MINERVA - read-only archives

"I know exactly how it feels" in reference to the reaction to seeing Zombines ...

Wait ...

Minerva's a headcrab-zombie!? ;)

There are a few lines which she speaks that I can't get out of my head. Things that don't quite fit in with other things. Such as "Light Blue Touch Paper" . I did a quick search on the INTERNOT and found(Guy Fawkes Night links non-withstanding) interesting little piece of internet. A blog dedicated to Cryptography.... hmm.
Other things, like being "All alone in this forsaken machine". It could mean the Satellite (or a computer station), but what if it's something else?
What if she's, say, a human mind that's been implanted into a machine. That seems a very "Combine" thing to do, fusing humans and machines in twisted and amoral ways, as witnessed by the usage of the soldiers alone.
What if she's someone who was merged with a machine by the combine, to "increase processing abilities" or "improve productivity" while "reducing downtime"?
If she was an aborted experiment, the "all alone" would be more logical, as well as the fact that the combine discarded her.
Drawing from System Shock's universe, when SHODAN gets exploded in the first game, she jettisons all those stinking pods, each containing a fragment of herself. If MINERVA was deemed an unsuccessful experiment, and discarded, what if she was able to save a part of herself, somewhere forgotten by the Combine. In a place that they had exhausted and left.
Anyway, these be nothing but wild theories, finally exhumed from this bumbling fool, too shy to join the ranks until fate forced his hand.
By the way, Adam, you've proved to me, once and for all, that games can be emotionally involving, and therefore, art.
Thankyou.

The thing I like about this kind of discussion is the sheer volume of ... raw data available. And to make any kind of sense of it, you need to process it -- how should we interpret this, how literal should we take that, how do we resolve this ambiguity?

At the same time, with each installment, we're given just enough information to make us think we understand more, one way or the other, while still raising more questions -- and the answers (and some of the questions) still depend on the same wonderful fun that is interpretation.

Hmm. Interesting train of thought:

Her snide comments about you being a "hairless ape", disparaging references to you being human, etc. seemingly point to "not human." That (I then realize), or hypocrisy -- which I at first think is slightly less likely: is hypocrisy one of Minerva's known character traits?

Hang on a minute ...

She has been hypocritical before, when she ordered you to your death -- at least, that's one way to interpret it. When she confronted herself directly with this -- that is, when she was about to push the button that was expected to vaporize you -- she broke down and confessed.

So, really, this opens up the possibility that she might be expected to confess about other "hypocrisy" in the future, as well.