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Jason Watson (forestfroggr@hotmail.com) writes:
I have been reading some of the recent speculation concerning the Forerunner, and thought I should put in my own two cents. Now, if the firing of Halo is such a drastic measure that it wipes out all life of sufficient bio-mass, which, presumably, includes the Forerunner (maybe they are non-biological in nature- hmmm) within the galaxy, then this last resort weapon is in reality of no use. Assuming that the Flood infection has reached such a point that it is unstoppable save for the firing of Halo, then the benefit of firing Halo is really nil, since it will not benefit the Forerunner (they will be dead). If all it can do is kill the food of the Flood, (which, if it kills things of sufficient bio-mass for the Flood, wouldn't that include the Flood as well?...but that's another matter all together) thereby starving all the Flood, then all Halo is good for is a "if we are going down, we are going to take them down with us" kind of a weapon. In regards to the previous firing of Halo, contrary to a recent post, the most natural interpretation of G.S.' statement about the others following suit is that once one is fired all will be fired, because if only one is fired, then the Flood can still eventually infect other areas of the galaxy. So, presuming that previously all Halos were fired, how could any 'seeding' of the Humans and Covenant take place? Assuming biological life of insufficient bio mass survived, that leaves only 100,000 years for both the Covenant and Human races to evolve, which seems like too short of a period of time. Now, there seems to be, assuming the aforementioned presuppositions are correct, (which is not necessarily the case) one possibility, involving three huge presuppositions. 1.Halo is spoken of as a Fortress world. 2.The Flood do not seem to be an original part of Halo. 3.A single Halo, let alone many, would take an enormous amount of time to build.
I will start with the last consideration. GS says that when the Halos are fired, "this galaxy will be quite devoid of life." Why the use of the word 'this'? Why not just say 'the galaxy'? It seems to me that if GS thinks MC is a Forerunner, then the word 'this' has great significance. To anyone else, once could just say 'the galaxy', because there would be no confusion regarding which galaxy one was talking about. Therefore, it seems likely that the Forerunner are not native to this galaxy, but came here in trying to escape the Flood. It is not a stretch, considering the technology of the Forerunner, that they may be capable of inter-galactic travel. So, perhaps while other galaxies were being overrun they sent a group to this galaxy to begin the construction of Halos, as I will now elaborate upon. This would go along quite well with the Flood not originally being a part of Halo. (The facility, Library, whatever, not Halo itself, is spoken of as being built to study the Flood.) Therefore, after the completion of Halo, structures were built to study the Flood, perhaps after the Halos were fired. But more about that later. Why is Halo a Fortress world? When GS is talking to MC, he mentions the firing of Halo rather casually, as if it will have no immediate effects on MC. This is important, and why Halo would be a Fortress world. The simple conclusion is that the effects of the firing of Halo do not affect the Halos themselves! Perhaps that is the purpose of the mysterious blue beams...who knows. The point is that the Halos are fortress worlds because they are the only safe place for the Forerunner to be when the Halos are fired. Having said all that, here is the scenario that I find most likely. The Flood is probably some naturally occurring parasite that came into contact with the Forerunner in some other galaxy. To avoid being completely destroyed, some Forerunner came to this galaxy to construct the Halos. Having done this, eventually the Flood caught up with them. Therefore, the Forerunners fired the Halos, wiping this galaxy clean, destroying the Flood, although perhaps they still remain in other galaxies, but without a way of leaving those galaxies now. That doesn't matter. What matters is that now this galaxy is free from the Flood. The Forerunner, with such a reprieve, decide to capture some of the Flood before they all die so they can study them to find a different way of killing them, or, perhaps, to find a way to use them for their own ends. Who knows? With this complete, the Forerunner civilization advances, populations grow, and eventually colonization begins to happen. However, after the firing of the Halos, there are only a few planets that haven't been ecologically devastated- and these happen to be Earth and the Covenant homeworld. A lot can happen in 100,000 years.
Those galaxy-hopping Forerunner. What will we do about them? ;-)
There is a certain amount of resistance to the notion of this galaxy, our galaxy, not having pride of place in the minds of the Forerunner. We would like to think that we would be protected from some galactic cataclysm, or at least left alone to deal with things our own way. After all, if we had never run up against the Covenant, yet some mishap on installation 04 led to the proper "containment protocols," it'd sure be a nasty (and very final) surprise to look up at the sky one day, *FOOM*, and humanity is history.
In contemplating the potential benefits of firing (a) Halo vs. the potential harm though, it may behoove us to consider a little bit larger picture than we might have before. Take a look at this image (almost 9 years old now ;-)). There are approximately 1,500 galaxies in that image alone. That image represents the area of the sky that would be covered by a dime (about 3/4", or a little under 2 centimeters), if you held it 75 feet awat from you. Imagine that. All those galaxies, just waiting out there. An intelligent and forward-thinking race might have a hard time resisting the urge to head out and really take a look around. ;-)
-mnemesis
