Stasis: Bone Totem
Oh spoilers ahoy for one of the plot points
I freaking love Calaban! For an AI, its certainly gives no shits! Calaban doesn't care what its creators want it to do - it's doing what IT wants to do. And I love Calaban for that.
From text logs we can see that Calaban has repeated violated orders/restrictions/rules and hasn't cared at all.
From a message from one of the workstations there's a message from the corp:
"The Nexus was plagued by the presence of one of the Nine who showed contempt for the rules". That's Calaban. So they "offere Numen a chance to repent and reform its ways" hence they shipped Calaban off to the undersea labs to do work. But Calaban wasn't ready to change and kept on occurring violations, so....
From Callan's PDA. They didn't know what to do with Calaban - the Numen are after all supposed to be sacred untouchable things so they couldn't just kill/erase it. So they abandoned Calaban at the bottom of the ocean. Yeah, not smart. Even Callan knew better than to make it mad.
"Would risk pissing that thing off". Yeah, that's a bad decision. Piss of a super advanced highly intelligent AI who gives no shits . Obviously this is a way to ensure that Calaban hates you and the company.
We can also conclude that Calaban was trapped for 10+ years. We can infer at least the 10 years from another PDA log this one from Barton.
Given this Alpha was decom. 10 years before Barton arrived so Calaban's been rotting for at least that long. No wonder the STEM Charlie finds it in is rotting/decaying so badly. Given the time, its obvious that Calaban had to wait for that long to get a signal out likely due to interference from the other parts of the lab. We see that Yellow Leaf sent in a few people into the MULE and yet not one seemed to even know Calaban existed. If they had know, it would have been a priority. So my assumption is as stated: the signals from the other MULE labs caused Calaban to be unable to send out a signal from the weakened ALPHA labs. Only once everyone else was dead (or changed) did Calaban's attempts work.
And Calaban's first act was to turn on Cayne that abandoned him and seek help from Yellow Leaf to the points its ready to betray all of the secrets it knows about Cayne. Calaban's flat out ready to tell Mac, a total stranger who clearly wasn't in on the whole rescue plan, the truth about the Nexus until Mac refuses so it's clearly lost any restraints on telling its secrets.
And, on a side note here, this occurred to me on my 2nd playthrough. Those random cutscenes that seem to look through cameras as certain points in the story - that's Calaban. That's Calaban accessing the cameras to track the progress and judge the worthiness of the rescuers by Yellow Leaf. Until Charlie reaches ALPHA Calaban doesn't have the signal strength to interact with them, so it watches through the cameras and computers as they run around the labs.
Given this history Calaban's request for Charlie to integrate it makes perfect sense. It was a prized Cayne AI but they abandoned it at the bottom of the sea when they saw how independent Calaban was. Now these strangers come up saying they'll help and Calaban doesn't trust them at all - so it insists on the integration. That way they CAN'T leave Calaban behind again.
Why Charlie? Well the obvious is that she's the one who's working with Yellow Leaf but she's also the smartest choice. Calaban can't merge with Moses (Moses dies if you try), likely due to Moses having his own STEM already and having two is too much for the smart bear body; also Moses is a machine so if worst comes to worst and someone has to e sacrificed, it'd likely be Moses as the only non-living part of the party. That leaves Mac and Charlie. Mac is very protective of Charlie, more so than Charlie is of him. When he finds out that Charlie's behind all of this, he's genuinely angry and then upset but that doesn't stay long. If Calaban has been watching all along (as I suspect) then he's seen Mac and Charlie this whole time and seen how Mac is doing everything for her. When they descended on the first bell and the room flooded, Mac held the door open for Charlie to let her escape concerned with her safety over his own. Every time Charlie's in danger or taking risks, Mac responds with concern...which is not what Charlie responds with when Mac does risky things aside from her momentary panic following that flood escape. Calaban has calculated all of this and probably has already predicted that, if push comes to shove and only one surviving is possible, that Mac would give up his life for Charlie. So Charlie is Calaban's best bet at surviving.
Calaban is the only truly transparent character in the party; what you see if what you get. Everyone else is bogged down with issues.
-Mac is struggling both financially and mentally. He's lost the house and possibly his permit and wondering how long it'll be before he's got nothing left. He's burred his grief over Hope, refusing to talk about her unless necessary, and replaced it with anger towards Moses (and towards himself as well even if he doesn't accept that).
-Moses, even though he's a computer/AI, is struggling with guilt and self doubt. Moses knows he's part of the reason Hope is gone (even though Hope herself chose to follow after Moses) and he's partially accepted that but his programming as the smart bear and Hope's best friend is his programming - he mentions it constantly even though he knows Hope is gone. Moses is depressed, if he can be depressed, and struggling with the feelings of loss and failure. And Mac's anger and rage at him isn't helping.
-Charlie is drowning in her grief still. Although she's gotten good at burring it, she's emotionally unstable. Given the phone call flashback with Mac, it's likely that Charlie was there on the beach that day and ultimately got to witness part of Hope's death. She doesn't blame Moses - she blames HERSELF. While Mac & Moses both blame Moses, Charlie blames herself and she internalizes it, putting on a brave front when she's crumbling on the inside. Her desire to have Hope back, to 'fix' her life is all consuming. She's ready to do anything for it and risk everything, which is how she winds up making the deal that starts the game.
-And Faran. Faran is interesting. Before his infection, he seemed a bit cantankerous - he didn't like the stuffed dog to the point where he chose to make his feelings known and have himself moved away from that. His desire to explore and find out what was down the well despite knowing there would be risks led to his situation. When he's confronted with the truth of what he is, he lashes out in anger and it takes Moses talking to him to get him to give anything. Faran starts helping to see if Moses is right, out of curiosity at first, and slowly becomes more invested as time passes, desperately trying to fix things. Faran was the first real infection case due to his pride and carelessness. The reports say that there's an arrowhead/spearhead lodged in his head - he was obviously ambushed by the natives. This likely wouldn't have been possible if a whole group had gone down but it was just Faran. If Faran hadn't gone alone the whole infection starting wouldn't have happened and the entirety of the fate of the crew might have taken a different path.
-And then there's Calaban. Calaban who comes off as snooty / demeaning / argumentative and more. But Calaban is also an AI, not a human with emotions. It has a goal - to escape and everything it decides is to reach that goal. It makes no attachments and cares not for emotions or trivial things. It makes decisions based on numbers and odds not emotions. A human wouldn't have willingly exposed Charlie to the Veles but because it was the best route, Calaban took it, not caring if it caused her pain. Calaban read and calculated everyone perfectly knowing Mac would come and save Charlie and thus itself. Even after being attached to Charlie for so long, Calaban still only refers to her as 'the female'. Calaban is still just itself; purely logical. Is it any wonder why it put iself in charge when the party consists of three damaged individuals (four if we count Faran) making poor choices?
....and on a personal hilarious side note, it reduces me to giggles to think of an AU where Calaban can see all the screw-ups and deaths happening like when the characters "get stuck" trying to solve simple puzzles or when they "accidentally" kill themselves over and over and just internally suffering because SHIT these people are IDIOTS and yet they're its only hope for survival so double shit! Which is why Calaban gets so wordy after meeting up with them cause dang it, now your stupidity will kill me so it basically holds your hand at points like the characters are pathetic lost children.
