[MASSIVE PLOT SPOILER DISCUSSION] - WAU

[1minus1is0]

Rebuilding civilization? There was around 60-70 people alive by the time WAU began to rampage. Subtract from that number the people who killed themselves and were disposed of, the people who drowned out in the ocean, those who were picked off by/torn to shreds by crazed sea life or maimed by insane robots who had had human brain scans forced upon them and the supply of usable corpses is very, very slim. But how would they even build a civilization? Simon only coped with the situation because he believed firmly that he could escape it. Corpses can't reproduce, for one.

Simon's existence was a bad thing, despite what he accomplished. WAU considered the preservation of humanity in a very black and white manner. Reviving corpses, having a large quantity of human minds, despite their being insane, was okay. It isn't some racism or wanting to commit genocide; it's wanting to stop a chain of suffering that had started back when the comet hit. Having your mind forced into the body of one of your dead friends isn't alright. Catherine was only okay with it because she was explicitly a strange loner. Simon had no personal relationships with any of the bodies he inhabited, and again saw them simply as a means to an ends when saving himself - but he still says time and time again how wrong it feels to be using the bodies of those who have been killed by WAU.

The ARK ensures that everyone who was scanned is allowed to live on. Destroying WAU ensures that its experiments stop and some manner of the natural life on Earth is preserved without being mutated so that eventually something new may evolve from the ashes untouched. There is no reason to leave the WAU. It is a wide-spreading and uncontrollable AI set on desecrating the corpse of the human race - quite literally.

WAU considered the preservation of humanity in a very blue and orange manner. Nothwithstanding, you are making several very unreasonable assumptions:

1) The supply of usable corpses is at least 20 in Omicron alone, although it may be worth replaying to count. Let's assume 10. We know for sure there are at least that many robots with eye cameras on the station, with Upsilon being the best place to go once you run out of robots just laying around and LCD monitors with facetime cameras. Structural gel literally drips from the ceiling. And you don't need any special structural gel, either. So, that's at least 10 immortal cyborg bodies before you even need to START getting creative. What about personalities? Well we have one surviving disk at Theta which has, what, 12? We don't even need to start datamining WAU yet and we haven't even started duplicating people yet.

So: 10 immortal cyborgs that can survive anywhere.

2) Yes, cyborgs can reproduce. Simon-2 asexually reproduced to create Simon-3. Simon-2 himself is a hodgepodge of mix-matched code that vaguely believes it is a person from 2015 magically transported to 2104(5). Simon-2 isn't even a full scan equivalent to the ARK scans.

Furthermore, cyborgs can reproduce without corpses by just building regular robot skeletons, popping in a cortex core and pouring in some structural gel. Using corpses at first is just easier because it requires zero infrastructure or technical knowledge.

As for more personalities? Easy enough. Everywhere on Earth had those scanners. Everybody who went in for an MRI at any time in the last hundred years is now a candidate.

And if you only consider humans like us to be a life worth living? It's not like structure gel corrupts DNA or is toxic. We are told that it has no toxic or mutating properties whatsoever. You just clone the first batch of humans from the cells of the fully alive human bodies at Theta, and then they reproduce naturally.

Bam problem solved, humanity is not only saved but better and stronger than ever. You just need time and one Simon or Simon-like robot. Which we have in Simon-2 since regardless of the choice to kill him or not WAU will just bring him back and Catherine only gave Simon-3 the choice to make his caveman brain feel better about himself so he could do some useful work.

Time and work is all that the world of SOMA needs to be fixed. It is a powerful story of hope and human perseverance overcoming adversity.

Or you can be mopey and have existential crises because that is what you WANT to do, and that's the situation you WANT, not because logic or reason requires it.

further edit: you are also ignoring that WAU was able to scan people on the fly and had been doing it for months at the very least. Carl Semke-2 was inserted from the time he was piloting a drone, not from when he was scanned into the ARK.

further edit: what are your thoughts on this guy right here?