[SPOILERS] Simon's Dream

[Atik]

So, towards the end of Theta, we have a "scripted death" where Simon gets KO'd by one of the Proxies.

He seems to awaken in his apartment, dreaming about Ashley. She speaks cryptically, but there doesn't really seem to be any connection to the rest of the game. Simon doesn't get some large revelation, there's no real foreshadowing, ect.

Now, I understand that the game originally had a different plot, where dreams like this would have been more wide-spread, and I know Ashley has a model where her face is just a mass of maggots and such from this older version. But, the scene itself must have been left in for some reason.

So, what I want to take a moment to point out is that Simon seems to DREAM. This is in contrast to a discussion with Catherine, where she explains that when she goes offline, there isn't any sort of dreaming. She just loses that time when she was offline.

So, by that logic, Simon shouldn't dream either. And he awakens stuck in structure gel.

Was this a ploy by the WAU? Was Ashley simply its manifestation in his mind? Is this how all the monsters we encounter see the world?