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Cortana: Knowing the Record Before the 'Lost Time' (final part)
Posted By: Traumatised Marine<rbecalick@hotmail.com>
Date: 31 March 2003, 10:01 AM
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FORERUNNER TIME RECORD
YEAR: 50 591 279 BC (Human Date)
Few of our worlds remain untouched, and they will soon all be surely infected. We searched for a long time for some means to prevent all our achievements and discoveries being lost. If the destruction of our people from a life that has no purpose but to mindlessly multiply does happen, all our achievements, history and even memory of our very existence will crumble to nothingness.
We may have one, desperate chance to live on, and end the threat of these monsters (that we have named the Flood, for their relentless and unstoppable destruction.)
These creatures can only make hosts from sentient life forms, as the host requires a certain amount of neural connections to survive the transformation of bodily control. If they have no hosts, they can't reproduce, and they die out. We have a weapon that can remove the sentient hosts from the Floods' sickening reproductive cycle:
The Fortress Worlds.
So it is decided that we shall activate all the Fortress Worlds at once, and in doing so ending our existence and the Flood threat, but not without leaving our future behind. We have created a new life form, one that we know will follow the same basic evolutionary path as our race. It has been purposefully given the same basic traits as our own life- spines, brains residing in skulls and what will evolve to become limbs. They are obviously not sentient, and therefore will not perish when the Fortress Worlds are activated.
These creatures will be sent to a multitude of untouched, uncolonised worlds, along with basic vegetation and necessary factors. These will provide environments for them to live in and shall turn planets with the simple untapped potential to hold life into flourishing, living worlds. Sooner or later these life forms will evolve, and at least one of the species that springs forth on each of the worlds will surely gain sentience. If all goes well, there will be many planets populated with our descendants. Those that become sentient will learn of their own accord how to venture into space.
We have built space installations that will keep the secrets and technologies of our people behind for our decendants to discover and use. Our decendants will venture into space and discover these installations. They will learn our history and their origins, they will learn to use our technology and benefit from our achievements.
Samples of ALL our achievements will be kept for them, including our greatest achievement; the very life that threatens to kill us all, the Flood. We cannot destroy all of what was our greatest achievment, examples of the Flood must be saved, we created life from that which was not living, samples must be saved.
The safest place for examples of the Flood to be kept would be the very installations that can destroy them if needed, the Fortress Worlds.
So research centers will be built on the Fortress Worlds to contain samples of the Flood and keep them alive for our descendants to discover, of course with the warning of how dangerous these creatures are and that they must not be released under any circumstances.
The monitors of the installations, (the Guilty Sparks) will be given new primary functions, to ensure the containment of the Flood on the Fortress Worlds, and to ensure that the Flood cannot get off the installations.
However, of course, it would be foolish for us to entrust these AI with the power to detonate the Fortress Worlds. They lack become the appropriate grasp of moral code to hold such power. These AI may need to be operating for a very long time.
We also realise that the descendant races must be prepared for the remote chance of a Flood out break, if things ever do become as desperate as they are now, then one of them must rise as a Reclaimer, to end the Flood threat once more, as we have.
FORERUNNER TIME RECORD
YEAR: 50 591 282 BC (Human Date)
Our preparations are now ready, samples of technology have been kept behind in installations throughout the galaxy, as well as many signposts and clues as to where to discover them.
Samples of the Flood have been safely sealed on the Fortress Worlds, they shall be kept alive after the rest have been killed by the Monitors.
Now is the time, the Flood threat will end, we will not be forgotten…
and part of us shall live on.
END RECORD
Cortana had witnessed the destruction of a race killed by their own will to understand, the fact that she even existed was ultimately due to their sacrifice, and she was grateful.
However there were other aspects of the Forerunner legacy she was not so grateful for. It was because of the Forerunner that the Covenant existed also.
Defeating the Covenant was the destiny she had been created for. Behind all her personality matrixes and learning programs, in her soul, she could feel she was ultimately compelled to complete that task. Even with the newfound independence and power she'd developed from being in the Halo mainframe, she still deemed it as her purpose to save the race that created her. It was a purpose, and all intelligent beings need a purpose.
The entity that she had discovered on the Halo had nearly prevented her from completing her task, her purpose.
She flushed with resent when she thought about the entity. It had called itself 343 Guilty Spark, it was one of the Monitors described in the Forerunner records. She was a smart AI, she could learn, and because of her neural pathways that were derived from a human brain, she had a grasp of morals and emotions that this other entity was far from understanding.
So she couldn't help but feel resent for 343 Guilty Spark. She hated the entity's ignorance, it was a bundle of protocols and academic curiosity, it didn't understand the significance of killing a galaxy of sentient lives. She had tried to fool this AI, to try to prevent it from activating the Halo. She had tried to hack it's memory logs. Once she had gotten inside she had tried to fool Guilty Spark into thinking the Master Chief had already activated the Halo, so Guilty Spark would not try to activate. She had given him a flash virus that temporarily disabled him long enough for her to make the necessary memory changes. It did work, but not in a very helpful way. The only affect it had was to make Guilty Spark think the Chief had already activated the ring once before, however it wasn't fooled into thinking that the Flood was gone. Guilty Spark still knew the Flood was there, and still expected the 'Reclaimer' (The Chief) to activate the ring.
Only he was to be surprised when the Chief refused, especially when according to his memory, the Chief had already activated the ring in the past. He couldn't understand why the Chief was refusing on his '2nd activation.'
So in the end she had been forced to physically break the ring. She was unsure if this had been the best course of action, but it was the only means by which she could be sure Guilty Spark couldn't activate the ring. It was the incredible abilities of the Chief that had saved all sentient life in the galaxy.
Cortana's thoughts turned to the Spartan II, who was sleeping in the pilot seat (The Longsword was without a cryo tube.) He was an incredible specimen, about as powerful as an individual human being could be.
But Cortana had been considering just that fact for some time. The fact was that despite all that this Spartan warrior had survived, he was still a human, he was limited by the restraints of his biological body.
Cortana had spent a lot of time in control of the Pillar of Autumn, she had very much enjoyed the experience, particularly the titanic sparring she'd had with the many Covenant warships. Not only that, but for just over 12 hours, she'd been in control of the most powerful existing weapon in the galaxy, she could have destroyed all sentient life in it had she tried.
And yet, here she was, a cerebral hitchhiker in the Master Chief's brain, she missed the experience of controlling a physical form. She had, from the moment she had been implanted within the Master Chief, considered what it would take to gain motion control of his suit. Her creators had, of course, made it physically impossible for her to send neural impulses that the suit would respond to, but they had given her the ability to enhance and adapt the Chief's neural impulses to enhance performance. Using a form of neural subconscious suggestion and diverse neural translation, she had found that she could, in theory, control the MJOLINER to 92% of the Chief's will to overpower her neural manipulation.
Of course, this was only in theory, she would have to test it to find out if it would really work.
And so, as the Chief sat, sleeping quietly in the pilot seat of the Longsword, his right arm slowly and steadily began to move until it was in a vertical position. It held still in that position for a moment, then the hand curled into a strong fist. It paused for a moment, balled like that, then the index finger peeled away from the fist, followed by the next, and so on until the hand was now held wide open. Cortana gave the fingers a flex.
Suddenly the Master Chief woke up, sat bolt upright.
Cortana had disengaged the new control programs the moment she had picked up the sharp increase in the Chief's brain activity that had signalled his awakening. Still, the Chief had sensed something was moving his arm when he was asleep, and he now looked about the cockpit, searching for anything that might have been physically moving his arm. Seeing and hearing nothing, he picked up his rifle and proceeded to search the small craft. Finding nothing, as he walked to the cockpit he addressed Cortana.
"Cortana, scan the ship for anything suspicious."
Cortana replied curtly,
"Chief, I'm monitoring the scanners all the time, if something had shown up, you would already know about it." Then she asked innocently, "What's wrong?"
"I could have sworn something was toying with my arm…"
"Sleeping in Slipspace has been known to cause strange stimulations in the mind, no one's really sure why." Cortana lied convincingly.
The Chief was silent, considering. He examined his arm, flexed it and straightened it, touched it carefully with his other hand and gave his fingers a testing curl. He clearly wasn't satisfied.
"Chief," Cortana assured, "Trust me, it's just because you've been travelling in Slipspace for quite a while. Don't worry yourself right now, you're going to have enough things to worry about when we arrive, try to make up for the sleep you missed while you can.
The Chief remained standing for a moment, before sighing gravely, and unhappily settling back into the pilot seat.
If Cortana had been in her holographic form, she would have been smiling. She monitored the Chief for a while; he was still suspicious of something, but he couldn't explain what had happened, and he was so weary the prospect of sleep was difficult to resist.
"Sleep John. I don't want to see you harmed, I still need you."
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