"FUCK!"

His good hand balls into a fist and he smashes the screen, now dark where before the static face of Catherine had stared at him in motionless frustration. He pulls his fist back, allows it to uncurl, realises what has happened.

No power. Blink off.

He's alone.

"Catherine?" he asks, and his voice wavers. "Please don't leave me alone." But she doesn't reply. There's no power and he's alone, in the darkest corner of the ocean, in a body that's already dead.

Completely alone.

He regrets his anger immediately. Regrets what he said. He still believes it, of course - he's hurt and frightened and so very, very tired - but if he could do it all over... Maybe she'd still be here. His friend. The voice in the dark. She was all he had left.

He misses her.

Minutes stretch into hours and he doesn't move from the pilot chair. Hours blur into what may be days and he doesn't move from the pilot chair. He's utterly defeated and feels the weight of the ruined, empty world pressing down on his borrowed chest, making the breaths he takes by habit rough and raspy until, eventually, he stops altogether.

After all, what's the point?

Several times he contemplates suicide, or the closest thing he can manage. He's not sure how he'd do it; all the robots he killed had batteries to still or power lines to sever. His is on his back, nestled in the lining of his suit and bonded there by that thick black crap that caused this whole fucking spectacle. He couldn't reach it even if he had two hands and, after a few half-hearted attempts, gives up.

Catherine would call him an idiot, if she were here. He'd agree with her.

There isn't much else to do down here but think, so he does. He thinks of Toronto and the life he remembers but never technically lived. He thinks of Ashley and the accident that inadvertently led to all this.

He thinks of his job at the book store, of his friends and colleagues, and how they all died a long, long time ago.

He thinks of the real Simon Jarrett and the tragedy that befell him.

He thinks of the brain scan he so innocently agreed to all those years, - or hours, depending on who you asked, - ago, and the coin toss he didn't know he was throwing. He wishes he had been on the other side of the coin toss.

He wishes he had been the one to die human.

He thinks of the coin toss he threw with Catherine and how he had misunderstood getting into the ARK. But that wasn't quite true, was it? He had been kidding himself; worse, he had been lying to himself. Just as he had lied to himself when he first woke up and saw his own two hands and his own shirt and jeans, he had lied again and tricked the human part of him into believing so fervently that, to him, it was the truth.

He knew getting himself into the ARK would be a scan, just like it had been in Omicron. He had thought then in his naïveté that, being nothing more than code now, he would be uploaded into a new cortex and carry on in a new body.

But he had been wrong. He had heard the other Simon talking and had known he had been wrong.

Wrong then and wrong now.

It wasn't how it worked, Catherine had said so. And he knew that. Despite all his rage and his inexpressible horror, and the betrayal he couldn't help but feel, he knew that.

The scan got to go be in paradise. He got to sit here, alone, in hell.

Simon number three probably wouldn't even realise that number two was still here; at least, not at first. He could imagine the joy that Simon must have felt and the relief when he realised that they had done it, they had made it and everything was going to be alright, Catherine.

She had told him to be happy for them. He hates them instead.

He imagines Catherine in the ARK, whole and human and ecstatic her project had finally made it to space. He imagines her reminding his new self, dressed in plaid and with his own face and his own eyes instead of the red pinprick horror of his dive-helmet head, that he is yet another copy.

He wonders if, given the chance, that version if Simon would kill him, just as he had killed his template.

He hopes he would have.

Non-existence would be far better than this.

There is no end to this in sight. He doesn't know how long the battery powering the rotting amalgamation of flesh and metal and gel that serves as his body would last. He doesn't know if it would even run dry before he went insane.

He hopes so. He doesn't want to be one of those lost, delusional robots he had come across out there. He'd rather not exist at all than exist as that.

But anything would be better than this.

The silence is oppressive. It isn't true silence, of course; Phi still creaks and groans with the weight of the ocean pressing in on all sides, and things more machine than animal occasionally crash into the darkened dome. But to him it is silent. There is no crackle of electricity. There are no clever words or thoughtful anecdotes chirped from the Omnitool. There isn't a single person left alive out there not twisted monstrous and their absence deafens him.

Even if he were to leave this chair, where would he go? For all he knows he is the last sane survivor in a world burned and mutated, and, even then, is damaged beyond repair in his own horrifying way.

What sort of a life could he have if he did leave? He had asked Catherine a simple question before -"Are we alive?" - but she had deemed it impossible to answer. He kind of wished she had though; he'd like to know what she thought, one way or another. Personally, and potentially coloured by his recent experiences, he leans towards yes. Only life, he reasons, could be this torturous. Death, as far as he could tell, was the bliss of being inexistent in the silence of the void.

He thinks it sounds wonderful.

He thinks back to a book he had once read as he leaned against the counter in that shop in Toronto. He can't remember the name or that of the philosopher, but he knew he had been Roman. He was pretty sure. His view on death had been strangely comforting at the time; that death is nothing to be afraid of because by it's very definition it is the absence of existence, and by not existing you cannot feel pain or fear or loneliness. It had been profound then and had changed his outlook on death. He thinks it might have served the original Simon well in dealing with a sudden death sentence but, to him, it is no more than a tantalising glimpse at what could be if he wasn't what he was.

He wishes not for the first time that he could join Catherine.

He wishes whoever made him would appear now to unmake him.

He wishes he could get the damn helmet that comprised his face off so that he could rip the cortex from its fleshy soil and be at once still and inexistent.

He wishes the thing had clasps he could open.

He wishes it wasn't mechanised.

He wishes a lot if things sat in that room, with his single hand clutching Catherine to his chest as his thoughts trudge sluggishly, miserably on. There is no way to tell the time. Weeks may have passed for all he knows.

He entertains the possibility once of getting up, leaving Phi. Taking Catherine with him and battling back to the Climber. Making it to one of the lettered sites - maybe even Upsilon. He could find a terminal. Plug Cath in. Listen to her rant and rave and finally agree, "Yes, you're right, I'm an idiot". Apologise. Talk. Maybe play a few games of chess; he'd seen one on a monitor somewhere. He doesn't think he could beat her, not yet, but he could get better, and they have time to kill.

He'd rather kill it with her.

He makes it to the door before he remembers it wouldn't work. He'd never even make it out of this trench. and he'd never find his way without her, much less get past the monsters single-handedly.

He would stay in Phi forever until his circuits corroded and the meat fell from his bones and the little battery that could finally couldn't. Phi would be his tomb, even if they weren't his bones he was leaving behind.

Funny. He had always liked the letter Phi. Something about it. That long meander to a sudden stop; it resonated with him. But now it tastes sour in his mouth that wasn't and rang flat in his ears that weren't.

Phi.

Fearsome.

Finally Finished.

He is finally finished.

He has no more energy to think and no more energy to move. He can't even muster the will to get angry or to be sad or scared.

He is tired.

Months have passed, they must have. Catherine is silent and cold, locked between fingers that haven't opened in weeks. They will never open again.

Though he has kept his eyes closed longer than his fingers he opens them now. His vision crackles like a

Error

badly-tuned TV monitor picking up the static of the universe. The never-ending creaking is muffled. For once the not-fish steer clear.

He lifts his eyes skyward and imagines watching the clouds roll by. He hopes that somewhere beyond the stars the other him is doing the same.

He smiles,

Battery Low

even without lips.

Please Replace Battery

It is cold. He isn't sure if he always felt cold but he

Warning: 1% Battery

is now. He thinks of Toronto in the winter and can almost kid himself that he is feeling the snow on his skin. He wonders if the snow on the ARK chaps your lips and cracks your hands.

He hopes so.

Replace Battery Immediately

He hopes so.

Warning: Powering Down

He hopes, and the human race goes extinct.