Coleen

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## Details

### Family

The Pilot (ex-husband), Samantha (daughter)

### First Mentioned

Black Box Cassette #3: MDW to YYZ

**Coleen** is a secondary character who appears in the bonus Black Box episodes of Within the Wires. She was the ex-wife of the Pilot who helped Hester Wells cross the world.

## Biography

Coleen and her husband met shortly after he graduated college. At the time, he had an old Blue Heeler dog named Danny who was blind and had joint problems in his hind legs. In the last three years of his life, he had to wear homemade diapers and be kept indoors because he couldn't control his bowels. Pilot and Coleen couldn't afford to hire a dog-sitter when they went on their honeymoon, so they took Danny with them. They had to take him everywhere, and they didn't mind because they loved him; he was a smart, sweet, obedient dog, and he used to curl up between them in bed and nestle his head in the Pilot's elbow. About a year after they got married, he died asleep in bed, and they both cried all the next day and at intermittent times for a week after.

Coleen was at one point colleagues with a journalist, potentially Lupe Alvarez. Pilot recalled that the journalist and Coleen had not particularly got on, but they were polite to one another. They lost touch sometime in the early 60s or before.

When he was in his early 30s, Coleen became pregnant and grew emotionally attached to the baby, naming them Sam and 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, as the rules of the Society dictated that Sam would be taken away from them once they were born, and people could be arrested for trying to hold on to their babies, at which point they would go through regimen that erased the ordeal - and sometimes other things, too.

Coleen was determined to keep her baby, and was willing to leave her husband behind to do so. Before she left, the Pilot happened to see the name "Ouachita" in her planner, which was lying open on her nightstand with some notes. 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.

Over the years, Coleen grew to be disaffected by the absense of her husband, and fully integrated herself into life with the Cradle, looking after her daughter, Samantha. Years later, the Pilot tracked down Coleen in the Ouachita mountains. He took his car up a long, winding dirt road and when the track was blocked by a log barricade, he continued along it on foot. After reaching a clearing, two Cradlers came up behind him armed with knives and a rifle, and after some convincing they agreed to blindfold him and lead him to the commune.

One of the guards, a one-eyed woman named Helen, unblindfolded him and escorted him to a barn where Coleen was knitting. He was unable to sum up all his feelings in words and simply ended up saying, "Hi." She returned the greeting, not appearing to feel strongly about his sudden appearance at the commune. He asked for a hug, and she obliged, as if they were casual friendly acquaintances. He realised that despite how much he still loved her, he still couldn't want the life she had. When he asked, she told him where to find Samantha, and he was escorted there by Helen. Sam had inherited her mother's hair, voice, height, and walk, and the Pilot's chin.

Not long after the Pilot left, the Cradle was seemingly attacked by IID agents, and although Sam escaped, it was not clear what happened to Coleen. 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.

## Additional info

* The name "Coleen" is derived from the Irish word "cailín" meaning "girl" and came into use through Irish immigrants to America

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Black Box Cassette #3: MDW to YYZ
2. ↑ Black Box Cassette #5: HOU to LAX
3. ↑ Black Box Cassette #6: LAX to SEA, SEA to YUL, YUL to MSY
4. ↑ Black Box Cassette #7: MSY to HOU
5. ↑ Black Box, Cassette #9: SEA to TIL, TIL to ABQ
6. ↑ Black Box Cassette #10: ABQ to SCL, LIT to ???