[MASSIVE PLOT SPOILER DISCUSSION] - WAU

[1minus1is0]

Where did he describe this?

Its written on the walls in Delta and i think there is a note in that office.

1) Where did the WAU originate from, was it an AI constructed by humans as an experiment before the asteroid hit the earth?

WAU was one of the research projects on or parallel to structure gel. It was Ross and Sarang and somebody named Dahl and probably others, who were the top secret Alpha staff. Ross and Co were instrumental in first removing all safety constraints from WAU, and then letting it loose on all the station's systems so that it could upkeep, repair and maintain the systems. It's not clear how it merged to be a structure gel entity or when, or if it was always the project like that. But certainly before the above events.

2) Some notes in Omicron say that the WAU tried all it could to get to Ross's body in order to keep him alive. But at that point Ross already wanted to stop the WAU, so why did it try to get to him to keep him alive instead of letting him die?
Or did I understand it wrong and it wanted to kill him because he was kept alive by the other people at Omicron?

Because the WAU is not a thinking thing the way humans are. It is some kind of other type of thinking thing. It's directive was to preserve humans, and Ross was a human at that point, although a corpse. That note kinda contradicts the whole "blow up brainboxes to save itself" thing. Not clear why it didn't kill Ross if it was willing to kill organics. It may even have been an accident caused by trying to revive Ross remotely with EM waves, which would be hilarious. One of the key points in SOMA is that outside from the prime directive nobody knows what WAU is thinking, we can only speculate from its actions.

edit: also Ross was stone cold dead when he got to Omicron.

3) Isn't Catherine-2 (and Simon-2 for that matter) infected by / linked to the WAU? If so, why was Catherine-2 still determined to launch the ARK instead of using Simon-2 to do stuff for the WAU?
And wouldn't that imply that the WAU got on the ARK when she copied herself onto it?

Yes. But it is clear that WAU connection is not mind control. WAU doesn't have a mind that works that way, at least at that point. WAU is not on the ARK because we would have noticed structure gel, and the last human was watching it. presumably she knew how to prevent contamination and that was what the secure lock in her chair was. Or maybe he did. We don't know. Personal theory is that WAU did not get on the ARK, and that WAU does not control the monsters directly.