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October 18, 2002

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful...

Nothing beats curling up by the hearth and waging war against the alien hordes on a cool day. But for those of you in fire ban areas, on probation, or still traumatized by the Halo 2 Trailer's sight of Earth in flames, don't despair. Instead sit and bask in the warmth of your monitor's glow...

Matt Wright (mattsoundworld@hotmail.com) writes:

In TFoR, the PoA was given a ship grade AI. This was never initialized because of the sudden attack on Reach, and Cortana had to step in. However, Cortana, as TFoR emphasized, was a different type of AI, much smarter then all the security AI's and much more creative. Cortana was never meant to be a warship's AI, but was merely in the right place at the right time. 343 GS is pretty observant. He'd be stupid to think Cortana is just a warship AI.

Also, during The Maw, 343 GS seems to differentiate between a 'construct' and a 'warship's AI'. He keeps asking the Master Chief to hand over the 'construct',†Cortana, who has control over the Index. Yet throughout he keeps saying that this 'warship's AI' "possesses far too much data", and that destroying†the PoA†would destroy a record of human history.

When beaching the PoA on Halo, there is no mention of a purging of the ships data arrays as in previous encounters with the Covenant (not mentioned doesn't mean it didn't happen). But... maybe the mysterious other PoA AI survived and was still in the ship. The Covenant wouldn't be able to access this dead info from outside the ship, but 343 GS was inside, able to see ALL the information there, not just the data moving on the network. Most importantly 343 GS keeps talking about the AI having too much info, even though Cortana is currently with the MC.

If 343 GS is talking about another AI, it would†make for an interesting twist.

An excerpt from Cortana Letter #4:

x - process 04497.2.32.867734 initiated (process owner: BW ˜ AI Class III ˜ autonomous)


Route Code: PoA > BHQ (EC #42: cannot confirm; security compromised)

Source: BW-AI aboard (?) PoA


An elusive stowaway? What could it be up to? What has become of it?

hmm... ;)

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-Finn




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