Simon Jarrett

Simon Jarrett is the main protagonist of the 2015 science fiction survival horror video game SOMA. After a near fatal car crash, he suffers from severe bleeding of the brain. After a brain scan, he finds his consciousness transferred into a robot body 100 years into the future.
He was voiced by Jared Zeus, with his face being modeled after Philipp Zimmermann.
==Appearance==
When human, Simon was a Caucasian male with brown hair and brown eyes, at an average weight and at a substantial height, being 6'6". During the true events of SOMA, his body appears as a feminine thin diving suit with a robotic device in place of a head inside said suit. The feminine look of the body was due to a woman being the template for the body. Later in the game, Simon is transferred into another diving suit, albeit much stronger and bulkier, with the same robotic device acting as the head.
==Biography==
===History===
Simon's past life is left unexplored, but what is known is that he lives in Toronto, Canada, likely being born and raised in that city. He ran a bookstore with two close friends, one of them being a woman named Ashley Hall, which Simon was romantically interested in. Before the events of the game, Simon was driving somewhere with Ashley in the passenger seat. A woman ran a red light as she was being distracted by her kids and hit Simon's car. The woman and her children survived with bruises, while Ashley unfortunately died on the scene by having blood fill her lungs. The impact also gave Simon brain damage, shortening his life expectancy without treatment.
Simon's doctor, David Munshi, had created a treatment for Simon which expanded his life. Munshi was also doing research with brain scans, something that Simon agreed on. Simon died at age 26, but on his deathbed, he allowed Simon's brain scan to be used for research. Because of this, the game's true plot begins, as his brain scan is uploaded into a robotic body.
===Events of SOMA===
In 2104, Simon suddenly "wakes up" in an abandoned storage facility in an underwater research station known as PATHOS-II. His brain scan was kept in storage, and was placed into a human-robotic hybrid body. This creation is a result of a powerful overseeing AI known as The Warden Unit (commonly known as the "WAU"). The WAU is responsible for taking brain scans of people and placing them into robotic bodies, as its primary objective is to "preserve humanity at all costs". However, the AI does not understand the true nature of being human, so it ends up haphazardly placing them into robots, leaving them with confusion, cognitive dissonance and sometimes hostility.
Many of the WAU's creations are monstrous, deformed, hostile and animalistic beings that act as the game's main enemies. Simon is horrified and confused and the new environment and different time period he has suddenly "transported" to, and wanders PATHOS-II in search of answers. He comes across an "omnitool", allowing him to open doors and activate things throughout the game. He also comes across "Mockingbirds", which are robots with a human consciousness put into them. Simon also encounters people being kept alive by the WAU, albeit in a comatose state.
Simon is contacted by a Catherine Chun, who is a consciousness placed into an AI. Just like the real life Simon, Catherine's human form is dead. Catherine Chun explains that she is at site Lambda. While Simon makes his way there, he enters a room that locks itself and completely floods, this reveals that Simon is not in his own body, but is actually in a unique diving ductile diving suit. This suit does not reveal itself until after the room floods, as his mind was simply projecting a normal body as a coping mechanism.
Simon reaches Lambda, and finally meets Catherine Chun, and his disappointed to find that Catherine is another AI, and not an actual human. Just before Simon entered the room Catherine was in, a flesher attacked the machine she was in, leaving it lying on the floor, damaged. Simon rectifies this problem by transferring her consciousness onto the omnitool he found. This allows Catherine to access any machine that the omnitool is attached to, helping Simon make progress throughout his journey through PATHOS-II.
Catherine explains to Simon that in 2103, a comet collided with Earth, wiping nearly all life on the surface. The only survivors were members of the PATHOS-II crew, who were unaffected by the comet's impact. Catherine also reveals that she was working on a way to preserve humanity, which was to transfer brain scans of the crew to a device called the ARK. The ARK (Artificial Reality Capsule) is a virtual paradise, where the consciousness of the crew members can "live on". However, for the ARK to work, it needs to be launched into space.
The ARK is located at site Tau, where Simon and Catherine travel. Simon collects Catherine's cortex chip, inserting it into the omnitool, which is what allows Catherine to be carried around within the tool. After leaving Lambda, Simon comes across an emergency vessel from a ship known as the CURIE, while attempting to avoid the flesher, one of WAU's hostile creations, Simon destabilizes the ship's reactor. This allows the vessel to work, which Catherine attempts to pilot to safety. Unfortunately, the CURIE explodes and shoves the vessel off of a plateau, landing near site Delta.
Simon calls a zeppelin, taking himself and Catherine to Theta. They discover a vessel known as the "DUNBAT", a submarine, which can be used to travel to Tau. Unfortunately, it was blocked by a quarantine, so Simon and Catherine used a brain scan of a former staff member, Brandon Wan, to get the security cipher. Once the DUNBAT is reached, it's discovered to be yet another Mockingbird, which panics and escapes into the ocean. Simon then discovers that his body is a corpse of a woman known as Imogen Reed, which is inside a diving suit fused with a chemical known as structure gel.
To access Tau, Simon needs a bulkier, stronger diving suit, given the depth and water pressure of the area. Before entering Omicron, Simon begins to see Johan Ross. Ross was yet another former staff member of PATHOS-II, and one of WAU's creators. Despite his mutated appearance and strange nature, he appears to retain his original personality, and is willing to do anything to stop the WAU. He keeps appearing and reappearing like a ghost, even helping Simon access some areas by manipulating some of the technology.
After Simon gathers the materials needed to maintain a stronger diving suit (which is known as the "Haimatsu Power Suit"), Catherine copies Simon's consciousness into the new diving suit. This has a side effect, however, as this leaves behind a copy of Simon's mind in the previous suit. This infuriates Simon, slandering Catherine and explaining the horrors he will go through once he wakes up, just like the original Simon did. Here, Simon has the choice of disconnecting his power so that he dies, or simply leave him there, to eventually wake up alone and confused.
With Simon now in the Haimatsu Power Suit, he is able to traverse the deep depths of the ocean with the use of an elevator, taking Catherine with him. Once the elevator reaches the bottom, Simon escapes the clutches of hostile deep sea creatures, which have also been mutated by the WAU, and finally reaches Tau. Inside, he evades a reanimated staff member by the name of Jin Yoshida, who is one of the most dangerous enemies in the game. Simon then comes across the last human on Earth, Sarah Lindwall, who is being kept alive on life support, and is just barely outside of the WAU's reach.
The ARK is found in Lindwall's room, who requests that Simon disable her life support, ending her frail and painful existance. Whether Simon does this or not is up to the player. Simon then uses a transport system for the ARK, which takes it to site Phi. While Simon goes to Phi, Johan Ross appears once again and explains that the WAU's creation was a mistake, and that Simon must stop it. Ross explains that the chemicals inside Simon's body contain something that would poison the WAU, and finally kill it. Once Simon reaches the very heart of the WAU, it is up to the player to stick his arm inside and poison it, or simply do nothing.
Either choice leaves Ross appearing in front of Simon, ready to kill him. Just before Ross is able to do anything, a massive mutated squid known as the Leviathan bursts in from the floor and devours Ross, giving Simon enough of a distraction to escape. While Simon goes to Phi, the Leviathan then turns its attention to him, with Simon having to evade the giant creature. Once at Phi, Catherine and Simon finally launch the ARK. Simon notices that his conciousness is still at PATHOS-II, not on the ARK. Catherine explains that it didn't work that way, and that it simply copied the consciousness of the two and placed it on the ARK.
This leaves Simon confused and disappointed. Catherine explains that it's a "coin toss", where either the consciousness is copied over, or the current one moves on while the copy is left behind, which was the case for both Simon and Catherine. Simon becomes furious, accusing Catherine of lying about the mission, causing Catherine to angrily retort and overload her cortex chip and the omnitool she's inside of, completely frying it. This leaves Simon all alone, in the dark depths of PATHOS-II, with his fate unknown.
After the game's credits, a copy of Simon wakes up on the ARK, completely unaware of his copy back at PATHOS-II. He sees that the ARK is a beautiful, virtual utopia. There, he finds a copy of Catherine, seemingly in her human form, and the two embrace. The ARK is then seen floating through space, with the Sun powering the capsule for years to come, due to its solar panels.
==Personality==
At the beginning of the game, Simon appeared to be a friendly, carefree and easygoing guy. After the car crash he suffers, his traits remain, albeit more cautious and possibly self-conscious. After waking up in PATHOS-II 100 years later, the sudden change in atmosphere and time period change his easygoing nature into that of someone more dejected, paranoid and confused. With the horrific scenery found around the game, these traits are perfectly justified.
Seeing as his complete consciousness is uploaded into a new body, he retains all of his old traits and memories, and despite the new horrors he faces throughout the game, his friendly and understanding nature have not dissipated. This is seen with his interactions with Catherine Chun and many new forms of AI Simon comes across, many of which are also human personalities uploaded into robots.
At the very end of the game, Simon becomes overwhelmingly furious that his consciousness did not get uploaded into the ARK prior to being launched into space, despite Catherine explaining the mechanics of the ARK many times to Simon. Once Catherine's rage destroys her AI and leaves Simon alone in the depths of PATHOS-II, it is extremely likely that he becomes completely hopeless and lost, as he is then all alone in PATHOS-II.
==Gallery==
simon_jarrett_copy.png|Simon seeing his own body after being transferred into another.
simon_body_info.png|Information of Simon's original body before being transferred into another.
==External Links==
*Simon Jarrett at the SOMA Wiki
Category:Video Game Heroes
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