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This topic has moved here: Subject: Enkidu - Cortana Letters Revisted?
  • Subject: Enkidu - Cortana Letters Revisted?
Subject: Enkidu - Cortana Letters Revisted?
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The checksum error is unimportant, it's just a polynomial us humans use to make sure packets are sent correctly (it's at the end of every packet sent across a link).

  • 05.04.2004 8:59 AM PDT
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I know whoever is reading this reply is going to think that i'm a dumbass but I have to ask, who exactly is enkidu, and after reading all these posts the only thing that I have made out is that these transmissions could only be from cortana, and that they are encrypted

  • 05.04.2004 9:18 AM PDT
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well I went though and found this word Anachronisms so I looked it up and this is what I found.



An anachronism (from Greek ana, back, and chronos, time) is an artifact that belongs to another time, a person who seems to be displaced in time (i.e., who belongs to another age) or something located at a time when it could not have existed or occurred. One of the most common uses of the term restricts it to the ante-dating of events, circumstances or customs. It can be used to imply a neglect or falsification, whether deliberate or accidental, of chronological relation.

  • 05.04.2004 9:20 AM PDT
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Jono: Enkindu as we have determined is an AI.

  • 05.04.2004 9:22 AM PDT
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It could be talking about the artifact that the covies were looking for in in the third book, the shiny thing that the brute gives to the prophet

  • 05.04.2004 9:23 AM PDT
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Thanks for clearing that up now it makes sense :)

  • 05.04.2004 9:39 AM PDT
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well I went though and found this word Anachronisms so I looked it up and this is what I found.



An anachronism (from Greek ana, back, and chronos, time) is an artifact that belongs to another time, a person who seems to be displaced in time (i.e., who belongs to another age) or something located at a time when it could not have existed or occurred. One of the most common uses of the term restricts it to the ante-dating of events, circumstances or customs. It can be used to imply a neglect or falsification, whether deliberate or accidental, of chronological relation.


Oh so that is what that means. This was found in the source code of the blast from the past. So to me it sounds like it is the story he is telling is from the past but the meaning has a belonging now. I could be wrong though what do you guys think?

[Edited on 5/4/2004 9:44:24 AM]

  • 05.04.2004 9:43 AM PDT
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J_A_C_K,

I think that anachronism is simply hinting to the fact that we are reading these messages out of chronological order, which is obvious based on the dates/times of the messages.

Taken from dictionary.com:

\An*ach"ro*nism\, n. [Gr. ?, fr. ? to refer to a wrong time, to confound times; ? + ? time: cf. F. anachronisme.] A misplacing or error in the order of time; an error in chronology by which events are misplaced in regard to each other, esp. one by which an event is placed too early; falsification of chronological relation.

  • 05.04.2004 9:51 AM PDT
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This is good stuff, keep up the good work guys. I dont have time to research stuff at work, but its interesting to hop in and see the latest developments. I'm rooting for you to figure it out. My question is; will this eventually shake down into info on a release date? Plot and characters? Maybe its a clever ruse to drive us insane.

  • 05.04.2004 10:11 AM PDT
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I think I may have a reason for Enkidu wanting JD alive.

It's obvious that JD is Enkidu's Gilgamesh; the fact that Gilgamesh and Enkidu are old friends and Enkidu keeps referring to him as such shows that. But that's not what I'm trying to prove.

The way Enkidu died is he had a disease, one without a cure. (seeing as the Gods did it to him and all) Gilgamesh stayed with Enkidu right up until he died from the disease. Now, we know Enkidu (the AI) is big on the epic, as he shows from Blast from the Past. And rampancy can be described as a disease for an AI.

The only reason Enkidu keeps talking to JD and helping him along, trying to help him, is because he feels he has to be there, in order to follow along with how the Epic actually occurred; right up until his death.

  • 05.04.2004 10:30 AM PDT
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Hey Cupcake,

Could you do a #4 next week? Let me know.

RAL

"Never eat yellow snow"

  • 05.04.2004 10:32 AM PDT
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Posted by: X Isle
J_A_C_K,

I think that anachronism is simply hinting to the fact that we are reading these messages out of chronological order, which is obvious based on the dates/times of the messages.

Taken from dictionary.com:

\An*ach"ro*nism\, n. [Gr. ?, fr. ? to refer to a wrong time, to confound times; ? + ? time: cf. F. anachronisme.] A misplacing or error in the order of time; an error in chronology by which events are misplaced in regard to each other, esp. one by which an event is placed too early; falsification of chronological relation.


Wait a minute. everthing that we have gotten here has had more than one meaning to it. Basically everything has double meaning or even triple meaning. Perhaps Anachronism is a clue refering to both the wacky AI, calling itself Enkidu (who i think is some kind of alter Cortana we have yet to see) and the order that we recieve the transmissions.

I have quoted a lot from the Cortana leters and have drawn some connections. Here is Cortana from the second letter where she seems to be talking from Frigid:
From: "Cortana" <cortana@bungie.com>
To: <hamish.sinclair@tcd.ie>
Subject: Your Mortality (My Summer Vacation)
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 18:04:41 -0600
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Priority: 3

I get the strangest transmissions sometimes. Especially when it comes from you people.

Have you missed me? Things are great here. The weather is good, the suns are shining, and I'm making lots of new friends. Of course, I always do.


The multiple suns that are shinning? Friend talk? Good weather? Let me just say that this sounds exactly like the place we see in the Enkidu terminal, FRIGID. Cortana is infact somehow on Frigid. Note that the title is also references "My Summer Vacation". Isn't one of the Enkidu terminals titled, "How I spent your Summer Vacation". The letter references these Enkidu events on Frigid. Furthur more, these Enkidu events take place before the events of Halo.

Still scratching your head?

Let me show you, before and during the events of Halo, Cortana (the one that we all know *wink, wink*) was with the Chief. We know this from reading the Fall of Reach and playing the video game. But then we have these Enkidu terminals that take place during the same genral time, making the events of Frigid and Halo over lap. Well as I have shown above, Cortana is also on Frigid at the same time. Basically she is in two places at the same time. How is this possible?

A time anomoly or more exacty a Anachronism. The entity or entities we are dealing with on Frigid are from another time.



  • 05.04.2004 10:35 AM PDT
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MoNuker,
I think that this will help us understand what will happen in the plot of H2 as plot twist arrise. With the Old Cortana letters, they were more understandable after halo came out. Still, with the events of H2 about to release, you can connect them to this enkidu terminal and they are just as mysterious. Despite whatever info they do give us with this enkidu terminal, I'm sure other new mysteries will unfold and leave us hanging in the end.

Was that a wishy-washy enough answer?

  • 05.04.2004 10:41 AM PDT
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Isn't it possible that when Cortana was inside of the Forerunner's Library, the wealth of information she adsorped included how to make an eternal AI? Similarly, perhaps she learned the secrets of time travel, etc., only she doesn't "know" she has learned it yet, seeing as how she hasn't decompressed the info. Unless maybe she did decompress it, learn a whole bunch of stuff, and make a copy of herself to carry out the origional fucntions she had ( because it would hold that the Covenant learned their AI copying techniques from the Forerunner, due to their imitative (not innovative) style. this would explain why Cortana finds the Covenant AI's code similar in the book). So the uber-smart Cortana, who now knows the secrets of the universe, given to her by the Forerunners (who were all killed by 343GS/and the HALO rings to stop the Flood a lont time ago?) has recreated herself as the Enkidu entity, while the other Cortana, who has no clue about the copying, is being "Cortana".

  • 05.04.2004 10:46 AM PDT
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Posted by: Tartarus
MoNuker,
I think that this will help us understand what will happen in the plot of H2 as plot twist arrise. With the Old Cortana letters, they were more understandable after halo came out. Still, with the events of H2 about to release, you can connect them to this enkidu terminal and they are just as mysterious. Despite whatever info they do give us with this enkidu terminal, I'm sure other new mysteries will unfold and leave us hanging in the end.

Was that a wishy-washy enough answer?


Yes, and more to the point...Bungie will undoubtedly be releasing a trailer (or trailers) for H2 during the upcoming E3, and the careful eye will likely see plot tie-ins that will clear up the mud even more. Those clever Bungie bastards!
RAL

  • 05.04.2004 10:49 AM PDT
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Was that a wishy-washy enough answer?

Yes Tartarus, perfectly wishy-washy thank you.

  • 05.04.2004 10:50 AM PDT
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Hojo,

JD maybe symbolic for Gilgamesh and thus we could conclude that Enkidu is a friend as he was in the epic. Concluding this in such logic would answer the major question, friend or foe. Could we trust Enkidu?

Unfortunately you did not remember the Enkidu terminal entry A Blast from the Past.

In the real Epic of Gilgamesh it is Gilgamesh that questions the killing of the beast Humbaba. It is Gilgamesh that fears venturing forth., And it is Enkidu that pushes him foreward.

In the enkidu terminal A Blast From the Past the AI calling itself Enkidu flips the whole story around. Instead it is Gilgamesh that has no fear and is strong about killing the beast. Enkidu is fearful and does not want to kill the beat Humbaba. He questions gilgamesh and wants him to not do it. Completely opposite of the truth.

So appearently the Enkidu AI does not agree with the events of true Epic and thus may also not agree that Enkidu is Gilgamesh's friend, in which case the Enkidu AI is not JD's friend.

  • 05.04.2004 10:52 AM PDT
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Tartarus,

You are right the Cortana letter and the way Enkidu describes Frigid, they are tantilizingly close.

I have just come across another bit of info on the technical side:

enkidu.bungie.org IS NOT HOSTED ON bungie.org.....it is aliased to a private web host called smallbits.com, more specifically: epiphyte.smallbits.com

I found this out by doing a nslookup on enkidu.bungie.org, I am not sure what this means.

I looked up epiphyte, which sounds like a word bungie would use, on dictionary.com:

plant that derives moisture and nutrients from the air and rain; usually grows on another plant but not parasitic on it

Something isn't adding up here. Why would bungie host enkidu on a different site? More mysteries.

  • 05.04.2004 10:56 AM PDT
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Choirboysquirrel,

You are thinking exactly like I am. We don't have enough information to prove this, but plenty is hinting at this scenario.

  • 05.04.2004 10:57 AM PDT
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Nice job X Isle!,

The meaning of that plant is completely symbolic for the Enkidu Terminal and bungie.

If this enkidu terminal was fan fiction, then we would call it parasidic, stealing from Bungie's halo creation.

Instead the enkidu terminal grows on bungie's halo creation and exsist symbioticly.

Its just another clue that this is real!

  • 05.04.2004 11:06 AM PDT
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.

[Edited on 5/4/2004 12:53:05 PM]

  • 05.04.2004 12:18 PM PDT
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Bumpity-Bump-Bump Bump Bump.

  • 05.04.2004 1:03 PM PDT
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I've been following this all the way from page 1, and I think I've got something no one's addressed in the thread before. Keep in mind I've not read The Flood or First Strike yet:

Is it possible that 343 Guilty Spark infected Cortana somehow? Saying that Cortana, while a unique and smart AI most certainly, could match the plans of a superpowerful millennia old guardian of a life-ending megaweapon is a bit of a stretch. There's multiple instances of areas where Cortana would have been in direct contact (though she may not have known it) with 343 Guilty Spark. Maybe he infected her on the Pillar of Autumn or when she was in the Halo network. Maybe, just maybe, Cortana isn't rampant, but 343 Guilty Spark has some kind of control over her, and through her some kind of control over the Master Chief.

As to Enkidu, I don't think that he and Cortana are the same. Too much evidence to the contrary. Also, I believe that I should mention Occham's Razor: The simplest explanation is usually right.

Maybe Enkidu was the Lebanon's shipboard AI, though I think assuming he's a dumb AI may be jumping the gun. Remember, Cortana is exceptional even for a smart AI, and it's highly probable that a Smart AI could find itself overwhelmed in a Forerunner network such as the kind that obviously exists on Frigid. Perhaps the Forerunners had some kind of security system in their networks that would damage intruders in the network. For being all knowing godlike beings, I somehow doubt they'd be stupid (or arrogant) enough to leave any vital netowrk unsecured save for Monitors. Perhaps this anti-virus system attacked Enkidu, and while he was able to survive it changed him and he has lost his perspective on who he really is and what his duty is.

Also, do we have any concrete confirmation that the crew of the Lebanon is dead? none of the terminals that I've read (all of them) state that the entire crew is dead. Spartans weren't educated in crash-landing spacecraft. That's why Keyes crashes the Pillar of Autumn and why the Chief relies on a Marine pilot to get him to the ground. While it does show in FoR that the Chief can pilot a Pelican, is there anything stating he could "fly" a capital ship? If the Cheif can't do it then no Spartan can...

  • 05.04.2004 1:27 PM PDT
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Tartarus and X Isle

Just wanted to let you guys know that enkidu.bungie.org isn't hosted by Bungie, it's hosted
by Halo.bungie.org. None of these transmissions have shown up at Bungie.net, they are all sent to HBO. That smallbits.com is connected to HBO, not Bungie. A while back, I kept being redirected to smallbits.com when I tried to go to HBO, I guess that's why.

  • 05.04.2004 1:52 PM PDT
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Before I begin I would like to say that I have not read all 29 pages. In effect, I may be re-stating what others have. Please forgive me if I do...

I highly doubt that this is 343 Guilty Spark. Why would 343 act in such a way? Besides the last terminal, the letters seem to have been a more of a personal relationship, not bent around religious belief. As for the last terminal, it was from an outside location, overriding then previous message. During HALO: Combat Evolved, at no time did 343GS talk about religion, why would it do so now? I highly doubt that there is a religiously motivated A.I.
The last terminal mainly calls for a "Holy war". The intrusion sounds more like "The Covenants" doing. I believe that this entire database is probably something similar to a "blackbox".

As you see at the end of every terminal ... it shows that all this information is being entered in an archive, and not necessarily directed at us.

Regardless of the theories ... why are these old messages coming out now?Why would someone want us to find somthing now? What is so special about right now?

[Edited on 5/4/2004 2:03:35 PM]

  • 05.04.2004 1:57 PM PDT