I know. Some people just have too much time on their hands. She should have taken up a hobby, like knitting.

: Has Bear been reading too many comic books?

"Hi guys! My name is Brian Reed, and I've just been added to 343i's writing staff! Most of my resume is writing Spider-man comics, but I also wrote the cutscenes for Mercenaries 2. I, uh, don't really like to talk about that."

As for Greg Bear... well, he's a hard science fiction writer. 'Darwin's Radio' had some pretty funky stuff being done with genetics and 'meta-evolution', but it was mostly plausible at the time it was written.

: I think that he thinks that very specific behaviors and even individual
: personalities and memories can be encoded in genes.

: Obviously there is some influence of genetics on behavior but I think that
: Bear goes too far.

Why can't they?
OK, so we know that genetics isn't the sole determining factor in a person's consciousness. But could a genetic mechanism be built to override a person's personality?

: Even if you could encode this stuff in the genes - how do you ensure that it
: stays encoded? How do you prevent it from becoming corrupted over the
: generations? You would need extra protection for the encoded data,
: something that we haven't found in the genome, something in addition to
: all the error correcting mechanisms that we know of. Something that still
: lets variation occur, the acquisition of new traits like lactose tolerance
: or hemoglobin changes to combat malaria - yet still preserves the
: stretches of DNA that contain secret personalities and secret compulsions.

: It seems that our personalities are a reflection of the specific structure of
: each individual's brain. It doesn't look like our brains are 'Turing
: machines' - generic personality machines that can run any personality like
: a computer can run any program.

OK, how would I do it? Well, I'm not sure about 343i, because I doubt they care about the science enough, but I would have made the Librarian's Geass into a sort of biological radio.

The captured humans, like Lord of Admirals, would have been uploaded into the Domain. Meanwhile, on Earth, Humans would have a structure in their brain (Not an organ per se, but a part of the brain's architecture) that acts as a receiver tuned to a particular channel. Like a Precursor-built OnLive, the Domain receives stimulus from a Human brain, does the processing that lets the Geass-memory 'think', and transmits the results back to the Human victim.

This is similar to a Forerunner 'hindbrain'. Though the Forerunner's understanding of what the Domain was left much to be desired, they knew something about the process that let them interact with it. This led to synthetic Domains, which were used to disseminate information and protocols within secure facilities. Humans interact with these systems on a most rudimentary level. When someone innately knows which button to press to extend a bridge, you've seen a synthetic Domain in action.

*Checks watch.

Hmmm... Started writing fanfiction fifteen minutes after I sat down to theorize... I'm slowing down.

Anyhow, since the Domain was destroyed when the Halo Array fired, all Humans get are echoes. Sometimes this manifests as Deja Vu or strange dreams.

So, if the Domain is gone, why does the Librarian's ghost claim to have steered our evolution? Well, I'm going to assume that she's not grandstanding and claiming credit for the natural progression of our methods of waging war, and submit the following explanations.

-The ghost was made after the Librarian learned that the Domain was the Organon. She is therefore unaware that her progenitor's plan was successful, and is assuming that the invention of powered armor and genetic augmentation was the result of her schemes.

-The Domain is partially intact and is rebuilding itself, enough that the Librarian's backups can guide us in a manner that is infinitely more discrete than the methods we saw in the Forerunner Trilogy.

-After learning that the Halo Array was going to kill off the Domain, she ran down to the Voi installation and put in what is widely considered to be the hardest night's work ever. She rebuilt a synthetic Domain so it's signal could reach out across all of the solar system, and then modified our Geass to prevent us from leaving Earth until we had unwittingly build the means to carry our Geass with us to the stars. The result is the Assembly, which steers Humanity in accordance with strings even it doesn't know that it dances upon.

Thoughts?