Melissa is an artificial intelligence construct created by using Yasmine Zaman's brain. Yasmine had been in the Spartan-II training program, but "washed out" at fourteen. They used her brain to create Melissa[1], the A.I. of the ONI stealth ship Apocalypso.
Melissa was infected by a devastating program that the Covenant created to attach itself to the AI that received the transmission it was buried in. 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 fragments of Melissa (A.I) that were sent back to 2004 to infect the ilovebees internet website were the:
- The Operator or Op, the AI/Spartan part of Melissa.
- The Sleeping Princess which was the young Yasmine who had memories of Yasmine's life before the Spartan program.
- The System Peril Distributed Reflex, aka SPDR or Spider, which was an emergency program that began repairing Melissa.
Also brought along to 2004 was the Covenant Seeker, who took the title of The Pious Flea.
Not all of Melissa was sent back in time, as another part of Melissa somehow landed on the home PC of Jersey Morelli. Jersey names this fragment Durga.
At the end I Love Bees storyline, all of the different fragments minus the SPDR and the Seeker are finally put back together after the Forerunner artifact in Boston is activated. She had just about gone rampant when the field that had separated her two halves dissolved and she regained her sanity.
Though technically a rogue, she continued to help her friends reach safety before the Covenant attack, which was brought upon them by the artifact's Slipspace ripple that was initiated upon its disarming.
Trivia
- You can see the Marathon symbol on her left shoulder.
- "Melissa" is Greek for "bee".[2]
- Melissa is the 117th most popular name in the US. [3]
- Melissa is voiced by Kristen Rutherford.