Simon slowly sank.
Simon was still awake.
He could not sleep. His mind would not stop acting and acting, thinking and thinking, wondering and wondering. The Power Suit fell as quick as he did and as slowly in the long fall to the dark depths. Ross's voice died under the storm of his thoughts.
Simon was never afraid of the ocean. It never really bothered him. He lived so far that sometimes he would forget all about it until someone mentioned it. That never reminded him of the terrors in the deep long before the WAU was even thought of. The works of Lovecraft that Jesse would read, the comics anyway, always had some monster in the sea that none knew about and those who did went mad. Who knew they were real? Not Eldritch gods or Old Ones. WE made this. WE thought of this. No monster will ever be as terrible as Humanity. The WAU was our idea. It had our commands and orders to carry out.
Did the machine do what it thought was best? Ross once said that it could never know what it is to be, that we couldn't trust its motives and actions and that no matter what we would be screwed over at its hands, but here was Simon and he knew not what it meant to be. He wasn't sure anyone else did. We all have our thoughts and beliefs on the matter. No one could ever have one complete thought that everyone deemed true. Someone always asked the "but" then came with their ideas and debates.
Could a machine know what centuries of Humanity did not? How long has it been alive? Couple of years at most, he guessed, it made the thought scarier to think about. Only when the world died did we ever come close to understanding and they didn't even get to know the answer.
Now Simon thought back to his life before Pathos-II, before Catherine, before the WAU, before everything. Did he even know what it was to live? Growing up he and everyone else knew that they had to go to school, go to college, work, and hopefully retire before 70. Along the way they were going to live and have a life with a family too. His mom used to tell him to live life to the fullest, to make a bucket list of have done when he was on death's door, so that when the day comes he'll be happy with his life. Then the accident stole that from him or did he steal it from himself? He thought back to the days beforehand, lazy and following a schedule compared to after when he thought he could do anything.
Only to give up in the end, the list still incomplete, and went down a failure. We know only when life was limited on what it was to live. When time starts counting down in our minds instead of in the open air beyond reach, leaving us to assume time is on our side. Dread can find itself over us, creating ideals and philosophies on how to live life so that we can feel achieved when we do die. We find value in our lives where others may not. Objects or goals that give them meaning.
Now Simon thought about now.
What is he going to do with his life? He couldn't die, not again, he had to make something out of this. Right now he was getting Catherine back but what then? What happens after that? If he succeeds or fails, what's he going to do then? Go back to the surface? Try and restore Pathos-II? Build himself a home in the destroyed Earth? Learn what he could? Ross and Catherine could have more ideas.
When he woke up back in Upsilon some time ago he never expected that he would end up here. Here as in...as in...he didn't know.
He looked down to still see he was sinking into the depths. His mind was starting to run out of things to think over without driving himself clinically insane. But he could delve back deep into another matter. Ross has asked him why. Why he was doing this, risking everything just to get back the shadow of a woman that died. That the person he was trying to bring back into the dead world was just the mind.
He told Ross that it was because he messed up, it was his fault. But Ross stopped him.
"That's not why. Why is only true when you don't cover it up. Simon, what is your really why for this? I have my why for helping you."
He didn't know then. He couldn't dig up his truth, his mind nearly drowned itself trying to force it all out.
Now he found it emerging.
He wondered if Simon on the ARK had the guts to tell her. He hoped so.
Right now he imagined her descending with him. They had philosphied what it meant for them to exist and for the ARK, if they knew about the coin toss. Then talked about what it meant to be, to live, what gave them purpose each and every time they woke up. Catherine would have brought up the fact they don't sleep. As well as her inability to walk, blink, move a finger, all the finger details about her current state of being. IN that solace of a moment he would have told her. For all he knew they might as well be dead floating down here. The Leviathan or some other creature could easily crunch them up into electrical bits without a second's hesitation. So he spoke aloud.
"Catherine," he said staring into the blue void around him.
"Yes, Simon?" she would say. Her monitor flickering a little bit.
"Since this may be our last few minutes, moments, great leap together, I might as well just tell you. I-"
The thud of the sea floor silenced him.
The moment was gone.
He was alone again.
He looked down to find that he just bumped into a deformed manta ray.
"Simon? Are you okay?" Catherine would ask.
He blinked a few times, his thoughts returning to him as well as the moment. Catherine was still there waiting for him. Now she wasn't the Omnitool with a face but back into a regular human body that he saw for the ARK back in Theta. She was...he knew the words but they wouldn't come out without a stutter. She seemed to notice, even past the screen of the Power Suit and the circuitry that was his face. He wasn't a machine. Wasn't Robo-Simon 2 or even just some copy of a dead man. Simon was Simon regardless of how many there was or will be he will always be him. At his core he'll always be some variation of himself. He'd always have these human emotions, that's what kept him sane from the deep insanity down here.
Simon took a deep breath, closed his eyes, relaxed the tension dwelling in the corpse's body, and let it all out.
"Y'know, when I lost Ashley to the accident and the brain damage started to kill me, I never thought that for the rest of my days that I had left in me that piece of me would never heal. The trauma and dying brain broken me. Deep down 'I knew this was it, this is the start of the end' everyday until Munshi. Even when I had my life seemingly back in my hands, I knew that I would never truly let go of her, never really get over here, never really love someone like her, then I met you, Catherine.
I get it, I get it, 'we're the last two sane people so it was bound to happen' is a cliche I remember Jesse talking about. I even thought that after the Curie exploded and we were stranded at Delta. I took a moment to sit at the edge with the K-8 and talked to it about you and all this. It couldn't talk but I'm sure it tried to encourage me. That or it was scared of the plateau, I was too. Then Theta and Omicron. I'm sorry for what I said, when Robo-Simon was still talking, I was...I don't know. Terrified? Scared?
When he existed for that moment, I thought that I was just replaceable to you. You could have any Simon or even yourself do the job. Maybe that's why. I let emotions get the best of me even when you explained it, I got beaten then and then at Phi it happened again. I wanted out. Out of this never ending hell we were trapped in. I didn't think that I wouldn't carry over. I had too much hope in the toss. For a moment, I saw the ARK, even now I can still see the river, the grass, and trees. I didn't think I'd ever say that. Eternity among the stars wasn't for me. Not this me, anyway. But I imagine that that us never forget Earth, home, the people we left behind, or this us that didn't make it. The people in paradise forget the people trapped in hell for all eternity.
What I'm trying to say, Cath, are three simple complex words I said on the ARK:
I love you.
Catherine, I really do, I can promise you that."
The weight of the world fell off his chest. He could finally breathe.
"I love you too, Simon" she said, she had before the ARK when he wasn't listening, and this was something Simon didn't have to imagine.
He gently touched the deep ocean floor. The twirling of rotor blades echoed in the distance; getting closer and closer to him every second. Two figures emerged, shadowed by the Abyss with only one bright light illuminating them not. They grabbed Simon and the Power Suit, dragging him away.
