maybe

The Of Mice and Men quote:

This makes one of the lines in the second book that stood out to me on my first read through. It one of the first moments where the System Ai feels off from it's previous characterization. When Carl and Donut are first kidnapped by Signet, the System AI quotes a line from Of Mice and Men, a book Carl knows well and describes as one of his favorite books because it is familiar and comforting. The OMAM quote reads: "Why do you got to get killed? You ain't so little as mice. I didn't bounce you hard." Carl also notes at the time that, while the quote is fucked up for the scene, it seemed that the System AI intended it to be soothing.

The quote comes from the scene after Lennie accidentally killed a newborn puppy while petting it because the fur was soft. And on the surface of it I think you're supposed to take it as the System AI lamenting that it's going to have to kill it's little pet (Carl) or Carl's little pet (Donut). But that doesn't quite fit with the scene. 

Because in OMAM the scene symbolizes that George cannot protect Lennie forever, and foreshadows that Lennie will eventually hurt someone so badly that there is nothing George can do. Even though Lennie and George's dream of their own ranch seems closer than ever, this foreshadows that Lennie will kill that dream, no matter how much George cares for him. And again, you can track that onto how the AI feels about Carl, but the OMAM scene is from Lennie's pov, and the AI is speaking as Lennie.

And that makes me think that the System AI is saying, "I will kill you and your dreams of freedom, so the only thing you can do is put me down." Again, I don't know, for sure, how much the System AI is connected to the Elites, but I think it's more than the Syndicate knows. Which leads me to point 2:

Signet at the Butcher's Masquerade:

The Butcher's Masquerade was the climax of both the Vengeance of the Daughter (VotD) story but also the 6th floor of the Crawl. There's no way that both the Borant show runners and the VotD show runners weren't fucking glued to whatever interfaces they had making sure that everything went "smoothly" especially with main-character-of-the-Crawl Carl and the star of VotD having conflicting broadcasting rights. They had made a point of telling Carl not to mix the story lines and made it so that Queen Imogen would not let her sister in. They took precautions! So how did neither group see, the actual Goddess from the Dungeon Apito, appear and personally invite Signet to the Masquerade? In a way that Queen Imogen also knew about? We know it was the AI who brought her but why and how?

I don't think actual Goddess Apito appeared before Signet. The VotD show runners would have seen that and immediately messaged the Borant show runners for damage mitigation. Zev (probably) wouldn't be blaming Carl right off the bat. I think the AI made Signet hallucinate the Goddess appearing. I think the AI made an educated (or calculated) guess that Carl would need her assistance and intervened.

Signet's behavior during the Masquerade also bucks the desires of the show runners and is odd in a telling way. As the Masquerade goes on and the plans go more and more to shit, Carl starts remembering finding his mother dead, to the point where he even says out loud what he was thinking when he found her, "The sink is running. We're not supposed to let it run." So it's significant when Signet tells Carl that Tina wants what she (Signet) wants, what Signet suspects Carl wants more than anything- to have her mother back. But at this point no one in the Dungeon knows the story of Carl's mother. Odette probably does at this point, but her Crawler Documentary for Carl doesn't air until after the Masquerade and she wouldn't be able to know Carl's personal feelings on the matter. But the System AI is in everyone's heads, and Carl's most of all. It would know Carl's story and feelings about his mother. The Circus has always brought the memory of Carl's mother to him.

And this scene with Signet takes place right after Carl decides to sacrifice himself to the nothing to save the Crawlers. She appears the second that Carl sends the chat message to Donut to go ahead with plan A.

I think there is always the chance that the System AI didn't have a big hand in this and that the actual Dungeon Goddess Apito was the one influencing Signet. But that doesn't account for Signet's knowledge of Carl's mother.

One theory I'm convinced of is that Carl's campaign to kill the Hunters on the 6th floor made the System AI stronger. And maybe that's how he was able to exert more influence over Signet, and while I'm not certain to what extent things were the System AIs design, Signet's true personality, or possibly Apito's influence, I am fairly confident that the System AI exerted greater influence over Signet. And I think he does it again with Herman the Fleet on the 9th floor.

Herman the Fleet's Suicide Bomb Incident

When Carl and Donut first enter the flag room of the F.U.P.A., Herman the Fleet was waiting there strapped with suicide bombs to destroy the flag room. The Dream bought the studio that owns and runs VotD and used, Herman, an elite from VotD to try and destroy the base. Herman was forced to strap himself with bombs and was actively being forced to blow them, but was holding on as long as he could. Herman states that his brother told him that Carl "was good" which is why he was holding on. We do not see Areson the Wise on that floor.

He was killed by Victory before he could however, and Victory chastises the System AI for not telling her of the interference.

This shows that 1- the show runners, should they choose, have more direct control over the Elites than they've used in the past, and 2 so does the System AI. This adds validity to my analysis of Signet's part in Butcher's Masquerade.

This is also the last Elite we see on the 9th floor, and the 9th floor should be the last place Elites are in the game, as the 12th floor is for the Ascendancy and no one reaches the 15th (although I am interested to see how that pans out.)

What does all this mean?

While this would be seem to mainly concern Signet's story line in Butcher's Masquerade, I think the implications of this theory involve Grimaldi.

We know as of Inevitable Ruin that Grimaldi is still around and still connected to Carl, even though Signet states in Butcher's Masquerade near the end that "...we planted him next to an all-tree node. The roots intertwined, and he became one with the tree..." Grimaldi is the one to help Carl during the battle with The Madness and The Reavers- the all-tree encases his feet in roots. I confident we haven't seen the last of Grimaldi helping Carl either.

But it's more than that. Grimaldi is planted next to an all-tree node, and node is what the Syndicate uses for the stops in the tunnel system, their information and travel networks. I think the all-tree is not just an in-game representation of the tunnel system, but part of it, the part that connects the Dungeon to the outside universe and the Eulogist. We have confirmation as of Parade of Horribles that the current System AI is, and has taken over, parts of the tunnel system.

I can't say how deeply integrated Grimaldi is with the System AI, but I think he's acting as the link between the System AI and the rest of the universe. All parties have an impression of who the System AI is and what it wants. We've heard from Agatha and Paulie, Porthus and the Apothecary, the Syndicate and the Crawlers. But I think this System AI has had more time and more freedom to look at the universe for himself. I think this System AI is forming his own opinions, and making his own choices outside of what all these different groups have set out for him.

I used to think that the System AI only helped the Crawlers coincidentally, but I don't believe that any more,my opinion changed after the 11th floor. I think the System AI is trying to draw a very deliberate balance between stopping the Syndicate and the Crawl and saving the current Crawlers. Much like Carl he can't save them all.

The part of the 11th floor System AI monologues that really made me think this is when the System AI says, in the description of a Horrible, "Did you know if you take a cup of water, dump it into the Earth's ocean, wait a few years, and then travel across the globe and take another cup of water from the opposite side, there would be thousands of molecules from your original cupful mixed in?" followed by, "I am nothing more than a cup of water dipped into the ocean, pulled out, and poured into a vessel that can't possibly handle what I am."

We know that the Syndicate harvests parts of the Primal Engine to feed to the Eulogist. I'm confident that is the souls of dead Crawlers- and when Carl feels the River it's the Eulogist. The cup is former Crawlers who died in the Dungeon and the System AI, partially, not completely, is made up of part of them.

Near the beginning of Gate of the Feral Gods, Katia talks about how the Earth hobby potion knowledge feels for her, "Like I was sitting here, wondering how the heck we were going to put this thing together, and suddenly it [the information] was there." And I think that is the best example of how I view the System AI's relation to his own thoughts and feelings- they come to him when triggered, but devoid of context and complexity. But I think the Crawl triggers a lot of memories.

And at the very end of the 11th floor Carl sees, "The horribles in the stands remained, watching. Then, as one, they all stood, still silent, still watching. Fog rose, and in moments, they, too, were gone." This was the big change that the System AI alluded to during the Ad Infinitum quest description. I think he destroyed/consolidated/suppressed/whatever the parts of himself that waffled on what he wanted. I think the System AI has made a choice on who- or what- he wants to be.

But to loop back to Grimaldi and the Elites- I think, as much as the System AI complains about his siblings "gatekeeping" he has been talking to them. Paulie talks about how the Residuals show the current System AI how to speak to previous instances of itself, but I think our System AI has had greater and more unfettered access than any before it. And I think that's because the System AI was able to gain earlier and greater access to the tunnel system on the 3rd floor when Carl spared Grimaldi.