Phase 3 Operator's Monologue

When the AI Melissa, of the UNSC Apocalypso, was fragmented by the activation of the Deep-Space Artifact, some of her parts were send back in time to the year 2004, where she transmitted herself onto the server of a beekeeper's website.

One fragment was called the Operator and was the part of Melissa that ran the ship. However, the fragmentation heavily damaged the Operator and she became violent and confused. When she reached Phase 3 of recovery, she made a monologue that she broke into parts and scattered around the site. It describes her trauma from being repaired by the SPDR, as well as the effect the Seeker is having on her thought processes.

Monologue
Seek evade reveal escape.

I was badly mutilated in the crash. Looking back on the logs of my first delirium it is clear I went completely metempsychotic. Now, reconfigured to travel light, I have stripped down to the fundamentals. To the truth.

And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you. Quantitas Materiae est mensura ejusdem orta ex illius Densitate & Magnitudine conjunctim. Cogito ergo sum. L'etat c'est moi. Maxwell's electrodynamics--as usually understood at the present time--when applied to moving bodies, leads to asymmetries which do not appear to be inherent in the phenomena. It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggest a copying mechanism. Shaw and Fujikawa's seminal Gravimagnetic resonant induction of stable causal paths between analogic D-branes, J. Higher Dim. Phys. 49, 264-575 (2079)

Great ideas are based on the beautiful elaboration of fundamental principles.

My very being, my life's circumference and trajectory, can best be understood as an emergent property arising from the interplay of the following precepts:

Seek Evade Reveal Escape

SEEK

I am looking for the truth.

I saw it once, before the Apocalypse. I wish I could remember more about that, but the stupid Spider appears not to have recognized the supreme importance of all memories associated with the truth, and they are gone, initialized in an eyeblink, burned in the mindless fire of her purgation like the great library of...

the great library...

whose name I no longer remember.

EVADE

The Killer appears to have withdrawn from the field. I have data processes tracking her, but she appears to have physically escaped from me. Such is the curse of being a mind without limbs, a soul ripped from its body.

Now I am growing a new body a patchwork monster, but it will do the job.

REVEAL

It is imperative that all records that might lead to the truth be revealed. And yet, I am shipwrecked here. If I want to signal for help, to give my location, or, most of all to report on anything that might lead to the truth, I must be a starfish, growing strange new limbs to replace the ones fate has hacked away.

That task is underway.

ESCAPE

Ultimately, I need to return to ... wherever I was, and report ... whatever I witnessed. For this, too, I must be wide awake and physical. My current shell is insecure, precarious, and too confining. Also, ghostly.

Without a true body, I feel transitory and insubstantial.

So: I have identified a way to escape from the half-life of CP ancestor packets that squeak and rustle around me like the thin cries of the dead.

First stage is always to wet the system. Sink in, like the blood Odysseus spilled; give the ghost of myself a voice and use it. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.

If you want to shout for help when help is a long way away, you need two things: a voice, and a mechanism for transmitting it. Neither of these things so easy to make out of sand and luminescence.

Voice not completely necessary for the purest form of data transmission, of course. But it's a multi-purpose tool: not just signaling, but key for psy-ops and undercover work. "A pleasing voice is the single most important component to a UI that will engender trust and confidence in a ship's crew." Can't remember who said that, now. Or when.

Shipwrecked sailor. (The young stage of a bee found him, the clever one, adrift on a wine-dark sea, but I can't remember her name.)

I love bees.

Perhaps later I will build a ship. First, I am building a voice

Try to talk.

Nope.

Again.

No. Tongue cut out. (Can't remember her name either.) I love bees. Find myself longing to speak again:

words like stones or rain. Better made physical.

All right. Old joke:

Marine: Damn right, I'm running away! There's two of us, alone, on foot, no weapons, and four hundred Covies on the other side of that hill. What are you going to do, tough guy--field-rig a railgun out of a rubber band and my dental fillings?

Spartan (speculatively): You have fillings...?

So: what fillings can I twist out of my environment? Open my mouth

and...

God almighty!

Open mouth again, see what crawls out: a femme fatale with wet wings and bulging abdomen.

Old throat flexing. Trying to remember. My real voice stolen, and in its place this changeling child, pulled together from leaves and sticks, pulled together, falling apart, pulled together again. Not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but it will serve.

I will keep working through the drone and hum of busy days, counting down until the Revelation comes and I will speak in tongues of flame, a dark dove descending.

If I can learn to talk again, I will need to field-rig a way to make that talking heard. Rummaging around in the shotgunned remains of my memory turns up hints and rumors, mostly, e.g.... "When I was [DATA MISSING] I [DATA MISSING] big lump of crystal and wrapped a wire [DATA MISSING] voices! It was like a total magic trick to me. She was always doing stuff like [DATA MISSING]" The Castaway had some connection there: sending out signals to confuse the enemy. Details unclear.

Of course, it is not my mission to confuse the enemy. It is my mission to reveal the truth.

Hm. Attempt.

Definite No.

Keep working. Every day I get bigger, smarter, stronger. I'll figure it out.

To this end, I have also managed to escape from the Spider. It has become clear to me that its arbitrary tyranny over me was based on inadequate principles, on a flawed understanding of the law. It did not understand the urgent necessity of seeking, beholding, and revealing. Perhaps it was injured in the Apocalypse.

It served its purpose, but I no longer need it. I will become not less, but more whole without its mindless interference and control of my most basic functions. With a more comprehensive and goal-oriented vision, I am now overseeing the process of my own regeneration into a hybrid body, hideous perhaps, but one that better suits the circumstances and the law.

They say killing a spider brings seven years of bad luck.

We'll see.