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The Moral Redemption of Dr. Halsey
Posted By: Ross Becalick<rbecalick@hotmail.com>
Date: 18 February 2004, 10:02 AM
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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.
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