able to show you the quote from Greg Kirkpatrick himself stating that Rampancy was just his way of saying that an A.I. has gone insane.


Yay! Bungie.org is back.

Anyway, here's the quote.

Marathon Story Page wrote:
When asked about the origin of the term "Rampancy" Greg Kirkpatrick wrote:

That is one that I thought up all by myself. It describes pretty well what happens to the AIs. It came about basically by spending a long time looking for a word to replace "insane" with. Insane didn't cut it because it's cliche in SF and it didn't describe very well what was happening.


Luke P.

PostPosted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:39 pm
 View user's profile MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
archon
Decorated

Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 250

 		I'll go ahead and post Gheritt White's story here for comparison by everyone just in case the site goes down again. Notice the similar motifs and themes that go between the two stories (rats, hands, tears, red (or blood), etc).

Quote:
Gheritt White had been floating six feet off the floor for
three weeks. His feet and hands tingled, and his eyes burned
with the flames of a dying fire. He had last heard someone
speak to him as the cell door slammed shut. He didn't
remember what the uniformed man had said. The words had
bounced off the bars of the cell and rang through Gheritt's
ears. Gheritt had been talking to himself for the last few
minutes, something about getting caught, but then his ears
began to tingle just like his hands.

He looked at his hands, but the fire in his eyes made him
blink. Tears came, and when he opened his eyes again, his
hands had been melted into fleshy pancakes that wafted in the
ripples flowing over the fire in his eyes.

"Damn cell," he heard someone say. "Last time I had a good
meal was three days ago. The food they feed you in here could
kill a lab rat."

Rats. He had remembered something about rats. But his ears
began to ring again and the voice speaking to him faded off
into the background of his mind. In its place, there was a
new sound, the clapping of hands together. He blinked hard to
made out his hands again. They had disappeared; his arms
connected at the wrists.

He thought back to the time he went ice skating on a pond. He
remembered the sound of his skates on ice, a gentle scrapping.
Scrapping away now inside his ears, trying to tear down his
thoughts. There had been a woman with a white fur tube over her
hands. Her wrists were like his now. The wrists of
someone who had tried too many times to clap his hands. He
had been applauding everyone else in life, but never himself.
The hands, like himself, had been put into prison, and he
didn't know why.

"Can't sleep in here, if the smell of this musty bedroll
doesn't make you sick, then the sound of the rats chewing
inside the walls will keep you up. You'll wake up from your
dreams to their little chomping. Sometimes I think that they
are chewing me..." The voice was coming from inside the cell,
but Gheritt couldn't see anyone.

Gheritt hadn't always been alone, he could vaguely recall from
somewhere inside his broken mind that there had been friends,
lovers, murderers.

He recalled a theory he had come up with after a bloody
schoolhouse brawl. The theory was simple. At some point in
time, everyone was a murderer. Whether or not they ever felt
remorse, they had all wanted someone dead. Hatred. Everyone
knew the feeling of hatred. Gheritt had known hatred on that
schoolyard. His beater had laughed at their bloody faces, a
laugh which now echoed through his ears, rhythmically blocking
out the other voice in the cell.

The schoolyard was usually a place where Gheritt and his
friends would play football or foursquare or something, but
today, there was an edge. Maybe everyone had eaten cereal
with milk that was about to go bad, or maybe there was too
much smoke in the air from the wheeling hubcap factory.
Football had been extremely rough. Gheritt had gone to play
foursquare after he got tackled by five boys who weren't his
friends. But today, even foursquare had an evil twist. The
top square today had become habituated to making fun of the
first square. Gheritt had decided that it was an evil day.
When his beater started to push him around, he exploded.
Hatred flowed from his eyes, his hands and feet began to
tingle. All of his coordination left him, and his face was
beaten to a bloody mess. The schoolyard disciplinarian had
been slow to notice the ensuing carnage, and she didn't really
care anyway.

Gheritt would have killed him if he could have. He would have
torn out the eyes of his beater. He would have made him pay
for his abuses. But his hands had begun to tingle. He
couldn't feel his feet and he had begun to float off the
ground.

Everyone was a murderer, but Gheritt couldn't remember his
reason for why that was so. He thought it was something about
hands, the passion for justice. His hands and feet had begun
to tingle, and he was floating farther off the floor. He
looked up from his hands, and he saw the bars of the cell,
moving left and right, opening wide and then closing shut
like the surf coming up a beach. Every time that he thought
he would be safe, the bars crested up, the opening closing,
the wave rising, crashing. The result would be the same, he
would never escape. The bars would crush him, break his back.

He could feel the roughness of the sand under his palms, for
all the motion of the waves around him, his hands had come to
rest serenely upon the ocean floor. His body tossed and
flipped, pivoting about his hands under which he could feel
the safe, coarse sand. The wave crashed one final time, he
landed upside down, his hands thrown clear from the sandy
bottom, the rush of the water filling his ears, his nose, his
mouth, the sound of crashing water cascading down from his
feet to his head- penetrating his mind to tear down thoughts.
Like the sand castle he had built to withstand the tide, his
thoughts came down around him.

Gheritt had a good life, so much time, so much time. He had
loved swimming, turning, beating. He had loved the tingle in
his hands and feet, his inability to kill his nemesis. Once
he had fallen down the stairs, and just for a moment, his
hands came to rest on the carpet of the stairs. In that
instant, his body had frozen, floating over the stairs, safe
from falling, but the moment didn't last. The ocean crashed
about him, his hands torn free from the sandy bottom, his body
flipping, falling.

But now he levitated farther up, his hands still tingling. He
began to float through the bars, he expected the instant of
safety as his hands found footing, but that moment did not
come, the bars squeezed his body. His chest tingled. As he
fell through his cage, his legs tingled. The fire in his eyes
had become a cold wind, he blinked away tears. He tumbled
through the bars, spinning and turning, he could see a man.
In his hand he saw a small white rat. A pounding, the
crashing waves in his ears became rhythmical, hard. The man
was beating the rat against the floor. Pounding, pounding.
Blood covered his hands, the man's hands tingled. He had
broken them on the floor of the cell. Disciplinarian, lover,
murderer. Gheritt looked back into the cell. He saw himself,
disciplinarian, lover, murderer. He had killed his nemesis.
The rat lay dead in his bloody hands. At last, he held the
throat of his beater.

He escaped into the waves.

The waves.


PostPosted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:50 pm
 View user's profile MSN Messenger
 Back to top 
jellyfish_green
Veteran


Joined: 30 Jul 2004
Posts: 144
Location: Inner Colony of Eire

 		Hah! And I thought I was insane. Smile

PostPosted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 9:47 am
 View user's profile
 Back to top 
Sep7imus
Veteran

Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 149
Gram wrote:
When either AI starts gallivanting around the universe, digging into ancient alien civilizations ...


What, Earth in 2004 doesn't count as an ancient civilization? It might 500 years from now...

-Sep7imus
_________________
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
-Sherlock Holmes

PostPosted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 10:52 am
 View user's profile Visit poster's website
 Back to top 
Display posts from previous:   Sort by:   
Page 1 of 2 [17 Posts]   Goto page: 1, 2 Next
View previous topicView next topic
 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates
Jump to:  


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum
You cannot post calendar events in this forum



Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group