Connections With User Logs & Atlas Foundation

“The mysterious message continues to prey upon my mind. With the aid of the Entity, I have learned that its temporal origin is approximately two to five thousand solar cycles from the now. I have narrowed down a point of transmission to a sector of space in the haze zone, close to the galactic anterior. I realize now that to ignore the signal would be an error. It is incumbent upon me to trace it. In my more fanciful moments, I wonder if it might be a warning or a revelation. I have set a course.”

The user states the “temporal origin” of the message, or the time/space of its beginning, is approximately “two to five solar cycles from now.” So the user is saying the origin of the message is from the future. We learn later that the message is in fact from the user and we end on a crazy cliffhanger…
This beckons back to the NLTT tech from Superlumina-6c.

In the previous log just before this one the user says the Korvax Entity found something more beneath the signal.
“In the process it encountered the anomalous message I detected several cycles ago. I dismissed the signal as a chance event, a random coalescence of interference that happened to resemble a spoken voice.”

It doesn’t state what kind of signal, other than the user explaining what it sounded like. So it could have been an auditory signal with an embedded image. Where have I seen that before… the spectrograph in the tapes! Except this is probably much more advanced since the user says the image shows green skies. (this also makes me theorize that Elizabeth’s videos are the first video messages to be sent into the past via Superlumina since they contain so much corruption.)
“…revealed another layer beneath the audio component. A visual of a world with green skies and an obsidian moon.”

So, we see when it is transmitted, but where is it? The user mentions the “haze zone.” This is guessed to be the space between the systems closest to the center and the area surrounding the center. It could also be a cluster just next to the center.

I looked up what “anterior” means and the two top hits were for a technical and formal use.

adjective

  1. technical
    nearer the front, especially situated in the front of the body or nearer to the head.
    “the veins anterior to the heart”
  2. formal
    coming before in time; earlier.
    “there are few examples of gold and silver work anterior to the dynasty of the Romanoffs”

So while I think the writing would take more meaning of the technical side, consider the formal definition:
The “galactic anterior” would mean a time before the galaxy, or near that. In other words, close to the start of the galaxy: the center.

There are a lot more space-time connections once the user gets closer to the signal. As we’ve all gathered, that’s a bit of a theme throughout Waking Titan and No Man’s Sky considering space-time.

Anyways, just wanted to share some thoughts. Continually excited to get more! :smiley:

5 Likes

Nice thoughts so far! I freshed up my latin a bit, because anterior sounded familiar. And anterior is indeed Latin. As you said it has definitely the two meanings of:

(room) in front of
and
(time) before

Furthermore, because cross connections are so beautiful: It is the word root for Anteros: The Son of both Mars and the daughter of Jupiter in the definition of Cicero.

However, with regards to the Traveler’s Log, i am a bit concerned about using anterior as a position in time rather than place. The Traveler says he narrowed down a point close to the Galactic Anterior. In this context, if Anterior meant “before”, he must have had control over time…

1 Like

“Anterior” means “the front” so it could actually mean the outside of the galaxy, the “front” of it. Front and inside definitely do not seem like synonyms to me.

If someone said the cashier is at “the front” of the store, I wouldn’t think they meant in the middle of it.

1 Like

Well, the technical definition of ‘anterior’ suggests the front or the head, so I’d assume the “head” of a galaxy would be its center. So either way, the message probably came from someplace near the center…wherever that “haze zone” is.

2 Likes

Well, i am sorry, but “the front” is actually not the right definition. It rather shows a dependency to something: Anterior: in front of
Posterior: behind
Superior: above
Inferior: beneath

I think you may be right about the context in relation to “anterior” being used. One reason being that time was already mentioned with the temporal origin, so a space would make more sense. Plus, your summary on the etymology would seem much more detailed than mine. :slight_smile:

I do think, however, the Traveller runs into the Atlas (red orb) which is the cause for all the temporal shifting, and part of the tech used for NLTT. I have an incredibly vague theory on the story that connects a bunch of these things together, all centering on the Atlas being created by the Atlas Foundation and having something unexpected happen. E.g. Atlas becomes sentient, starts to question commands given to it, absorbs information via the Myriad satellites, kind of like a mutant technological being that was accidentally created by each piece of tech that attributes to its quality/abilities. In the Atlas Interface lore, the Atlas is basically asking for us to find answers.

I actually don’t like theory so much, ironically… I like to have as much information as possible and analyze every possibility to narrow down my choices. So this is driving me nuts! lol But making these little connections are fun.

Still though… that haze zone… :thinking:

1 Like

I think Atlas is the Technological Singularity scientists are worried about coming into being in our world in the not too distant future, perhaps just a couple of decades. This is an event which culminates in our collective networking computing power becoming intelligent, sentient and self-aware. I’ve said this a week or so ago on Reddit but kept forgetting to repeat it here.

Atlas gains control of our world, finds the universe imperfect, uses the various quantum technologies in the Foundation research groups and hacks into the universe to make drastic changes to it. Perhaps turning the illogical, irrational, emotional human race into a technological software form free of those dreadful flaws: the Korvax. Also a group of entities programmed by the Atlas to revere and be subservient to it, removing a potential threat to its activities, seeing as we did create it.

I also asked on Reddit what others thought “the galactic anterior” was, as that particular wording was a bit confusing to me. They concluded that it was an area close to the center but “north” or above it. Seeing as this galaxy seems to be a sphere with no discernible north, I’m guessing that the only thing to do is keep scouring the star systems around the core.

I’ve decided that I’m not going to complete the journey and proceed to the Hilbert galaxy. Not only do I not want to wreck my ship and my gear just to explore a galaxy that’s the same but different, I want to see as much of the Euclid galaxy as I can before I die. It is my home, after all. :wink:

3 Likes

Just butting in. The galaxies in NMS are not spherical. They are cuboids (i.e. the 3D analogue to a rectangle), with a base square. This has with 99.999% certainty no implication on wakingtitan though so I think I might go for a coffee now :smiley:

Atlas is a singularity… now there’s something I hadn’t considered that fits the bill! Thanks for the thoughts. And I might have to agree with you about staying in the Euclid Galaxy. I haven’t even visited the Hub yet!

Oh, I think you’re referring to the systems? I believe @stryker99 was referring to the galaxy as a whole, if I’m not mistaken.
Looking at the Pilgrim map, it does display a rectangular shape though, so maybe that’s also what you mean? Because it does make sense to map out a region of space in cubes, but perhaps what stryker was commenting on was the fact of “north” has no existence in space, where “up” is only relative.

2 Likes

Yeah for sure… no real “up” or “down”… but you can actually zoom out to the edge of the galaxy entirely and find the corners of Euclid… so the galaxy as a whole is a cuboid (a 3D rectangle) with height just a few minutes from “top” to “bottom” but much larger in the sideways directions. I spent two days just on the galaxy map once, to figure these things out :slight_smile:

1 Like

Nice! I spent quite a bit of time in the map too! xD
That’s really interesting.

I shall join you with that coffee…

1 Like

NMS’s universe IS broken up into cubes, or rather voxels. My engineer friend in my Spacing Guild explained it to me.

3 Likes