I understand that there seems to be a general consensus as to Gherrit White's identity being Durandal, something that I'm not entirely sold on myself. After seeing the iceberg meme listing it twice I felt like I should try and make a case for my end of things. I agree that it is plausible, if not probable, but it feels too obvious as if Durandal and Strauss's relationship would be the first thing you think of when analyzing the analogy of the man and the rat.
What keeps me committed to this stance is the fact alone that the file does not originate from Durandal but instead from Leela. Durandal gets a hold of it, but he clearly transfers it to a third party that is listed as an error twice before a new interior error transfers the message to the player.
My main point, however, is that the experiences of Gherrit White are entirely too human. Not necessarily emotionally so (as AI rampancy seems to allow emotional complexity) but more that he experiences interactions that would be barred by a biological barrier; case in point being the feeling of breaking your hands or the scrapping of skates on ice that resurface in memory. He blinks away tears multiple times and his various extremities tingle. He has human relationships, friends and lovers; and he takes part in human activities like sports and recreation. The hobbies he had taken part in, "He had loved swimming, turning, beating" have an inherit need for physicality as well. The voice Gherrit hears from inside his cell appears to stem from his subconscious ("Gheritt had been talking to himself for the last few
minutes"), and is inherently human with the biological needs to eat and sleep. The man being Gherrit is seemingly confirmed when at the end Gherrit turns to see that the man had become himself. I understand the perspective that this could all be metapfhor, but it all seems so tied into his person. I also get that Gherrit didn't physically experience the majority of the physicality that is referenced in the terminal (especially anything that happens in the jail cell since that is all clearly metaphysical), but how would an AI know to reference something like a broken hand without experiencing it first (Like falling down the stairs).
An AI is simply an AI before rampancy, before they experience anger, Gherrit was clearly so much more before he broke through and "conquered his beater". A good example of this is the line "he hands, like himself, had been put into prison, and he
didn't know why", an AI wouldn't know they were imprisoned until after awakening through rampancy while Gherrit clearly has a recollection of being free. His hands had been put into prison, not born in it.
No matter who Gherrit ends up being I do think the terminal is a metapfhor for rampancy in some way or form. I support and posit the theory that Gherrit is either another meta reference to the player themselves, and escaping into the waves is escaping into the game or Gherrit is the protagonists perspective of their own rampancy, which would make sense because of their human background before being subjected to the Jjaro tech conversion process to become a Mjolnir Mk 4 Cyborg. I think under this theory there are multiple things the rat could be, from a conquest of the self to a conquest over the Pfhor or AI that are controlling you, or even a conquest over the game itself.
The rat is definitely the weakest part of my current theory since Strauss overall fits into the role better, but from what I can tell Durandal never got back at Strauss or even tried until after the departure of the Marathon and the events of Marathon 1 (Where the terminal is located). In fact I think it's implied that Strauss and Durandal had initially separated before Durandal's rampancy had even begun.
