Intergalactic Summit

Let us honour our ancestors for the guidance they grace us with, the wisdom that has descended to us, and their heritage which we carry into a brighter future. Even if you disagree with his goals, the guidance he provided to, and continues to provide, our State endures and is well worth cherishing.

I still don't buy that it really was Noir, and I like to think I'm not a man prone to conspiracy theory.

A man spends a one-hundred-and-sixty year lifetime working to promote peace, wins the Aidonis prize for his efforts, builds a top-quality reputation on both sides, and then just as his life's work is about to, if not be accomplished then certainly see a big step forward, throws it all away in a self-destructive instant of insanity that destroys that whole century of work? Not to mention his own reputation and memory?

This man being a capsuleer with clone access. Clones which could be hijacked.

I know that the burden of proof is on me with this, but I just can't bring myself to believe that Noir was really piloting that supercarrier. The idea that he was just raises far, FAR too many questions. I don't believe that a man with that vicious a grudge in his heart could work contrary it for as long as Noir did. I don't believe that such reckless hatred is level-headed enough to bide its time like that, especially not without a foreseen opportunity.

If he really was that vindictive, then that century of peace work constituted undermining his own interests with no clear objective. He simply could not have foreseen that one day he would be called upon to fly a Nyx to Malkalen. Without such foreknowledge, there is simply no way he would have worked against his own core beliefs for so long. He achieved tangible results! He wasn't just paying lip service to the peace process, he was to a large degree responsible for there being a peace process at all!

No. Call me crazy, but I just don't see how it could possibly have really been Alexander Noir in that capsule. And I think it's rather telling that the Federation Navy and the FIO have never released any of the results of the investigation they surely performed after the Malkalen Incident.

I've got no stake in this. I never knew the man personally. Hell, that Nyx struck a blow to my home Corporation and killed the CEO whose philosophy and work have done a lot to guide my own political opinions. I have as much reason as anybody to hate the aitikusipaa who killed Otro Gariushi.

But I pride myself on being a rational man who thinks before he hates, and I am forced to conclude that the person responsible was not Alexander Noir.

Then who do you think it was? Some Jove? Black Ops? Who the hell could ever hack a Nyx?

And I swear if I hear anything about that Broker myth...

I reluctantly agree with Anslo, while you raise interesting questions, I've never heard of a clone being hijacked. Also, this kind of talk usually precedes outlandish conspiracy theories like that of "the broker" he mentioned.

Then you haven't been paying a whole lot of attention. It's entirely possible to do. There's a lot of extremely heavy security that in theory prevents it from happening, but with the voice of experience - there is no such thing as perfect security.

I'd like to add my voice to the other scientists (though I am really more of an engineer, really) speaking up. It's entirely possible to hijack a clone, assuming that you can negate the security.

Does this mean that I buy into Verin's "Must have been someone else pretending to be him" hypothesis? No.

Occams razor sort of comes into effect here because all we have to assume is that something caused Noir to snap on that particular day or the days leading up to it, whereas to assume that someone hijacked his clone we have to assume the existence of a conspiracy, up-to-and-including the clone techs, and that not a single one of them has come forward in the famously media saturated Federation.

Singing the praises of someone who'd crash a Carrier into a large civilian populace. I'd say that's worse, glorifying mass slaughter.

Hmm... let's see... who benefited most from the death of Otro Gariushi? Whose political agenda of anti-Federal jingoism, ultimately concluding in the massive invasion of Federation space and the liberation of Caldari Prime, was in no small part made possible by a surge of nationalism and anger in the wake of national grief? Who, in fact, came out on top as an almost direct result of Malkalen?

...not that I'm accusing anyone. But I can certainly think of people who directly benefited from the incident, all of whom have access to more resources than I do, and I'd be prepared to bet that if I turned my mind to it I could accomplish a clonejacking.

come to that, who benefited from making the incumbent Federation President at the time look incompetent? Who benefited from knocking Ishukone into a financial hole that it's been struggling to climb out of ever since? Who benefited from several months of Caldari 100% control over Federation lowsec? Who benefited from the embarrassment of the Federation Navy and the FIO?

It's a long, long damn list, and the thing is that I really don't think that pulling it off would have required more than a handful of people to be in the loop.

Considering shortly after you might add, the creation of the SDII, which someone benefitted from, and still does, quite spectacularly.