- turokman2000
- |
- Noble Member
Here's my theory:
The AI Assembly in the Data Pads control ONI.
They manipulated the Covenant into discovering Reach for two purposes:
1)To prevent Dr. Sorvad from sending Dr. Halsey the latchkey. The Covenant arrive conveniently right after he sent Halsey a message that he was going to send it.
2)Upon discovering Reach suddenly (the Zealots were anticipating a ruined Forerunner site) as humanity's stronghold, they overreacted and wiped it out quickly. Assuming the AI Assembly did cause the Covenant to come to Reach, the alternative is that the Covenant might have taken a few years to find it. MJOLNIR or more Spartans, or anything else might have turned the tide of the war by then. The ultimate purpose of causing Reach to fall so soon is to guarantee that TRUTH OPENS THE ARK.
So, the AI, if they had deep access to the Covenant Bnet (Cortana waltzed around in it during First Strike), could have known about the Ark and everything, they may have even listened in on Mendicant Bias and his rantings. To get the Zealots to come to Reach, all they'd have to do is pick Reach from their long list of Forerunner artifacts to explore, and move it to the top in their computers.
There was a two day delay. When Sorvad discovered the latchkey, the AI could have obtained it, disabled the comms array, then cause the Covenant to come. In Halsey's journal, there are two days between the comms array dying, a special forces team disappearing, and the arrival of NOBLE.
Would the holes in the cannon be explained if you knew that humanity was being manipulated by to level ONI AIs that wanted the Covenant to destroy Reach, but didn't want the humans to think they were doing this? I think so.
So, then, what is NOBLE team?
Carter is a Major, right? Six is an LT. Master Chief was a, well, Master Chief Petty Officer. The highest Naval enlisted rank.
So how are two NOBLE team Spartans officer? Probably because they were officers before becoming Spartans. The implication is that there are Spartans besides the S-III's and that Ackerson's (or Whitcomb's) efforts to streamline the Spartan technology for regular humans have been fruitful. What if the S-III program wasn't meant to produce a viable fighting force, but was a sick guinea pig experiment to transition S-II technology for general use? Halo 3, and Reach, have MP armor variants of multiple 'private makes'.
That being said, what would be the purpose of these special teams? Well, consider that if the AI running ONI didn't want the humans to know about the Forerunner, or have the latchkey, but NOBLE successfully prevented that, then the Spartans are maybe counter AI?
What I mean to say is that perhaps Whitcomb or somebody made these special Spartans in such secrecy that even ONI barely knew about it. The purpose of the teams was to investigate intelligence breaches within the UNSC.
We know from the Data Pads that the AI have been manipulating humanity for centuries. We also know that one of them is the reason the Covenant was first contacted. Wouldn't some human eventually find out? More plausibly, wouldn't some humans begin to suspect some force was pulling strings.
I'd bet NOBLE was a tippity-top secret task force investigating this security breach. Hence, they were deployed to Visegrad. Hence, the lack of great surprise upon finding Covenant. Yes, there's the school of 'its only a matter of time' cynicism. But it would make more sense that NOBLE was already investigating whether humans - within the UNSC or rebels - were communicating with the Covenant. Maybe they never would suspect the ONI AIs.
This twist: that these AIs are causing the Covenant to win against humanity, that some humans suspect that this shadow force within the UNSC is the 'real enemy', this explains the holes in the cannon VERY VERY well.
But the implications bring us deeper down the rabbit hole.
Why would these AI, who in the Data Pads talk about protecting humanity as their mission and reason for being, want to expose humanity to the Covenant.
Well, the last Data Pad with the AI mentions that the AI no longer want to be 'stewards' of humanity, but 'true companions'. Earlier, they discuss Halsey's idea of using Slipspace to make an AI that could live forever and know any/everything. They wonder if that might not be the solution, as opposed to constantly trying to improve mankind to protect (by making Spartan-II type humans). Maybe by this point they've decided: "Screw humanity". Just after the last data pad.
Maybe they discover the truth about the Ark, and so forth. Here's why I think they have.
On another forum, Godle55 Heathen wrote:
and a side note, no one has mentioned this either
but if you look at the letters in which there are numbers, you get
"Why, to, time, for, statis, because, truth, going, find door, all sometime, themselves think, for, tried, answer, talk, numbers, symbols, path always, been, going.
Because Truth Find Door
What if whatever the Great Journey is is what the AI decide that they want. What if they decide it's the only option for themselves and humanity? And so they make it their mission to get to the Ark.
Only the Prophet of Truth has a Keyship. And the portal is on Earth. Humanity would have to lose the war for the two to ever meet.
Plus, as someone posted way early on and was ignored: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZhBaMo0aTo&feature=player _embedded
You play the audio that goes with the Data Pads backwards, and you have the same crap that was spoken (presumably by Mendicant Bias) on the Ark when Master Chief read the terminals there. In fact, during the Legendary commentary, one of the many things Marty O'Donnell says that everyone shushes is that he points out an audio credit for "The Voice of the Terminals". This pretty much confirms that that audio for the DPs is the same as the Ark terminals.