We are searching for editors to complete gameplay topics in all games. You can contribute without an account. Learn how to contribute and join our Discord server.
Arthur Hume
| Arthur Hume |
| |
| Information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Hume |
| Affiliation | Fox Sisterhood |
| Voice actor | -TBA- |
| Artist | Unknown |
| View page template | |
"This is classified information!"
This article contains unmarked spoilers. You have been warned.
Doctor Arthur Hume (亚瑟•休谟)[1][Note 1] was a scientist who pioneered Doll technology. After receiving a vision and an unaging body during a relic incident, he pursued Project Pilot Whale, the ideal recreation of the human brain.[2]
He created many experimental Dolls and associated with the Fox Sisterhood to fund his research, but eventually admitted he couldn't complete the project alone and instead disseminated his ideas in the scientific community, until Martha Meitner completed it with her own Holy Grail Project. He was later killed by Paradeus.
“Arthur” was only the latest name he had taken for himself when he died. He also used the names Maurice (莫里斯) and Louis (路易) at other points in his life.
Background
Hume was born in the French nobility,[3][Note 2] but he was stripped of his title by the king at the time.[4] Hume was only interested in his research and didn't mind losing his title.[3] From this, it can be deducted that Hume was alive in the 19th century at the latest, before the end of the monarchic rule in France.
At an unknown date, he was the victim of a relic incident and exposed to a lethal amount of Collapse radiation. However, he not only survived the incident, but his body stopped aging from this point on.[3] Moreover, he received a vision in the form of a complete understanding of the working of the human brain. The vision has been compared to seeing the visible light spectrum spread out on a wall after passing through a prism, if the prism was the human brain and the result encompassed the fields of biology, neuroscience, philosophy and psychology.[2] This started his obsession with Project Pilot Whale, the creation of a perfect artificial replica of the human brain[3] and a mean to achieve not simply lack of aging, but true immortality.[5] Hume was the only survivor of the incident along with Mikhail Tsvigun, whom he kept in contact with through his long life.[3]
In 2003, Hume published, titled “Born from the Spring” or “GRCh38”, his first theoretical paper on the "Spring", the core of his artificial brain, under the name Maurice Hume. The scientific community at large considered the paper fantastical, and science-fiction writers even contacted him asking to use it for their stories. Hume changed his name to Louis and presented himself as Maurice Hume's son to escape his bad reputation.[3] Undeterred, he continued his work but faced many difficulties. After meeting with great minds similar to his own, he became convinced that his breakthrough had been a matter of luck, and that he wouldn't be able to complete Pilot Whale himself. Instead, he took to disseminating his ideas and research in the scientific community at large until another brilliant scientist could reach his goal in his stead.[5]
Hume ran into money issues during his experiments. He took commands from clients such as Tsvigun,[3] creating innovative Dolls based on his research such as the later AR AR-18AR-18AR-18, but his creations usually went mad and their neural cloud had to be melted down, giving him the reputation of a unethical scientist.[6] He only kept three Dolls close to him: his bodyguard SG Stevens M520Stevens M520Stevens M520, SG Stevens M620Stevens M620Stevens M620, in charge of recording his life (though both were eventually sent away to fulfill a military contract),[7] and his “work of art” SMG ErmaErmaErma. Erma was the implementation of Hume's reproduction of the human memory: while she lost most of her memories upon reset, she could always recover them by using “anchor points”, key terms that would give her access to her lost memories.[8] He made Erma's neural cloud so unique and secret that Paradeus tech couldn't hack into it.[9] Hume tested the system by destroying Erma himself countless times.[10] Hume also created a virtual space shared by the Dolls he created, called the Summer Garden. The Summer Garden was used as a virtual meeting place by the Dolls, but it also concealed the Great Palace, the central repository of Erma's memories. The Summer Garden also contained passages to two other repositories, one labelled Lunasia and seemingly lost by 2064, and another labelled Nadia which led to the Lake of Cognition of the Hela Project.[5]
In the 2030s, in a funding run for Pilot Whale, Hume collected a billion from investors, but came up empty-ended and was branded a scammer. After the ordeal, Hume, with only 50,000 worth in Sardis Gold to his name, was contacted by Maggie Ponzi of the Fox Sisterhood, who convinced him to put his image as a scientist and contacts in the service of their “Horn of Hope” health scam.[4][3] The scam brought large funds to Hume, but they still dried up. Tsvigun offered Hume to join his organization (probably the Prometheans) but Hume didn't want to be involved in politics.
Hume used the Fox Sisterhood's foothold in the black market to sell his subsequent editions of his paper. When he met Maggie Ponzi, Hume had rewrote and re-titled it “Human Intelligence Research”, veering away from pure theory and including details about the production and applications of the Spring, but it still met with complete lack of interest. Maggie Ponzi was eventually killed (probably during World War Three) and Hume, now a close collaborator, accepted to watch over the Fox Sisterhood for her. On Maggie's request, he also created a Doll in her image, and passed Maggie's legacy onto her, on the condition that she continue to sell his papers on the black market.[3] He also kept selling the Sisterhood his Doll technology.[6] Maggie's adoptive sister, Catherine Ponzi, changed her name to Natalie and entered the service of Hume as the maid of his Dolls at Hume's manor in Moscow, and later, after Hume's sponsor there disappeared, in Frankfurt[5] (the Frankfurt manor was probably one of Maggie's).[3] She hoped to see the end result of Pilot Whale and find a way to resurrect Maggie. Natalie became the only human Hume would keep around him.[5] Humes' paper only found a buyer years later, with its 17th edition, which was sold for a trifle[3] to Martha Meitner.
Hume's inspiration was visible in Meitner's design of the Dog Tag System for Daybreak Squad.[5] At the Relics Agency, Meitner led the Holy Grail Project, which Hume saw as the completion of Pilot Whale, but not of the perfect replica of the human brain. He believed the framework he had created was correct, but that the correct data was still missing. He stored the complete key to GRCh38 into Erma's memories, which would give her the opportunity to share it with the world or even to become a human if she wished so.[11]
At some point, Hume received a visit from Tareus who offered him to work with Paradeus, but he ran away to hide Erma. He then had Erma mortally shoot him, declaring she was now free, only seconds before the time bomb Tareus had planted on him activated, gruesomely destroying his corpse.[8] Hume's death was blamed on a Soviet agent.[12]
Hume Dolls
Hume created many Dolls during his lifetime. Though all his Dolls had exceptionally special powers, they all met exceptionally painful ends,[13] most of them becoming mad.[6] Hume himself only considered one of this creations to be a work of art worthy of his attention, Erma.[8][14] His other Dolls were created on request by various parties and he didn't pay much attention to them.[14]
Hume Dolls can communicate privately, seemingly without regard for distance, through a transmission channel only open to them (denoted in dark green text in the game). They are also the only ones able to access the Summer Garden virtual space,[13] though only Erma has full authorizations in it.[4][14]
- 00-Э-00 (Unit 0): SMG ErmaErmaErma[13]
- 09-П-39 (Unit 9): SG Stevens M520Stevens M520Stevens M520[13][15]
- 27-П-55 (Unit 27): SG Stevens M620Stevens M620Stevens M620[15][7]
- 63-Я-180 (Unit 180): Instructor Я (AR AR-18AR-18AR-18)[16][17][13]
Character Info
Hume has been described as looking eternally 27-years old.[4] He believed Dolls could become a perfected version of mankind.[6]
AR-18 considered Hume to be a bad man.[18][13] His only concern was the completion of Project Pilot Whale. He had a complete lack of consideration for the events or people around him, and did not even care to use his solution to immortality on himself.[5] His long life had rendered Hume completely emotionally numb, to the point that he argued his Dolls were more humans than him due to their emotional simulations.[11] Hume had left a message for Erma in his coat after his death, where he warned her that she would probably be remembering only the happy memories of him and forget his bad sides, as human memory tends to do.[14]
Story Involvement
Erma eventually forgot Hume's death and wandered in search of him. She had carved Hume's name in her body so she wouldn't forget this anchor point.[19] Her search led her to meet AR-18 and the Doll version of Maggie Ponzi aboard the “Future” train.[20][18] After completing her service in the military, Stevens M520 learned that Hume was dead and tried to recover his legacy to resurrect him, so he could give back the Hume Dolls their lost memories.[7] Tsvigun gave her Erma's location,[3] and after the Battle of the Dead Sea, they met in Frankfurt,[13] where they accessed the Great Palace and unraveled the truth about Hume's past. Erma ultimately decided to seal all information about GRCh38 by destroying her realm in the Summer Garden, preventing humanity from using it.[11]
Gallery
-
-
-
-
-
-
Erma witnesses her creator's gruesome end. -
-
Hume's portrait in the Great Palace.
Notes
- ↑ Hume is called “professor” rather than “doctor” in part 33 of Longitudinal Strain.
- ↑ In the original script, Hume only says he was a French noble from his father's side (我放弃了父亲的法国姓氏和爵位[...]). The English script says he was Duke of Broglie, probably as a reference to Louis de Broglie, a physicist who contributed to the quantum theory.
References
- ↑ Girls' Frontline, Longitudinal Strain, 25
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Girls' Frontline, The Summer Garden of Forking Paths, E17
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 Girls' Frontline, The Summer Garden of Forking Paths, E9
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Girls' Frontline, The Summer Garden of Forking Paths, E6
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Girls' Frontline, The Summer Garden of Forking Paths, E14
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Girls' Frontline, Longitudinal Strain, 20
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Girls' Frontline, The Summer Garden of Forking Paths, E140
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Girls' Frontline, Longitudinal Strain, 33
- ↑ Girls' Frontline, Longitudinal Strain, 35-T2
- ↑ Girls' Frontline, Longitudinal Strain, 15
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Girls' Frontline, The Summer Garden of Forking Paths, E21
- ↑ Girls' Frontline, Longitudinal Strain, 16
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 Girls' Frontline, The Summer Garden of Forking Paths, E2
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Girls' Frontline, The Summer Garden of Forking Paths, E13
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Girls' Frontline, The Summer Garden of Forking Paths, E5
- ↑ Girls' Frontline, Longitudinal Strain, 5-γ7
- ↑ Girls' Frontline, Longitudinal Strain, 3-α3
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 Girls' Frontline, Longitudinal Strain, E9
- ↑ Girls' Frontline, Longitudinal Strain, 3-γ1
- ↑ Girls' Frontline, Longitudinal Strain, E8