In Response To: Jealousy Stage (Speculators may want to read) *SP* (Socrates)
: Ok, be forewarned! The bulk of this contains direct spoilers for the Halo
: novel First Strike !
: ...
: Perhaps the ground team is gone, due to Enkidu, who could be in the Jealousy
: stage of rampancy.
: Perhaps Enkidu, once wild with the Lebanon and her crew, has been
: introduced into the urbanity of a Forerunner structure, and now resents
: it.
: Perhaps Enkidu sent the distress message to the Covenant.
: And I tracked down what people have been associating the Covenant ship with
: in their memories. The Covenant cruiser Sword of Justice would probably
: be of the same fleet as the Ascendant Justice , under the Prophet of
: Justice. The Ascendant Justice is the ship that John & co. captured
: after the destruction of Halo.
: Now from the BLAM! you might've been waiting for. A few quotes, starting on
: page 63 of the novel Halo: First Strike : The Chief Halted and killed
: his external speakers so he could speak freely. "Problem?"
: "No. A lucky break, maybe. Look to your left and down twenty
: centimeters."
: The Chief squinted and noticed that a portion of the wall extruded into a
: circular opening no larger than the tip of his thumb. "That's a data
: port... or what passes for one with the Covenant Engineers. I'm picking
: up handshake signals in shortwave and infrared from it. Remove me and
: slot me in."
: "Are you sure?"
: [...]
: "When have I not been sure?" She snapped.
: The Chief could sense her impatience through the neural interface.
: He removed Cortana's data chip from the socket in his helmet. The Chief felt
: her leave his mind, felt the heat rush back into his head, pulsing with
: the rhythm of his heart... and once again, he was alone in the armor.
: [...]
: Cortana was built for software intrusion. She had been programmed with every
: dirty trick and code-breaking algorithm the Office of Naval Intelligence
: had ever created, and a few more tricks she'd developed on her own. She
: was the ultimate thief and electronic spy. She slipped into the Covenant
: system.
: [...]
: "How is it?" the Chief asked.
: Now the element of surprise was gone, and the system's counterintrusion
: systems were running on high alert. Something else prowled the systems,
: now. Delicate pings bounced off the edges of Cortana's presence; they
: probed, and withdrew.
: It felt as if there were someone else running through their system. A
: Covenant AI? There had never been any reports of alien AIs. The
: possibility intrigued her.
: [...]
: A tickle of feedback teased through the data stream.
: Cortana locked onto the source of that feedback, listened, discerned a
: nonrandom pattern to the signal, then cut off contact. She had no time to
: play hide and seek with whatever else was in this system.
: [...]
: She sent a blocking countersignal along the connection where this
: "other" was trying to contact her.
: [...]
: Cortana picked up increasing communications bandwidth between the flagship
: and the cruisers. Reports of the invaders -- a cry for help -- a warning
: to be relayed to the home world. There were references to the "holy
: one," and those messages had what she considered amusing attempts at
: encryption to keep them secret. Curious, she had to investigate what the
: Covenant thought important enough to hide.
: [...]
: The other presence in the system tried to shut the pumps off. She blocked
: that signal and assigned a new code to the security systems: "WE
: REGRET TO INFORM YOU."
: She heard the other AI scream, an echo of an echo that revertebrated through
: her processors. She knew the sound--familiar like a human voice, but
: terribly distorted.
: [...]
: Cortana was annoyed. She had let the Covenant AI--for that's what this other
: presence in the system undoubtedly had to be--trick her. She had gone
: straight for the simple lockdown of the NAV systems. She never performed a
: thorough systems check[....]
: [...]
: Cortana swore that when she caught this guerilla Covenant AI, she'd erase it
: line by line.
: [...]
: Cortana emerged from her cocoon of concentration and immediately sensed the
: electronic presence of the other near her, monitoring her slipspace
: calculations. It was practically on top of her.
: "Heresy!" it hissed and then withdrew ...and vanished.
: [...]
:
: "Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel-Infidel--"
: "That's quite enough of that," she said. "You and I need to
: come to an understanding." She reduced the memory pathways, peeling
: the Covenant AI apart code layer by code layer. "This is my system
: now."
: While an operational Covenant AI would have been a prize for ONI Section
: Three--this particular Covenant AI was too dangerous. She could not allow
: its existence to continue.
: "Do what you will-wil-willwill," it screamed, "I go to finally
: to my heaven reward paradise
: final-finalfinalinfinityinfinityinfinityinfini-AT NONCOPYSTATE."
: Cortana's curiosity over this odd proclamation would have to wait--forever.
: She tore the AI apart, erasing, recording the Covenant code structure even
: as she destroyed it. This was analogous to a dissection, and she did it
: quickly, efficiently, and without remorse-- until she found the AI's core
: code.
: She halted
: She almost recognized this code. The patterns were maddeningly familiar. No
: time to ponder why, though. She recorded it and then wiped the original.
: The Covenant AI was gone, its bits safely hacked apart and stored for
: future research. Provided, of course, Cortana had a future.
: [...]
: Small portions of the alien software looked like her. The odds of such
: parallel evolution in computer science seemed improbable. It was almost as
: if it were her code... only copied many times, each time with subtle
: errors introduced by the replication process.
: Could the Covenant have captured a human-made AI, copied it, and then used
: the result in their ships? If so, why had there been the need to replicate
: the code so many times? And with so many errors?
: [...]
: [...]She ran a trace on the origin of the copied pathways of the alien AI,
: and found its replication routine. This copying code was extremely
: convoluted; in fact, it took up more than two thirds of the Covenant AI's
: processor--memory space. It was dark with functions that ran deep to the
: core. It spread dendritic fingers through the system, like a cancer that
: had metastasized throughout the AI's entire body.
: She did not understand any of it.
: These are the relevent sections of the text, I believe. There is more to what
: I've quoted here, but I really did not wish to retype that much of the
: book. (And I hope Mr. Trautmann will forgive me for quoting as much as I
: have, here.)
: The conclusions I have reached are thus: 1) Enkidu has indeed been changed by
: his contact with the Forerunner system. He has not been taken over,
: however, and it is possible that the reason his origin is listed as
: unknown is that he's broadcasting from within the Forerunner structure,
: using the structure's comm. systems rather than the human comm. systems
: that he had been using.
: 2) Enkidu has gone rampant and, as of the "How I Spent Your Summer
: Vacation" section, is in the Jealousy Stage of rampancy. He is
: therefore highly dangerous and very much capable of destroying his former
: friends of the Human crew. One way he might ensure this would be to call
: in a Covenant fleet to smash the already crippled Lebanon .
: 3) Enkidu is not captured by the Covenant; rather, he joins them willingly,
: probably from the head trip of suddenly being a god-like being to be
: worshipped. He is, in other words, a new spin on an old "friend"
: of ours...
:
: So... we have Leela (Cortana) and Tycho (Enkidu)... but where's Durandal?
: ~Socrates
Maybe Enkidu is part Durandal part Tycho, because he does have the Durandal sense of humor!
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