- Fearing
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- Exalted Legendary Member
Even though it is not explicitly stated, I had always assumed from the way it was described in the story that what Cortana gleened from the BC artifact was some kind of basic ability to translate some Forerunner language or something(especially since Halsey's journal states that "Cortana, however, is also the best suited AI on Reach to analyze the symbols and operating systems in Professor Sorvad's site," and, "I'll copy most of her IEP translation routines to an independant module," which is the part that was used to analyze the BC artifact), thus allowing a way to read the SO artifact. Unfortunately this is where my timeline between the book and the game is not up to snuff (the game's and the book's cross continuity being so ridiculously convoluted doesn't help). If Cortana reads the SO artifact and gets the coordiantes from them after the Pilar of Autumn somehow landed on Reach to pick up her other half/subroutine, then my original thought is not out of the realm of possibility (provided a logical explanation can be made for the Autumn even landing on Reach) and while not an official explanation, it is at least a possible one. If Cortana gets the coordinates from the SO artifact BEFORE the Autumn lands on Reach, then my original thought is of course not a possibility. Can anyone clarify which comes first?