#i want him genuinely convinced and thus truly terrifyign and unhinged

[meduseld]

Anyway here’s my Ciaran Singleton theory: he’s real (as in a human character and not like an AI with his name) and took the divergent path from Maura. Namely, Maura went the neuroscience route, and Ciaran went the neuropsychology route. Both had similar reasons, namely their messed up family and obsession with people’s behavior and reasoning, and how to alter that, but Maura went nuts and bolts of brains while Ciaran went into the less defined emotional reasoning. Which helps explain their father’s attitude to each, and makes his disdain for emotion, love and mistakes all the more charged.

Point being, when the mission came about, Maura went to her brother for the emotional underpinning of the simulation meant to occupy their minds in the void of space/en route/during hibernation. But Ciaran, like Searle in Sunshine before him, is not the sanest of psych officers. Of course, if you ask him, he did it all for good. For making them confront their psychological issues.

He’s not taking advantage of what he knows, in manifesting their mental scars physically in the simulation, or in putting them in soul-breaking scenarios. He’d call it therapeutic, about exploring their relationships. That’s why he split them up, and twisted their views (I like to think Iben is a devout atheist, Ramiro took one look at Ángel’s baggage and knew he wouldn’t put himself through that for a man, Krester has 0 hangups about his sexuality and might be a little vain, Lucien is a nebbishy loser who quietly covets Jerome/Clemence’s bond and J’s authority and in getting it is even more tormented......)

The only reason he altered his sister’s simulation was to provide closure, catharsis, new perspective! He’s helping, that’s what he does. It’s not torture, Maura, he’s not playing God the way she planned to. Except, of course, in the ways in which he is.