Let's get back on track here...
1) The Old Lady isn't/wasn't senile - she's had her
memory wiped, on more than one occasion. She might have been old, but she was still sharp as a pin. Thinking she's trying to give clues but somehow send people on the wrong track is incorrect, in my opinion - she's had her brains scrambled a few times and the result is a mish-mash of vague hints and clues, which we're all trying to make some sense of.
2) Forget patterns/faces/Mickey Mouse in the nebulas. Just don't. The
Thing we're looking for
may be visual - and it may be spectacular, but I doubt it's going to be a case of seeing faces in nebulae.
3) Assume for now that the Barnacles/UA/UP/Merope stuff is unconnected with the Rift, until we know better. So far, there has been nothing concrete to suggest they are connected. At. All.
My gut feeling is that we have still to uncover some clues which have probably been exisiting in-game for a while now. Drew has mentioned, for example, that the Dark Wheel play a part in this Rift stuff. I have been Allied to the Dark Wheel for quite some time now, and was poking around Shinrarta Dezhra (who came up with that goddamned name anyway it's awful to type

) for a while, even noticing one or two things about a DW base there, before moving on to other things as the Rift story was in limbo for a bit. I may go back there and have another poke around.
The other line of enquiry should be Tionisla, which is where the Old Lady is buried in her ship in the ship graveyard (which isn't officially in the game - yet).
As others have stated frequently, a reminder to
Read The First Few Posts In This Thread Before Presenting Your Latest Theory.
Regards o7