[ Regardless of Catherine’s attachment to her crewmates, Simon couldn’t say for sure he thinks he’d be able or willing to do anything, no matter how good the cause, had he had to confront not just a possibility but a certainty that he had absolutely no escape from his situation to look forward to.

The ARK launch was his lone carrot on a stick. He braved the monster-filled obstacle course that PATHOS-II had turned into for it, and even then, he found time for his thoughts to turn to the futility of their new existence, which Catherine knows because she heard about it almost every time.

His answer to her is slightly exasperated. ] Because she hates robots. Just trust me on this one. You don’t even have to lie, you look human. You can just not bring it up.

[ He had some awareness that her social standing in her human life was weird, but Simon can feel his understanding of Catherine shifting in places just from the twenty seconds they’ve been talking about this. Like anybody, he has a baseline understanding of How to People that he assumes everybody he meets possesses, and Catherine keeps... like, not even failing at meeting these expectations, but just dodging it somehow and doing something else. It’s “be nice to Imogen” all over again. ]