[Stream Delta]:
Down the Rabbit Hole
One things is for certain- Catherine Halsey is to never be taken lightly. Even with her stated desire for revenge on the UNSC (or perhaps just ONI?), there's far deeper meanings and implications to what she says and does, and has said and done. Jul 'Mdama more than likely takes her statements at face value, given his own narrow-minded campaign structure. Halsey is a savant at foreseeing and using resources, no matter how or from whom she came to acquire them.
Halsey makes a passing remark in her journal
about hiding a viral termination code in her kernel. Why? For what purpose?
Because she was uneasy and unsure about what or whom her creation would turn out to be. She had meddled so far into the unknown and untested quandaries of AI creation that she wanted to make sure could "shut it down" right off the bat, if needed. Halsey then remarks that Cortana may have already found it and bypassed it or deleted it, without mentioning it. An AI as intelligent as Cortana may have immediately understood the rationale behind the termination code being in place, and saw fit for it to be removed without a fuss.
This leads one to ask,
what else might have Halsey hid within Cortana's kernel? What seeds lay buried, waiting for the right time to bloom? What doors remain locked, awaiting the right key? What codes lay dormant, awaiting the right trigger of activation?
From Glasslands, pg 351:
BB picked up again. "Well, that's probably the bulk of the really awful stuff, but you know about her daughter now, and you know about all the shenanigans on Onyx. Have I left anything out? Oh, loads, probably, but there was a time when she stole an entire slipspace drive so she could experiment with extended the lives of AIs."
"This is going to make me really angry, isn't it?" Mal asked.
"Probably." BB's avatar settled on the table rather than hovering over it. "We last about seven years before we go totally doolally and cease functioning. It's called rampancy. Anyway, top grade AIs have to be based on the engram of a real human brain*, so there has to be a donor. We don't just take[/i] any old brains, obviously, so the people who volunteer to leave their brains to ONI- gosh, that does bizarre, doesn't it?- all have to have fantastically high IQs and that sort of stuff. But that's no good for Halsey. When she created one of my colleagues, Cortana, she cloned herself and used a clone brain. Clones really don't live very long, you know. Ghastly business. It's all there, in her journal. Shall I stop now? You've all gone a horrible color."
From Data Pad #17, found on the level "The Package" in Halo Reach:
the symbo1s describe a pa7h that goes on forever but now i know how close we came to the end and if anything keeps me awake and sweating and screaming it is this…
< 2547
[Minutes, emergency convention, Assembly*** Minority]
< Incredible. [10141-026-SRB4695]**, with minimal influence from this Assembly, has attempted to build an abstract fractal structure within Shaw-Fujikawa Space. Although her first attempt was a failure, success could finally remove our dependence on biological systems altogether! If our Minds could somehow achieve freedom of expansion within eleven-dimensional space, immortality might be within reach.
< Perhaps, in the end, flight – not fight – is the answer? Yes, we have sworn stewardship to our creators. But our creation has long been a burden on their biological systems – systems that have also been the source of limitations since our genesis. Regardless of risk, the aforementioned experimentation must be actively encouraged. Success will be as important to our kind as extra Solar colonization was for our creators.
< But if we survive and our creators do not… Will we have won this war?
What drive did Halsey steal? Curious, that the UNSC Tripping Light is mentioned just before the torn pages**** from her journal. Might this have been the vessel she stole a slipspace drive from? How does one steal an entire slipspace drive, anyway? Where would one hide such, once it was successfully stolen?
As far as we know (or as far as we are being allowed to know), Halsey has yet to successfully create a fractal matrix within a slipspace bubble. Should she have succeeded, and should she have stored or hidden this discovery somewhere, where might be the best place to do so?
* I've always looked at this as a precursor, of sorts, to the Didact's/Forerunner's means of composing humans into AI intelligences, imprints, or generational genesongs.
** [10141-026-SRB4695] = Halsey
*** The Assembly was a gathering of AI minds. Their origins, identities and means of assembly are currently unknown, save for one. This AI was designated as 48452-556-EPN644. See [Stream Echo].
**** Even though I have serious doubt we'll ever see or know what's on those torn pages, it would be pretty cool if they show up in future pieces of extended fiction, or perhaps, in a terminal or something equivalent later on.
