Lucy Stillman

Lucy Stillman is a scientist working for Abstergo Industries. She helps Dr. Vidic in the research of Altair. She is modelled after and voiced by Kristen Bell. Not much is known about Lucy's at the start of the game, although it can be assumed that she is not as cold hearted a person as Dr. Vidic is. She frequently stops Desmond from using the Animus for prolonged periods of time, because she says it can strain the body severely if used for too long. She is also generally warmer in personality than Dr. Vidic and is generally nicer to Desmond, allowing him a bit more freedom than Dr. Vidic Does, even to the point of allowing him to use her computer once. Throughout the game, Desmond has many chances to speak to Lucy and to get to know her better. These moments occur at the end of each memory segment, after Dr. Vidic leaves the lab. As Desmond talks to Lucy, she starts to tell him a bit about her past. It is revealed that during her college career she was ostracized for her scientific beliefs and her theories. After college she could not find work at any scientific organization. She became so desperate that she was ready to give up science altogether. Then she received a call from Dr. Vidic, who told her he agreed with her theories and offered her the chance to work for Abstergo and to prove her theories to be true.

It is unclear as to exactly what these theories are, but it is inferred that it has something to do with Genetic Memory and with the work being done on the Animus project. It is also unclear as to exactly how large a role Lucy had in either the creation or the development of the Animus machine.

Lucy also reveals to Desmond that he is not the only captive Abstergo is holding. She too is being detained by the company. She then tells him a story about how a while back her death was ordered by the company, but before her assailants could finish the deed, they were ordered to stop by Dr. Warren Vidic. She claims that he saved her life that day, and she tells Desmond not to judge him so harshly, as he is under a lot of pressure. Whether this story is true or not is unknown. It is possible Lucy is feeding Desmond false information in an attempt to get him to trust her, but it could also very well be taken at face value.

Throughout the game you can gain access to Lucy's computer and read her emails. From the emails, you definitely get the idea that she is telling the truth, as she is obviously concerned for her own safety and is trying to find out more information about a previous Abstergo employee who died a while back. This employee is said to have "committed suicide" but the documents relating to the death are being held as classified and are not being released. Desmond comes upon the codes to Lucy's emails when she leaves her access pen on the animus after planting the code to Desmond's bedroom door in his wardrobe. It can be speculated that she planted them to give him a better idea of what was going on with Abstergo, in which case she was invaluable.

At the end of the game when you can see the writing on the floor you can go to the computer where Lucy is usually working and access it. If you look at her deleted emails there is a conversation in which Lucy tells another person that she has been delaying the doctor from finding the artifacts and asking for the other person to send a rescue. A strange reply has random capitalizations in words. When these capitalized letters are put together, they form, "WE WILL BE THERE SOON". The rescue may be the people you hear trying to get to you towards the end of the game. This also means Lucy is an assassin, which is also shown by her showing Desmond her left hand and symbolically pulling in her ring finger to have it appear like Altaïr's missing finger, and is spying on Abstergo Industries. At the end of the game, Desmond gains the ability to use Eagle Vision. When Desmond uses this on Lucy, she appears with a blue aura, confirming her to be a trustable ally.

The Side Story of Leila and Neumann
More spoilers...must include two figures from "bloody mural" here for openers:

The Lorenz Attractor

The Lorenz Attractor, which appears in the middle of the wall over Desmond's bed and is the central focus of the entire "mural" is emblematic of the "butterfly effect". The intricate interweaving of the lines which compose it are paths taken by a particle. In spite of the fact that the particle always moves in the same general path, the path is always different. What does this mean in terms of the game? You may perform the same movements over and over again within the game, but something will always be different. No two assassinations of the same person are ever quite the same.

The Mandelbrot Set

There is a partial Mandelbrot figure also shown in the mural of blood over Desmond's bed. The unique feature of this figure is that no matter how many times you zoom in on it, the figure keeps repeating itself infinitely. It is a fractal figure, which implies that it repeats itself into infinity. The point is made within the cut-out scenes that what started so long ago is still continuing today. The plot and the characters live in a different time and space, and have different names but the story has repeated itself infinitely and was going on even before the time of Altair. It will continue to go on, unless the modern day Templars manage to unleash their diabolical plan to subject all of humanity to the Piece/Peace of Eden via their latest satellite they are scheduled to launch on December 21, 2112.

Is it only partial to indicate that only part of the story is revealed? If the any one of the parts are equal to the whole, it follows that we need only see a portion of the story to know the whole story.

After reading Lucy's emails, we learn that she has inquired after her friend Leila and Leila's mysterious disappearance. This happens after a conversation that she has with Vidic in the conference room on the other side of Desmond's bathroom. As she defends and tries to protect Desmond from Vidic's drive to subject Desmond mercilessly to the Animus to get what he wants, Vidic tells her to back off and that she "wouldn't want to end up like Leila". From here the emails follow as Lucy tries to discover what happened to her friend.

We know that Subject 16 experienced "bleeding" from his interactions with the Animus, causing him to go insane. "Bleeding" is a term used to describe the ancestral memory taking over the subject, wherein the subject becomes the ancestor. Why is it that with Altair's Eagle Vision, Desmond can see the paintings and figures of blood that are not there to his ordinary vision? Obviously, the blood was cleaned up - the walls and floors scrubbed down until it was no longer visible to the naked eye. Crime scene investigators use what are called "forensic light sources" such as a CS-16 or Polilight to find and view cleaned up body fluids and other things. These light sources use light in both the UV and infrared ranges to show these dried and cleaned fluids. The normal human eye is only capable of seeing a small fraction of the entire range of light. This implies that Atair's Eagle Vision allows Desmond to see beyond the normal spectrum of light that the human eye can see. (I don't think this is the case with eagles' eyes, but they can see both forward and sideways at the same time because of a small depression in their large pupils called a "fovea". Their large pupils also scatter light less than human pupils, making whatever they're looking at much more precise.)

Clearly, Subject 16 did not use his own blood to paint the mural and the figures on the floor and walls of the main room where the Animus is located. He would have bled out - literally - before he finished his work. The blood may be partially his own, but not all of it by any means. The "jump" feature that Lucy programs into the Animus actually serves to lessen the amount of time that Desmond has to spend inside the Animus. It cuts out the long and dangerous rides through the Kingdom. Apparently, Lucy is very much aware of this "bleeding" problem and may have some indication that spending too long in the Animus is the issue causing it. This seems to be her main reason for concern about Desmond, although it's mentioned very briefly.

I suggest that Subject 16 was this Neumann that Vidic mentions in his email to Lucy about "dipping her quill in company ink". Leila operated the Animus before Lucy and probably talked to Subject 16 much as Lucy talks to Desmond, who is Subject 17 - Desmond's immediate predecessor. This all must have occurred shortly before Desmond was brought to Abstergo's Lab. Could it be that Leila fell in love with Neumann and was trying to help him and talk to him and he went whacko and killed her...then proceeded to paint the lab red with her blood in his desperation and insanity?

Finally, who was Neumann? Strangely enough, a search on the name turns up someone of interest that is significant in relation to all of this. His name was John von Neumann, who died in 1957 (long ago enough for him to have a descendent). He was an Hungarian mathematician who "who made major contributions to a vast range of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics...continuous geometry, economics and game theory.... He is generally regarded as one of the foremost mathematicians of the 20th century." Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann We have the Mandlebrot Set - an example of set theory and the repeating overall patterns of history. It is also an example of continuous geometry - a fractal or holgraphic fragment of a larger whole that is identical to the smaller part. We also have the Lorenz Attractor, which is part of Chaos Theory:

In mathematics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain dynamical systems – that is, systems whose states evolve with time – that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos. Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

Assassins Creed is most certainly a "deterministic" game, in that there can be only one outcome no matter what you do or when you do it. There are probably millions of permutations of activities within it. (This is true of any game worth it's salt!) And last, but not least, Mr. Neumann was one of the major developers of game theory. --Maskim xul 01:13, 31 March 2009 (UTC)