Elisabet Sobeck/Synopsis

The story of Elisabet Sobeck from the Horizon series.
==Birth and Early Life==
Elisabet Sobeck was born in the suburbs of Carson City, Nevada, on 11th of March 2020. Her fascination with technology began at a young age. She set fire to a pine tree in the back yard while playing with a children's electronics kit when she was six years old.
Sobeck's mother, Miriam Sobeck, showed her the remnants of the chicks the fire had eaten after the fire crew had doused the inferno. Sobeck yelled that she didn't care, but her mother held her face in her hands and instilled in her the significance of using her brains and gifts to help the world, lest they be wasted. Sobeck was profoundly influenced by this lesson, as she took it to heart, which led to her humanitarian attitude.
Sobeck was a science and technology prodigy, enrolling at Stanford University at the age of 13, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Experimental Physics and Computer Science at the age of 16, and graduating from Carnegie-Mellon University with a Doctor of Philosophy in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Design in 2040, at the age of 20, the youngest to do so. Ted Faro, the creator, owner, and chairman of the robotics and technology business Faro Automated Solutions, employed her a year after she graduated. She was elevated to the post of Chief Scientist in the organisation within two years.
Her work in the design and development of environmental recovery automatons, dubbed "green robots," put FAS to the forefront of attempts to avert the decade's terrible environmental damage, dubbed "The Clawback," during the next eight years. She did, however, leave from FAS in 2048, disillusioned by Faro's intention to enter the military automation industry. She went on to found Miriam Technologies, a successful environmental technology firm, as a result of her work in green robot technology.
Elisabet had communication with former criminal hacker known as Travis Tate at some point, and while the details of their relationship are unknown, Tate subsequently claimed that she was romantically drawn to him at the time. Elisabet had a relationship with Dutch programmer Tilda van der Meer at some time, but they eventually split up.
==Becoming Faro's Enemy Number One==
Meanwhile, with Sobeck now the founder of Miriam Technologies, Ted Faro's wealth made him the world's wealthiest individual and the world's first trillionaire, but it also made him selfish and paranoid. At some point in time Faro sued Sobeck and her firm because he saw them as direct competitors to FAS' environmental branch.
==The Faro Plague==
A decade after Sobeck's departure from FAS, she would be suddenly contacted by Faro on 31st of October 2064 for assistance about a malfunctioning unit of his company's series of Chariot combat machines. The robots were meant to be practically unstoppable by everyone except their owners, with a swarm of artificially intelligent, self-replicating robots capable of consuming any biological substance as fuel through its biomatter conversion and the capacity to quickly enslave opposing machines to their own neural network. To make matters even worse, Faro also has the Chariot line's Operating Systems protected to the Black Quartz protocol standard utilising Polyphasic Entangled Waveforms, a nearly unbreakable encryption mechanism, with virtually zero backdoor in the software.
A bug allowed a swarm controlled by the Hartz-Timor Energy Combine to defy stand-down codes, attack the personnel of Hartz-Timor, and begin reproducing at a faster pace than normal. Faro attempted to retake control by having his programmers install a service pack, only to be reminded of his insistence on the aforementioned security measures, which rendered the Chariot OS essentially unhackable and hence impossible to regain control of, starting the events of the Faro Plague.
Leaving with no options, knowing it would spell doom on Earth, Faro would contact Sobeck to consult on the problem, where she would visit FAS in Salt Lake City, Utah, up to the building's 35th Floor. In exchange for that, however, Faro would later drop the lawsuits that he put on Sobeck. However, despite Sobeck's contempt towards her former superior, she would later accept Faro's offer, knowing that she had no other choice.
It didn't take long for the horrifying reality to emerge. Sobeck submitted her results to Faro twenty-four hours later, accusingly: the Hartz-Timor swarm had become an autonomous entity beyond its owners' purpose, now serving itself, and reverting to its formerly emergency-only Biomatter Conversion mechanism for nourishment and expansion. Faro's rash emphasis on practically impregnable security for the robots' operating system, combined with the swarm's exponential growth rate, made confining the swarm unfeasible.
She predicted that the swarm will take over Earth in 15 months, consume the Earth's biosphere at an alarming rate, and therefore deplete the earth of all life and render it sterile. Faro pleaded with Sobeck to find a way to halt the swarm, pledging to follow her advice. Faro's main worry, according to Sobeck, was to keep the incident from becoming public knowledge for the sake of his name. She walked away, pledging to keep his word.
==Spearheading Zero Dawn==
Knowing that any attempt to halt the swarm would be worthless, Sobeck created a strategy with a completely different goal: there was no way of stopping the swarm before it wiped out life, but there was a chance of shutting it down and then restoring life after it was gone. She designed a completely automated worldwide terraforming machine to do this. It would not require any human input because it is totally automated. Just one of the swarm's codesets would take a supercomputer 50 years to break.
But, unlike human programmers and codebreakers, as well as supercomputers, the system would have the time to brute-force all the codes, then broadcast them through specialised broadcast towers, shut down the robots, and then cleanse the Earth, restore its ecology, and eventually restore the human race over decades. The proposal was called Project Zero Dawn by Sobeck.
However, there were some incredibly difficult and questionable moral issues to overcome. To give the doomed global human population enough time to execute Zero Dawn, it would have to sacrifice itself in a hopeless attempt to stop the swarm and delay its march. To hide the facts and keep the worldwide people fighting through Operation: Enduring Victory, utmost secrecy would be necessary.
Finally, the project would necessitate the most brilliant minds on the globe; due to the need for secrecy, they would have to be kidnapped from their home countries and offered the opportunity to work on the project. They would have to choose between being jailed forever with no contact with the outside world or being euthanised if they refused to work.
Faro was hesitant to sign off on Zero Dawn when Sobeck delivered it to him via hologram projection two days later because of the moral implications of these issues. However, Sobeck, who was on her way to tell the US Joint Chiefs of Staff about the initiative, harshly pressured him with the prospect of publicly disclosing his role in the swarm.
Sobeck travelled to the US Robot Command HQ in Colorado and briefed the J.C.S about Zero Dawn. They were also concerned about the plan's moral consequences and were hesitant to approve it. Sobeck swept their concerns away with cold hard facts, in spite of their attempts to dispute Sobeck's ideas.
Any attempts to dispatch US battle robots against the swarm, now dubbed the Faro Plague, would merely contribute to the swarm's numbers by hacking and commandeering them. The robots were replicating at a rate that outpaced their ability to be destroyed. It was impossible to hack their operating systems and shut them down before they ate the biosphere. Life was condemned to extinction, and the only way to save it was to create an automated system to restore it once it had been eradicated.
General Aaron Herres, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recognised this terrible truth, overrode any remaining objections, and agreed to provide Sobeck with what he needed: a staging area for the project under Bryce Canyon in Utah, the abduction of the necessary specialists according to a list Sobeck had drawn up, and a campaign to deceive the global populace into sacrificing themselves in a futile battle against the Faro Plague to give Zero Dawn the time it needed, in an In terms of money, Faro had been compelled to agree to contribute his whole personal fortune to the project.
==Project Zero Dawn==
Sobeck personally filmed a presentation about the nature of Zero Dawn for potential Zero Dawn applicants at the Zero Dawn staging area.
She worked with nine potential candidates (including the erstwhile hacker Travis Tate) who agreed to be the project's Alphas: the heads of the teams that built the nine separate subordinate functions of the Zero Dawn system's core AI, known as GAIA. The other candidates that Sobeck hired for the project include Charles Ronson, Patrick Brochard-Klein, Samina Ebadji, Naoto Tanaka, Margo Shen, Ayomide Okilo, Catalina Garcia Fernandez, and Anders Larsen.
She later names GAIA's Subordinate Functions after Greek Gods: Tate for HADES, Ronson for ARTEMIS, Brochard-Klein for ELEUTHIA, Ebadji for APOLLO, Tanaka for DEMETER, Shen for HEPHAESTUS, Okilo for MINERVA, Fernandez for POSEIDON, and Larsen for AETHER. However, the most important of the functions are APOLLO and HADES.
APOLLO was created so that the humanity of the new world may learn from the mistakes of the old, while HADES was created as a fail-safe software that would wipe out all life on Earth if GAIA's efforts to restore it ran into issues, allowing GAIA to restart. GAIA was mostly created by Sobeck on her own. During this period, she had further contacts with Ted Faro, who had started acting erratically, likely as a result of his intense remorse about obliterating all life by his carelessness. Indeed, she noted in one of her journal entries that at their last encounter, he fidgeted a lot and couldn't keep his gaze fixed on her.
Despite the Turing Act of 2044, which restricts AI awareness, Sobeck's work on GAIA was a huge success; not only was it by necessity the most sophisticated artificial intelligence ever built, but it was also capable of human empathy and could experience emotions. Sobeck had not meant for this to happen, but he was overjoyed since such talents considerably improved the AI's capacity to fulfil its function as the initiator and protector of new life on the planet. She formed a relationship with the AI and would often converse with it before going to sleep.
She did, however, install a Master Override on GAIA's advice in case it went out of control and needed to be shut down. Ted Faro, ironically, had recommended it, but she had flatly declined, believing him unfit to provide such advise after what he had done. GAIA, on the other hand, thought the proposition was solid and persuaded her to accept it.
Meanwhile, Enduring Victory was only just a sliver of a success. Sobeck and the other Alphas had barely enough time to get Zero Dawn up and running before the Faro Plague, which had practically rendered the Earth uninhabitable by that point, wiped out the final military stronghold in Wichita, Kansas.
Sobeck was very troubled by the deaths of billions of people over the world, either as a result of robot consumption or as a result of mass famine, thirst, and asphyxiation in an environment devoid of oxygen and full of hazardous gases. She conveyed her emotional grief about their agonising deaths, as well as her concern that the project would fail and life would be forever extinguished, in a dialogue with GAIA. GAIA reassured her that she and the other Alphas had done everything they could, and that the chances of reestablishment were in their favour.
While the system was functional, it was far from complete. General Herres informed GAIA that the Faro Plague had broken through the final military salient. GAIA had been transferred to its permanent site, named GAIA Prime, in King's Peak, Colorado. The robots were on their way to USRC headquarters, wasting any remaining time. Sobeck and the Alphas chose to be permanently imprisoned in GAIA Prime to finish the remaining work while the lower-ranking members of the Zero Dawn team, known as the Betas and Gammas, were evacuated to Elysium.
Zero Day, the predicted end of existence, has come and gone. Sobeck and the Alphas, together with the few other people trapped in bunkers like Elysium, became the planet's only surviving species. Outside, a lifeless and desolate planet lay in wait, overrun with Faro Plague robots resting after eating every last biological molecule.
Sobeck and the Alphas went about their business as usual. During this period, Ted Faro, who had sequestered himself in his own personal bunker, known as Thebes, in San Francisco, California, was in touch with the crew on a regular basis. His persistent insistence on technical changes that was beyond its skill (or so it seemed) was annoying. Sobeck, on the other hand, handled his requests and kept him from upsetting the others.
==Sacrifice and Giving Earth a Second Life==
Sobeck sacrificed her life for her fellow Alphas and Zero Dawn during this moment, demonstrating her selflessness and kindness for the final time. The crew finished work on GAIA and its Subordinate Functions after being locked inside GAIA Prime. However, one of GAIA's port seals failed not long after, failing to close inside the 2mm maximum seam required to prevent a detectable energy signature leak.
If the Faro Plague discovered GAIA's signal, it would assault and destroy the facility, destroying any hope of life on the planet and leaving it dead and sterile forever. The seal, on the other hand, could only be repaired manually from outside the facility, and anyone who ventured outside would be permanently barred.
Sobeck donned the sealed, self-contained environmental suit, now required to survive outdoors, and locked the port while the Alphas argued about who would travel. When she informed the Alphas via hologram, they begged with her to enable them to figure out a method to bring her back inside.
She declined due to the swarm's closeness towards GAIA's energy source, placing them and Zero Dawn above her own life. She requested that they look after each other and that she be allowed to return home. She closed the message by bidding them farewell, thus sacrificing her life to pave way for the rebirth of planet Earth from lifelessness.
Sobeck performed what she promised the Alphas she would do now that Zero Dawn had been spared. She sat on a seat when she arrived at the ruins of her childhood house, silently dying later, probably after her suit's life support capabilities were finally depleted, thus fulfilling her impossible goal.
==Post-Sobeck/Legacy==
===Murder of the Alphas===
Sobeck's sacrifice rescued Zero Dawn and, as a result, all life on Earth from extinction. The Alphas built a memorial to commemorate her and her work, as she had always done, in championing the struggle for life. Her sacrifice, however, left the Alphas vulnerable to an increasingly unstable Ted Faro, who developed an obsession with the idea that APOLLO's knowledge was a deadly "disease" to the new planet. Without Sobeck to keep him in check, his fascination turned into determination. To prevent APOLLO from being reconstructed, he erased APOLLO and murdered the Alphas when they were gathering in GAIA Prime's control room by releasing the chamber's atmosphere.
As a result, no one knew (sans Aloy and Sylens, 974 years later) of Sobeck's existence or what she had done for the human species or for life itself. Despite this, Sobeck spared all life, including the human race, from extinction as the driving force behind Zero Dawn. She was therefore principally responsible for the deactivation of the Faro Plague's robots and the re-establishment of life following the plague's extinction. Sobeck became a martyr for the future of life when she gave her life to defend GAIA Prime from being attacked and destroyed by the Faro robots.
===Nemesis===
GAIA was suddenly bombarded by a powerful energy signal, hailing from the Far Zenith AI known as Nemesis, over a millennium later, causing its subordinate functions to become self-aware beings that followed their programming direction without GAIA's guidance. As a result, the HADES function attempted to utilise the terraforming mechanism to wipe out all life on Earth, this time with no hope of recovery. To stop HADES from escaping, GAIA murdered herself and began scheming to employ the dormant Faro Plague instead, albeit this would take time and necessitate the Carja's manufactured devotion.
More importantly, without GAIA to oversee the terraforming system, it would continue to break down and imperil life, putting all of Sobeck's efforts at risk. GAIA did direct one of the cradle facilities to develop a genetic clone of Sobeck, who would eventually be called Aloy, so that she might one day access GAIA and rebuild it after killing HADES. Aloy grew up to be precisely what Sobeck had envisioned for her kid if she had one: curious, wilful, and compassionate (in her words: "With enough compassion to heal the world").
===A Common Thread===
When HADES invaded the Nora tribe and discovered Aloy 19 years later, it became preoccupied with eliminating her since she shared Elisabet's genetic code, putting the Nora tribe's existence in jeopardy. Aloy learned Elisabet's existence after gaining access to a Focus used by Olin following this meeting. Initially assuming Elisabet to be her real mother, Aloy set out on a personal quest to discover who she was in the hopes of uncovering her own mystery past (reluctantly accompanied by the Banuk researcher Sylens).
This resulted in Aloy and Sylens finding the cause of humanity's extinction due to the Faro Plague, Elisabet's work on Project: Zero Dawn, and Ted's heinous endeavour to prevent APOLLO and GAIA from ever being found. Aloy was shocked to hear of the circumstances of her own conception, but she grew to like her "mother."
===HADES===
Despite HADES' overwhelming forces of Carja and machines, Aloy was successful in not only preventing it from using the Faro Plague to cause a second, permanent extinction using the Master Override, but also in bringing the tribes of Sun Carja, Oseram, Banuk, and the Nora together and convincing them to abandon their previous hostilities in order to face their common foe, ironically similar to how Elisabet brought the Alphas together to create GAIA and save humanity from permanent extinction.
Aloy set off on a quest to discover Elisabet's homeland after HADES was defeated. Elisabet's body was discovered on a bench near her childhood home, surrounded by a triangle structure of purple flowers, which was GAIA's personal homage to her remembrance. Aloy discovered a miniature duplicate of something she had always treasured on the ground beside her bones, likely slipped from her hand: the world.
===The Quen===
The seafaring tribe known as the Quen would worship Sobeck as one of the "Legacy", a group of so-called "pantheon of corporate shills", as Sylens described their bizarre religion. The Quen would then call Aloy the "Ancestor Reborn" of Sobeck as they see her firstly in the ruins of a Faro Automated Solutions facility, then to San Francisco ruins, now known as the Isle of Spires. They would later misattribute Sobeck as a so-called "Assistant" to Faro.
However, due to their obsolete Focuses, which cannot access data past mid-2050s, they are currently unaware of Sobeck's knowledge of Project Zero Dawn and Miriam Technologies, two of Sobeck's most important milestones.
Category:Synopsis