If something had happened to 2B, if she’d left the ship before they ended up here, 9S would have known about it. They can sense each other’s black boxes. So it doesn’t make any sense for her to have disappeared under their noses somehow. Right? Right. ]
It’s not her. I just saw her- [ There are too many variables here for Simon’s liking, still. They were on Hathaway’s ship one second and then here the next- except the last time he thought that, the ‘second’ turned out to be 90 years. And you can’t ever really say you just saw 2B, either. She isn’t exactly the kind of person you run into every day.
But he doubles down, insistent. ] She wouldn’t have gone back to Earth.
[ elbows on his knees, he drops his face into his hands, in the sort of way where the heels of his palms would be against his eyebrows, if he still had those. A sudden death is better than knowing what’s coming - anything is better than that, in Simon’s deeply biased opinion - but he can’t start to question whether what A2 claims she did was really necessary, whether there could really have been no other way, without feeling a queasy pang of guilt, hearing Catherine’s reassurance like she was tiptoeing across ice. I get attached to them too... but, in this case... it had to be done.
He doesn’t turn his head, but he glances over at A2 again for just a moment when he speaks, almost weakly, as if his compulsion to ask has outlived his ability to steel himself for the answers. ]
no subject
If something had happened to 2B, if she’d left the ship before they ended up here, 9S would have known about it. They can sense each other’s black boxes. So it doesn’t make any sense for her to have disappeared under their noses somehow. Right? Right. ]
It’s not her. I just saw her- [ There are too many variables here for Simon’s liking, still. They were on Hathaway’s ship one second and then here the next- except the last time he thought that, the ‘second’ turned out to be 90 years. And you can’t ever really say you just saw 2B, either. She isn’t exactly the kind of person you run into every day.
But he doubles down, insistent. ] She wouldn’t have gone back to Earth.
[ elbows on his knees, he drops his face into his hands, in the sort of way where the heels of his palms would be against his eyebrows, if he still had those. A sudden death is better than knowing what’s coming - anything is better than that, in Simon’s deeply biased opinion - but he can’t start to question whether what A2 claims she did was really necessary, whether there could really have been no other way, without feeling a queasy pang of guilt, hearing Catherine’s reassurance like she was tiptoeing across ice. I get attached to them too... but, in this case... it had to be done.
He doesn’t turn his head, but he glances over at A2 again for just a moment when he speaks, almost weakly, as if his compulsion to ask has outlived his ability to steel himself for the answers. ]
You were friends?