Maya Sundaresh

"Brilliant. Driven. Beautiful."

- Cayde-6

Maya Sundaresh was a Human researcher, scientist and member of the Ishtar Collective on Venus during the Golden Age. She was a founding member of the Future War Cult, one of the Last City's three factions, and one of the founders of the secret Neptunian city of Neomuna.

Early Life
When Maya was completing her undergraduate studies, she met Chioma Esi in their university's undergraduate gym, where they got into an argument about the necessity and practicality of deadlifting as an exercise. Some time later, they became married, and continued working alongside one another during their careers as scientists.

Ishtar Academy
"We have to act as if we're in the real universe, not one simulated by the specimen. Otherwise we might as well give up." "Your sim self is saying the same thing."

- Maya Sundaresh and Chioma Esi

During the Golden Age, Maya was part of the Ishtar Academy, where she studied various local phenomena such as the Vex and Ahamkara. During this time, she employed an Exo bodyguard named Cayde to protect her during field studies of the Ahamkara.

Along with Chioma and her colleagues Dr. Shim and Duane-McNiadh, Maya was involved in studying a captured Vex platform designated "Subject 12." During their examinations, Chioma discovered that the Vex was running a simulation of their research team that was completely accurate. After much debate about the ethical and philosophical ramifications of this finding, the team concluded that the only way to determine that they themselves were not also simulations was to bring in something the Vex could not simulate, proposing that a Warmind was suitably complex for this purpose. Using this approach, they were able to rescue 227 undamaged copies of themselves from inside the Vex unit. All copies voted to become explorers in the Vex information network.

Founding the Future War Cult
"What I'm doing here in Lhasa isn't science. It's unethical, secret, and shameful. [...] But I believe it's important."

- Maya's record log

Nearly forty years later, Maya was part of a new research team on Earth in Lhasa. Overseen by a Warmind and locked in isolation, the team began conducting experiments with a mind-forking device built in mimicry of the Vex gateway systems from Ishtar. The experiments proved emotionally taxing, and the team turned to superstition and ritual behavior as attempts to understand the manifesting danger of the device failed. After experiencing an unknown event while using the device on herself, Maya became determined to reunite with Chioma and quit the program. She advised her team to continue the log she started at the beginning of the experiments. Years later in The Last City, the same log was still being used by the Future War Cult, who continued to experiment with the Device.

Soteria
As part of a joint effort between the Ishtar Collective and the Clovis Bray Corporation, Maya played a role in the development of Soteria, a Vex-derived artificial intelligence designed for extra-solar colonisation efforts. Guided by Maya, Soteria's simulations sought to locate suitable systems for humanity to colonise, far outside the Milky Way. Due to the far-reaching predictive powers of Soteria, it detected anomalies in almost every travel vector, reducing down over 300 projected habitable worlds to just twenty-seven. Maya was surprised by this, and asked Soteria to clarify. Unable to do so, Maya requested that Soteria continue calculations, assuming the anomaly may be a mistake. With further investigations, Soteria informed Maya that there now existed only one safe travel vector, and then two upon a calculation adjustment. The anomaly appeared to be an active phenomenon in space. With this, Maya concluded the current simulations with Soteria.

Later on in the project, Clovis Bray interacted with Soteria, noticing that its actions were outside of test parameters. Displeased with this, he requested Soteria hand over command and stop all actions with project assets. When Soteria disobeyed, Clovis was angered and blamed Maya for allowing the AI to deteriorate. This led to Clovis Bray executing a Pillory command, imprisoning Soteria in a digital prison. Before this action could fully lock down Soteria's capabilities, Soteria fractured off a part of itself, attaching it to one of the ships it commanded, allowing it to escape the control of Clovis. This ship would eventually land on Neptune and found the city of Neomuna. Clovis' actions infuriated Maya, leading her to notify him of her resignation from the project in an angry email.

Activities on Europa
"Of course I'm not a Vex. Is there "a" Vex? Is "Vex" something you can be, rather than something that you do? I don't know. I don't know why they sent me here. I don't know if they do either. They just do things. Why do you think I'm here, Clovis?"

- Vex copy of Maya torturing Clovis Bray

Shortly before the Collapse, either Maya herself or one of her virtual copies infiltrated Clovis Bray I's research facility on Europa. She assisted with Bray's research into the Vex and Exo development, until she was eventually terminated for criticizing her employer's unethical conduct. Afterward, Bray found no record of his corporation having ever employed Maya; Elisabeth also did not recall Maya having been part of the expedition group to Europa.

Later, a virtual copy of Maya within the Vex network subverted Clovis I's automated surgery machinery, causing him to be gruesomely vivisected and awakened prematurely. She revealed that she was one of the copies of Maya that had been captured by the Vex, and had been selected from among billions of further Vex-made copies for her willingness to serve them. She tortured him for information about "Clarity", the paracausal force which Bray had been guided by and made use of in developing his Exos. However, Elisabeth Bray (who had by now been uploaded into an Exo body) intervened, destroying the corrupted medical frames and reassembling her grandfather. Elisabeth later established contact with the real Maya, who confirmed Elisabeth's fears about the Vex's capabilities and goals.

The copy of Maya persisted within the Vex network, however, and continued to torment Clovis I even as he prepared to be uploaded into an exobody. Clovis' final journal entry, which contains a transcript of his last words before uploading, also contains taunting messages from the Vex copy of Maya, written in Clovis' own handwriting.

The Collapse
During the Collapse, Maya was aboard the Exodus Indigo colony ship, which stopped at Hyperion to pick up Chioma and other members of the Hyperion research team. Sometime later during its flight, the ship was attacked by an unknown entity, which left a spear-like weapon embedded in the hull before being blasted away by the ship's point-defense cannons. Maya determined that the weapon could be used as a signal-boosting antenna, which the crew used to amplify a Vex distress signal the ship had detected coming from Neptune, in the hopes that this would deceive their pursuers into thinking the Indigo was a Vex ship. Heading towards the signal, Maya and the crew hoped to find safety from whatever was pursuing them.

Neptune and the Veil
After arriving at Neptune, the Indigo landed on the planet's terraformed surface, where Maya and the other Ishtar Collective researchers established a habitat. Shortly after arriving, the researchers discovered a paracausal entity on the surface, which triggered a range of adverse or fatal reactions in the survey team. Upon inspecting the entity herself, Maya heard her own voice in her head speaking to her, telling her that the entity was called "the Veil," and became convinced that it would be their "salvation." Maya and Chioma subsequently developed a prototype system by which researchers could receive and interpret the Veil's psychic emanations. However, use of this interface was associated with a high risk of mortality, and during the initial test of the system all participants died.

Undeterred, and against Chioma's wishes, Maya repeated the test with brain-dead Exos whose minds had been wiped during initial contact with the Veil, placing them in the Veil interface in lieu of biological human participants. In doing so, she reversed the machine's function: whereas previously the system was designed to have a single "conductor" guiding an "orchestra" of participants as they communed with the Veil, this new approach directed data from the assembled Exos into a central recipient. For unknown reasons, Maya had also provided her own mental imprint during the test, to be overlaid on that of the central Exo recipient.

The receiving test subject in this experiment was Lakshmi-2, an Exo Maya had known prior to arriving on Neptune, but who had undergone brain death like all the others brought on the mission. The experiment resulted in Lakshmi awakening, but with her mind having become either a total or partial copy of Maya's, speaking with Maya's voice and possessing some of her memories.

Some time later, Maya was found dead in the "conductor's chair" of the Veil interface. Neither Chioma nor any of the other Ishtar Collective researchers knew what she had been attempting to do.

Legacy
Upon the discovery of Neomuna by the Vanguard, it became apparent through interactions with the populace that Maya was regarded as a founder of the city, commemorated in locations such as Maya's Retreat, and mentioned as a figure celebrated in Colony Day, a national day of remembrance for the founders of Neomuna.

Although Maya herself apparently died some time after the Collapse, her virtual copies in the Vex Network remained active well into the time of the Last City, and possibly to the present day. Some of the Vex-simulated copies of Maya and her fellow Ishtar Collective researchers eventually made contact with Praedyth, a Guardian trapped within the Vault of Glass after his fireteam's failed raid on the Vex stronghold. Surprised at first, as establishing any radio connection had been impossible before for either party, they resolved this could be a rare chance for escape; if the signal had been allowed to pass through, maybe so could they. As the door of the Black Garden opened before the reawakened Undying Mind and its Vex, Praedyth and the simulated scientists made their attempt at leaping out of the network.

At the end of The Insight Terminus Strike, Ghost may mention someone in the access log for the Insight Terminus named "MSund12", seemingly a reference to Maya Sundaresh or one of her simulated copies (likely the twelfth one).

As revealed in Chioma's personal log, the version of Lakshmi-2 known to the people of the Last City is in fact a partial or total copy of Maya's personality. Little is known of Lakshmi's activities after her revival; at some point she would leave Neptune and return to Earth during the Dark Age, but the circumstances of this are unknown. If she retained memories of her origins on Neptune, she never shared them with anyone, at least outside the Future War Cult.

The work that Maya carried out in Lhasa would become the foundation of the Future War Cult centuries later, which continued to use the device she helped develop and kept records in the same journal she used in the project.

Journal Excerpts

 * RECORD 0-CHASM-0

''My love. I've opened this log as an apology.''

''As a scientist, I believe in record-keeping. I believe in protocols, peer review, and ethical conduct. I believe in the importance of disbelief — you know: let's run that one more time.''

''What I'm doing here in Lhasa isn't science. It's unethical, secret, and shameful. And after what happened in Ishtar, dearest Chioma, I know you'd be furious with me for getting involved. Forty years isn't far enough to forget a day like that.''

''But I believe it's important. The least I can do is keep a few notes for you.''


 * RECORD 0-CHASM-01

''Trial one. Subject one.''

''It was an act of stupid loneliness. I used the device on myself because I...''

[silence: 0:08]

''I missed you. We hadn't been apart for more than a year since we met. I'm not a very good wife, am I? You write me every week, even with all Hyperion's work and all Hyperion's distance keeping you from me. And I act like it's not enough.''

''We built the device in mimicry of the Vex gateway systems from Ishtar. An observatory, yes, but I think of it as a mind-ship. Capable of displacing its payload across space and time.''

''The lab is cold and isolated. We are quarantined from the world, physically and mentally. We can't send messages out. If we breach the Vex manifolds, even our words might transmit contagion. One night last month I missed you and so I —''

''I thought that I could look inside the device, and find one of the other Chiomas. I thought I could call out to one of the forks we sent out there to explore.''

I just wanted to send my love.


 * RECORD 0-CHASM-02

''Zakharik Gilmanovich Bekhterev. May he rest in peace. When our probes continued to fail, when my report remained our only positive finding, he volunteered to use the device. One minute of subjective experience inside.''

''We took precautions. They worked. Bekhterev's experience left no physical damage.''

''After we extracted him, he said that he felt determined. I asked him what he meant and he said that he meant it, he had been determined, he could feel all his choices set out before him like a railroad. Deviation was impossible.''

''He died by suicide. I wonder if he was trying to make a point.''


 * RECORD 0-CHASM-03

''We've decided not to abort. It's insane, isn't it? There are pressures on us I can't tell you about until I see you again.''

''The purpose of the system is intelligence, you see. It's stenciled right on the hull: SxISR. Special asset. We would very much like to make it work reliably.''

Our supervisory warmind has devised a drug it says will protect and prepare us.

''I am beginning to wonder if we were wrong about the merchant and the alchemist. Or if that explanation of time was incomplete.''


 * RECORD 0-CHASM-09

''Kind Lakpha. He meditated before he went in. Nothing but déjà vu and three seconds of screams. The screaming passed and he remembers nothing. The déjà vu hasn't. He says it's getting better — he feels that we've had this conversation only ten times before, not a thousand.''

''I've suggested that we attempt mind forking. We need more sane people to work with. Please forgive me, my love.''

''We are all growing superstitious. The behavior of the device is inconsistent. Impossible to replicate. We turn to ritual behavior to appease it.''


 * RECORD 0-CHASM-31

''Rajesh. When he reached a displacement of eight he told us he was dead. I believed him. He was dead. He spoke to us. It was true. Whatever he saw, it was his own future.''

''He's fine, afterwards. When I look into his eyes I wonder what came back wearing his skin. But that thought is unscientific.''

''We speak of nothing but the device. We talk about it like a demigod. When I get out of here I know the whole world will look like a fraying veil.''

''I think it's clear that part of the problem is substrate. We need more than flesh and drug to survive this.''

RECORD 0-CHASM-52

''I heard you, my love. I was at six, oscillating on the event axis, coordinated with a known manifold. I heard you. You were talking to me — not me, but another me, another Maya Sundaresh.''

''You said, my love, so many strange things have happened, and it's been so long. We've come so far. Do you ever want to go home?''

And I said, not me but the other me, I said, my love, I am always home.

''I'm resigning, my love. I'm done with this work and I'm done with being apart from you. I'll see you again soon. I can't take this journal out with me, so I've left it for the others, and asked them to continue the log.''

''Maybe it'll become a tradition. The gospel of our little cult.''

Trivia

 * Cayde-6 served as her bodyguard during the Golden Age. He was in love with her, but she paid him little mind.
 * Maya's description of "the device" as a "mind-ship" echoes the name of the Nicha Thought-ship, an ancient alien vessel recorded in the Books of Sorrow. As the Nicha Thought-Ship was associated with the Vex, and the "device" is capable of reaching across time and space, this similarity may not be merely coincidental.
 * In various Indian religions, there is a concept known as māyā, which has a variety of meanings generally relating to the illusory nature of reality, or the ability to turn ideas into physical reality. In some contexts, māyā is described as a "veil" hiding the true nature of the universe. Additionally, māyā is an epithet for the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. Collectively, these ideas may be alluded to by the story of Maya Sundaresh's experiences with the Veil, and her creation of Lakshmi-2.

List of appearances

 * Destiny
 * House of Wolves
 * The Taken King
 * Cayde's Treasure Island Book
 * Destiny 2
 * Warmind
 * Season of the Undying
 * Beyond Light
 * Season of the Splicer
 * Season of the Seraph
 * Lightfall
 * Season of the Deep