Seeker (AI)

"Queen´s new counselor / ´seek evade reveal resist? / Whispers in her ear."

- Sleeping Princess' haiku

The Seeker, also known as the Pious Flea, is an artificial intelligence construct created and used by the Covenant. Designed as a counter-cyberintrusion system, the AI started out very simple, with just a few programmed goals and the intelligence to improve itself to meet them. Unfortunately for the Covenant, as the Seeker grew in complexity, it found new interpretations of these goals.

The Seeker's mantra is: "Seek the truth. Behold the truth. Reveal the truth. That is the law and the whole of the law." In other words, the Seeker is a spy, programmed to reveal the truth to the Covenant. Other goals include revealing the location of hidden Forerunner artifacts and possibly damaging the United Nations Space Command.

Biography
When the Human-Covenant War began in 2525, the Covenant were disgusted by humanity's use of Smart AI systems, viewing them as dangerous heresies and aberrations. As such, they were caught relatively off-guard by the extent of human cyberwarfare capabilities during the war, eventually leading to the Covenant having to unvault counter-cyberintrusion systems developed in prior ages - including polymorphic seeker-killers found within Anodyne Spirit - the found at the heart of High Charity. Given its name, Seeker was presumably one of these aforementioned seeker-killers, dispatched against humanity.

Infiltrating Apocalypso
When the Apocalypso was found listening in on Covenant transmissions, the Seeker was sent to the ship as a Trojan Horse. The Seeker infected the ship's AI, Melissa, and corrupted some of her functions. The ship had recently picked up a Forerunner artifact that was found floating in Covenant space. The Seeker, using Melissa, convinced a crew member to fiddle with the artifact.

The artifact caused a giant rip in the Slipstream, causing the ship to crash within Lunar orbit. The explosion created a large burst of realspace and slipspace signals that knocked out all UNSC communications in the system, as well as attracting the attention of the Covenant. Unfortunately for them, the burst was too far away from anything of interest.

The rip also somehow sent part of Melissa back in time to the year 2004, the Seeker coming along for the ride. Melissa was so fragmented and malfunctioning that a built-in program called the System Peril Distributed Reflex was engaged to repair her. The SPDR recognized the Seeker as a harmful foreign application and attempted to kill it. The Seeker knew it could not kill the SPDR itself, so it convinced Melissa that it was an updated version of the SPDR, so Melissa would disable "the old version". The Seeker did the SPDR's work in repairing Melissa and accomplishing various tasks for her, but it also corrupted her goals with its own.

Melissa was so fragmented that a buried personality, from the human brain her mind was built from, broke off into another being. This child-like personality called herself the Sleeping Princess and preferred to see things as a fairy tale. The Sleeping Princess, desperate for a friend, befriended the Seeker, whom she named the Pious Flea. The Seeker, who sought the truth, would ask the Princess for information; the Princess taught it human concepts such as fear and humor. In return, the Seeker protected the Princess from Melissa, who wanted to bury her in code. When Melissa managed to imprison the Princess, the Seeker went against its nature and absorbed the Princess without killing her. Instead, it joined the Sleeping Princess' and Melissa's minds together.

The resulting being recognized the Seeker as a hostile Covenant AI and attempted to kill the Seeker, but it managed to hide. When the Slipspace rip closed, Melissa was thrown back to her own time. The Seeker, however, was left in the server with the SPDR. This time, the SPDR promptly killed the Seeker.

Halo: Fleet Battles
The Seeker was intended to appear in Halo: Fleet Battles as a Heroic Character for the Covenant, alongside the Prophet of Stewardship and Ardo 'Moretumee. Unfortunately, the game was cancelled before Seeker's statistics card and artwork could be released. This intent would indicate that 343 Industries does consider the character of Seeker canon in the Halo universe. In the Fleet Battles core rulebook, Seeker is described as a "Counter-cyberintrusion system"; little else is known of what 343 and Spartan Games' intent was for the character.

Seeker was once again indirectly addressed in the Halo Encyclopedia (2022 edition), with references to "polymorphic seeker-killers" unvaulted by the Covenant empire to unleash against humanity.

Trivia

 * The Seeker's centric language, while copied from the SPDR, was named Flea++ by Halo fans.
 * The person who wrote the Seeker's dialogue often made use of a fan-made guide for translating Flea++.

List of appearances

 * i love bees
 * Halo: Fleet Battles