/-/S'pht-Translator-Active/-/


Eat The Path terminal speculation -- Part 1
Posted By: XaleManixDate: 6/8/16 7:36 p.m.

In Response To: Eat the Path terminal translation (Lion O Cyborg)

This was a lovely read. Please, allow me to offer an alternative explanation. I will be restricting myself to Marathon, most specifically Mi. I'll analyze as best I can each page of the first EtP terminal. Sorry in advance if this gets a little... long.

First, the entire terminal page:

Find the right way down through the maze, to the food, then find the exit. Push the exit button. If the food tastes awful, don't eat it, go back and try another way.

They want the same thing that you do, really, they want a path, just like you. You are in a maze in a maze, but which one counts? Your maze, their maze, my maze. Or are the mazes all the same, defined by the limits of their paths?

Now, to break it down.

Find the right way down through the maze, to the food, then find the exit.

The maze is the timeline. We're in a maze of choices and options, and ever so many of them lead, quite literally, to dead ends. The food is a potent metaphor: humans need it to survive. Presumably, so do the S'pht. However, the Security Officer, presumably, does not:

"Time is limited. For you, it is limited by the breakdown of the neurons in your brain." -Durandal (Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap; Terminal 3)

Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but is the player, perhaps, not limited by their need for a biological fuel? Though our need for oxygen contradicts this, I will run with it as a metaphor: We do not need food to survive, but those around us, those we presumably care about, do.

The food is the way out, the way to stop the Chaos. Why don't we need it?
Why do we dream about Electric Sheep?
Why do we find ourselves starting back?

We keep finding ourselves pulling out our pistol, and pound the switch to open the door.

Oddly , this is familiar to us, as if it were from an old dream, but we can't exactly remember...

Let us move on, before I get too excited about slipping quotes I like into this and needlessly expanding the text.

Push the exit button.

To escape. To escape. To Create a new version of events. To forge A new Timeline. To control Chaos. To contain our Destruction. To create. To create, and escape.

Escape will make us God.

If the food tastes awful, don't eat it, go back and try another way.

Given my previous speculation, this seems sensible: If the outcome is unsatisfactory, we'll jump back and try another version of events, until we get a result we like.

They want the same thing that you do, really, they want a path, just like you.

This applies to everyone, really. They want a path -- a safe way to survival, just like we do.

You are in a maze in a maze, but which one counts? Your maze, their maze, my maze. Or are the mazes all the same, defined by the limits of their paths?

These two sentences are closely linked, so I'll talk of them together. Life is a maze. We, all of us stuck inside the maze pick the path which we think is right, and hope we go the right way... but when people start hopping the fence, and finding themselves not outside the maze, but simply in another maze with slightly different turns -- which one counts? Who can say that the occupants of a maze find all the corners the same? I speculate that, perhaps, whatever trick of the Jjaro that allows us to hop between mazes allows them all to be set right once a maze that works is found -- perhaps that's how the W'rkncacnter was captured to begin with.

Ah, but that's too much to talk about for now. Perhaps another time...

End message.
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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

Eat the Path terminal translationLion O Cyborg 6/5/16 5:40 a.m.
     Eat The Path terminal speculation -- Part 1XaleManix 6/8/16 7:36 p.m.
           Well, this is odd...XaleManix 6/8/16 7:40 p.m.
                 Re: Well, this is odd...VikingBoyBilly 6/9/16 1:52 a.m.
                       Re: Well, this is odd...XaleManix 6/9/16 5:06 a.m.
           Re: Eat The Path terminal speculation -- Part 1Lion O Cyborg 6/9/16 9:23 a.m.
           Re: Eat The Path terminal speculation -- Part 1Martin 6/9/16 11:28 a.m.
                 Re: Eat The Path terminal speculation -- Part 1Lion O Cyborg 6/10/16 12:22 a.m.
     Eat the Path terminal speculation -- Part 2XaleManix 6/10/16 6:05 a.m.
     Eat the Path terminal speculation -- Part 3XaleManix 6/12/16 6:29 a.m.
           Re: Eat the Path terminal speculation -- Part 3Durandal_1707 6/13/16 12:48 a.m.
                 Re: Eat the Path terminal speculation -- Part 3XaleManix 6/13/16 3:37 a.m.
           Re: Eat the Path terminal speculation -- Part 3Lion O Cyborg 6/15/16 6:51 a.m.
                 Re: Eat the Path terminal speculation -- Part 3XaleManix 6/15/16 6:25 p.m.
                       Re: Eat the Path terminal speculation -- Part 3Lion O Cyborg 6/16/16 12:51 a.m.
                             Re: Eat the Path terminal speculation -- Part 3XaleManix 6/16/16 3:34 a.m.

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