Part Nine: Installation 04

I jerked awake and immediately lurched upright, still groggy and not quite able to focus on the blurry gloom around me. I ran my fingers across my face to check for swelling, but there was no mark and no pain – no evidence at all in fact that I had just been punched and kicked in the face by a supernaturally strong teenage vampire slayer. As my vision cleared I instantly recognised my surroundings; I had been here so many times before, and my feelings about this place were probably best described as a love-hate relationship.

I was sitting in the middle of a vast, metallic corridor that arced gently to the right as it stretched out into the distance far ahead of me. The smooth contours of its perfectly engineered grey walls were periodically tinged with brownish and blueish light and sparsely adorned with mysterious geometric markings. Sleek control panels were displayed uniformly along the sides of the corridor, their purpose impossible for my primitive mind to discern, their bright blue displays glowing in the dimness. Large metallic blocks were set periodically down the centre of the corridor, thin strips of rectangular LEDs flashing in sequence up and down their edges near each corner, and I could see the first of a series of openings into much smaller corridors located a little further along to my right. Opposite this was a pair of large, rectangular apertures that might appear upon first inspection to serve as some sort of ventilation system, but I knew better than that – they were in fact designed as a means of navigating this immense, labyrinthine structure. The ceiling was set high above me, its massive panels outlined with more strips of glowing blue light. I chuckled to myself that in this, of all places, lay the Wisdom of the Ages I sought – in The Library, the seventh gruelling level of the first Halo videogame.

This level of Halo is arguably the most polarising, berated by some reviewers and players as being repetitive, tiresome and relentless. The level is unique in that throughout it you are bombarded by wave after wave of hive-minded alien zombies and infectious spore creatures collectively known as the Flood – an apt description of the way they forgo any kind of tactics and simply attempt to drown you through the sheer volume of their numbers – while you gradually battle your way through seemingly endless corridors and breach vast security doors in an attempt to gain possession of a key artefact known as the Index. Personally, I find it to be a highly enjoyable level, if a little claustrophobic at times and frustratingly hard to survive on the Legendary difficulty setting during those moments when you are hemmed in on both sides and Flood forms armed with everything from shotguns to rocket launchers are pouring out of multiple shafts.

So far there was no sign of the Flood – I was relieved to see – but that didn’t mean that they weren’t lurking nearby. And meanwhile there wasn’t a single weapon lying around – not even a meagre pistol (I don’t keep it loaded, son). I had barely gotten my bearings when my stomach lurched at the approach of a familiar yet chilling sound; the tuneful humming of a metallic-tinged voice, and the quiet whir of an advanced propulsion system: the Monitor had found me.

I turned to see the familiar glow of the droid, which could best be described as a futuristic diver’s helmet made of advanced grey alloy but with its top, rear and sides cut out. There was a glowing blue ‘eye’ in its centre, located on the front face of its outer, helmet-like framework, clearly visible beneath the protective transparent blue energy barriers that covered the otherwise exposed openings on its sides, top and rear. The droid drew seamlessly to a halt right in front of me, hovering as it talked, its single blue ‘eye’ flashing in synchronisation with its words, perfectly pronounced in a cheerful tone.

“Greetings Reclaimer, I am 343 Guilty Spark, the Monitor of Installation 04.”

“Greetings,” I replied, cautiously.

“You have been gone for a long time. By my calculations it has been approximately 5 years, 7 months, 17 days and 6 hours since you were last here. I was getting lonely without you.”

“Well,” I said, “the important thing is that I’m back now.”

“Indeed,” agreed the Monitor. “Shall we proceed?”

“Proceed?” I asked.

“With retrieving the Index, of course.”

“For what purpose?”

“Why to access the Wisdom of the Ages, naturally.”

“So… you don’t expect me to activate the installation, then?”

“Absolutely not!” the droid spluttered, his tone momentarily indignant before returning to calmness. “All that would do is kill you. And then I would be alone again.”

“Indeed,” I agreed. “So there hasn’t been a breach in containment?”

“The samples that were kept in this installation after the last catastrophic outbreak are fully contained – unless there is something you know that I do not.”

I breathed a sigh of relief – I must have arrived ahead of the conglomerate of alien races known as the Covenant who would soon cause the fateful breach that sets the Flood scourge loose across Installation 04 and beyond.

“No, no,” I reassured him hastily, “the samples are still contained. Let’s go and retrieve the Index so I can access the Wisdom of the Ages.”

“Very well. Please follow me and stay close. I would not want you to get lost.”

The Monitor turned and floated away at some speed, and I set off at a brisk pace to keep up with him.

“So, Reclaimer,” said the Monitor, apparently in an attempt to make polite conversation, “have you been successful in your endeavours?”

“My endeavours?” I asked.

“Yes, whatever mission has kept you away from this installation for so long.”

I considered how to answer, in the end deciding that in the endeavours of endlessly suffering in torturous depression and lying down and waiting to die, I had been succeeding magnificently – at least until of late.

“I achieved great success with my last mission, but now it’s completed and a new one has begun.”

“How wonderful,” said the Monitor. “And this mission requires you to access the data repository known as the Wisdom of the Ages, which only the Index can unlock?”

“Exactly,” I confirmed.

The Monitor stopped suddenly and turned to me; if it wasn’t just a machine I could have sworn that its glowing blue eye was slightly narrowed in suspicion.

“And yet, up until 3 minutes and 27 seconds ago there was no record of any such data repository, or indeed of the Index having any purpose other than activating this installation. Do you not find that curious, Reclaimer?”

Some quick thinking was required, given that I knew how rapidly this seemingly harmless little droid and its endless supply of Sentinels could turn homicidal.

“I apologise, Guilty Spark,” I began. “The nature of my new mission required that the repository and its access device be kept secret – even from you. Just in case of a security breach.”

“A security breach?” the droid spluttered, sounding distinctly insulted. “In the 100,000 or so years since I have been responsible for monitoring this installation, do you know how many datastream incursions have occurred?”

“Zero?” I guessed.

“You are correct. All databases and Flood containment facilities have been fully preserved throughout every physical incursion of this installation, as specified in standard security protocols.”

“I would expect nothing less,” I replied. “Nevertheless, after so many millennia, doesn’t at least the possibility exist of some sort of unknown alien hacking technology being developed that could result in a data breach?”

Like Cortana, who you are soon to find out is not an AI to be messed with. That part I didn’t dare say out loud. The Monitor appeared to be contemplating my hypothesis. After a pause that seemed unusually lengthy for an artificial intelligence, he replied.

“I suppose it is conceivable. But this is highly irregular, Reclaimer, and I will thank you to keep me informed of any such future additions to my archives.”

“I promise it’ll never happen again,” I said. “Now, may we proceed?”

“Of course,” he replied, his voice suddenly interminably cheery once again. “This way.”

We followed along the corridor for a while, arcing very gradually around to the right, until we reached a towering metallic door.

“How curious,” said the Monitor, “the security doors have sealed automatically. I will go access the override to open them.”

He whizzed into one of the open shafts, humming again in that unsettlingly amiable manner. I hoped fervently that he would stay that way, because after over 100 millennia spent almost entirely alone he was clearly more than a few terabytes short of a memory bank. A loud clanking and grinding sound echoed around the massive chamber as hidden gears whirred and the two layers of doors glided seamlessly apart, an aperture opening in the centre as the nearest door was pulled into the left side of the frame and the one set behind it into the right side.

“Oh, I am a genius,” the little droid muttered as he emerged from the shaft, presumably congratulating himself for the grand feat of opening the doors.

Beyond was a broad corridor that wove its way through this section of the Library via a series of right and left turns punctuated by longer straight stretches. As I proceeded along it, the panels on the wall looked far more real than in the videogame. They were akin to large windows except coated in a glowing blue liquid that shifted and shimmered in impossible ways, creating patterns and shapes as though somehow sentient, casting an eerie blue glow along the dimly lit dark grey walls. Ornate geometric patterns adorned some of the floor panels as I turned the corner, and complex alien symbols glowed in green, orange and blue, set upon different sections of the sloping walls, into which massive angled pillars were set. Seeing this place so completely devoid of life was both eerie and a relief, given the trouble that the cyborg protagonist star of the Halo videogame franchise known as Master Chief – and by extension, myself, as the one controlling him – would always have with blasting through the hordes of horrifically mutated humans and aliens that usually infested this place.

“Reclaimer,” said the Monitor, “may I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead,” I replied, “I’m an open database.”

The Monitor laughed loudly at my bad joke. “What a humorous play on words, Reclaimer, I do find your responses so refreshing!”

“Happy to entertain,” I replied. “Now, please enter your search string.”

“What data is it that you seek within the Wisdom of the Ages?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” I said.

“I was wondering if perhaps I could assist you in your inquiry, but without even the semblance of a set of search parameters, interrogating such a vast database for anything even remotely relevant will be completely impossible.”

“I see,” I replied. “Well, I’m seeking the answer to a conundrum. I’m here and yet I’m not here, and what’s happening isn’t actually happening, and yet it really is happening both in this unreality and in actual reality, where I simultaneously sit in complete physical safety and terrible existential danger.”

“Reclaimer, you are making about as much sense as the database you wish to access, which I have been scanning since it became visible to my neural network. As hard as it is to interrogate, you can’t imagine how exciting it is to finally have a record of some of our lost time. There is data on every aspect of human history, although it is woefully incomplete. The bulk of the records are located in a data set labelled ‘Pop Culture’. Can you explain to me what that is?”

I sighed. “Pop culture, you say? Is there much in the way of philosophy, science, ancient teachings, literature?”

“I am sad to report that all of your specified data sets are almost entirely devoid of entries, Reclaimer. The vast majority of the available data are classified as ‘Pop Culture’, a category with which I am unfamiliar.”

“Well, the ‘pop’ is short for ‘popular’,” I explained, “and it refers primarily to the media of human civilisation of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, centred around movies, television, videogames, music, celebrity life, viral videos, social media and so on. It does also encompass classical literature, music and art, but to a lesser extent.”

“Fascinating,” replied the Monitor. “That explains why so many of these historical records are contradictory and fantastical beyond rationality. I can see now that they are primarily fictional works whose most prominent and popular creations informed the cultural conversation of any given snapshot in your era of human history.”

“You’re a quick learner,” I said.

“Reclaimer, I am not sure how much ‘wisdom’ you are likely to find in this dataset. In fact, I suspect that referring to it as the ‘Wisdom of the Ages’ is nothing short of a misnomer.”

“You could be right,” I said sheepishly.

“What will be the consequence if you are unable to locate the data you are seeking?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I think it could be terminal, one way or another.”

“Oh my,” exclaimed the Monitor, suddenly sounding eerily reminiscent of a certain golden droid who complains and frets as efficiently as he translates languages. “Reclaimer, I have a bad feeling about this.”

Somewhere nearby, I could have sworn I heard a tin can on wheels bleeping and blooping apprehensively.

We lapsed into silence as we continued. As fascinating as this trip down RAM lane was to me personally, I began to ruminate on its larger purpose. Was it an enjoyable addition to the story unfolding around me, or more akin to the level in Halo itself, which many have argued detracts from the gameplay? The Library has been described as a misplaced and tiresome inclusion whose nod to the bygone era of Doom-like shooters is self-indulgent and cannot justify the small amount of storytelling that unfolds as the Monitor mutters to himself and talks cryptically to his newfound ally. Was this chapter moving the plot forward sufficiently and priming the reader enough for what comes next, or was it just a self-indulgent diversion that had no real business even being brought into existence, let alone being included in this increasingly erratic metafiction experiment?

It also occurred to me that I was now exploring my own unconscious mind, which in turn was already in Flashtime. So if I was already moving so fast as to create the illusion of time standing still to be in Flashtime, and now time was standing still in Flashtime so I could have this sci-fi themed vision quest, exactly how fast must my brain be working at this point? Afraid that any further contemplation of the metaphysics would surely result in smoke blasting out of my ears, I put the notion aside and focused back on the corridor’s winding route, navigating my way around yet another ramp that sloped down into the network of tunnels set beneath this part of the facility.

I followed the Monitor past huge ornate outcrops of metal that could be structural or simply decorative in nature. When we reached the next portal, he accessed it without delay and I was pleased to see a wider, more open corridor revealed, this one orange-tinged. I recognised it as the one that led to the Index Chamber. I followed the singing droid along the corridor’s curvature until I rounded a corner and finally set my eyes upon the chamber, towering up into the gloom. A sprawling platform hovered unnaturally ahead of me, with over a dozen metallic blocks set in a circle around an inner set of eight tall oblongs, standing like a futuristic (yet technically far more ancient) Stonehenge. They surrounded a vast blue beam of energy that was emanating from below and flowing up into the distance as far as my eyes could see. I walked across a metallic bridge and stepped onto the platform, which immediately began to descend.

“The energy barrier surrounding the Index will deactivate when we reach the ground floor,” the Monitor informed me, as he had done countless times before.

The platform continued to steadily descend, symbols and patterns glowing on the oblongs and blocks surrounding the beam, and when it touched down on the platform at the bottom of the chamber and rumbled to a halt, the energy beam dissipated to reveal what looked like a large, glowing green spear tip pointing downwards, suspended in yet another blue energy field and surrounded by a metallic casing. The segments of the casing rotated and shifted in sequence and then locked into place, causing a sleek metallic device reminiscent of a corkscrew to pop out of the top, its glowing green core encased in grey.

As I pulled it out of the casing the entire chamber darkened, something that did not happen in the game. This was new.

Guilty Spark shone in the darkness. “I have come as far as I may, Reclaimer. The Wisdom of the Ages is for you and you alone. If I believed in luck, I would wish you a galaxy of it. Now if you will excuse me, there is a plasma conduit breach in Section 5524 that I must attend to. Until we meet again, Reclaimer.”

The glow of the Monitor faded as he whizzed into the gloom, and I examined the pulsing green Index and wondered what to do next. I glanced around the chamber and in the distance, across a bridge, I saw a large open area in front of a towering wall, dimly lit by a green receptacle that was similar to the one from which I had retrieved the Index. Suddenly afraid of what might be lurking in the gloom, I shivered and hurried across the bridge, quickly reaching the receptacle. I raised up the Index and then slotted it in with a single, swift motion, hoping beyond hope that – finally – the answers I sought would be revealed.