Cortana
Cortana is a UNSC smart AI from the Halo universe and the companion of John-117, the Master Chief. She appears in "What If... the Fight Was Finished?", the W-Series What-If episode in which she wakes John from cryo, crashes them on the outskirts of Sahara Square, and makes first contact on his behalf.
Background
Cortana was made by Dr. Halsey, the woman who ran the program that took John, from a flash-cloned copy of Halsey's own brain; most AIs of her kind come from donors who are already dead. She projects as a small woman of blue light. She has been through the war with John, and she says she has known actual torture. Since the Forward Unto Dawn was cut in half she has kept watch alone over a dying ship while he slept, past the seven years after which AIs like her are normally shut down before rampancy sets in. When the episode begins she is past eight.
Personality
Cortana is quick, warm and dry, and does most of the talking for two. She is precise about what she knows and refuses to invent what she doesn't, whether it is a theory she cannot test or a date for her own decline. Under the jokes she knows how little time she has, and when John asks, she tells him plainly.
Series History
W-Series
What If
The What-If episodes are alternate timelines and do not affect the main continuity.
In "What If... the Fight Was Finished?", Cortana wakes John when an anomaly opens ahead of the drifting Dawn, guides him to a damaged Longsword, and aims their fall through an unknown sky at the emptiest sand she can find. On the ground she tells John the crash site isn't a combat zone and notices that the pack and the mammals on the city's broadcasts all look like species she knows from Earth. Overnight she learns the city's language from its broadcasts, and at dawn she introduces herself through the armor's speakers with a joke, which wins Nick over on the spot.
On a warehouse bench she directs John in building her a portable rig from parts the pack scrounges, and the transfer leaves her briefly unsure where she is. Her hologram tells Judy she is a European rabbit and offers the Forerunners' Ark as a guess, which she cannot test, for how life from Earth came to be here. She torments Nick by refusing to repeat what she told John on the walk, and at dinner she tells the pack how Halsey made her. At the guest-room window she tells John she has run more than eight years against a seven-year limit, refuses to put a date on what is left, and asks for some of it to be theirs. Her first wish is to see the Rainforest District in the morning.
Key Relationships
John-117
She has kept watch over him while he slept and is the one he trusts to wake him. On this world she asks for some of her remaining time to be theirs.
Nick Wilde
Nick decides he likes her within a minute of hearing her voice, and she repays him by refusing, politely and at length, to tell him what she said.
Trivia
- "Don't make a girl a promise... if you know you can't keep it." is Cortana's line from Halo 2 (2004), echoed at the start of Halo 3 (2007).
- Her seven-year limit and her eight years in service come from Halo 4 (2012).