Spoiler tagging because I know plenty of players never complete the Artemis path and may not know this, but the basis of this theory starts with the revelation that the Atlas is a computer program that simulates the entire No Man’s Sky universe.

The Atlas has a computer virus, and it’s all related to the organic ships and biological horrors.

When doing the dream arial quest to get your first organic frigate it tells you in conversation that the “Crimson Eye” does not see them. So the program that simulates the universe is not aware of organic frigates. It means they weren’t created by the Atlas and had to originate from somewhere else.

So how do we get “virus” out of that? During the leviathan expedition all of the anchor points were on infected planets, and I always had a pod of living frigates spawn above me when I reached the point. The flora of infected planets look suspiciously similar to the hull of a living ship. These planets I think are the breeding grounds of the organic frigates and the whispering eggs are there to protect them. The description of the planet type when you discover them has very negative connotation, they’re called “infested” “frozen hell” “toxic horror” etc. so clearly they are not supposed to be like that and have been corrupted.

Here’s where the living ships come in. Starbirth gives some lore about the living ships being created by the Korvax. They synthesize the heart, brain, membrane, and singularity cortex (the analogs to your regular ship’s critical systems) and you do the same during the quest. But… any living ship the player can acquire is found as a crashed ship that’s already assembled, just waiting for you to bring it back to life.

That’s likely not exactly how the Korvax created them. I theorize they synthesized biotechnology to approximate the organic frigate’s key organs for space travel (listed in previous paragraph) and then grafted them onto the flora of the infested worlds to create a domesticated organic frigate, or living ship.

I have no idea what the purpose of this virus might be, but I do assume the purpose of the organic frigates is to spread the virus. Why else would they want to explore the universe doing expeditions for you?

I do have some more ideas on the subject but I don’t have much in game evidence to support them, so these are purely speculation.

The void egg space encounter to get an upgrade for organic ships, I think they might actually be the egg of an organic frigate. You have to destroy them to claim the upgrade from them, so perhaps maybe you’re killing a gestating organic frigate and claiming one of its organs for your ship.

Building on this theory I think the flora on infested planets might be some form of egg, as I think they’re breeding grounds, and they get brought into space by organic frigates so they can grow and become void eggs. Pure speculation here though.

Also I think the Titan Worms are part of the virus as well, but my only support for that is that worm nests are also found on those infested planets. But I think it falls in line with the rest of the theory that the Atlas did not create these god like space beings.

So travelers, what do you think? Am I way off base? Have you had a similar thought before?