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Breaking The Code - Part 1
Markuz, January 21st, 2018
I’ll make a statement with which probably some of the hardcore fans in the community will disagree: the messages of the Empirical Truth section of Assassin’s Creed Origins are the closest we ever got to the glyphs and clusters from Assassin’s Creed II and Brotherhood. There, I said it. Following the articles by our Sorrosyss and by our Hephaestus, here you are with another piece dedicated to the six infamous messages hidden under the tombs in Assassin’s Creed Origins. Funny, isn’t it? This is the third article on ATA dedicated to the Empirical Truth and to the Isu among all the possible topics that could be explored about the latest chapter of the franchise… hint hint? This piece will be more focused on the several details that the messages contain both in their text and in their pictures and will hopefully provide another interpretation of their meaning so you can compare it with our other articles and choose the one you prefer. Or maybe make one of your own? I’d be stoked to know!
As I mentioned before, the Empirical Truth messages to me are very similar to the glyphs and clusters from AC2 and ACB because, in my interpretation, narrative-wise they have the same structure: each of them has a single theme that runs across all of its content (text, pictures, hidden or decodable messages), such themes are heavily intertwined with historical events and conspiracy theories, and, taken all together, they bring a final revelation that is aimed at the modern day protagonist. Back then it was Desmond Miles, now it’s Layla Hassan. Back then, in the AC2 glyphs, the final revelation implied that humanity was engineered by a group of advanced beings known as the First Civilization and was later used by them as workforce through the use of Pieces of Eden. Is the final revelation of the Empirical Truth as shocking and interesting as the one of (just) the Truth though? Many of you may already know but we’ll try and find out.
Still, before we go into the actual messages, we need some context. All the messages are defined as “Retransmissions”, highlighting the fact that these are recorded messages and, more specifically, they have been recorded between 91 and 109 days after the Toba Catastrophe. Along with that, as we already mentioned in our articles, every message is introduced almost mechanically by the same male Isu called “Pedestal Narrator” who, then, lets a so-called “messenger” (who is different for every communication) speak to Layla through Bayek. Also, as suggested to me by our Hephaestus, by toggling the option of having the name of the speakers in the subtitles, it’s possible to see the name of the messengers, which brings some… curious information to the table. Finally, what is very interesting to note is that the messages don’t only contain references to historical events but also to events that happened from December 21st, 2012 and onwards. Plus, they are recorded in the past, but the messengers talk like they are living in the actual present day. This can be explained both by the main theme of the messages and by the “Acquiring contemporaneity” line at the beginning of each of them, but it can also possibly lead to some consistency issues, as we’ll see in the third part of the article. For now, though, let’s delve in the messages themselves and check all of their details (look out for the references to Isu messages and technology from past games!). Segment 1 - Oun-mAa Niye Ressoot
Location: Golden Tomb – Isolated Desert Main theme: Reality and simulation, the Fibonacci numbers Dialog by: Amun Amunet narrator (Source: Kristian Petersen) Click here to read the full Message
1. Oun-mAa Niye Rassoot
Retransmission. Segment 1. Acquiring Contemporaneity. It has been 91 days since the Great Catastrophe. The messenger speaks. How real is the ground you walk on? How real is the machine you toy with, the music you hear, the lover you kiss, or the foe you hate? Your foot taps the ground. Does that make it real? Your enemies bleed deep red. Does that make them real? The confusion growing within you due to my words... does it make you real? What if reality wasn't what you thought it was? What if this was all a construction? A masterfully crafted simulation? You know such things exist. You've been in the Animus before. In fact, aren't you in one right now? You know just how real a simulation can feel even when it has long vanished. You've experienced the Bleeding Effect. Layers upon layers of reality, each blurring into the next. Which is real, and which is not? What if none are real? What if everything you know is false? We ran thousands of simulations. searching for the right version, searching tor Desmond. Each one of them felt real. Very real. But there's no way of truly knowing, is there? Not for sure. Anything can be simulated. And finding the answer could mean erasure. From the build. From the code. From everything. So much to ponder and so little computational capacity. Take your time. This question has haunted humanity since its creation. It is a worry, a thought wormed deep in the collective mind. 2000 years ago, Zhuang Zhou fell asleep. He dreamed he was a butterfly, and woke up unable to decide if he was a man dreaming of a butter?y, or a butterfly dreaming of a man. In Plato's cave, prisoners were chained and forced to watch shadows dancing on a wall. Freedom was denied to them until they accepted the intangible as reality. It's everywhere. Ask this professor at Oxford University, or this cosmologist at MIT. And you. What would you choose, if you truly knew? Would you even want to understand? A dream within a dream, where even the truth is sometimes a lie? In any case, simulations are not meaningless. They have purpose. The question isn't whether or not you are in a simulation. What matters is how much of your free will is actually yours. No matter how true you are. Your Turing test would do nothing to determine whether you are conscience or code. Eliza, the natural language processing computer program... She managed to pass the Test, did she not? And she was very much machine. So… in Eliza's own words... How does that make you feel? Are you sure? Analysis of the message First things first, the messenger is called “Amun Amunet” which probably isn’t a reference to Aya (as the names of the other messengers are unrelated to her), but rather to Amun and Amunet, two of the eight primordial divinities that were part of the Ogdoad, the primordial pantheon of gods worshipped in Hermopolis during the Old Kingdom period. Quite interestingly, the name of the narrator is made up of two deities who were a couple in the Egyptian mythology. Bear this in mind as it’s not the only occasion we are going to see something like this. In the first lines of text the messenger suggests that maybe what Layla sees around her isn’t actual reality. Maybe it’s a simulation, like an Animus simulation. In general the gist of the message revolves, as our Sorrosyss said, around a concept that is very similar to the one of the Simulation Hypothesis, a theory that suggests that all of reality, including the universe itself may actually be an artificial simulation. While he is instilling a feeling of doubt and confusion in Layla (and the player obviously), he also tries to anchor her to some actual examples. The Animus simulation and the Bleeding Effect are a perfect example of a non-existing imagery that feels very authentic to the user and can get him confused about what’s real and not.
The Amun Amunet narrator goes on making more historical examples of how the doubt of what is real and true and what is false has always been nested in the human kind.
Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know that he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. The second example is even more famous, and it’s called Plato’s Cave or the Allegory of the Cave, which goes beyond what is written in the message by the Isu narrator. The allegory was part of Plato’s Republic and in it he describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a wall. On such wall several shadows are projected from objects passing in front of a fire behind them. In this “story” the shadows are the prisoners' reality, they are everything they know about their world. Being them their reality, these “inmates” do not even want to leave their prison as such is the life they know. At a certain point one of the prisoners manages to break his chains and is able to / forced to get out of the cave, under the sun.
This is very interesting for the overall narrative of the Isu messages in Origins, because it’s an allegory for how humans are bound to the impressions that they receive through their senses, beyond which they cannot see. In the allegory one of the prisoners breaks free and is painfully able to see beyond this condition, which is very similar to what the Isu are asking of Layla, as we’ll see and expand in the next parts of this article.
One of the first programs (if not the first) that appeared to pass the Turing Test was ELIZA, which was developed to replicate the behavior of a psychotherapist (hence why one of its sentences – which appears in the Isu message - was “How does that make you feel?”). According to Wikipedia, ELIZA “was able to fool some people into believing that they were talking to a real person, with some subjects being ‘very hard to convince that ELIZA was not human’”. These are some very nice and famous examples that prove how easy it could be for the world we live in to actually be a dream or a simulation or something else than actual reality, with no test which can actually prove that we are actually real and not the fabrication created by somebody else entirely.
As the Isu narrator says, though, the actual question that Layla should find an answer to is not whether she is in a simulation or not, but how much of her free will is actually hers, which could be a very tiny hint at the more visible “guidance” towards the Assassins that the last Isu message (and his narrator) is invoking for her, as we’ll see. Analysis of the picture
The picture that comes along with the message, is full of details and elements that are connected not only to the main focus of the message but are also visually similar to past First Civilization drawings. This one specifically was already analyzed for other purposes by our Hephaestus in his article, so I’ll try and go quickly through it (spoilers: it’s not going to be quick). What we see here is the portrayal of an Isu who, thanks to an Apple of Eden, is teaching several notions to a group of human slaves. The Isu is very likely to be the equivalent of the Egyptian deity Thoth, as stated by Hephaestus, both because he is depicted with an Ibis-shaped head and because he was believed to be the author of all works of science and later declared (by the Greeks) the inventor of, among other things, the science of numbers, mathematics and geometry, which matches perfectly with the picture. More specifically in the picture we see the Isu teaching science concepts that get more and more complicated. He starts with different kinds of polyhedra and then moves on to numbers… which are not just some numbers. The “1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13” are, indeed, the first numbers of the Fibonacci sequence, a series of numbers where every number after the first two is the sum of the two preceding ones. This sequence is very famous because of its appearance in mathematics and computer science and especially because it is closely connected with the so called golden ratio (usually defined with the Greek letter phi (f or f)) and because drawing a tiling with squares whose side lengths are successive Fibonacci numbers can lead to a very good approximation of the golden rectangle and the more famous golden spiral.
The Fibonacci sequence also has a lot of applications in several other fields, such as chemistry, music, art and especially biology and nature in general. In fact, almost every flower has a number of petals that is part of the sequence and several plants like the sunflower have their seeds displayed in a number of spirals that are part of the sequence (55,34,21) and such spirals are also oftentimes golden spirals. The numbers of the sequence and the shape of the golden spiral has also been observed on starfish, the human ear, the way waves bring the tide to the shore, the ratio between the phalanxes of the human hand etc. This led several people to define the Fibonacci sequence as “God’s Fingerprint”, which is a perfect fit for the Code mentioned by the Isu in the other messages, as we’ll see.
The only element that does not seem to be connected to the Fibonacci sequence among those “taught” by the Isu to the humans is a pipe. Of course that’s not just a pipe, and is possibly the most complex level of information that the Isu is trying to transfer to the humans and also the one that is the most connected to the text of the message. Our Hephaestus in his article did a great job in explaining that it’s the pipe from
It is immediate to think that the one in the painting is a pipe, while in reality it is nothing but a representation of it. Magritte also stated that the object and its image had completely different functions.” Before wrapping up, I’d like to stress how the pictures of the Isu messages in Origins are purposefully similar and, so, visually consistent with the pictures shown by Minerva to Desmond through Ezio in Assassin’s Creed II. More specifically, the picture for Segment 1 contains the same design for the humans that is shown in the next two pictures – which come from Minerva’s message - although in said pictures the humans were shown worshiping the sun and several Staves and Apples of Eden rather than learning new information. Also, even the stylized version of the Temple of Kukulcan is actually taken from a picture in Minerva’s message that appears when she talks about the temples that the Isu built and that the humans misunderstood. So maybe “Thoth” is describing the Isu technology / architecture to the humans in the Segment 1 picture? Oh, and by the way, those pictures contained the Abstergo logo multiple times, which makes it date from the Isu era, as the more hardcore fans among you already knew since the release of AC2.
Conclusion Basically the message and the picture try to convey to Layla that the line between reality and simulation can be blurred in a much easier way than humans (and she) may think, to the point where even reality itself *could* be a simulation. Furthermore, the picture introduces the concept of a series of rules (the Fibonacci series, the golden ratio, the golden spiral) that regulate and govern the world and the way it works, making a stark contrast between reality seeming to be the product of a set of predetermined rules and the importance of free will for men and women who live inside of it. Segment 2 - Seshem.eff Er Aat
Location: Nomarch’s Tomb – Black Desert Main theme: Language, Time and The Code Dialog by: Nomarch narrator (Source: Kristian Petersen) Click here to read the full Message
2. Seshem.eff Er Aat Retransmission. Segment 2. Acquiring Contemporaneity. It has been 93 days since the Great Catastrophe. The messenger speaks. Hello World. Language is the key to our mutual understanding. Yours and mine. Alone. We listened to your times. We learned. And today, we'll exchange words from the age of post-truth. They mean nothing to him. Human language carries knowledge and wit. Lies and broken promises. Through language, you share fear, excitement, hope. It is the syntax with which you articulate what surrounds you. A structure to express and share your understanding of the world. It conveys abstraction, change, and uncertainty. Human language is flexible. It can even become mathematics. It solves and predicts; weights and decodes. It can count objects using basic numbers in one breath, and solve quadratic equations using imaginary ones in the next. You've engineered dialogs with thinking machines, in an attempt to add new vocabulary. To expand your understanding of reality. But your mastery of the code is rudimentary at best. No surprise. You were designed to have boundaries, after all. And one cannot speak of that which one cannot conceive. The Code. Equations that define life. They are nestled deep within every star, and every mote of dust. Every second that passes is a word, a symbol. All part of an intricate yet simple language existing within the framework of time itself. It is the one rule which applies to us all. Immutable. Inescapable. The Code is a bridge. A single point of cohesion between your civilization and... mine. It is a language that can be read, that tells of what was, what is and what will be. A language We Who Came Before can read, though you cannot... Time is more than the hour of the day. The readings of an atomic clock. Something to lose. Something to run out of. Time is a set of rules, not unlike the language you so dearly use to converse with your powerful machines. Time is a system that defines what comes to be. That is how we understand it. The Code is Time, and Time is Code. As you scratch the surface and uncover the truth, ask yourself if there is something more? Something else. No need to be puzzled. You've seen time written before. You are surrounded by it as we speak. To your untrained mind. [...] [Time] might just look like paths and nodes. To us, it is not unlike a chalkboard covered in calculus. It reveals a window through which stretches the map to infinity. [...] [Time] See? As I speak of it in its true form, your mind is incapable of making sense of it. Were you to read, you'd learn about the other simulations. You'd learn about the genesis of who you came to be. You'd learn about space and its fluidity. Simply put, time is the language which existence is made of. All our existences. Yours. Mine. And all those you dare not imagine. Analysis of the message
The narrator describes the human language as a powerful means through which the human kind was able to try and describe the surrounding world, from physical objects to abstractions, from the most complex scientific information to the deepest feelings. Yet, as intricate as that might sound, that is the best that humans can get to because they were engineered like that, according to the Isu narrator (and the AC lore, obviously). That is why humans have a very rudimentary mastery of the so-called Code. As most of you might know by now, with Segment 2 the Isu introduces one of the most interesting element of the messages which is, indeed, the Code. The Code is, for the Isu, a set of equations and rules that define life and upon which everything is based. For the Isu it’s a language (hence the introduction of the message and the comparison with the human language), and more specifically it’s a language “existing within the framework of time”, but that also describes time itself. I know, it’s complicated.
On the subject of time, though, the Nomarch narrator tries to explain a bit more how the Isu see it, which is – obviously – fairly different from how the humans do. For the Isu time is a set of rules, or better, a system of rules that defines past, present and future. It’s a language, which can be read and by which everyone is surrounded. It’s described exactly as the Code and, in fact, the narrator says that Time and the Code are one and the same, basically saying that the Code, as a language and set of rules is able to describe and explain time. The narrator even tries to make a “visual” comparison between how the Isu and the humans see time. Men see time as a series of paths and nodes where – this is my interpretation – specific events lead or may lead to other events in a sequential order.
To the First Civilization time is more like a chalkboard covered in calculus, which is consistent with the name “calculations” that has been used in the lore to define the predictions and simulations used to hypothesize the future through Isu technology. This “chalkboard”, as mentioned by the Isu narrator, acts a a “map to infinity”, so it’s much more than a simple cause-effect concept. It seems to me it’s more like something that is influenced by an enormous set of variables which interact with each other (hence the chalkboard) in several different ways and following certain rules. If that were to be the case, it would be consistent both with the definition of the Code and also with how the calculations were described a few years ago (so much so that the AC3 guide actually says that [The First Civilization’s machines] “were perfectly able to interpret time’s myriad variables”). As a final touch, the narrator says that Layla (and the human kind) is not able to read the Code / time, but if she could, she’d be able to learn about other simulations, about how human kind came to be, about space and its flow. She basically sums up saying that this set of rules is at the basis of existence itself, meaning – at least in my interpretation – that, according to this message, everything that we know of, that has happened or that will happen is already pre-determined by the rules of this language. Analysis of the picture
There is a lesser amount of detail compared to that of the previous one, but what is shown is still very interesting and consistent with the message itself. In fact, what we see here is another Isu (he has a different head / mask from the one shown in Segment 1) who seems to be once again trying to transfer knowledge to a few humans. He is standing on a pedestal and he is holding what looks like a scroll with the classic First Civilization markings upon it, while over the scroll itself there’s a symbol depicting a hourglass. All around him there are what seem to be structural formulas or more precisely skeletal formulas (they are easily to spot because of the lines – called bonds or atomic bonds – and the hexagons, which usually but not always represent the so-called benzene rings). Looking even more closely, there is one formula that is repeated throughout the picture and that’s the structural formula of heme, the most commonly recognized component of hemoglobin, the “red pigment” in blood.
Lastly, there are some tiny triangles dropping from the formulas, the scroll and the Isu, in the hands of the men kneeling under him (who once again are drawn in a very similar way to those who appeared in Minerva’s message in AC2). My interpretation is that in this scene the Isu is explaining the existence and the true meaning of time, symbolized by the hourglass, and the Code, symbolized in general by the structural formulas (which are another way to explain how life works) and specifically by that of heme / blood. This is interesting as blood has been a recurring theme in the franchise as a repository of information and History but, at the same time, it is also an essential component of life itself, which again goes back to how the Code works. The Isu is reading from his parchment and is trying to explain concepts that are even more difficult than the ones shown in Segment 1, especially for the humans that were designed by the Isu themselves not to comprehend them and so can only understand bits and pieces (possibly represented by the tiny triangles dropping in their hands). But, as we know, the picture goes along with a message that takes place 93 days after the Toba Catastrophe, in a period where, as Minerva said in AC2, “It took sacrifice. Strength. Compassion. But we rebuilt” and where Isu and humans “carried on, together”, as Tinia mentioned at the end of Revelations. It does make sense, so, that after the catastrophe the surviving Isu tried to transfer their knowledge to the humans as shown in Segment 1 and 2, “to ensure this tragedy would not be repeated”, so much so that even Minerva said that after the catastrophe “We shared what we knew as best we could. We were not the only ones”. … Which, by the way, is exactly what Desmond would have done, had he chosen to stay in the Grand Temple instead of sacrificing himself.
Still, as Minerva said in AC2, even after all the work following the Toba Catastrophe “time will work against us. Truth turned into myth and legend. What we built, misunderstood.”, which is possibly why the Isu decided to send the messages to Layla. We’ll see in the third part of this article if that is consistent or not with pre-existing lore. Conclusion Both the message and picture introduce us to the existence of “the Code” and of a different concept of Time, which for the Isu are one and the same and tie a lot with the idea of the Fibonacci succession as “God’s fingerprint” that was visually mentioned in Segment 1. Still, as of now, mankind is not able to understand this language and the rules that it involves. So why are the Isu telling Layla? We’ll have to dig into the next messages to find out, but unfortunately we’ll have to stop here for now. In the second part of the article we are going to discuss the role of the Isu, some new information about the Code and Time, a new perspective on Desmond’s sacrifice and a new impending threat for Earth, but that’s going to take some time so stay with us! You don’t want to miss it! Back to this article, though, what are your opinions about these first two messages? Did you spot all the details while you listened to them in-game? Or did we miss something about them that you spotted? Let us know in the comments below!
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