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Cortana: Knowing the Record Before the 'Lost Time' by Traumatised Marine
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Cortana: Knowing the Record Before the 'Lost Time' (First Part)
Date: 31 March 2003, 9:58 AM
They had been cruising in Slipspace for some time, thankfully in recent years even craft as small as Longsword fighters were equipped with Fujikawa Shaw generators.
The Chief was in a very shallow sleep, making up for the several days he'd had of sleepless combat.
Cortana wondered if anyone could afford to sleep soundly anymore, with so much hostile intent relentlessly searching for them. Cortana, of course, would never know sleep. Not that she minded, it seemed like a ridiculous waste of time, but she also understood that it was necessary for the biological mind.
But her mind was not biological, and she preferred to say active and occupied, and after being where she'd been, even her mind had plenty to think about.
Also, she had much time to muse over it
She reminisced over the time she'd spent in the Halo mainframe, the revelations she'd had while inside.
It had been inside that database she had discovered the origins of all life in the galaxy, the history of a race turned to dust, and all it's secrets. One of these secrets being the key to life itself.
She remembered the history of events that lead to the Forerunners' eventual demise…
FORERUNNER TIME RECORD
YEAR: 50 589 793 BC (Human Date)
We have finally come to an agreement, after scouring the galaxy for other forms of sentient life, a task that our race has been consumed with for millennia, we have charted the whole of our galaxy.
The findings defied any of our predictions, it seems that we truly are alone in the galaxy, not just in terms of sentience, but in terms of living organisms, we have found not even the most basic alien biological form of life on any other planet.
It seems that our existence and life as we know it, is a freak phenomenon. It seems that life does not form given the right circumstances and environmental factors. That life is not like a reaction that will always occur with the right elemental conditions. It seems our existence is a single, isolated, freak event.
Which leads us to wonder, why do we exist? What is it that begins life? The guilty spark that turns that which is not living to life?
This has become our new purpose, to discover the guilty spark, and when we find it, to recreate it, it will be the ultimate achievement of our race. To produce meaning from chaos.
FORERUNNER TIME RECORD
YEAR: 50 590 215 BC (Human Date)
Though it has taken our race many centuries, we have finally discovered it; the key to life, the guilty spark.
With it, we have created life, meaning from chaos, we are creators of a new lifeform from that which was nothing. This moment in time marks our greatest achievement, testimony to our brilliance. We look ahead to the future of our new life with anticipation.
FORERUNNER TIME RECORD
YEAR: 50 590 217 BC (Human Date)
It was speculated that our new lifeform needs somewhere to evolve, as our race did. For our race only exists and became what it is from the struggles and craftings of early life trying to survive. It needs an isolated world away from our activities to flourish. One can only dream of what this life will craft itself into, it will be the purpose of our race to observe for a very long time. But we are patient, and ever watchful.
FORERUNNER TIME RECORD
YEAR: 50 590 218 BC (Human Date)
It seems finding an isolated world for our new life will be harder than we thought, for our own race needs worlds to live on. Wish this world to be isolated from our presence and activities, yet not so far from our colonised part of the galaxy that we cannot monitor it properly. There has been one suggestion put forward that we keep finding ourselves returning to.
At the end of the Great War in the ancient history of our race, when we fought amongst each other, unenlightened and without whole unity, weapons were crafted.
Weapons of vast, titanic, unimaginable power, they were our doomsday devices, they ended the war through fear of ultimate destruction.
The Fortress Worlds.
The Fortress Worlds used a newly discovered weapon, Betawaves.
These were so horrifyingly dangerous because of the range they could reach, given the broadcasting structure was large enough. The Fortress Worlds are huge ring-like structures, they can send these waves deep into space, with an effective range of 25000 light years, a phenomenal distance. The Betawaves are damaging to the functions of a brain, they counteract neural functions, scrambling the mind's pathways. The bigger the brain the worse the consequences of this brain damage. If the brain is large enough to be sentient it will certainly die, killing the sentient life form. This meant that a single Fortress World could kill trillions upon trillions of Forerunner.
The Fortress Worlds are the ultimate weapons, capable of bringing the ends of our existence.
However with the uneasy cease-fire that came to be because of the ever-present threat of destruction by the Fortress Worlds, the different Forerunner nations came to peace.
In time, the rifts that had existed in the past were lost to history and we became united with one goal:
To find new alien life.
So these great, powerful reminders of our dark past remained untouched for millennia… until now.
It has been suggested that the Fortress Worlds could be the cradles for our new life. With some simple terra-forming and the installation of gravity and atmosphere, we could turn the inner curve of these superweapons into worlds for our life to flourish in.
It is ironic that structures of such evil power should provide the cradle for new life to live in.
FORERUNNER TIME RECORD
YEAR: 50 590 432 BC (Human Date)
We have been hyper-evolving the life in an attempt to speed up their development. This simply means we have been putting the life forms through varying events and conditions, eg. long periods of cold, etc.
The results have been different on each installation. On some of the Fortress Worlds the life has died out, extinct. Others the life has barely left it's single-celled form.
However one installation, 04, is showing promising results, the life has already begun to pass the multi-celled level and is beginning to develop specialised cells. It is tremendously exciting. It is evolving, and we are all eager to see what the life will become.
FORERUNNER TIME RECORD
YEAR: 50 591 232 BC (Human Date)
We have monitored our life developing on installation 04 for centuries now, and it has reached a level of such complexity that we can wait no longer. We cannot simply observe from a distance anymore, the life has reached an incredible level of evolution in a short time, thanks to our intervention. They could now be described as creatures, or animals, no longer bacteria or simple, basic life forms. We must go to the installation, examine the creatures for ourselves, and collect specimens for dissection and examination. We are incredibly excited.
FORERUNNER TIME RECORD
YEAR: 50 591 233 BC (Human Date)
Something unexpected and terrible has happened. It seemed that this new life has reached a level we had not been prepared for. We now know how they reproduce, and it has cost many lives to find out.
It seems there was an accident when examining the specimens, and one escaped into the laboratory. They are able to reproduce at a phenomenal rate, using the bodies of their hosts as food and reproduction frames.
Within days these creatures converted the whole planet of Forerunner into creatures of their own kind.
We are deciding what our next course of action should be now.
FORERUNNER TIME RECORD
YEAR: 50 591 234 BC (Human Date)
Disaster.
These creatures work with collective intelligence.
The used our ships to get to other worlds, countless planets in our galactic empire have been completely converted into these creatures, used as hosts and food. They continue to spread, and though we wage our whole forces against them, we are losing the battle. Our military is very weak, as we have not needed it for thousands of years, we never foresaw a struggle such as this after millennia of enlightened peace reigning throughout our galaxy. I fear that this will be our races' end.
Cortana: Knowing the Record Before the 'Lost Time' (final part)
Date: 31 March 2003, 10:01 AM
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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