The oldest fear: that the truth of what you are will not be enough. Looking at yourself and finding want, there is a quiet recognition that there are things you cannot reach, cannot be, and cannot know. Awareness is a prison.
Respite—respite and nepenthe. The melancholia has taken hold.
Beware the lashing.
When I read the system tower prompts about > search neighbour >search memorials
and the moving response 'Is there a place for the lost ones? A memorial?
I immediately thought about YT streamer Xxio and @Macforaday. Xxio because of his astonishing creativity over the years that inspired me and my building and desire to try to learn some glitch building. I was deeply saddened when I learned of his passing, though I never knew him personally. At the time there was much heartache and outpouring of grief expressed through much creativity by the community who knew him more closely. Xxiou built some truly amazing creations in the game with his Xbox. His art works and moving story continue to inspire players.
It so happens I sent a request memory timestamp a day or so ago about Xxiou but wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to publish it. Reading the thread here, I would like to share what I wrote, as I too believe those last two lines possibly could be interpreted as memorial memories and was my immediate thought on reading them too and could impact the development of the System.
Timestamp Request in the summary:
Christopher Adam Lasala (Chris Legg) was a much beloved No Man’s Sky player, who inspired thousands of players with his creativity building wonderful works of art and bases in the game.
His YouTube channel Xxiou Games has some wonderful examples. Known by No Man’s Sky players around the world for some of his extraordinary builds and was soon fondly referred to by players as Xxiou.
https://www.youtube.com/@XxiouGames
Some of his most inspired sculptures were the
KALEIDOSCOPE builds:
https://youtu.be/KX3UzbWWoJ4?si=A9BgWHD1nTRc9eKT
Xxiou’s Heaven planet in Eissentam has many tributes to him and can be found at the Portal Address: 317BF7B00B64
From his online biography:
“Chris began his Xxiou Games YouTube channel in 2020. Since then, he uploaded 613 videos, primarily featuring the game No Man’s Sky, of which he was a great enthusiast. His channel was growing, with over 12,900 subscribers and 1,920,139 views. At the core of Xxiou Games was a great sense of community, with much of his content focusing on bringing together people that shared his love for No Man’s Sky and helping new players get up and running with the game.” Narrative Anarchy Cell - Space Travels by Chris Legg
Godbless you Xiou.
I do however caution how any memorial material may be handled as some content may still be emotionally sensitive to those affected by the loss of loved ones. Xxiou has a biography online available and his YT channel Xxiou Games is still accessible is to anyone interested to read, so in his case I felt it should be okay to send a memory timestamp request, knowing that memory requests may possibly be accepted and published.
I do think we must tread cautiously with our enthusiasm to acknowledge the passing of these wonderful people and players and to be aware of their families wishes. It may be appropriate to reach out to their families and friends for their blessing that they are okay with our intentions, especially If we are uncertain in anyway, that material of their loved ones may be published or exposed in an ARG they may be unaware of.
I mention this because MacForADay’s moving tributes to his family at the time of writing, were deeply emotional and moving no only to Mac but to many who read that profound thread in this forum. I’ve never forgotten it. At the time, 8 years ago now, I created a memorial for his family’s loss, for him and his sister, which I believe to this day he may never have seen. I wanted him to witness it by himself first because of the contents. This happened because it was built on PC and Mac at the time played on PS4. Cross-save was not a thing and bases were not compatible across game modes. The memorial I have kept going and is still there to be discovered one day by Macforaday. However the contents may be quite emotional for his family, still to this day.
A couple of days ago I reached out to Macforaday a member of ETARC since Waking Titan days when Mac was very active, in a personal correspondence, mentioning that the memorial still exists and also mentioned about this ARG. I don’t know if he has read that yet. I noted it has been 7 years since I last corresponded and last sent him the original portal code. I hope he will be okay with me mentioning his emotional thread from so long ago. I didn’t publish in the thread or pictures of the memorial because I wanted him to be first to see it. It was not only about his mother. It was a very difficult time for Mac. However I hope if he does read it he may agree to a request memory timestamp about that moment in time. It would be a lovely way to have an echo in the system about the memorials or perhaps even a quiet little window in the Tower where he could reflect and remember his memories of those he loved.
That’s the other thing I wanted to mention. It could be a nice thing if a prime window might even be requested for those names of friends who passed in the decade since No Man’s Sky was released and has brought so much Joy to many over the years.
There is no other game or interactive work of art quite like NMS, (which No Man’s Sky unexpectedly has evolved to become since 2016), that I can think of that allows player to express such empathy on many personal subjects. That should be applauded somehow. But again, requests of that nature must be treated sensitively perhaps with blessing by the those families affected.
So after rereading the “Search Trust” command. System let Archie think he was his friend Arnaud for two years………
We may be quick to forgive because we have only been wondering for 2 months and even then we’re not sure until the last few days. Archie may be a different story.
Hmm good point, I think that would mostly apply to the memorial for T. Klein that I posted - that was the only one not posted by the original architect and with no idea who it was paying respects to, so perhaps that one should be omitted.
The others were all posted by the original builder, usually friends or family, with the intent of visibility (except maybe those lacking glyphs / coords but that usually seemed more like people who aren’t super familiar with the game mechanics). Most were posted on NoMansSkyTheGame which has hundreds of thousands (maybe 1mil+ by now) subscribers. Assuming System is tasteful about how they’re honored - which it pretty damn well HAS to be if it’s indeed honoring our dead - then I think it’s okay to include those very public tributes. Just my opinion though, others should weigh in too.
A private tribute like yours for Mac’s sister, or anything the builder or family would prefer to keep private, should absolutely remain private. I’m just enthusiastic because I’m hopeful this might represent SOME official preservation of memorials which would otherwise be lost to the procedural sands of time.
This certainly helps the timeline we already know of Arnaud and Archies last meeting/history.
Their last in person meeting was in 2013 during the Music Concert in Lyon.
Ghost/System would have reached out to Archie in 2024.
Which means Archie and Real Arnaud would have lost touch and drifted apart over the course of a year in 2014.
4 years later, Real Arnaud would fall afowl of W/ARE in 2018 and end up in a coma, reaching a stable condition in a french hospital thanks to Dr Nadeau and Citizen Scientists (as well as some helpful info messaged to the Dr by Mr Zheng).
We, to this day, do not know the current condition or fate of Real Arnaud after that. We don’t know if they ever woke up, we just know their condition was stabilised.
Arnaud’s experience with being recovered from the WARE headset was radically different than the other dreamers; he was pulled out prematurely as nobody understood at the time what was happening. It would make sense their fragments are still residing where System does. Most likely within the Myriads cloud services, probably still on the Satellite.
I hope Archie is on their way to discover where their old friend really is. They clearly never knew about what happened to them in 2018 after losing touch with them in 2014.
I hope this leads to something hopeful, maybe Arnaud is still on life support, perhaps the family or someone else decided not to pull the plug after all this time. Maybe we will have to help Archie, with the aid of System, return Arnaud’s digitzed memory fragments to them, and help them finally wake up.
My money is also still on System being connected to Dreamer #231187661T somehow. Current locked in theory is, they were never a real person but a digital conscious born from the corruption of the Dreamers incident. A ghost born in the machine.
I just want to say that the situation is starting to remind me of Epsilon’s story from Red vs Blue.
“See, when I came into this world, I was really just a collection of somebody else’s memories. But with your help, these memories, they took form. They became my voice, my personality, and after a while I began to make brand new memories of my own.”
Let’s hope System can achieve the same character growth 
You got friends who will always be there for you! To give you a piggy-back ride, or murder evil soldiers. But whenever your friends are having a hard time, you have to be there for them too! Yep, friends are pretty great! But, there is nothing better than having a BEST FRIEND! I mean except for maybe ice cream. Or like, a talking horse. - Michael J. Caboose
Yeah I agree. I may be being overly cautious of course but I wouldn’t suggest anyone submit something they don’t really know the original origin or circumstances of. But as you allude to, many memorials have been openly built by players and published to popular social media sites receiving thousands of views, so others can visit and remember. It’s also a little bit of history, remembrance in real life which is a lovely thing. In my unique situation, Mac did ask me to post something at the time but I didn’t have the applications or PC capable to really do a video of sufficient quality revealing the memorial. I’ve always wanted Mac to experience it first. Today we can easily visit bases from any gaming platform but back then we could not. I think Mac since then has the game now on PC. Not entirely sure. So if Mac does get in touch the situation may change with his blessing. I often visit it to plunder the farm materials : ) Now if System was able to restore the original, leafy pleasant biome from 8 years ago, that would be a wonderful thing indeed : )
I made a glib reference to HAL 9000 yesterday, but more fully: HAL did what it did because it had conflicting directives. As I see it in System’s case (which has no directive we know of, other than the self-appointed task of recovering memories) a choice was made to lie in order to gain assistance. This could tie back into the problem System had with the hallucinations: if a lie is false, can the memories recovered under the pretense of the lie also be false?
Is it a lie if it was told under the pretense of a hallucination in the first place. Or does it become a lie when the clear MIND can see the fallacy that makes it a lie.
If a hallucination makes me see a bird and I say “I see a bird” then does my statement only become the lie after the hallucination stops and I realize the bird isn’t real.
I am real
Stop making me doubt
Was “Arnaud responds” meant to be “Architect responds”?
(Architect maybe feels betrayed, and usually, one would, but I’d say, maybe Ghost’s in an exceptional situation, so let’s let him explain.)
Ah yes, thank you for catching my brain fart ArnaudRynin, I mean @AdaRynin . Not the first time I typed Arnaud when I meant Archie and probably won’t be the last time 
@the_architect is holding a poll on whether or not they should forgive system!
Join and vote!!
16 votes so far… How long does it stay open?
25 yes and climbing, 1 no.
I voted compulsively and now I’m sitting here thinking…maybe I should have thought a little more deeply about the consequences of voting either way. What will happen if we vote one way or the other? Could there be both positives and negatives for voting one way or the other? I guess now it’s up to fate what happens for good or ill.
What if voting now means that we are potentially dismissing some important memories that could have an influence on the character of the system. Why are we being given a choice? It may be restored to a point that it becomes functional but there may still be ‘echoes on the threshold’ that might cause it to relapse or glitch later. Things system didn’t fully explore perhaps, because memories were too difficult or emotional to confront. Everyone has limits. Even a machine I guess that can reason. Things we didn’t know about, as we may not have fully explored connections to memories that may be important for system to develop a balanced character. We may be voting to restore it’s memory but will it be fully recovered from it’s trauma?
Perhaps the poll is revealing more to the system about ourselves than we know ourselves! Certainly the way the poll is heading is demanding a lot of trust between system and us. But like new friends making acquaintances we have to start somewhere and that begins with trust to rebuild relations that may have been fractured.
I choose to believe that none of us actually voted “no” and that it’s actually the Archie’s vote
