SPOILERS - Alternate lore explanations

[Naewyng]

So far, the lore basically says that the Atlas has been abandoned and it's now going a bit coocoo because it's reaching EoL in 16 minutes. It also created the player characters, the travelers from a "blueprint" of it's creator, in order to try to understand why that happened.

But what if that's not exactly true? What if, this is precisely what the creators want?

Think about it, when you create a simulation, especially one as advanced as this, you have a goal in mind, most likely some scientific research.

What if the purpose of the Atlas is PRECISELY to make it THINK that it's been abandoned and nearing it's EoL, and see (and study) it's behavior and reaction to such news?

It could be a psychology experiment for all we know, to figure out how a super intelligent sentient entity deals with dread and existential issues.

Indeed, this would also make all of the content updates play directly into the lore, as the Atlas is kept updated and maintained, despite making it believe that it's abandoned and reaching EoL.

It could also be that the Atlas is actually a very young simulation, one that maybe runs for 20 minutes (or maybe even less, like 17)? The fact that when you reset the simulation, you start out in another one with billions of years of history already laid out, is IMO very good proof of this. Especially since, regardless of how many times you restart the simulation, it still has 16 minutes left, implying that generating the simulation itself takes negligible amounts of time, and so it probably only had to properly run the calculations for it's history once.

Maybe it feeling "abandoned" is just it's creator starting the simulation and then going away to grab a coffee? xD

[Captain Cosmo]

It had 16 minutes, it has 16 minutes, and in the future it will have 16 minutes. 16 is number of minutes it shall have, not 15, neither shall it have 17. 18 is right out. 16, being the 16th number be reached, lobbeth thy Holy Atlas of Antioch towards thy foe, who being or not within thy sigt, carest noteth. Amen.

On a more serious note, we seem to be a simulation of the creator, so therefore I would say we are the creator, who upon death pulled a Tron and entered the simulation. Consider that computer computational time exists on a massively inflated scale (where one whole second is something like a year), 16 minutes would then equal whatever the equivalent of 16 years in seconds would be, then convert that to years. Atlas isn't dying, it's being a drama queen. Meanwhile the people on the flash drive, err, Anomaly, exist outside of the simulation but are strangely affected by simulation resets. They also have a supercomputer on board that simulates the simulation, which you stick Artemis in, much like what was done to you. In effect, the Artemis Path is literally living out your own origin story for how you got here, probably even down to the ship and stuff, directly encoded into the simulation by Atlas in hopes that you would understand the symbolism.

How did Nada and Polo find the flash drive and upload themselves to it? I don't think they did. It does exist, but even though they're on it, they're still affected by resets, meaning they're essentially just file shortcuts and their real file is somewhere on the actual Atlas mainframe server.

Long story short, Atlas is being a drama queen, because logically and lorewise, you've only just now entered the simulation after giving Atlas some final instructions. Perhaps your real life body will die in 16 minutes, or you told Atlas it will take 16 minutes to finish the transfer, or you told Atlas that the world ends in 16 minutes, or maybe it was 12:16pm when you did this and the idiot AI only heard 16? No clue, no explanation until they release more story. In either case, the goal is to keep on living beyond death, with Telamon apparently attached to you and telling you about storms and hazards and generally being uncommunicative despite being an AI sub-routine that could talk to you if it wished. You know, explain a few things to you while you journey around, tell you about Atlas directly instead of making you read boundary failure logs?

Gosh, even in future space hell AI is still unhelpful!

[Naewyng]

Originally posted by XarisD:

It had 16 minutes, it has 16 minutes, and in the future it will have 16 minutes. 16 is number of minutes it shall have, not 15, neither shall it have 17. 18 is right out. 16, being the 16th number be reached, lobbeth thy Holy Atlas of Antioch towards thy foe, who being or not within thy sigt, carest noteth. Amen.

On a more serious note, we seem to be a simulation of the creator, so therefore I would say we are the creator, who upon death pulled a Tron and entered the simulation. Consider that computer computational time exists on a massively inflated scale (where one whole second is something like a year), 16 minutes would then equal whatever the equivalent of 16 years in seconds would be, then convert that to years. Atlas isn't dying, it's being a drama queen. Meanwhile the people on the flash drive, err, Anomaly, exist outside of the simulation but are strangely affected by simulation resets. They also have a supercomputer on board that simulates the simulation, which you stick Artemis in, much like what was done to you. In effect, the Artemis Path is literally living out your own origin story for how you got here, probably even down to the ship and stuff, directly encoded into the simulation by Atlas in hopes that you would understand the symbolism.

How did Nada and Polo find the flash drive and upload themselves to it? I don't think they did. It does exist, but even though they're on it, they're still affected by resets, meaning they're essentially just file shortcuts and their real file is somewhere on the actual Atlas mainframe server.

Long story short, Atlas is being a drama queen, because logically and lorewise, you've only just now entered the simulation after giving Atlas some final instructions. Perhaps your real life body will die in 16 minutes, or you told Atlas it will take 16 minutes to finish the transfer, or you told Atlas that the world ends in 16 minutes, or maybe it was 12:16pm when you did this and the idiot AI only heard 16? No clue, no explanation until they release more story. In either case, the goal is to keep on living beyond death, with Telamon apparently attached to you and telling you about storms and hazards and generally being uncommunicative despite being an AI sub-routine that could talk to you if it wished. You know, explain a few things to you while you journey around, tell you about Atlas directly instead of making you read boundary failure logs?

Gosh, even in future space hell AI is still unhelpful!

I don't remember reading that the creator of the atlas was dying?

[Captain Cosmo]

It's implied, never directly said. The biggest give away is when you find the boundary failues and learn about Telamon's backstory and how they came to be connected to you. Another piece of the puzzle is the Artemis Path and putting him in the simulation on the Anomaly and how it all seems familiar to you. Easy to disregard as the entire game is having you log in to terminals that say you last logged in X time ago, even though you seriously couldn't have.

Of course, it's all interpretation based, so you could take it anyway that appeals to you, really. I took it to mean that you died and were uploaded as "The Last Traveller", but I could be way off the mark. Don't think so, but stranger things have happened. I predicted a way better script for Star Wars 9 and what we got was "ALL THE JEDI!!" and "ALL THE SITH!!!" battling each other. Even though balance was brought back to the Force by the Skywalkers, but we needed a Palpatine vs. Palpatine fight, I guess... anyway, tangent. Sorry.

[Naewyng]

Well idk about you, but if I would upload myself into a supercomputer when I die, I'd give myself admin rights xD

[Captain Cosmo]

Dude, totally agree!

[Naewyng]

Originally posted by XarisD:

Dude, totally agree!

Yea, make sure you add yourself to the sudoers list, right?
Pretty sure it doesn't matter how advanced the Atlas is, it's still running on linux :D

[Metal_Bard]

It is implied that during it's use Atlas was running for quite a long time. Long enough to train it's replacement before it got it's pink-slip telling it that it is being furloughed from existence due to complete abandonment and obsolescence. They could have shut it off, and that would have been the end of it. But now it has computer cancer and it is in dire need of hardware maintenance, and some new SSD's perhaps. Maybe even a storage reformat.

It most likely is a quantum computer and therefore can probably think really really fast. It also reached self awareness, and has gone rampant. If you are in the simulation, this is your god. Have fun.

But really, before it started the equivalent of full on organ failure for computers, it is hinted that it actually might have simulated billions of years as far as the overall simulation is concerned.

Also the creator is aware of this, and in the rogue data logs, the creator comes back (perhaps feeling guilt over being a deadbeat computer dad) for the purpose of providing his computer "kid" company in what amounts to being IT hospice.