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Damn you Qwest...damn you to hell. 'Twould seem that our not-so-friendly phone company hacked through my DSL line with a shovel or other sort of sharp implement-for the third time, and the second time this year. Anyway. Sorry for my lack of presence-not that you missed me much, as mnemesis has been doing an amazing job of keeping the page running all by himself. Everyone, give him a round of applause. Hurrah!

Daniel Barbour (finn@7hr33.org) writes:

Howdy folk,

I had resolved not to become involved in story speculation but, after considering this piece of text I thought it important enough to break that pseudo promise. The text I am considering is from Marathon 2 on the level "Kill Your Television". It will be well known to any "Marathon scholars". (I have already taken the liberty of spacing out the words and replacing most of the odd characters. [Not realizing at the time that there were more complete versions available :P ])

Kill Your Television (Terminal 1: 2nd message)

ugv0-i6tck[24 2h26u njk==tp12t1


i have been roland beowulf achilles gilgamesh i have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the world goes
dim and cold i am hero

she has been nameless since our birth
a constant adversary caring for nothing but my ruin
a sword drenched in my blood
forever my greatest and only love she is the dark one the enemy and lover without
whom my very existence would be pathetic and vulgar our relationship is complex and perhaps eternal

we met once in the garden at the beginning of the world and unaware of our twin destinies we matched stares across a d;yfountain and
i recall her smiling at me before she devoured the lawn and trees with a translucent blue flame and tore flagstones from the
path and hurled them into the sky screaming my sins
i powder a granite monument in a soundless flash showering the grass with molten drops of its goldinFay
sending smoking chips of stone skipping into the fog she splinters an ancient oak with a force that
takes my breath and hurls me to the ground she lea%!

CONNECTION TERMINATED

gv0-i6tck[24 2h26u njk==tp12t1


There has been a lot of debate in years gone by as to whether the author was Durandal, you the cyborg, or someone else entirely. I do not intend (nor could I) solve the mystery now, but I will submit the idea that our friend John-117/Master Chief and the Security Officer from Marathon are one and the same individual. I am still holding on, waiting for the two timelines to be perfectly aligned without the need of any time travel or dimension jumping; hoping that the Halo story will fall into the "Century Left Intentionally Blank" in the Marathon timeline, and any apparent contradictions will be explained.

Second, as has been explored previously, I firmly believe that Cortana will or, more than likely, has already become rather selfish (to put it mildly) and has some shady motives of her own. She is not to be trusted. Now, if "I" is our eternal hero, Master Chief, and Cortana the "she" spoken of we have a peek into the development of their relationship over time. Pointed out to me by me comrade Richard, the most amazing and relevant phrase is "she splinters an ancient oak with a force that takes my breath", the very definition of the name "Pillar of Autumn". I find this amazing. As the subject of my email states, this could be a gigantic coincidence, but knowing Bungie and also considering that the name Pillar of Autumn had been decided on very early in Halo's development this may be an important link.

Of course the entire text could be interpreted very differently: perhaps the "she" is speaking of the Covenant? The phrases " she devoured the lawn and trees with a translucent blue flame" and "screaming my sins" suddenly become extremely meaningful starting from that presupposition.

I hope you and others also see what could be, an immense portent.

Sincerely,

Daniel

Interesting indeed. Could Bungie possibly be so far-minded, planning behind the thin slice of the Marathon universe covered in the games, building entire characters and personalities and histories which are revealed to us only now? Perhaps. Clearly, the connections are everywhere-and this one is one of the stronger, though more odd, ones.

Running with the assumption, as Daniel asks us to do, that Cortana is "she" and the Master Chief is "I," I find particularly interesting the following passge:

"devoured the lawn and trees with a translucent blue flame and tore flagstones from the path and hurled them into the sky screaming my sins"

The destruction of Halo? Sounds a lot like it to me. And of course, the splintering of the ancient oak-the destruction of the Pillar of Autumn, which leads to the fall of Halo. It was Cortana's idea to detonate the Autumn's fusion cores, thus setting about in the dismantling of Installation 004.

This is just another element of correlation between the Master Chief and the 10th Mjolnir Cyborg; the cyborg seems to have known of the Master Chief's exploits. Are they his own exploits? Perhaps we shall know soon enough.

So much to ponder, so little time...

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-Ape Man

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