Ariane Yeong: the Pilot at the Heart of Signalis

Ariane Yeong is the human pilot of the Penrose-512, the scout ship she crewed with the Replika Elster, and the person Elster spends the whole of Signalis trying to reach. She grew up on Rotfront, a moon of the Eusan Nation, and signed up for the Penrose Program to get away from it. In the game's terms she is a Gestalt, the Nation's word for a natural-born human. (Signalis)

Who is Ariane Yeong?#

Most of what we know comes from documents Elster finds in a dreamlike version of Rotfront late in the game. A letter addressed to Radio Officer Yeong at Station 6 belongs to her mother, and Elster can visit that lonely radio station in a first-person sequence. In Blockwart C, an email from the Yeong photo shop to the local Blockwart says the owner's niece has the only spare key "but she's still at the hospital right now". (Signalis)

School went badly. In a memory seen through the eyes of her classmate Isa Itou, Ariane is beaten by other students in the school library. Her teacher's evaluation, found in a hospital room, disapproves of her interest in art. Her medical record lists insomnia, bruising and premature greying, and her doctor's notes have been removed. (Signalis)

Why did Ariane join the Penrose Program?#

Her cycle 225 note is blunt. She was sick of Rotfront, of school, of the photo shop, "of the fake smiles and the whispering behind people's backs". She remembers seeing a photograph of a soldier who looked like her and wondering whether she could have been like her. "Here," she writes, "I am finally free." (Signalis)

She had been told to keep her distance from her Replika. The Penrose pilots' guide to LSTR units says not to befriend the Elster unit, not to show it films or play it music, and not to give it photographs of soldiers. Ariane's notes show she ignored all of it. (Signalis, "Replika Known Issues, Penrose Program")

Ariane and Elster#

By cycle 648 Ariane notices Elster is "different from replikas I knew back home" and feels they have run away from the world together. She hears a Vinetan accent like her old friends Isa and Erika's, and quietly slows the ship's clock so each cycle lasts about as long as a day on Vineta, wondering whether Elster will notice. She paints, complains about the ship's films, and laughs with Elster about running out of ochre paint. (Signalis)

The good years didn't last. Her notes from cycles 1840 and 2503 describe feeling trapped, brain fog, hair loss and breathlessness. At cycle 3000 the program told the crew no world had been found and that the reactor shielding would fail; it suggested the pilot ask the Replika to spare her a slow death, or take permanent rest in the cryo pod. The game shows Ariane and Elster marking that day with a dance. (Signalis; Signalis, "Penrose Phase 3")

Later notes are hard to read. She loses teeth, can't sleep, and writes "please, just make it stop". The last note, written in smeared, coded text that players date to cycle 262144, says she can no longer tell whether she is awake or asleep and that everything hurts. (Signalis)

How Ariane's story ends#

Elster reaches Ariane in the cryo pod at the end of the game, and the ending decides what happens next. In the Memory ending Ariane doesn't recognise her, and Elster stays at her side until she herself dies. In the Promise ending Ariane remembers, asks Elster to kill her, and Elster does before dying next to her. In the Artifact ending the last image is the two of them dancing in Ariane's quarters on the wreck. How she fits the whole plot is covered in Signalis story explained. (Signalis)

What is stated and what is theory#

The game states that Ariane is still alive in the cryo pod at the end. It never states outright that she is bioresonant, or that she caused what happened at S-23 Sierpinski. The leading reading is that she is bioresonant and that her power, amplified as she lies dying in the pod, is dreaming the world Elster moves through, which would explain why Alina Seo's last diary says her hair is turning white and that she remembers "a different name, and a different life". Another popular reading ties her to The King in Yellow: her cycle 1294 note recalls a dream of her mother taking notes from the radio with a book on her lap, the same book with a yellow hooded figure on its cover that Ariane once saw in the Itou bookshop window before the Protektors confiscated it. (Signalis)

A dream in Adler's diary describes a uniformed tester showing "a young woman, her hair white as snow" cards with astronomical symbols. Many players take this as Ariane being tested for bioresonance, but she isn't named. (Signalis, "Adler's Diary")