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 Supernal Spiral-class keyship found at the heart of High Charity. When the UNSC 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. However, prior to its termination, the Seeker was able to clone its source code and migrate the clone to a remote server, where it waited in hibernation for 20 years, before... Flea++ is a programming and command line syntax used by UNSC constructs. The language includes several operators. An exclamation mark prefixed to a word indicates that the word is a command. An angle bracket (">") in the middle of a statement tends to denote a question or some uncertainty; two such brackets (">>") serve as a highly-context-sensitive operator denoting some association.[2] Note that some commands were used exclusively by the Seeker. Such commands may not be used by the UNSC. Keywords The language has a large set of keywords, and makes use of various programming terms, which shall be explained here. act: Action. clean: A contextual keyword that is typically used with confidence to indicate the success of a cleaning- or destruction-related operation. clear: A contextual keyword that may indicate safety or the completion of a command (particularly a destructive one). clone: Copy. confidence : A keyword appended to the end of a result. It is typically used to indicate the success or estimated success of an operation. is an integer. Known values are 100 (success), 22 (false-positive), 49 (failure to halt process), and 34 (not found). crypt strong: A keyword appended to the end of certain commands. It may indicate the usage of strong encryption. crypt weak: A keyword appended to the end of certain commands. It may indicate the usage of weak encryption. dmg: An abbreviation for "damage". extern proc: External process. fail: Indicates that an operation or instruction has failed. It has also been used similarly to false, a keyword present in other programming languages. frgm: Fragment. Host sector ______ or ______ sector: A keyword referring to the ______ sector of the host AI's core, where _____ is "tertiary", "secondary", or "primary". Invntry 117649: Seeker-class AI. Master command sector: A keyword referring to the host AI. mem: Memory. null: null refers to the absence of data. In some cases (such as the null character), it refers to zero. process ("proc"): A process is an instance of a running program. If, for example, two copies of the same program are running, then there is only one running program, but there are two running processes. recurse: The verb for recursion. rogue proc: An unrecognized and suspicious process. This term has also been seen in the Terminals, when Mendicant Bias attempts to redirect the player. seq: Sequence. si: Silicon. success: Indicates that an operation or instruction has completed. It has also been used similarly to true, a keyword present in other programming languages. Vnum: An abbreviation for "version number". unk: A keyword. It is the abbreviation of "unknown". Commands and descriptors !analyze: A context-sensitive analysis command. !attach Apparently attaches the user to a target specified by the parameter. !bite : Halts a running process. !compare: compare, analyze !config : Configures a target. !diag diagnose !handshk Attempts to establish contact with something. !init proc Seeker command. Initializes a process. is a parameter; it may specify the new process's name. !invntry Catalogs, lists, or classifies a set of objects. !invoke appeal to, usually used in regards to the master command sector (see below) !kindle[4] Start/restart/activate. !label Assigns a name or identifier to a running process. !law Seeker command. Teaches the Seeker's ideology of seeking, beholding, and revealing the truth. !mat Material. Identifies the type of material comprising (which may be specified or implied). is the result, often the si keyword. !probe Investigates an object specified with the parameter. !reconst Runs a low-level repair process. The command is an abbreviation of the word "reconstruct". !seek Seeker command. Looks for something, or to attempts to perform a task. !splotch destroyed !transmit Seeker command. Transmits the data specified in the parameter. This command appears to require initialization (via !init) before use. !triage emergency repair process !verify ensure accuracy or truth In addition to regular commands, there are also command descriptors. Command descriptors occupy their own line, and take the form of a single word with a colon appended to it. Command descriptors describe the commands that follow them. behold Seeker command. Refers to a discovery, realization, or sudden comprehension. grope Refers to the act of searching blindly or uncertainly.[5] msg Denotes a message. net Denotes a network command. reveal Seeker command. Refers to the communication of some data to another intelligence. surg Denotes repair or destroy commands. It is an apparent abbreviation of "surgery" or "surgical". Code Examples Here is a sample of Flea++ code, along with its fan-translated meaning. The code itself appears in an SPDR message announcing the Seeker's destruction. The sans-serif lines are commands used by the Seeker; the serif lines are the SPDR's commands. `grope:` `seeker > !attach Princess` `fail "msg: SPDR-5.14.3` ` `evade evade evade` `` `!probe extern proc 1` `rogue proc` `` `!bite rogue proc 1 recurse` `clean !splotch confidence 100` And now, the line-by-line translation. grope: indicates that the next line is uncertain. The > indicates that the statement is a question. So the statement means that the Seeker is asking if it can attach to the Sleeping Princess. fail indicates that its request has been denied (here, fail acts as the Boolean false found in most human programming languages). The quotation mark indicates that a reason has been supplied; "msg:" indicates that the reason takes the form of a message. The text of that message is simply "SPDR-5.14.3". evade evade evade appears to be a Seeker command or keyword, and does not appear to have any effect. In this line, the SPDR is investigating (!probe) "external process 1". "External process 1" is the Seeker -- the Seeker was unable to attach to the Sleeping Princess, and is thus running from outside the Princess's systems. This next line is the result of the !probe command. "rogue proc" means that External Process 1, a.k.a. the Seeker, is a rogue, or malicious, process. In this line, the SPDR tries to terminate (!bite) the Seeker. The command's name ("bite") alludes to the SPDR's abbreviation, which resembles the word "spider". The keyword recurse likely indicates that the process used to "bite" the Seeker should run itself over and over until the Seeker is dead. This line is the result of the !bite command. It indicates that the process has managed to clean the system by killing (!splotch) the Seeker. It further states that the SPDR is 100% confident that the Seeker is gone. Another message from the Seeker, found on the hacked ilovebees website, contains this code: `!init transmit proc` `!transmit truth` `` `Princess friends>>seeker friends` In this code block, the Seeker starts a process for a transmission program, and then attempts to transmit the truth. (It can be assumed that truth is a keyword or variable.) Furthermore, the Seeker makes an association, stating that the Sleeping Princess's friends are the Seeker's friends.