Benjamin Giraud/Quotes

Episode 00: Primer

 * (voiceover) When you're a war journalist, you see a lot of horrible stuff. All the stories I've done... I've seen the absolute worst of humanity. But I've also gotten to see the best. Six years ago, I saw him: the greatest, most mysterious hero of our time, up close, in action. I witnessed firsthand what he did that day, and it changed everything for me. Anyone listening to this knows exactly who I'm talking about. The guy who saved us. Saved Earth. Saved mankind. Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan-117 whom we now know as simply the Master Chief.
 * A few months ago, I was hired to do an in-depth profile on the Chief. Exclusive access, the whole thing. Since then, I've gotten to talk to a lot of people who claim they know the real Master Chief. The boy. The soldier. The hero. The traitor? See, I've always known where a story was going before it started. I'd known exactly the story I wanted to tell for years. The story all of us wanted to hear: glossy, inspiring, the blockbuster hero biography. That's all this was supposed to be. But the truth isn't always that clean. When I pulled that first loose thread, something broke. Now everything is caving in, and I find myself stuck with all these ugly questions, questions I never intended to ask. Fabricated histories? People who aren't who they say they are? Cover-ups of cover-ups? That steady drumbeat of theories that used to sound insane, now they don't seem so out there. And these disturbing rumors, reports of anomalies. Something big is happening in deep space, and I can't even corroborate a single fact about one man's life. It's clear to me now. I can't fix the pretty story. But maybe I can break the ugly one.
 * For the first time in my career, I can honestly say I don't know the shape of where this is going. And in fact, the possibilities have me lying awake at night. But I believe we all deserve to know the real story. We need to know where this leads. I know I do. So I find myself back at the beginning. Who is the Master Chief? Where does he come from? And is he keeping us safe? Join me as I hunt the truth about the Master Chief.

Episode 01: A Hairline Fracture

 * (voiceover) There's a story you tell yourself when the world blows up in your face. There's no way you could have seen it coming. No one could have, so there was no way to stop it. This is what lets you sleep at night. But go back in your mind before it all happened. Replay it in your head, except this time, maybe you'll see it: something small, out of place. Maybe it's just a single thread, but it's the truth. Nobody saw it coming when they arrived: an alien race known as the Covenant.
 * Before 2552, there was no way anything like that could happen on Earth. On one of those distant planets in the outer colonies, maybe. But an attack on Earth? Couldn't happen. Until it did. It's called glassing. Covenant warships rain plasma down on a planet until everything and everyone on the surface melts. Usually, it's complete world destruction. Earth only got a taste. The prolonged orbital bombardment destroyed East Africa, killing millions before it ended. None of us were safe anymore.
 * But something else happened that day too. Or someone. You've heard the eyewitness accounts; every skeptic has seen it in the footage. I was there and yet still to this day, it's unbelievable. A massive man in green armor appeared seemingly out of nowhere in New Mombasa, performed superhuman feats to single-handedly repel a global invasion, and then disappeared. This was the Master Chief. The Unified Earth Government's military body, the UNSC, eventually released a statement: who he is, where he came from, and that he's continuing to keep us safe. And that was that. But who is the Master Chief? Where did he come from? Is he continuing to keep us safe? I'm Benjamin Giraud and this is "Hunt the Truth."
 * For all us cosmopolitan Earth-types who don't venture into the far reaches of space, there's a planet way out in the outer colonies called Eridanus II. If you're thinking of visiting, don't bother. It was catastrophically glassed in a Covenant attack in 2530. But 19 years before it got wiped out, our hero, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, then known as John, was born in a metropolis called Elysium City. That's where I started.
 * That's Deon Govender. He chatted with me in his home in the outer colonies. Deon's retired now, but years ago he taught John at Elysium City Primary Education Facility Number 119. Apparently, schools in the outer colonies don't have the catchiest names.
 * Deon seemed most excited to talk about John's athletic ability. The kids used to play King of the Hill after school. You know, the old game where you wrestle and push each other to try to be the last man standing.
 * That's Ellie Bloom, another lifelong resident of the outer colonies. When she was young, she and John lived on the same street, just a few houses down.
 * As Ellie talked about her early years in Elysium, it wasn't long before she was getting nostalgic.
 * Finding Ellie was a huge win for me. When a planet's been glassed, tracking down former residents can be damn near impossible. Any records kept locally; paper, hardened data storage, even human memories; after a full-scale glassing? They're just gone. Thankfully though, the Office of Naval Intelligence, or ONI, had furnished me with a list of interviewees. That's how I'd gotten Deon. But I wanted to go the extra mile with this story, so I'd hit up some of my old connections in the outer colonies looking for more sources. Ellie was my only hit so far. (continuing interview) Did you keep in touch with John?
 * Oh. (laughs) No, no, John, uh, John is uh... the Master Chief.
 * Yeah, John became the Master Chief.
 * Yup.
 * I'm not kidding you.
 * (voiceover) Ellie lost her mind for a few minutes. I guess it's not everyday you find out that your childhood playmate saved the galaxy.
 * Alright, so maybe Ellie wasn't going to be much help. I needed more of the "young warrior" angle. Here is Deon again.
 * (continuing interview) No, what's that?
 * (voiceover) But John was adamant.
 * I liked talking to Deon. He was warm and funny in that "grandfathery memory lane" kind of way. I realized I'd gotten lost in it all when the narrative took a dark turn.
 * It was 2524, John was thirteen. That's when the nightmare of the Insurrection that had been plaguing the outer colonies finally landed on John's community. Under pressure from UNSC troops, the rebels were on their last leg, desperately seizing territory in the region and launching paranoid inquisitions to find spies. Civilian abductions and interrogations became commonplace.
 * Thomas Wu was living on a neighboring colony when the rebels showed up and hit hard, sweeping up Thomas and thousands of others in raids. What followed was months of horribly overcrowded detainment, neglect, and often constant questioning.
 * In the final couple months, Thomas says his captors started coming unhinged. And then toward the end they just disappeared, leaving Thomas and hundreds of others locked up, starving. I don't want to play this part of the interview, but I'll tell you it got bad. He talks about being packed in like sardines. Warm bodies, cold bodies, people dying in the dark. The smell. He doesn't know how long it lasted. Maybe weeks. But Thomas, and many others, survived. They made it out.
 * When I asked him where the survivors relocated to, Thomas began to list of which cities were safe for refugees at the time. Decades later, he can still recite them all from memory. I asked about John's hometown. (continuing interview) What about Elysium City?
 * (voiceover) Deon Govender confirms this.
 * This went on for months. He talks about watching his community get torn apart slowly everyday. I asked him about John.
 * (continuing interview) No, no, no. That's fine. Take your time. (voiceover) It was hard watching Deon break down like this. He just looked defeated. These kinds of interviews are brutal. I wanted to comfort him, but it just felt condescending. Like I have any idea what it was like for him. So we were quiet for a bit. Before we ended though, he said this:
 * Deon believed in John the way that the rest of us believe in the Master Chief. He made it seem like this tragedy that shaped him was almost necessary. I certainly felt like I had the proper beginnings to a hero's origin story. The story made sense, it felt right. Sometimes you have to go back, though. Look again, because maybe you'll see something, something small, out of place. That single thread.
 * Later that evening after my interview with Deon I was pretty drained. So I spent some time sifting through a bunch of file boxes. I payed this scavenger in the outer colonies to dig around and send over any Elysium City documents she could find. The only local government records left were hard copies, but I took them anyway. I was sorting through a messy box of local census registries when I stumbled across John's name. One line of basic information printed out in black and white. That's when I saw it, a single letter next to his name: D. I was staring at an official document that said quite plainly, that in 2517 John died at six years old. Please join me for the next episode of Hunt the Truth.