Cortana is also very aware of her short lifespan (a "Smart" A.I's lifespan is an average of seven years before rampancy) and her derivative nature as a copy of part of another person, rather than a true human being. Desperate and tortured aboard High Charity she murmurs: "A collection of lies; that's all I am! Stolen thoughts and memories!" Later on she says: "I'm just my mother's shadow..." and "It was the coin's fault," referring to the game of chance that Dr. Halsey played with John-117 when he was young. Halo: Evolutions Human Weakness reveals some of this to be her defying the Gravemind and a few of the more rampant things she says to be copies she made of herself which have been consumed by the Gravemind. She, along with Mendicant Bias, is one of only two known A.I.s that may have progressed completely through rampancy and became metastable.
However, this theory of metastability may have been disproved in the Halo Legends short film Origins, in which four years after the events of Halo 3, it is strongly suggested that Cortana is falling into rampancy. She displays several characteristics to support this, such as her hologram flickering, trying to communicate with John-117 despite him being in cryo-sleep, recounting the history of the galaxy, which gets continuously more inaccurate to the point where events being recalled simply did not happen. She even tried to make physical contact with John via her avatar. Cortana's fate is left ambiguous, but it is assumed she became rampant.[5] Let it be noted however, that Halo Legends is a lower source of canon than the games. It is also possible that Cortana had to go through rampancy to get to metastability.
