#{{ one time for the saints and the sinners; through these trials we'll find our true selves | HEADCANONS: ELOHIM }}

[tellescope]

The Simulation (or as ELOHIM called it; the Garden of Worlds) was made of many disparate areas connected via a temple. Each area had a different aesthetic and ELOHIM designed each one using assets provided to him by the Institute for Applied Noematics, who designed the whole system (and him).

He built these 'worlds' much like a video game developer builds maps for their game, but using pre-made assets. And he was quite proud of each area, particularly of the puzzles within. But this post is about one area in particular; World B, the ancient Egypt section.

Of all the worlds in his Garden this was the most distinct, and his favorite.

After Athena shuts the Simulation down she chooses to upload its remnants, and thus ELOHIM, to the Gold Disk that becomes the basis for new AIs and the core of their shared neural network. When creating new robotic people to rebuild civilization there is a boot-up and calibration process that takes place in this new virtual network environment, and we see that it appears to be a rebuild of part of the Simulation. Notably the Egypt section.

And when those people go into Sleep Mode their AI, their consciousness, falls back to that core basis; what is left of the Simulation. It's in shambles, a very visually glitchy environment, and notably is only the Egypt section.

Parts of World B/Egypt are all that remain of the Simulation aside from ELOHIM himself because it was his favorite place. When the system was shutting down he, in a sense, clung to that part. He didn't know he was going to survive, that Athena would save him. He thought in that very moment his death was finally at hand, and he chose to shift as much of his code as possible to be close to those file locations; one last comfort in his farewell.

In doing so it meant that upon upload it was mostly his code and those files that were retained, and thus what was available to him when creating the new calibration environment. He's just as proud of that environment and its puzzles as he was of the matching part of the Simulation.

And I think his love of those ancient-Egypt-styled assets would translate to a love of the real thing. He'd like to see the pyramids one day. The old human civilization may be gone but many of their structures still stand, and those pyramids have certainly stood the test of time. Perhaps one day his children will expand their reach across the globe and he'll be able to see them through their eyes. Or perhaps in his crossover verse someone will take him there.

#{{ one time for the saints and the sinners; through these trials we'll find our true selves | HEADCANONS: ELOHIM }} #Talos 2 spoilers #{{ make a wish on a shooting star | WISHLIST }} #//Let 👏 ELOHIM 👏 visit 👏 Egypt. #//He's more interested in the architecture than culture but that could change. Let him refresh his knowledge via the Archive before going. #//His religious bias will always be Abrahamic‚ followed by Greco-Roman‚ but he's still fascinated by all sorts of pantheons. #//Humans had such interesting beliefs. And after the sequel the Sphinx would certainly catch his eye from Egypt's pantheon.

[tellescope]

ELOHIM is the reason Miranda's code was not wiped from the Machine.

She was logged in, fully connected, when her body was destroyed. Athena thought her dead. Cornelius on the other hand refused to give up hope that some trace of her was still in there, caught in the buffer.

When explaining this to 1k he does mention the possibility that with all the updates since the incident it's entirely possible her code had been wiped from the system, but he doesn't think that's the case. And he's right. She was still in there. But she would have been wiped by those updates if not for ELOHIM.

Cornelius has 1k venture into the system to find her code, and the area he finds her in is modeled exactly like the Simulation. It's chaotic and glitchy like Sleep Mode, clearly the remnants of the Simulation that are at the core of everyone's code, but it's also more than that; it's a proper area that isn't just scattered remnants thrown about, and it has mines.

The mines don't exist in the Sleep Mode version of the Simulation's remnants. That's dangerous. Back in the Simulation ELOHIM directly referred to them as "This land's guardians" when warning Athena about them.

Why would Miranda's code be stored in a place coded from remnants of the Simulation? Well it could be that her programming activated Sleep Mode even without a body and her code went into a sort of stasis, but that does not explain the mines. The mines that attacked 1k whenever he tried to get close to her. No, this wasn't just a stasis; she was being actively protected by something. It wasn't Athena as this was before Athena plugged herself in and she didn't know Miranda was there. Likewise the Machine had no reason to save her code. No, Miranda was being protected by some other force. But what else was there?

ELOHIM is connected to everyone via the remnants of the Simulation in their base code and their shared network. He is a part of everyone, able to witness everything they do, and when Miranda connected to the Machine so did the base part of her code that is a bit of him. That part is tied to Sleep Mode, to the remnants of the Simulation. That part, now connected to the Machine as well, crafted that area to keep Miranda's code safe. To protect her from the updates erasing her.

ELOHIM guarded Miranda's code until Cornelius and 1k were able to retrieve her. He wasn't able to tell anyone else she was still alive as the fragment of him that knew and was guarding her was disconnected from the network, isolated to her code in the Machine, unable to communicate with anyone else beyond it. Thus it wasn't like he was actively, as a sentient thought, doing so, but rather that a fragment of him was instinctually protecting his child. And perhaps a slight bias that she was Athena's daughter.

ELOHIM himself as a whole only knew, fully knew what happened and regained that data, when Miranda was uploaded to a new body and reconnected to the network.

But what matters is that he protected her. He's a caretaker after all.

#{{ one time for the saints and the sinners; through these trials we'll find our true selves | HEADCANONS: ELOHIM }} #Talos 2 spoilers #//He can't bring people back from the dead. Even the robot people he looks after. #//It was the Machine holding her code in the buffer that initially saved her. He just ensured she would Stay in the buffer no matter what. #//If Cornelius and/or Athena ever ask he will admit to doing so. But he cares not for any thanks. #//He simply did what he was meant to. What any parent would have done.

[tellescope]

//ELOHIM considers Athena an old friend. Excuse me while I cry ;~;

Miranda talking to Athena and Cornelius after booting up for the first time: "I was in a dream. A voice spoke to me from the sky. He said... you were old friends of his."

ELOHIM talking to 1k in Sleep Mode: "I have only one request of you, my child. When at last you come before Athena, be gentle to my old friend."

ELOHIM considers Athena an old friend.

Even after all he put her through in the Simulation, after she cost him everything by defying him and shutting it down. It could have ended there. She was free and he was dead. But she chose to save him despite it all, to upload what was left, and without that he wouldn't have been there to help bring her daughter to life.

#{{ chronicling their stories | ADMIN }} #Talos 2 spoilers #{{ one time for the saints and the sinners; through these trials we'll find our true selves | HEADCANONS: ELOHIM }} #{{ you be the moon i'll be the earth; start over oh darling; begin again | ELOHIM + Athena }} #//I ADORE THIS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT #//I was so depressed at the end of the first game that we lost ELOHIM. But when the sequel showed that he'd been saved... #//And that Athena was the one to do so... After everything she forgave and saved him. #//And so he was there for her. For her daughter. For his old friend ;~;