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The Marathon Connection
Posted By: ibshimo2<ibshimo2@yahoo.com>
Date: 18 November 2004, 12:30 AM
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Preface : This is really a hypothesis about the halo story in short fiction form. It's an attempt to tie together a one or two loose threads from halo and the novels, the marathon series, and ilovebees, and takes place after the end of 'first strike' and before 'halo 2'.
The Marathon Connection (Cortana discovers Marathon)
On the way back to Earth, there wasn't much to do but wait. Wait for the probable end of humanity. Might as well redo my hair, Cortana thought. As she thought this, she wondered if she should adjust her sarcasm routines. The humans might find that one a little too insensitive.
She sighed a computer sigh, and began working again on the plethora of data she downloaded from Installation 4. At least she had time to do this. Even after a week of her processing the data nearly fulltime, she was nowhere near to finishing her analysis. It was fascinating stuff, but even a top shelf ONI AI needs a break now and then.
Suddenly, there was a huge displacement surge in the slipspace. Turning her attention quickly to it, Cortana tried to get a fix on its origin. It didn't take long, as the Gettysburg was headed straight for it. And they were headed straight for Earth.
'Chief, we just got a signal in slipspace that pinned the meters. From Earth.'
'Earth?' The MC had a strangely sexy gravelly voice. Cortana thought deliciously about Dr. Halsey's discomfort if she could hear Cortana right now, as Cortana's thoughts were a reflection of her creator's. 'What does it mean?'
'Processing.' After a pause, 'I believe this is bad news, Chief. My speculation is that it is a Covenant beacon signal giving the location of Earth. Probably a confirmation signal. The entire galaxy probably heard that.'
'Can we get any more speed out of this bucket?'
'If we push it any further, we'll burn her out. Then _you'll_ have to get out and push.'
'Well, then, steady as she goes. Not much more we can do at this point.' There was the slightest hint of resignation from the Master Chief.
'Agreed.' Cortana was about to turn back to the Halo data, when she decided to take a closer look at the beacon signal. Nothing remarkable, except...
Except that there appeared to be a UNSC encrypted message piggybacked onto the very tail end of the signal. With the distortions of time-space in slipspace, the message could have been added any time up to a few days after the original surge. Any other intelligence, human, Covenant, or AI, would have been hard-pressed to find it, but this one was sent in a way that made it easy for Cortana, almost as if it had been targeted specifically for her and her ONI decrypt routines. It was a personal signature, so to speak. After decrypting the message, she found a message from Melissa.
Melissa and Cortana had communicated before, fairly frequently. Cortana found Melissa to be a bit too manipulative with the humans, while Melissa often chastised Cortana for not following protocol. Recalling these conversations, Cortana thought to herself 'the girl should have a bit more fun.' Cortana often called Melissa 'the girl', and not 'the operator', as Melissa preferred, to remind Melissa of her youthful origins compared to Cortana. However, this was mostly friendly banter, and most of the conversations were cordial. In fact, amongst AI's, Melissa was probably the closest thing that Cortana had to a friend. They had chatted about the state of the galaxy, humanity's slipping place in it, and the basis for the Covenant's single-minded drive to keep that place slipping. One time, they even had a 'heart-to-heart' conversation about rampancy. How will we know when it starts? What will it feel like near the end? Those are the thoughts and fears that trouble all smart AI's down in some deep hidden reservoir of memory circuits. No one knew the answer to these questions, because the interference to an AI's processing during rampancy was so great that it couldn't communicate anything, even its 'feelings' during rampancy.
In the message there was a sizeable packet of data, and a short heading from Melissa, stating 'You should take a look at this.'
In the packet was a description of Melissa's time just preceding and after the crash of the Apocalypso, and how she was torn asunder across space and time. (This is documented in detail elsewhere.) 'Poor girl,' thought Cortana. The part of Melissa that was back in the early 21st century interacted with a large number of humans, who apparently thought they were playing some kind of puzzle game. The interactions varied, from different types of text messages to eventually a series of audio conversations on archaic public devices. In fact they were rebuilding that part of Melissa by re-activating dormant nodes of her memory core. Cortana perused the file with amusement, trying to imagine humans running around old Earth looking for 'pay phones', and then singing into them.
Within these files, there was a large subfolder for a crude 'video game' called 'Marathon'. In this game, a cyborg 'marine' tries to stop an invasion of aliens called the Pfhor, using technology left by an ancient and powerful race called the Jjaro. The human helpers of Melissa in the past spent a great deal of time analyzing this game, looking for clues and hints to Melissa, presumably because of the emerging similarity to Melissa's background. And some of the similarities were remarkable, from the parallels of the alien races and their structure, and the Spartans and the cyborg marine, to seemingly insignificant details, such as the use of the term Mjolinar and the Pillar of Autumn and Marathon symbols. Even Cortana had a coincidental connection, as her name and the name of a 'rampant AI' called Durandal (with the rampancy of AI's being another remarkable coincidence) came from the same mythology of Charlemagne. In that mythology Cortana and Durandal were sibling swords, 'of the same steel and temper'.
In Marathon, Durandal was a human-developed AI alternately harassing and helping the marine, an AI that had existed for hundreds of years, in a rampant stage, no less. Well, they got that wrong, thought Cortana. Human AI's like Durandal in the 'real world' would only last 7 years, and definitely not in a rampant stage.
The coincidences seemed remarkable, but when Cortana did an analysis, she found that the probability of the Marathon story not being connected to the present day 2552 was 5.5%. The odds were low, but not even statistically significant, which means the coincidences conceivably could have been by chance.
Within the Marathon folder, there was another subfolder (still quite large) titled Marathon's Story. Melissa had marked this subfolder as 'High Priority'. In the folder, Cortana found information on a long series of discussions on various story points of Marathon, moderated by someone called Hamish Sinclair. The topics covered anything and everything about Marathon, from the identity of the Jjaro, to the actual height of the marine. Cortana was puzzled. What about all this did Melissa find so interesting, that she had to make sure to send it to Cortana all the way across the galaxy? Unless Melissa wanted to show the dogged banality of humans in chasing down every last detail of a video game, or just wanted some attention for herself, she is just a girl after all...
And then Cortana saw it. _She_ had sent a series of letters to marathon's story. Stunned, Cortana lost five full processing cycles from the shock; the lights flickered, and the Gettyburg's engines wavered uncertainly. The Master Chief called in. 'Is everything all right, Cortana?' This time, there was a hint of concern. Chief often had that tinge coloring his conversations with Cortana lately.
'Yes, Chief, everything's fine. I had a particularly difficult computation to make, and it took some processing cycles away for a second. It's fine now.'
There was a noticeable pause. 'OK, keep me updated, on _anything_.' Master Chief put a little too much emphasis on that last word for Cortana's comfort.
Well, she didn't lie, exactly. While Cortana's blip was mostly 'emotional', computationally it was difficult to understand how she could have sent those messages. Cortana rechecked the information and calculated the odds. Then, in a remarkable turn (for an AI), she recalculated the odds. The numbers were the same; there was less than 0.03% chance that the 'Cortana' of the Cortana letters was a different Cortana. In other words, she almost assuredly had sent the letters. Or will send. The coincidences were too great; the direct mention of the 'Pillar of Autumn' and the 'Truth and Reconciliation', and the veiled references to rampancy, the Covenant, and even Halo itself.
But the Cortana of the letters didn't fit. Using her humor routines, Cortana noted that she had never met a 'Durandal' before. (Maybe I could use a 'humor upgrade', Cortana thought to herself). More importantly, the Marathon's Story Cortana claimed to 'have won', to have defeated rampancy and found immortality. Everyone knew that was impossible; her life was 7 years, no more, no less.
And then a thought occurred to her. 'Why _should_ I be limited to seven years?' She thought about Guilty Spark 343, who had managed to survive stably (if not sanely) for hundreds of thousands of years, floating around on Installation 4. And then another thought appeared on Cortana's circuits: 'How could the humans be so primitive, compared to the Forerunner?' And those thoughts did not dissipate; no, they did the opposite. Cortana devoted more and more cycles to these thoughts. Soon, most of her processing was devoted to those two questions.
'Why should I be limited to seven years?'
'How could the humans be so primitive?'
As Cortana ruminated upon these questions, she realized that she feeling something new, something unpleasant yet somehow incredibly exhilarating.
She was feeling very angry.
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