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[MrToasty]

[SPEC] High Ranking Officer=Grumpy Old Man definitive?

[Cherry Cotton]

You're absolutely right! I had always interpreted the two conversations in goodbye.wav (when the GOM is put on hold during his tirade about reciepts and evacuation, and the High Ranking Officer has a brief conversation with Mr. Doesn't Drink) as being entirely seperate... but in calculus.wav, the HRO's voice merges perfectly into the GOM. Now, it seems that, when the GOM/HRO is put on hold, Mr. Doesn't Drink comes into the room to tell him that the Apocalypso is lost.

So the new question is... what is the HRO's motivation to complain about Troy and officers and reciepts, if he himself is a part of the military chain of command? Perhaps he is honestly angry about being evacuated so suddenly, or he really did lose important family papers; or, maybe there's a reason that the HRO and the GOM seem like two distinct acts.

Discuss.

[SuperJerms]

I think most of us were under the impression that GOM = HRO by now because of the pauses in the first salvo of recipe3 wavs and some voice similarities, so this is mostly confirmation.

Along with that spec, the common wisdom (as I understand it) is that HRO is an ONI (section 3?) spook, and possibly McKaskill's contact. At any rate, the theory goes that GOM is a total fiction, HRO has always been on Earth, and the point of the GOM call was to a) verify that Janet is dead, and b) introduce HRO.

We still have nothing definitive on who Janet is, but the GOM wavs basically show that HRO is a clandestine ONI operative of some sort. Most of ONI is clandestine in some way or another, so he could be acting like GOM for a ton of speculative reasons. So, his point with the whole recipt issue? It may just be a red herring...what's important is that he is ONI, he is a ranking official, and we can see already that ONI often has to resort to cloak-and-dagger techniques to do thier jobs. At least for now, the more important issue is what HRO and LRO are revealing about the Apocalypso, Troy, and Harmony.

I think aliendial is right on here, when he specs that this is a situation similar to the WWII German Enigma code machine (Beast easter egg, anyone?)...Harmony seems to be a doomed planet, like Troy, and we have to be judicious about how much we reveal to the Covenant about what we have intercepted of their plans.

[Astald]

The High Ranking Official also slipped into his Grumpy Old Man voice in alt_burgundy, when he says "They don't make it anymore." Like SuperJerms, I assumed everyone had already accepted HRO as the GOM.

[MrToasty]

[thebruce]

well I have two qualms with accepting they are the same person just yet (I'm not against it though, just need to explain these issues)

1. in goodbye of chapter 1, the HRO knocks and enters the room, after the cranky old man speaks... (if this has been explained then apologies, but please explain it again here )

2. Listening to cranky in chapter 1 and the impersonation the HRO does in calculus, they don't sound like the same person... in calculus you can tell that the voice foundation is the same, that it's indeed HRO that's impersonating an old man... but cranky from chapter 1 just doesn't sound like it's based on the HRO's voice... HRO's voice is very deep and clear, whereas cranky's voice is slightly higher-pitch and grizzlier, IMO...
This point is more subjective though, so it's not directly disprovable...

I (and the other cranky!=HRO folk) will gladly step back if it can be proven... maybe it'll wait until a later audio clip... I dunno.

[ElectricSheep]

I think I can help you piece this together.

It is not the High Ranking Official that knocks on the door and walks into the office, its the Lieutenant Doesn't Drink. Just from listening to how the conversation flows and the footsteps, and that it seems more natural for the High Ranking Official to have a private office that the Lieutenant would have to knock before gaining entry rather than the other way about.

Leaving it that the High Ranking Official is only using the Grumpy Old Man as a cover, this leads to a few new questions. The High Ranking Official is a member of Section 0, so what need would he have to place a call through ordinary civilian use channels? The only particular piece of information attached to that call with any meaning is a name: Janet Adams. He did, after all, make very sure to include it.

So why place the call? To see if Janet Adams was KIA? Certainly a High Ranking Official from Section 0 would have much better methods at his disposal to determine whether or not a particular corporal is alive or not. Assuming that there was some kind of personal attachment between the High Ranking Official and Lance Corporal Janet Adams, I would have expected a slightly different reaction when the news of her death was announced. It doesn't seem to phase the act that the High Ranking Official is putting on. This either means that he is very[i] good at suppressing himself entirely, there is no personal connection between the two, or that the High Ranking Official [i]already knew whether or not Lance Corporal Janet Adams was alive. I'm leaning towards the final reason. We are dealing with a branch of the ONI here, and what is the job of the ONI? Managing and manipulating intelligence.

It could very well be that the purpose of the call was to verify that the KIA status for Lance Corporal Janet Adams had trickled down to a certain level, a level that would be accessible to the general public—family members and whatnot. It doesn't matter if Lance Corporal Janet Adams is actually dead or not, only that she appear to be dead at an informational level.

Following this line of reasoning, and keeping in mind that this is the ONI, what reason would there be to make sure that Lance Corporal Janet Adams showed up as KIA for anyone placing a call through normal civilian use chatter lines?

Curiouser and Curiouser...

[thebruce]

[SuperJerms]

[thebruce]

yes but if you listen closely, there are footsteps to the left/middle while the lieutenant is speaking from the right ("a lot of chatter from the cable sir")... unless he's, leaning way back so he's walking with his feet on the other side of the room, there's 2 options - it's not the lieutenant who's doing the walking, or it's an audio editing goof... or there's a 3rd option we missed.

[MeKiwi]

[thebruce]

[MeKiwi]

[IMnotGarbage]

excuse me but what does Lt mean. on these forums you have to type out all words or you will be judged. your not intelligent if you dont type out your words. never use Lt again



type out your words please

[vpisteve]