Melissa (AI)

Melissa is an artificial intelligence construct created from Yasmine Zaman's brain. Yasmine "washed out' of the Spartan-II training program at age fourteen, dying during augmentation. Melissa became the A.I. of the ONI stealth ship Apocalypso. The character is voiced by Kristen Rutherford.

Melissa was infected by a devastating Covenant program buried in a larger transmission. When the Deep-Space Artifact created a Slipspace explosion on return to Earth, she was blown apart, with some parts being transmitted to Earth of the present and others being thrown back in time to the Earth of the early 21st century.

The Operator and The Sleeping Princess
In 2004 some of the fragments infected the ilovebees.com website, a fitting coincidence as "Melissa" is Greek for "bee". Also brought along to 2004 was the Covenant Seeker, who took the title of "The Pious Flea." System Peril Distributed Reflex, aka SPDR or Spider, which was an emergency program that attempted to repair Melissa. The Operator or Op, is the AI/Spartan part of Melissa and is aggressive and fragmented. The Sleeping Princess is based on Young Yasmine's memories. She speaks in fairy tale language, calling The Operator "The Evil Queen" and the SPDR "The Widow."

Melissa's SPDR began intense repairs and attempted to remove The Seeker's influence from her. Before succeeding, The Seeker successfully impersonated the SPDR and convinced The Operator to disable the true repair program. The Seeker corrupted her and began work on destroying both halves of Melissa's personality. However, The Sleeping Princess eventually allied with The Seeker, calling it "The Pious Flea." In exchange for education on human concepts like fear and humor, The Seeker protected The Sleeping Princess from The Operator. When "The Evil Queen" imprisoned and damaged the Princess, The Seeker absorbed her and recompiled the two split halves.

This recompiled personality regained enough of Melissa's abilities to recognize the Covenant AI for what it was, and The Seeker hid until the temporal rift closed and Melissa was sent back to her own time. The SPDR then promptly killed The Seeker and prepared the ilovebees server to keep it functional for 500 years until October 9, 2552, at 06:07:00, until it could send itself and the information it had gathered to UNSC forces.

Reconnection with 2552
Not all of Melissa was sent back in time, as another fragment somehow landed on the home PC of Jersey Morelli in New York City. Jersey names this fragment Durga, and has her engage in espionage which unwittingly leads her to uncover the threads of what happened to the Apocalypso and even meet Yasmine's brother Kamal in a lengthy series of real-world events that reveal the interconnection of the stories of the Zaman family, the UNSC, and the impending Covenant Attack on Earth. Through these events, several of Durga's human allies were imprisoned.

After Melissa composed herself and reached her own time, she impersonated a lawyer to gain the release of her friends Rani, Sophia and Aiden from jail, and then explained everything she knew to them. Reports had just come in from the Pillar of Autumn about Halo, and Melissa correctly suspected that the artifact was a remote control that fires the Halos. Though technically a rogue, she continued to help her friends reach safety before the Covenant attack.

Trivia

 * Melissa has the Marathon symbol on her shoulder.

Related Links

 * I Love Bees
 * I Love Bees Synopsis