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Oooh, now I like this one. I like it a lot.
tony ogmundson (tony.ogmundson@shaw.ca) writes:
Why is the ring so empty? At first you're thinking "duh...doomsday, everyone is dead" and yeah you're right, but that's not the empty I'm talking about. Where are the remnants of the lives that these beings had? There is nothing at all to suggest that there was anyone there EVER. No vehicles, no homes, no trash, no personal items, nothing at all. I mean, when the ring was going to be activated either everyone on the ring was informed, no one on the ring was informed, or everyone was busy fighting the outbreak.
With any one of these scenarios things would have been left behind. So why do we see no remnants other than the massive empty structures?
Firstly this brings up the nature of the weapon.
Biological: kills everyone dead but leaves everything else, so we were bound to stumble on something sometime.
Explosive: somehow kills everyone and everything they had, but mysteriously leaves the vegetation, the structures, and lets not forget the rings themselves.
Not really a weapon: Could actually be a tool for "The Great Journey" like the covenant say and all the Forrunner took a bit of a trip.
This leads me to my original theory:
Unmanned structure: Halo rings were left to be tended by the artificial intelligences, in order to keep the flood contained without fear of outbreak, and the obviously liveable terrains for visiting forrunner technitions.
The reason there was an outbreak was because a species such as the covenant begins to explore this seemingly deserted structure, frees the flood and gives them an opportunity to escape. So the forerunner come...tra la la... and kill all life everywhere. The weapon is most likely of the bio-only killing variety hence the "survival" of the monitors and sentinels. The artificial intelligence now has 100 millions years on their hands so they decide to take all the crap the aliens left behind and shoot it into space or something (they're so anal).
Why, you ask, couldn't they have done the housecleaning with the forrunner stuff if they were the last ones there instead? Let's say your parents and siblings die: what would you do with their stuff? The monitors obviously have forms of emotions as expressed buy 343's chuckling and pride and they also have an affinity towards the past and the keeping of records. Therefore the idea of them throwing out all of the Forerunner's things is asinine.
A theory I have been toying with:
This theory plays on the idea of the Great Journey. Scenario: Forerunner build rings to take them on "Great Journey". They build machines capable of making decisions by themselves, and in some cases capable of a small range of emotions. They leave these machines to guard these portals and give them the task of guarding the keys and making sure no one unworthy comes after them.
Now imagine this: you're an intelligent being and your creators say "we're off to enlightenment and paradise, never coming back, you be the bouncer." That would piss me right the hell off if I were them. So you kick around for a hundred millennia or so stewing in anger and two groups of people show up to the party. One of them worthy, one of them not. Toast em both I would say. So you activate the security system: namely the flood.
That's right, they are nothing more than guard dogs. Think about it: turn the unworthy into mindless killing machines with no desire to join the forrunner in the great beyond and sick them on whoever else may want to follow them. Never was there a better plan.
So now for the reclaimers: Humans are indeed worthy of the great journey. Guilty Spark really has no intention of letting them go when he can't. So he makes it seem as unappealing as possible: say...by telling them it will be the end of all life. No I know your thinking: but he tried to turn ON the big old machines.
What would happen to Cortana if all of humanity ascended? Most likely this is a voyage for the living and she would spend all of eternity alone, just like the monitors. So her and the Spark, while she spends the hours in the control room, devise a plan: play both sides of the fence. Get the Humans to prevent the rings from turning on, incite a revolution that will hopefully distract the Covenant: and sick the looming guard dog on anyone else that may want to desert them; keeping them trapped here: just like them.
They are in a prime position to do this, think about it: who is the only member of humanity that knows the slightest thing about the rings, who tells them all what is happening and the consequences of their actions? Cortana. And who do the covenant worship as the oracles: the providers of information: The monitors. They have been given the opportunity to make things happen their way when they want it to.
The Prophets? why they have been READING about the Foreunner for as long as they have known about them so when a floating lightbulb tells them they have "misinterpreted" countless centuries of information they simply ignore them. Usually religious fanatics have a pretty good idea of what they are fanatical about.
-Jillybean
