Samantha

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## Details

### Known Physical Features

Red hair (in a ponytail), tall for her age, her father's chin

### First Mentioned

Black Box Cassette #3: MDW to YYZ

**Sam** is a secondary character who appears in the bonus Black Box episodes of Within the Wires. She was the daughter of Coleen and the Pilot.

## Biography

When Coleen became pregnant and grew emotionally attached to the baby, she named them Sam and started talking about how they would grow up. Coleen once asked the Pilot whether he would teach Sam baseball, and mused about whether Sam would grow up to be a pilot like them. The Pilot was adamant that she stop doing this, but she was determined to keep her baby.

On their last night together, Coleen told the Pilot about the Cradle, which was supposedly a group of people who farmed in the woods, made art and raised children. Coleen described them as a commune, while Pilot called them a cult, who thieved and raided the Society. Coleen left that night, saying that she wouldn't allow Sam to be taken away, and at least this way she could keep her memories of everything she loved. She went to a branch in the Cradle in Ouachita, as planned.

Sam seemingly grew up happy in the Cradle amongst other children. Years later, when she was around nine years old, the Pilot tracked down Coleen in the Ouachita mountains. When he asked, she told him where to find Samantha, and he was escorted there by another Cradler. He did not approach Sam as she played in the river with the other children, wielding a long stick, but observed that she had inherited her mother's hair, voice, height, and walk, and the Pilot's chin. He left without speaking to her, or even making himself known to her.

Not long after the Pilot left, the Cradle was seemingly attacked by IID agents, and Sam escaped. The Pilot was sent an urgent message from the SCL control tower saying that his wife was in a serious accident. This led him to pick up Sam, but she did not tell him about what happened or explain how she had known to contact him, or how to do so. He did not pressure her to speak, although he was worried about Coleen. As they approached the refueling station, he told her that soon they would have to make a decision. Since he couldn't take Sam back to the Cradle campsite and the whole area would be crawling with IID agents, it would be difficult to find anyone she knew from the Cradle even if he knew how. The legal thing to do would be to take her to a Registry Office and get her signed in to a Childhood Centre, where she would be comfortable and safe for the next few months. Her memory would be erased when she turned ten, but that might have been better than living with the trauma of being separated from her mom and losing her home. He thought perhaps if he didn't tell them the whole truth, they wouldn't erase his memory completely and he could even still visit sometimes, and reconnect her with Coleen if he ever found her. He spoke to the merits of the Society, being provided for, getting an education, being able to travel, and assured her that she would be happy.

The second option was that they offload the cargo at the refueling station so they were not branded as thieves and kept flying. They could stick together, find somewhere to lay low and get to know each other. He knew what the right decision was, but didn't know what he wanted to do. The decision involved two of them, though - he asked Sam what she wanted.

## Additional info

* The name "Samantha" is thought to be a feminine form of the name "Samuel" meaning either "name of God" or "God has heard" in the Bible, with the suffix -antha originating from the Greek "anthos" meaning "flower"
* When Pilot saw Sam for the first time, she was wearing her red hair in a ponytail and wearing a green shirt. He identified her as having her mother's hair, voice, height, and walk, and the Pilot's chin.
* Strangely, there seems to be a discrepancy about Sam's age. In BB Cassette #3, Pilot mentions that she would be "a teenager" but when he meets her in BB #9, she is nine years old, and he claims it has been "almost a decade" since he has seen Coleen. This is likely a continuity error.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Black Box Cassette #3: MDW to YYZ
2. ↑ Black Box Cassette #7: MSY to HOU
3. ↑ Black Box, Cassette #9: SEA to TIL, TIL to ABQ
4. ↑ Black Box Cassette #10: ABQ to SCL, LIT to ???