Adjutant Reflex- have we met this guy before?
Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 12:36 pm
Like Kiloh Ekim already mentioned, AR's naming convention is at odds with that of the two known monitors, Guilty Spark and Penitent Tangent. 'Adjutant' being a second-in-command, and 'Reflex' again, an automatic response to an incitement or stimulus.
I have no requirements. I am a facilitator. The array requirements are paramount.
Duh. Is he the second in command to one of the Installation Monitors, or to the central AI of the Ark/array system as a whole? While 343 Guilty Spark and 2401 Pentitent Tangent have some sort of numerical identification as part of their name, Adjutant Reflex does not. Does his lack of a number give him a superior classification?
343 Guilty Spark:(Two Betrayals) Protocol does not allow units with my classification to... perform a task as important as the reunification of the index with the core.
Is Adjutant Reflex cleared to reunify the index with the core? He's been talking a lot about Array requirements. Is that the array of Halos he's talking about? Intriguing.
As for this guy's existence in the game itself, from the deeply hinted-at but ultimately ambiguous existence of an AI on Pillar of Autumn to Guilty Spark's dialogue in the Maw, there seems to be someone keeping an eye on things while keeping out of sight.
Another AI on the Autumn?
(a) From the novels- In Ghosts of Onyx, the three AI's affiliated with the Spartan-III project are named after the seasons Winter, Summer and Spring. Autumn is missing, and we know that PoA was in the Zeta Doradus (Onyx) system two years before the events of Halo.
Much more directly- in Fall of Reach, Pillar of Autumn is very clearly mentioned as having two AIs- Cortana and an unnamed Point Defense AI. The second AI is never booted up due to a lack of time, and Cortana herself handles the PD for the Reach space battle. This AI never turns up again, and Keyes might have destroyed it when he initiated the Cole protocol, but nothing is ever clearly mentioned. Is PoA's second AI one of Chekov's Guns or a Red Herring?
(b) In game-
Keyes(Pillar of Autumn): Capture or destruction of a shipboard AI is absolutely unaccpetable.
Bungie may have decided to get rid of this AI the way they got rid of Johnson's flood immunity, as a plot point they were unhappy or dissatisfied with, but in the absence of a clear statement to that effect, I'll go with the assumption that the case for this AI's existence is the same as its state at the end of FoR: It's not active, but it exists on the ship nevertheless. Going by Keyes' statement, this second AI should have been removed from the Autumn, but its removal is not mentioned either in the game or in Halo: The Flood.
Who is with Guilty Spark?
343 Guilty Spark:(Two Betrayals):
If you are unwilling to help, I will simply find another. Still, I must have the index. Give your construct to me, or I will be forced to take her from you.
343 Guilty Spark:(The Maw):Why do you continue to fight us, Reclaimer? You cannot win! Give us the construct and I will endeavor to make your death relatively painless...
Notice the change from "I" and "me" in Two Betrayals to "us" in the Maw. Who is with Sparky? "I will endeavour to make your death relatively painless..." endeavour to do so in the face of someone else's anger, or out of his own misplaced gratitude to the seemingly loony Master Chief? What is the position of this second entity in relation to Spark?
343 Guilty Spark :Ridiculous! That you would imbue a warship's AI with such a wealth of knowledge! Weren't you worried it might be captured? Or destroyed?
Spark is no fool and Cortana is not an ordinary warship AI, so this statement's been taken to mean that the other AI on Pillar of Autumn does exist, and Sparky's talking about him. However, Cortana says that Sparky's in her data arrays. Are the data arrays exclusively her own, or are they a part of the ship's computer system, and not taken away with Cortana when she left the Autumn? Spark rambles on about human history like he's been around there for some time before they came and hadn't just entered Engineering, and he continues to say things like "This AI construct has too much data" during our rampage in the engine room. Again, who is he really referring to: Cortana or the unconfirmed second AI?
And not to mention the "We" and "Us" conundrum. If the second AI on the autumn is the person he's talking about, why is it supporting Spark? If it's been quietly disposed of and its existence is a mere red herring, why the "us"?
Enter Adjutant Reflex. There are two ways in which AR can fit in with the whole situation.
(1) He's the second AI from the Autumn, back from canonical limbo and converted into 343 GS's assitant and driven back in time for whatever crazy reason: to learn more of human history, perhaps?
(2) He's the second-in-command of the entire Ark system, the other half of the "us" in the Maw, and he's on Halo 04 in whatever way: Faster than Light data transfer, perhaps due to a higher classification, and maybe to control the Flood outbreak there. He likes the data on the Autumn, and tries to stop the outbreak while keeping Autumn's data intact for study. Halo 04 is blown up, and he makes a cheap escape and heads to our time for more of the data he found on the Autumn.
Our data archiver compared to Spark:
Sufficient contextual data acquired. 871803909 ± 384 hours since event.
Compiling local archives/resources. [Hibernating] until next incident.
Archives/resources will be compiled in approximately 38 hours. No significant incident predicted. Systems, functions and attitudes are normal.
I'll tell you where the Sleeping Princess is.
- reprobate
Detailed investigation complete. You do not possess that location. Data acquisition complete. Compiling local archives/resources. [Hibernating] until next incident.
Guilty Spark:
You can't imagine how exciting this is! To have a record of all of our lost time! Human history, is it? Fascinating.
Oh how I will enjoy every moment of its categorization! And to think that you would destroy this installation. As well as this record. I am shocked. Almost too shocked for words.
Sparky is almost drunk on what he finds on the Autumn, while AR is totally impassive as far as his trawling is concerned. If you ask me, he knows what he's searching for, and I guess he has an idea of what to search for based on what's on the Autumn. It's a stretch, but I'd put it as the best explanation we have available.
I have no requirements. I am a facilitator. The array requirements are paramount.
Duh. Is he the second in command to one of the Installation Monitors, or to the central AI of the Ark/array system as a whole? While 343 Guilty Spark and 2401 Pentitent Tangent have some sort of numerical identification as part of their name, Adjutant Reflex does not. Does his lack of a number give him a superior classification?
343 Guilty Spark:(Two Betrayals) Protocol does not allow units with my classification to... perform a task as important as the reunification of the index with the core.
Is Adjutant Reflex cleared to reunify the index with the core? He's been talking a lot about Array requirements. Is that the array of Halos he's talking about? Intriguing.
As for this guy's existence in the game itself, from the deeply hinted-at but ultimately ambiguous existence of an AI on Pillar of Autumn to Guilty Spark's dialogue in the Maw, there seems to be someone keeping an eye on things while keeping out of sight.
Another AI on the Autumn?
(a) From the novels- In Ghosts of Onyx, the three AI's affiliated with the Spartan-III project are named after the seasons Winter, Summer and Spring. Autumn is missing, and we know that PoA was in the Zeta Doradus (Onyx) system two years before the events of Halo.
Much more directly- in Fall of Reach, Pillar of Autumn is very clearly mentioned as having two AIs- Cortana and an unnamed Point Defense AI. The second AI is never booted up due to a lack of time, and Cortana herself handles the PD for the Reach space battle. This AI never turns up again, and Keyes might have destroyed it when he initiated the Cole protocol, but nothing is ever clearly mentioned. Is PoA's second AI one of Chekov's Guns or a Red Herring?
(b) In game-
Keyes(Pillar of Autumn): Capture or destruction of a shipboard AI is absolutely unaccpetable.
Bungie may have decided to get rid of this AI the way they got rid of Johnson's flood immunity, as a plot point they were unhappy or dissatisfied with, but in the absence of a clear statement to that effect, I'll go with the assumption that the case for this AI's existence is the same as its state at the end of FoR: It's not active, but it exists on the ship nevertheless. Going by Keyes' statement, this second AI should have been removed from the Autumn, but its removal is not mentioned either in the game or in Halo: The Flood.
Who is with Guilty Spark?
343 Guilty Spark:(Two Betrayals):
If you are unwilling to help, I will simply find another. Still, I must have the index. Give your construct to me, or I will be forced to take her from you.
343 Guilty Spark:(The Maw):Why do you continue to fight us, Reclaimer? You cannot win! Give us the construct and I will endeavor to make your death relatively painless...
Notice the change from "I" and "me" in Two Betrayals to "us" in the Maw. Who is with Sparky? "I will endeavour to make your death relatively painless..." endeavour to do so in the face of someone else's anger, or out of his own misplaced gratitude to the seemingly loony Master Chief? What is the position of this second entity in relation to Spark?
343 Guilty Spark :Ridiculous! That you would imbue a warship's AI with such a wealth of knowledge! Weren't you worried it might be captured? Or destroyed?
Spark is no fool and Cortana is not an ordinary warship AI, so this statement's been taken to mean that the other AI on Pillar of Autumn does exist, and Sparky's talking about him. However, Cortana says that Sparky's in her data arrays. Are the data arrays exclusively her own, or are they a part of the ship's computer system, and not taken away with Cortana when she left the Autumn? Spark rambles on about human history like he's been around there for some time before they came and hadn't just entered Engineering, and he continues to say things like "This AI construct has too much data" during our rampage in the engine room. Again, who is he really referring to: Cortana or the unconfirmed second AI?
And not to mention the "We" and "Us" conundrum. If the second AI on the autumn is the person he's talking about, why is it supporting Spark? If it's been quietly disposed of and its existence is a mere red herring, why the "us"?
Enter Adjutant Reflex. There are two ways in which AR can fit in with the whole situation.
(1) He's the second AI from the Autumn, back from canonical limbo and converted into 343 GS's assitant and driven back in time for whatever crazy reason: to learn more of human history, perhaps?
(2) He's the second-in-command of the entire Ark system, the other half of the "us" in the Maw, and he's on Halo 04 in whatever way: Faster than Light data transfer, perhaps due to a higher classification, and maybe to control the Flood outbreak there. He likes the data on the Autumn, and tries to stop the outbreak while keeping Autumn's data intact for study. Halo 04 is blown up, and he makes a cheap escape and heads to our time for more of the data he found on the Autumn.
Our data archiver compared to Spark:
Sufficient contextual data acquired. 871803909 ± 384 hours since event.
Compiling local archives/resources. [Hibernating] until next incident.
Archives/resources will be compiled in approximately 38 hours. No significant incident predicted. Systems, functions and attitudes are normal.
I'll tell you where the Sleeping Princess is.
- reprobate
Detailed investigation complete. You do not possess that location. Data acquisition complete. Compiling local archives/resources. [Hibernating] until next incident.
Guilty Spark:
You can't imagine how exciting this is! To have a record of all of our lost time! Human history, is it? Fascinating.
Oh how I will enjoy every moment of its categorization! And to think that you would destroy this installation. As well as this record. I am shocked. Almost too shocked for words.
Sparky is almost drunk on what he finds on the Autumn, while AR is totally impassive as far as his trawling is concerned. If you ask me, he knows what he's searching for, and I guess he has an idea of what to search for based on what's on the Autumn. It's a stretch, but I'd put it as the best explanation we have available.