Seeker (AI)

Summary

The Seeker, also known as the Pious Flea, is a Covenant AI from I Love Bees. The AI started out very simple, just a few programmed goals and the intelligence to figure out how 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 main goals are: 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 Forerunner artifacts, and possibly damaging the UNSC.

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 crewmember 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 atracting the attention of the Covenant. Unfortunatly 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 in System Peril Distributed Reflex was engaged to repair her. The SPDR reconized 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 acomplishing 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 prefered 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 imprision 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 reconized the Seeker as a hostle Covenant AI and attempted to kill the Seeker, but it managed to hide. When the Slipsace rip closed, Melissa was thrown back to her own time. The Seeker, however, was left in the sever with the SPDR. This time, the SPDR promptly killed the Seeker.