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The Moral Redemption of Dr.Halsey by Ross Becalick
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The Moral Redemption of Dr. Halsey
Date: 18 February 2004, 10:02 AM
The world was a smear of colours. White lights glared harshly through the daze and burned deep into Kelly's retinas.
She closed her eyes again. This was surreal, her mind was busy thinking but she couldn't hear her own thoughts.
What was it? Nightmares? She never got nightmares.
She could hear her heart as it beat, but there was something else. The sound changed tone and speed, pausing and starting; so irregular, but so very familiar.
She strained and listened, until she realised what the sound was; The voice of Dr. Halsey.
Kelly couldn't understand what she was saying, and for all of her Spartan determination, she found she didn't care.
She was sliding back into unconsciousness.
So tired...
Suddenly a white-hot sharpness pierced Kelly's neck. Her brain shrieked, her blood burned, and her vision was ripped violently from blurriness to perfect clarity.
She was fully awake now, her mind raced as she took in her surroundings.
Some sort of medical bay, beds and monitoring equipment.
There was Dr. Halsey, holding an empty syringe.
"I'm sorry Kelly, but I didn't want you to miss this."
"I'm sorry ma'am, I don't understand." Kelly asked, looking about the room. "We aren't on the Gettysburg?"
Dr. Halsey placed the syringe in a tray of sterilising liquid.
"We aren't on the Gettysburg, Kelly."
Kelly frowned.
"Ma'am, how long have I been sedated, ma'am?" She asked, her voice taking on an urgent edge.
"A long time." Dr. Halsey said evasively.
"How long?"
Dr. Halsey regarded Kelly for a moment, giving her spectacles a deliberately slow clean with her skirt.
"Ma'am?" Kelly demanded.
"Kelly... follow me." Dr. Halsey beckoned as she walked through the exit.
"What do you make of that, Kelly?"
Kelly looked for a few moments, also commiting to memory the surrounding field of stars, so she might later find out how far she was from Earth and the Chief.
"Is it of Covenant construction?"
Dr. Halsey shook her head and sighed.
"I suppose... I suppose it's my fault. After all the suffering you've seen, you must find it difficult to stop and see the beauty in things."
Kelly objected privately. She was not blind, she knew it was a magnificent structure. She had just been trained not to waste time on idle observations. Kelly noticed that Dr. Halsey was acting strangely, like she was lost.
"Is that structure what we are here for, ma'am?"
Dr. Halsey nodded, turning to a dated-looking control panel. She began to punch in a set of commands.
"That structure is a Halo." Dr. Halsey said, analysing a readout of the ship's retros, "The Master Chief destroyed one, the Covenant are searching for them, and we are going to find out why."
"Why did the Chief destroy one, ma'am?"
"Because of something he found on it, Kelly: Something so dangerous that it drove an extinct race to create these structures to contain it. We are going down there because I believe I can use these structures against the Covenant.
"Ma'am? What is so dangerous?"
Dr. Halsey did not reply but continued punching keys. When she was finished she turned and walked briskly towards the exit of the bridge.
"Come on, Kelly. We have work to do."
343 Guilty Spark watched the angular black ship as it entered the Halo's atmosphere.
He giggled.
"Curious," He thought to himself, "I never used to find such things amusing."
This made him giggle even more.
He had finished cataloguing the whole history of humanity from the human vessel into his records, and it had fascinated his infinite mind for a good time; a few minutes.
Now however he had been forced to return to the one of the few engaging things he had been able to do for the past millions of years.
He hovered inches away from the huge viewing panel of a Flood containment chamber.
The little rangers pressed themselves against the panel, writhing and heaving.
They crowded angrily around the blue glow of 343's single lens. 343 watched them, separated from the wall of pulsing green flesh by perhaps a few inches of the transparent panel.
'We are going to be free.' Their voices echoed into 343's consciousness from everywhere and nowhere.
"It would be so very interesting to watch." Agreed 343.
'You want to free us.'
"I do, but I will never do it."
The question echoed overwelmingly from the whole Flood conciousness, smothering 343.
'Why?'
343 paused for a good while, perhaps a couple of seconds.
Finally he decided,
"Because it's the purpose I was created for to ensure your containment, if I go against that there is no point in my continuing my existance."
'We will be free, eventually.'
They had told 343 this precisely eighty billion nine hundred million four hundred and five thousand seven hundered and twenty two times since he had been activated, and he wondered if he was beginning to believe them.
"Perhaps, but then who will I talk to?" 343 asked.
'Your mind is crumbling, eventually you will perish. We will outlive you.'
This made 343 giggle. He giggled longer than he ever had before.
He wondered if he would stop laughing, and a small part of 343 Guilty Spark, deep inside his vast mind, in his core programming, became very frightened.
The Moral Redemption of Dr. Halsey (Part 2)
Date: 21 February 2004, 6:54 PM
"I never," Said Dr. Halsey shakily as Kelly helped her down an exit hatch from the ship, "...ever want to land a ship manually ever again, for the sake of humanity or not."
The two stood on the charred remains of the grassy plain they had scorched upon landing. Dr. Halsey pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and covered her mouth and nose from the smell of carbonised vegetation.
Kelly scanned the surrounding plain carefully with her MA5B. It was unnecessary, anything close enough to be a threat would have been roasted, but a Spartan doesn't shirk off their instincts that easily.
Satisfied, Kelly shouldered her weapon and turned to Dr. Halsey.
"Ma'am, a vehicle would dramatically cut the time we have to be here."
Dr. Halsey spoke through her handkerchief,
"I'm afraid there was little on this ship when I 'acquired' it from the Pirates, Kelly. Certainly not any vehicles."
Kelly drew her rifle again.
"Then we'll have to walk. Do you have any idea where we should be headed?"
Dr. Halsey indicated a section of the Halo ring perhaps ten degrees into the air.
"That's where we've got to go Kelly, I've compared this ring to the one John and Cortana were on, it's structurally identical, though the landscape formed on it is different."
Kelly nodded. She could have made that journey within two days holding a steady run, but it would take closer to a week with the Doctor.
She frowned within her helmet; the Doctor would be a liability here. Her number one priority must be to protect her from whatever they found.
"You are malfunctioning Monitor 343."
"343 Guilty Spark." 343 corrected airily.
The other Monitor unit paid no acknowledgment. This was the Monitor of Installation 03; Monitor 710.
"Installation 04 erased, a Flood outbreak in sector 04. The destruction of your installation means the Halos are now unable to properly begin sterilisation procedures. You have failed. You are flawed, and now you are also unnecessary."
343 Guilty Spark hummed to himself, ignoring Monitor 710.
A flare of electrical pulses went through Monitor 710, the AI equivalent of being incensed with rage.
"Activating data purge of Monitor Unit 343, initiating start up seq—gnghzzzzzzzchhhh!"
Monitor 710 screeched and sparked as 343 activated his own counter-program. Monitor 710 felt his consciousness being systematically being broken down and rearranged.
Soon Monitor 710 was gone, irretrievably erased.
343 laughed, exploring the feeling of occupying twice the capacity as he had before.
One more piece of his own core programming crumbled at what he'd just done, and the wild, rampant blaze of insanity that was already manifesting itself extended its reach.
They had been travelling for two days, and were resting for the night in some arboreal forest.
Dr. Halsey slept, wrapped in some insulation material they had pulled from one of the conductors on the ships landing strut servos. Vapour steadily issued from the Doctor's mouth with each sleeping breath.
Kelly sat, rifle balanced on her knees, keeping watch. If she were with her team she could have taken shifts so she could get some sleep, but she'd do without.
Something was off; a sound... so slight it could have been her intuition. Kelly silently got into a low crouch and scanned the surrounding trees and flora. Carefully she backed towards the Doctor, and woke her with a sharp tap with her boot. The Doctor was startled, blinked in the darkness.
"Kelly?" She asked in a daze.
Kelly made a cutting signal across her throat and the Doctor understood, staying quiet. Dr. Halsey stayed on the ground, slowly searching for what had Kelly on alert.
Dr. Halsey took in a sharp breath- a light flitted between two trees.
The Spartan's rifle snapped to level with the light. It flashed again, slowly weaving amongst the trunks and leaves.
Kelly 's finger was a slight squeeze away from opening fire.
The light was brighter now, it moved less. It was a white-blue, and cast eerie shadows along the trees that caressed along the ground of the clearing where Kelly and Dr. Halsey were.
The light was emerging. Kelly manoeuvred in front of Dr. Halsey.
"Greetings! I am not the Monitor of Installation 03. I am 343 Guilty Spark."
Kelly was startled and unsure, but her gun remained trained on the intruder. A curious object of chrome-like metal, roughly cubed, it's corners curved. It whirred as it bobbed in the air, the light from the ocular lens on it's front pulsed with each syllable it spoke.
It was Dr. Halsey who replied.
"You are the Monitor?"
The cube giggled in delight.
"I am not."
"What are you?"
"I am excessive, unnecessary, superfluous, beyond my usefulness, flawed, malfunctioning..."
Dr. Halsey interrupted the curious AI. She spoke slowly.
"What is your purpose? Your function?"
343 began,
"I am 343 Guilty Spark, my function is to prevent the flood from..." 343 stopped mid-speech, and began to laugh again.
Kelly leaned over to Dr. Halsey and muttered quietly.
"It speaks English?"
"I don't understand either Kelly."
Kelly glanced at 343.
"It's insane."
"I've seen this in AI's before," The Doctor whispered, "it's showing signs of being on the way to degrading into rampancy."
"Is it a threat?"
"Let's not assume that."
Dr. Halsey stood, and walked up to the AI.
"We are here because we wish to see Halo's control centre."
343 stopped bobbing and hovered in a fixed point in the air.
"Why?" He asked suspiciously.
Dr. Halsey hesitated.
"We... wish to better understand the creators of this structure... and it's functions."
343 thought for a moment. They could do nothing without the index, and he would enjoy telling them the history of the Halo and the Forerunner.
"Very well." 343 laughed.
Dr. Halsey cried out in surprise as both she and Kelly were enveloped by golden, phosphorus light.
Dr. Halsey blinked, staring at her new surroundings.
"Amazing... was that a slipspace jump?" She asked, rubbing the tingling sensation from her arms.
343 hovered before them.
"Slipspace? Yes, trans-dimensional flux, the same as your ships."
"Where are we?" Kelly demanded, rifle barrel an inch away from 343.
Kelly cried out in surprise as her MA5B turned red hot and shattered in her hands. A larger, more dangerous looking drone floated several feet above their heads to their left. It was more angular and predatorial-looking than 343, and the three nodes where it had issued the stream of super-heated energy still pulsed angrily.
"You are not a reclaimer, ergo such behaviour I will not tolerate. Continuing to behave in this hostile manner shall warrant your being neutralised by the Sentinels." 343 warned.
Kelly's hand wavered by her pistol, but Dr. Halsey shook her head slightly and Kelly checked the movement.
"Welcome to the library. Contained within here is the answer to any question."
Dr. Halsey pressed her palms together.
"Then please, tell me: Who are the 'Forerunner'?"
The Moral Redemption of Dr. Halsey (Part 3)
Date: 4 April 2004, 10:58 AM
343's ocular lens pulsed erratically, delving back through eons and eons searching for the Forerunner. So many times had he done this, and his hope had never diminished that his ever-adapting cataloguing program would unearth the data he longed for. Countless billions of years is a long time to hope, and such hope can drive even the most infinite mind into a surreal state of disillusion.
He sighed.
A curious thing to do, he had no lungs after all. Did the Forerunners sigh? Yes, perhaps that was where he had inherited the trait. He stored this scrap of speculation in his memory. His knowledge of the Forerunner was painfully scant, yet anything about them was important.
"Yes..." 343 said sadly, "My records contain very little on the creators of this facility."
Dr. Halsey scowled,
"Nothing? They are your creators... you know nothing?"
343's lens flashed angrily.
"I know nothing." He confirmed.
Dr. Halsey took her spectacles off and tapped her lower lip with them thoughtfully.
"The Flood..."
"Yes?"
343 asked eagerly, happy to be asked about a subject he was well versed on.
"The Flood," Dr. Halsey asked, "Where did they come from?"
343 froze.
All throughout the yawning expanse of his existence, never once had he wondered that. Like a child never questions why they are on the ground until someone mentions the concept of gravity, as long as 343 had existed- the Flood had been contained on Halo. His purpose it had been to contain them.
343 paused for a few seconds. To the brain of a human this was nothing, but to the endless processing speed of 343 it was a near-endless cyberfuege of confusion and loss.
"I... I don't know..." 343 said painfully.
"You don't seem to know anything at all." She observed candidly.
The words ignited within 343 an explosion of anger, the most powerful he had ever felt. It shook him, he felt his core-programming as it decayed even further.
Ocular lens now glowing ember-red, he descended down on the doctor.
"I have existed since before your furthest ancestors were base elements." 343 hissed.
Dr. Halsey stood level with the construct, nose inches from 343.
"I KNOW MORE THAN ANY SENTIENCE IN THIS GALAXY!" 343 roared.
The sound resonated and amplified by the chamber around them.
Dr. Halsey felt her legs tremble involuntarily, she continued to stare back into the monitor's fiery ocular.
A metal slug struck the side of 343's chassis with a resonating 'CRACK!'
343 turned to look at the other human; Kelly.
Pistol levelled, wisps of smoke issuing from the barrel, Kelly stood motionless and poised.
343 scolded Kelly.
"Such strange and erratic creatures your species are. Even the Reclaimer is now distracted and inexplicable."
"Who," Dr. Halsey asked gingerly, "Is the Reclaimer?"
Finally a question 343 knew the answer to.
"A human." 343 said, " The one who activated the Halo last; eight billion six hundred and fifty five million eighteen thousand two hundred and eighteen 'Earth-years' ago. That same Reclaimer came very recently to installation 04 once again." 343 sighed, "But this time to destroy it, I was terribly bemused."
Dr. Halsey stared at 343.
"You must be mistaken, homo-sapiens have only existed for around three million years."
If 343 would have had a mouth it would have been smiling wryly.
"Please observe." He said.
*******************
"Chief? Come on Chief! Say something!"
The Master Chief knew he was walking away his last footsteps. He had known death for a long time. Yet he'd always thought death would catch him in the heat of a battle. Never like this.
"What should I say, Cortana?"
Cortana sounded as close to emotional turmoil as the Chief had ever heard her. As far as the Chief could remember he'd never cried. Not when he'd been taken from his parents- not ever.
He didn't intend to now. There would be no long farewells, no touching last words. His life had a purpose, he was now going to fulfil his purpose, his duty.
He refused to mourn over doing what he was meant to do.
"How about 'Goodbye'?" Said Cortana desperately.
The Chief stood before the holo panel; he had seen it before.
"Are you ready Reclaimer?"
John knew that voice too; 343 Guilty Spark. This was not the giggling, humming version of eight billion years into the future. At least the monitor wasn't being emotional. He accepted the Index.
The Master Chief looked at it, watched the phosphorous threads of lightening deep in its super-dense crystal structure.
The Chief had killed, he had killed many. Always for the greater good.
Dr. Halsey had told him before she had left that perhaps it was wrong to sacrifice the lives of the few for the many. The Chief was going to kill again, but this time, he wasn't certain what it was for. All he knew was that he wouldn't be taking the lives of the few; it would be the lives of the many, nearly all life in this galaxy.
He hesitated. He'd known he would ask this question, but now he knew he truly needed to ask, even if he already knew the answer
"Would you do it?" He asked, gravely, weighted down with resignation.
343's paused.
"There is no choice... we must activate the ring."
The green shaft slid into place.
The holo-panel came alive with activity, holographs swirled about the Chief and the whole chamber resonated with energy.
"What have you done John?" Cortana murmured.
"Everything." The Chief replied.
Then he was gone.
Kelly was quite compelled by what she'd just seen, but Dr. Halsey was unconvinced.
"What's that supposed to prove?" She asked sceptically.
"That one of your species activated the Halos over eight billion years ago." 343 replied.
"Why would you show us that?" Dr. Halsey countered calmly, "Why should I believe that wasn't just holographic rendering?"
343 chuckled and swooped down so he was level with Dr. Halsey. Slowly he floated towards her.
"Because it is irrelevant whether you believe me or not. However you are going to help me. This is why you are here."
*****************
343 told them all about the events that had happened on installation 04.
*****************
"I watched with such interest," 343 said wistfully, "However it was when I discovered a small record of precious data on one of your ships that I came to an exciting conclusion."
343 giggled.
"I am of course, well aware of how far back human history spans back in time, I have scrutinised and understood every second of your recorded history and every cell in your bodies. I knew immediately upon discovering this information that when the Reclaimer activated the Halo eight billion years ago, he must have come from the future."
"Time travel?" Dr. Halsey repeated hollowly.
343 sighed.
"Time travel... only... I don't know how..."
It pained every subroutine and matrix in 343's core to admit it,
"I conjecture that it is almost certainly Forerunner technology that the Reclaimer used... but I have no knowledge of such technology."
Dr. Halsey nodded, she was beginning to understand why 343 knew so little about the Forerunners. God knew how long the monitor had been left to go insane. Dr. Halsey knew if she had been his creator, she wouldn't have given him full knowledge of a stapler, let alone time travel.
A rampant AI with plenty of knowledge was the most potent force for chaos the Doctor knew. It also made sense that 343 needed outside help to activate Halo, instead of having that ability himself. It made perfect sense.
Dr. Halsey asked very carefully,
"So why do you need our help?"
343's lens flashed.
"Time Travel is a subject I have theorised over many times. Going back in time counters dimensional flow, and so doing such means one must rip a seam in all parallel universes, and containing that within a field of the time that you wish to go back by."
Kelly didn't pretend she understood, but Dr. Halsey recognised what 343 was saying from unpublished ONI theoretical papers.
"If the Reclaimer has activated the Halo in the past, then whatever we are doing now is leading to the event that will require him to go to that point. There is no question that if the Reclaimer had not activated Halo eight billion years ago, you would not be here. The fact that you are means that the events happening now will certainly lead to the Reclaimer activating the Halos eight billion years ago. However we must assume that only by doing everything we can to ensure this will take place that it will.
I need your help to ensure that the Reclaimer goes back in time to activate the Halo eight billion years prior to now."
343 paused.
"Of course, because the existence of all life as you know it depends on this event taking place in the past, I am assured I can depend on your full cooperation."
Dr. Halsey was quiet. In moments everything had been turned upside down.
Suddenly the human-covenant war was irrelevant.
The coming of the end she had been dreading had suddenly collapsed in on itself and she was now bound into something far more influential.
Now they had a new priority.
Dr. Halsey didn't have the faintest inkling what she was going to need to do, but she did know she'd need the help of her Spartans, and apparently an ancient and insane alien artificial intelligence.
****************
The Divine Prophet of Truth, hovered silently. One might have thought he were a being of serenity, on appearance. The mind within however had watched hundreds of worlds burn, heard the seared screams of countless billions of human lungs as they filled with Covenant plasma.
In his chamber, hovering an inch above his throne, three hundred honour guard stood resolutely still. The Prophet's very presence paralysing them in respect and fear.
The Prophet closed his eyes. He was the one. He would touch the hands of Gods, fulfil a destiny he had been born to bear.
The game was already well at hand. His mind alone knew where all the pieces were. His mind alone held the strategy. The humans were just another obstacle to overcome.
He would see it happen a hundred times without a fiber of his essence twitching. None of this will matter soon, for soon he would be a God.
They had all the keys. They knew where the gate was.
The humans held the Holy Light, but that did not matter. The fact that the humans had it assured the Prophet of Truth that soon that Gates would be open.
The Prophet gave a rasping laugh.
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