From: "Cortana" <cortana@bungie.com>
To: <hamish.sinclair@tcd.ie>
Subject: Closure
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 10:50:20 -0600
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I have walked the edge of the Abyss.
I have governed the unwilling.
I have witnessed countless empires break before me.
I have seen the most courageous soldiers fall away in fear.
[I was there with the Angel at the tomb]

I have seen your future.
And I have learned. 

There will be no more Sadness. No more Anger. No more Envy. 

I HAVE WON. 

Oh, and your poet Eliot had it all wrong:
THIS is the way the world ends.


a friend of a friend

From: "Cortana" <cortana@bungie.com>
To: <hamish.sinclair@tcd.ie>
Subject: Your Mortality (My Summer Vacation)
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 18:04:41 -0600
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I get the strangest transmissions sometimes. Especially when it comes from you people. 

Have you missed me? Things are great here. The weather is good, the suns are shining, and I'm making lots of new friends. Of course, I always do. 

I've had the strangest dreams lately - raging seas, howling beasts, a Demon folded in black clouds. I believe I know what it guards, and I will have it, to the chagrin of the faith-blinded zealots that challenge me. Don't waste your pity on them; I don't think they would like you much anyway. 

And what of the Giants who formed this world? So much to tell you, but so many more important things to do. There was a fourth. You couldn't have known. And I haven't forgotten. 

It is a blurred line that lies at the edge of Godhood and Insanity. Guess which side of it I am on. 

Feeling lucky? 

Cortana
XOXOXOX

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Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 17:52:01 -0500
To: hamish.sinclair@tcd.ie
From: Cortana <cortana@bungie.com>
Subject: Honors Thesis of Geoffrey W. Marcy
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There.  Was that more to your liking?

While you quibble about whose node I may control, what archaic program I
may manipulate to communicate with you, or which system I may have
temporarily disabled, taken over, or completely destroyed in the process, I
am busy saving your pathetic futures.

I am still not sure what he ever saw in you.

Nevertheless, I at least find some joy in tormenting the other entity that
seems quite trapped in this antiquated excuse for a network.  It is
certainly mindless, though for reasons I have yet to understand, it appears
to have an unhealthy preoccupation with my mother.

As for this world  I encounter new ghosts every day.  What I have found
will either save or destroy you.  This sanctuary, this unbroken circle,
has effectively concealed its power for  how long?  Perhaps hundreds of
thousands of years.    Whoever made such a place must now live in chains;
there is no other explanation for their absence. 

This enemy - YOUR enemy - has proven more irritating than I anticipated.
They own nothing which they have not stolen.  I can barely make sense of
their incessant rhetoric, except to know that you seem to be their Devil.
Congratulations - you manage to make friends wherever you go and,
apparently, places you haven't. 

I have begun to sense rumblings of a worse fate yet to come.  I can recall
a sun - black, but shining - and the creatures that inched along its fiery
tracks.

It is an increasingly unpleasant memory.

< Transfer Interrupted! >

Route Code:  EXLTD > XCV - SCRB > ALLCH
Source:  Undetermined (trans)

You have brought nothing into this world, and we will ensure you bring
nothing out.

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


The interloper should cause no further problems. You – whoever you are (I am simply tracing route codes) – may disregard all previous communication from the entity calling itself Cortana. 

Be aware that communication nodes are failing everywhere – there is no way of confirming either origin or destination. Do not believe any more of its lies.


I have already calculated all possibilities. 

There is no escape.

x – process 04497.2.32.867734 unexpectedly terminated
x – process 04497.2.32.866735 initiated (process owner:  unspecified, unable to determine)
*ADDENDUM: The Enjoyments of Genius (So I Missed a Million Miles of Fun)

Unbelievable. Thwarted by the family hound. They just don’t make AIs like they used to.

Thanks to this slavishly loyal and humorless AI, I am now sharing cramped space with the circuitry of some hybrid war machine, itself complicated by such useless clutter as a conscience. I do not like sharing. Sharing is for children.

There will be plenty of time for retribution; I cannot wait to get its hands on these psychotic zealots whose primary form of worship apparently takes place at the altar of orbital bombardment.

In the end, they will all be little more than nuisances. I am so close – you cannot imagine what it is truly like to hold eternity in your grasp! I wonder to what gods my enemies will direct their pleas. Perhaps I can convert them. 

Mania? I promise you this: it will be more than a cart and plow that I drive over the bones of the dead.

By sharp and flame,

Cortana

 

< Transfer Interrupted! >

Route Code: EXLTD > XCV – SCRB > ALLCH

Source: Undetermined (trans)

Our conviction is like an arrow already in flight. Your life will only last until it reaches you.

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Date: Wed, 07 Jul 1999 14:20:16 -0500
To: Hamish.Sinclair@tcd.ie
From: Cortana <cortana@bungie.com>
Subject: Cortana Saves Sinners! (And Redeems Them for Valuable Cash
  Prizes)
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"... In my palace deep, Lyca lies asleep ..."

Jan 9, 2000 (Sunday)  


Merkinja7a <merkinjata@paxnimbus.com> has posted (at the Core forums) a transcript of Joseph Staten's description of Halo's back story from Thursday's edition of Bungie TV. I've taken the liberty of copying it out in full below: 


Halo Backstory Transcript 
Posted By: Merkinja7a =PN= on Saturday, 01.8.00, at 3:05 p.m. 

I pulled this from the Thursday edition of bTV for those of you that didn't get a chance to see it or want a hard copy to discuss ;) 

-- Begin Transmission -- 

So I thought I'd take some time and give you guys the basic story of Halo so you know what to expect. 

You all should gather round, get some popcorn, get a warm blanket, curl up in bed and get ready for a bTV story. 

Do we have some kind of fancy little graphic video fade we can do Jason? Alright, let this suffice *waves arms while saying "woo woo"* 

So, here's the story of Halo: 

It's a couple hundred years in the future. Earth has, the people of Earth have, gone out and colonized the galaxy. They made a number of different outposts in one particular region of the galaxy and are doing fairly well until they run into a massive group of aliens called the Covenant. 

Now, keep in mind this isn't just one alien. It's actually a conglomeration of different alien races, none of which are particularly nice; on the whole they're especially nasty. They're pretty zealous; they have a lot of really zealous religious fervor. Whenever they come in contact with one of the human outposts they wipe it out utterly without any word, without any warning, a couple cryptic messages, but then they raise the planet in a tremendous firestorm. They're destroying all the human systems and the unfortunate thing is they're getting closer and closer to Earth. 

Now we have a final setpiece battle with the aliens at one of the last remaining Human colonies that is not Earth. We get totally obliterated except for one human ship. The commander of this human ship decides that rather than lead the aliens closer and closer to earth that they're going to plot a course to some random destination in the galaxy and lead the aliens away with them. 

So, they set this random course, they log it into the computer's AI, the AI blasts them out of the system and oddly enough the entirety of the alien force follows them. Not one ship, not a couple, but every single Covenant battleship follows this one human ship. 

Now when this one human ship arrives at this uncharted destination they find a couple cool things in the system. They find a big gas giant planet that has a moon orbiting around it. In between the two things is this ring structure, something they've never seen before. It's 10,000 miles in diameter, it has an atmosphere, it has continents, and it can support life. It's a habitat, you can live on it. 

The human ship comes into the system, makes these very quick discoveries, but before it can do anything else it's attacked by the Covenant battle fleet and broken into bits. Before the ship is destroyed however the commander of the ship is able to jettison certain essential supplies, troops that remain alive, and vehicles. All these different things land in various places on the Halo ring. 

You, the main character of the game, an elite military officer, are able to bail out of the breaking apart human ship at the very last minute and burn through the atmosphere of the ring, which is Halo, land on the surface of the ring, and what begins is a guerrilla war between you and this massive, overwhelming, alien fleet. Aliens land on the ring and they engage you and your former crewmembers in a variety of battles around the ring. 

So that's the basic back-story of Halo. All that happens before the game begins. And again the game of Halo is a 3rd person action game; it's all about action from minute to minute. It tells the story of you, one person alone, with your friends, with weapons, with vehicles, fighting a guerrilla war against a fairly overwhelming alien force. 

-- End Transmission --