Waking Titan and A Midsummer's Night Dream

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The last puzzle led us to a Hamlet quote. Then yesterday Emily–either through her well-read nature or because she knows more than she’s letting on–slipped in another Hamlet quote into her interview.

Another thread spoke of the acronym “F.A.Y.” on echo-64’s History page, which is a literary term for a fairy.

With these references to Shakespeare in my head, the addition of “fairy” made me immediately think of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream. It’s been some years since I read it in university, so I had to refresh myself on the plot.

And then the crack of thunder. In the play, Oberon is angry with the queen of the fairies Titania, so he devises a potion which will make her fall asleep, and then fall in love with the first person she sees when she wakes. And she does so in Act 3, Scene 1, when Bottom’s singing awakens her and she falls in love.

Waking Titan …is waking Titania.

I’m rusty in my memory of this play, but it deals with many things, chief among them love. But it also has strange concepts of time and speaks of magical periods when the moon is not visible. Moreover, there is a dreamlike state to the play itself, which makes me think there is a connection to the simulation in No Man’s Sky. The “mechanicals” controlled by the fairies also makes me think of the Korvax and the sometimes odd feeling that not all of the Korvax wanted to jump into a new body.

And for a bonus, possibly related Hamlet quote which I had to memorize at university:

To be, or not to be–that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep–
No more–and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep–
To sleep–perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

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There are far too many Shakespeare references going round here…Titania/Mab goes back even further and down a rabbit hole it will take us… :smiley: didn’t someone suggest a book cipher somewhere… also just a thought but on Titania (Uranus’s largest moon) all the surface features are named after Characters from Shakespeare… just a thought there maybe some correlation…

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There’s definitely a “classical” theme throughout. And how the game is heavily influenced by old classic sci-fi book covers makes me think they want to go in that direction. So I wouldn’t brush that one off just yet!

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Well if we run with it the Herschel’s works (1779-1818) do cover the numbers 1799, 1802, 1808 if we assume they are years I haven’t spotted anything exact as yet but it’s late and I’m tired…might be worth looking into?

Edit:

The only exact number I can find is 1802 when he published Catalogue of 500 New Nebulae…

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More thoughts if we going down the Sci-fi book route…the Nebula Award is for best Sci-fi novel…could the 1974 books be significant…

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Isbn numbers? Look at these covers :wink: These Alternate No Man's Sky PS4 Covers Look Just Like Classic Sci-Fi Books | Push Square

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these quotes makes me think that the quotes are small parts of plot specifically chosen for this Arg or more so Nms the plot is left vague though.

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Who ever is in charge of this must be some kind of shakespeare fanboy. Because of the many references to greek mythology. Its nt hard to find mahy references to greek and roman mythology in his plays.

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So where we already talk about Book Covers and Shakespeare: Does the following Cover remind you of something? :wink: https://goo.gl/images/1IfZeP (points at a specific PDF)

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Interesting, Dave. That could certainly be an edition of The Tempest. I did a reverse image search on the PDF book and didn’t turn up anything. edit: it looks like someone did find it in another thread, but it seems to just be a fancy book cover, but not for a particular book. Quite possible that it’s a reference to the play though.

I don’t remember reading The Tempest, but I found this bit in Wikipedia about it interesting:

The Tempest is explicitly concerned with its own nature as a play, frequently drawing links between Prospero’s art and theatrical illusion; the shipwreck was a spectacle that Ariel performed, while Antonio and Sebastian are cast in a troop to act.[16] Prospero may even refer to the Globe Theatre when he describes the whole world as an illusion: “the great globe … shall dissolve … like this insubstantial pageant”.[17] Ariel frequently disguises himself as figures from Classical mythology, for example a nymph, a harpy, and Ceres …

The “world as an illusion” certainly sounds like the kind of simulated world in NMS we’ve been discussing. Also, the magical spirit Ariel disguising himself as Greek mythological creatures.

I don’t know if these Shakesperean references will solve any puzzles, but I do think they tie in heavily with the nature of whatever plot is at work in Waking Titan, and probably with the current and perhaps future narratives in No Man’s Sky.

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Indeed! I think it won’t harm if we keep Shakespeare in mind while uncovering more and more of this great mystery. What makes me wonder (because i am unfortunately not so familiar with Shakespeare): Is one of the persons (e.g. Elizabeth) from Wakingtitan an actress/actor in Shakespeare plays? edit: Reference to Queen Elizabeth?! The Elizabethan Age - Sailors who discovered the world?

Thank you for the great research, i tried it on my own early this morning, but fell asleep… :sleeping:

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Hamlet mirrors the current Korvax theory closely as well. Think about the plot of Hamlet. In the play, Hamlet’s father’s ghost (echo) appears to him and tells him of how he was betrayed and murdered by his brother, Claudius. Hamlet then stages a play (a simulation) of his father’s murder to draw out Claudius’ guilt. After a series of tragic events, Hamlet, Claudius, and a host of other characters all die, save one, Horatio, who Hamlet urges not kill himself in despair so that he might tell Hamlet’s story (echo). Now today, centuries later, Hamlet’s echo continues on in the simulation (Shakespeare’s plays), and Hamlet’s father’s echo continues on in a simulation within the simulation. And on these forums his echo is now subsumed in this grand simulation called Waking Titan.

Armed with this analysis, the “to be or not to be” quote comes alive. Hamlet is contemplating death. He sees it as an escape into an endless sleep. What gives him hesitation is the fear of the kind of dreams he may face in a final sleep. He is afraid of life as an echo.

The Tempest is similar, seemingly self-aware that it is only a simulation, and breaking the fourth wall. On this note, there have also been references to metal gear solid lore throughout the Waking Titan experience. Many of you know the genius of Kojima behind the MGS series, and his fame and fondness for breaking the fourth wall.

What frustrates me is that none of this helps us come any closer to a solution to the echo-64 website.

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I can add to what I said earlier.

Act 1 Scene 5 is where the “heaven and earth” quote Emily dropped comes from. The line number is 166. Act 2 Scene 2 is where the “good or bad” quote Emily dropped comes from. The line number is 249.

I found this quote by chance which is from Act 2 Scene 2:

HAMLET
540. ha’t: have it; see it.
540 We’ll ha’t tomorrow night. You could,
541. for need: if necessary. study: memorize.
541 for a need, study a speech of some dozen
542 or sixteen lines, which I would set down
543 and insert in’t, could you not?

I don’t think it has anything to do with the pattern above, but his mention of 12 and 16 are very interesting since these are numbers that keep coming up in NMS and the WT ARG.

If we could find a third quote, we might find an RGB code or something like it.

Source HAMLET, Act 2 Scene 2

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I thought I’d revisit this thread again, as we never seemed to use these Shakespeare references, and as we have more answers and questions about what’s going on with the Atlas Foundation.

I was reading through A Midsummer’s Night Dream–the part where Titania wakes–and this bit jumped out at me. Right before Titania speaks here, Bottom (the human Titania fell in love with on waking due to the love potion) wishes he could find his way out of the forest: (I’m quoting a modernized text here for easier understanding)

TITANIA
Don’t bother wishing you could leave this forest, because you’re going to stay here whether you want to or not. I’m no ordinary fairy. I rule over the summer, and I love you. So come with me. I’ll give you fairies as servants, and they’ll bring you jewels from the depths of the ocean, and sing to you while you sleep on a bed of flowers. And I’ll turn you into a spirit like us, so you won’t die as humans do.

This really starts to sound foreboding; a threat of being turned into an Echo (“a spirit”) and trapped in a simulation (“the forest”) through an act of love. This mirrors the Echo-64 site and the promise of keeping loved ones around forever in a perfect simulation.

Echo - History

Echo is formed as an LLC, and the first public showing of Echo 1, “F.A.Y.”

New Oxford American Dictionary:

fay |fā|, noun (literary)
a fairy.

Titania is likely a stand-in for the singularity that Atlas has awoken and wishes to provide immortality for everyone in exchange for servitude and devotion. I still think Waking Titan is the metaphorical waking of Titania, and by extension the waking of this singularity. Titania’s line “I am no ordinary fairy” could also present the idea that the Atlas started out as an Echo.

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To continue this theory, it’s becoming clear now that since loop16 is probably our Emily, Emily is, or will become, Titania. She is the Queen of the Fairies (Echoes), and will eventually become the singularity that seeks to keep us (or Echoes of us?) in the simulation.

For our part, we seem to be “waking Titania” by contributing to the CSD, feeding the AI with data and experiences until she becomes self-aware, or a singularity, or…

There seems to also be a link in A Midsummer’s Night Dream to the dualities of dreams that we’ve seen going on in other references to The Little Prince and the Butterfly Dream, as Titania and Oberon are dreamlike doubles for Theseus and Hippolyta .

1500×1000 682 KB

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I’m revisiting this thread due to recent events in Waking Titan and the much larger focus on dreams, and I think there’s a new connection to be made between A Midsummer’s Night Dream and Waking Titan.

In a previous update I talked about how Titania, queen of the fairies, had been put to sleep with a love potion and turns creepy when she wakes up and falls in love with the first person she sees – a human named Bottom. She is an immortal, but wants to keep this human with her no matter what, trapping him in her land and wanting to make her like the rest of the fairies:

Obviously, this is in large part currently speculative, but I’m starting to think that Arnaud may be our Bottom: Titania (Emily/Atlas) has found him as she investigates the Dreamscape and has decided to keep him around in her simulation, creating a digital version of his consciousness. Note again that the first Echo was named F.A.Y., and ‘fay’ is a literary term meaning fairy. If Titania wants to turn Bottom into a fairy, then Emily/Atlas may want to make an Echo (mental simulation AI) out of Arnaud.

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