Mysteries
From ILB
Unresolved mysteries
How did The Operator, an AI from the future, end up on a computer in 2004?
There is much speculation (fueled by the interpretation contained within the Story So Far) that some sort of time-travel and shipwreck has occurred. Even if that's so, how did the time-travel occur? And why was there a shipwreck?
There is much spec that the Artifact that the Apocalypso found contained some sort of Forerunner crystals, which in the Haloverse have a strange effect on time and space. Anton P. Nym has noted that the Halo novels describe two Forerunner artifacts as containing ruby and sapphire, which could explain the gem fragments that The Widow came across in the course of The Widow's Journey. -- Shadow 12:27, 15 Sep 2004 (EDT)
Why did the Operator end up residing on the ilovebees.com (http://www.ilovebees.com) server in particular?
There is no solid speculation. Does it have something to do with the physical location? IP address? Domain name? The site's content? The people running the site?
We do know that both Melissa and Durga seem to have a fascination with bees, according to the Phase 3 Operator's Monologue and awful_fast.wav (http://www.ilovebees.com/outbound/awful_fast.wav), respectively. So does The Sleeping Princess, according to the Phase 2 killer.jpg pictures. -- Shadow 12:27, 15 Sep 2004 (EDT)
What are the real world, literal names of The Pious Flea and The Sleeping Princess?
In the story of The Widow's Journey, allegorical names are substituted for the literal names of real world characters, items, and objects, so what are the literal names of The Pious Flea and The Sleeping Princess? Also, where did the pieces of ruby and sapphire, that sound like Forerunner artifacts come from?
- The Operator / Melissa == The Queen
- SPDR / Spider == The Widow
- A security process == The Manticore
- Magnetic media == A lodestone floor
- Silicon chips == Cakes of sand
- ??? == The Pious Flea
- ??? == The Sleeping Princess
- ruby ==???
- sapphire== ???
The Pious Flea appears to refer to itself as "seeker," in Yellowbrickroad.html. The Sleeping Princess doesn't appear to know her origin or real name, and the Operator doesn't seem to either. -- Clamatius 17:13, 1 Sep 2004 (EDT)
Melissa refers to a "rogue" in some of her calls. This may be the Sleeping Princess. --.--Rose 12:16, 22 Sep 2004 (EDT)
In a lot of the SPDR's commentary, it refers to extern procs - 0, 1 and 2. extern proc 1 it defines as rogue proc, and sometimes refers as rogue proc 1. Thus, SPDR refers to the Flea as rogue proc, and that's the only other documented reference of rogue to date. --thebruce 14:34, 22 Sep 2004 (EDT)
Who told the story of The Widow's Journey and hid it among the corrupted images on ilovebees.com?
The story of The Widow's Journey is told in a voice/writing style that no other in-game text possesses. Who told the story? Why? Why was it cut up and placed in corrupted images? Was the entity who hid the story fragments the same entity who told the story in the first place?
- The Sleeping Princess appears to be the author of the Widow's Journey - but it's unclear how she had the ability to write it at that point (Phase 1), since her English appeared to be very weak. -- Clamatius 19:47, 2 Sep 2004 (EDT)
- On the other hand, there is spec that SP may have also been hiding or sneaking during her periods of seemingly very rough english, so as not to be obvious to be caught by the Queen, since her hasty jump back to near perfect grammar and large vocabulary was very quick. --thebruce 18:10, 8 Sep 2004 (EDT)
What is the nature of The Sleeping Princess?
In her September 3 404 page, The Sleeping Princess tells us, "I'm older than the Flea and I'm older than the Queen and it was bad day for them when the coffin cracked and I got out because I'm never going back there again. I'm a survivor I play to win and I will die before I go back again." What is the fundamental nature of the Princess? Is she human? Covenant? Forerunner? Or something else entirely?
Which characters should the players try to help, and which should the players try to stop?
Who are the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys", assuming it can be dichotomized so simply? Dana seems innocent, but we don't know what role she played in getting The Operator on to her server (or if Dana's been lying to us). Where has Dana's family (particularly her mother, Chloe, and her aunt, Margaret Efendi) in all of this? The Operator seems like it's friendly to humans, but wants to kill Dana as an act of self-defense. And who can say what the motivations of The Sleeping Princess are?
Where do the axon clips come from and how does their story relate to the present-day story?
What are the nature of the Axon Clips? Are they Melissa's memories, or something else? Are we "eavesdropping on the future" (as mentioned in Dana's blog) somehow via some mysterious time-travel wormhole? What do these clips have to do with the story that's taking place inside of the ilovebees server?
What is the origin and purpose of the "mysterious artifact"?
Melissa's ship, the Apocalypso, picked up a mysterious artifact in space. The artifact is denser than Osmium (the densest naturally ocurring element) and bears markings that are similar (but not identical) to the Covenant's, leading many people to believe it could be of Forerunner origin. Sometime after the object was recovered, it crashed out of slipspace near Earth, disrupting communication systems throughout the solar system. (Durga also showed up in Jersey's system about the same time as the crash.) Although the crash apparently wasn't fatal, knowing about the artifact was - Capt. Greene was hit by a bus, McKaskill's motorcycle was tampered with (he survived and went into hiding), Rani was nearly assassinated, and Herzog was sent plummeting into a river at 350km/h. All of these people knew about the artifact and/or knew it was being held at Chawla base by a secretive ONI detatchment apparently headed up by Standish, who has all but admitted to causing the aforementioned "accidents" to cover up the object's existence. The object seems to be counting down to something - a transmission? an explosion? something else? - but its true origin and purpose is currently unknown.
What's with all the mirrors?
Resolved mysteries
What will happen when the countdown on ilovebees.com reaches the "metastasize" and "wide awake and physical" checkpoints?
Most speculation is that this is a countdown to The Operator becoming more aware and more capable, but this question remains the first and most central mystery of the entire ARG.
Answer
When the countdown expired on August 24 (the "wide awake and physical" stage), payphones across the US rang as part of the Axons challenge.
Assuming they come from the same author, who wrote "problem quite interesting" / "I was looking at your site a little awry" / the killer.jpg embedded text / the ladybee777 e-mails?
General consensus has the author of these messages as the real world analogue of either The Pious Flea or The Sleeping Princess (or some combination of the two). Although ladybee777 sent an e-mail that was labelled "by The Sleeping Princess", ladybee777 hasn't sent us anything we haven't sent it first, always parroting back what we send it. We have sent it a) a lot of messages mentioning The Pious Flea, The Sleeping Princess, and even Dana Awbrey, and b) a lot of texts attributed to other authors (so it may think proper protocol is to send text it didn't write itself). As noted above, the ladybee777 entity doesn't have the same writing style as was used in the story of The Widow's Journey, so there's no reason to believe that it would have even known to call itself The Pious Flea or The Sleeping Princess if we hadn't bombarded it with e-mails containing those names.
So, what is this entity? What does it want?
Answer
The Sleeping Princess was the author of the given texts. She no longer writes in sewn-together snippets but uses her own words.
Where is Dana Awbrey?
Dana Awbrey created the ilovebees.com (http://www.ilovebees.com/) website, maintained her own blog (http://ilovebees.blogspot.com/), and was getting ready to leave for a Chinese vacation when all of this struck. She is our main real world link to the game. Where is Dana now? How do we reach her? We think she's gone to China, but there is some confusion over what she says in her second Voicemail message.
Answer
Dana initially went to Beijing on July 27. As of August 31, she was in Shanghai. On September 15, Dana let us know that she arrived in Tokyo on September 12. On October 15, Dana announced that she is coming back home.
What will happen when the x/777 progress meter reaches its goal?
The x/777 meter is filled by us, the players, activating Axons and resides on any ilovebees.com (http://www.ilovebees.com/) page where axons are listed or archived. But what will happen when we've activated the "target" number of 777?
Answer
777/777 was reached on September 21, and at that time Melissa began to make live phone calls to some of the axon sites, during which she would ask for the player's name, rank, and have a short chat with him/her. Once this call had been completed, special axons labelled "Axon Spike" were enhottenated on the http://www.ilovebees.com/recipe1.html page. Also, live phone calls were made to other players even though that call did not enhottenate an Axon Spike. Successful live calls resulted in the player being made a part of Melissa's crew. Further instructions and secret duties may be forthcoming to those crew members.
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