The Pilot

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## Details

### Family

Coleen (ex-wife), Samantha (daughter), Linda (mother or aunt), unnamed grandfather

### First Mentioned

(in abstract) Season 2, Cassette #10: Karikari Contemporary Gallery (1986)

## Voice

### First Heard

Black Box Cassette #1: PHL to PWM

**The Pilot** is an unnamed secondary character that appears in the bonus Black Box episodes of Within the Wires. He helped Hester get from Philadelphia to Aotearoa after her escape from the Institute.

> *"I never knew either of my parents, but I have this letter from my grandfather. I don’t even-- I don’t even know it that’s true. It could be some other man, unrelated. These are my shoes, and I don’t know how his letter would have gotten into my shoes. I don’t think it’s a bad thing for people to be curious about their families, really."* **--Pilot in *Black Box Cassette #1: PHL to PWM***
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## Biography

### Early Life

The Pilot was born near Galveston, Texas, which was mostly destroyed during the Great Reckoning. As an adult could recall Bishop's Palace standing in ruins during his childhood.

When he was young, he had a fear of dogs, which the caretakers trained out of him. When he was almost 13, he was running down a hill "for no reason, probably" and tripped, tearing the sole off his shoe. Inside was a letter dated 1915, which he assumes was from his grandfather, to his daughter Linda, who he assumes is either his mother or his aunt. The first line of the letter read:

> *"The Mayor died today, and no one wants his job."*
>
>

From this letter, he learned that his grandfather grew up in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood called Yellowhook. This neighborhood was one of the only ones in Brooklyn to survive the Reckoning. At some point, the Pilot visited Yellowhook and tried to find the address written on the letter, which was 71st street, but the houses had mostly fallen apart.

In the letter, the Pilot's grandfather talked about how malaria and influenza were infecting the block, and most people stayed indoors for fear of getting sick.

As a teenager, he wrote a love letter to a friend at school. The reason he wrote it down was not because he was shy or bad at expressing themselves, as he said, it was so that the girl wouldn't be able to cut him off before he had finished, and he wouldn't have to see her disappointed face. The girl, Keisa, talked to him later about the "creepy" unsigned note, and he agreed that it was creepy and promised to ask around to figure out who wrote it. They didn't talk about it again, and eventually stopped talking altogether.

At school, the Pilot showed an aptitude for mechanical things and displayed vehicle proficiency. He went on to drive many different vehicles, including cars and buses. As part of a special programme, they learned to drive a tank, one of the only ones left in existence. He supposed they did this partly to learn about mechanical things and partly to learn about the dangers of man.

When he was 20 years old, he got his pilot's licence. He flew passengers at first, but moved on to cargo and found he enjoyed it better, with less customer satisfaction involved. His cargo job, though possibly his passenger job too, was with KR Development.

He met Coleen shortly after graduating 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, but at the same time, the freedom from the burden was an immense relief.

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.

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.

Once he was alone for more or less the first time in his life, the Pilot tried to embrace solitude by going camping by himself at Grand Rapids in Michigan. He borrowed a truck from one of the mechanics he worked with, Rhonda. It rained, and he was cold, miserable, and terrified of the forest - but he stayed out there, because he was more scared of being on his own in their everyday life. He later took up whittling, which he didn't profess to be very good at. He started telling people that he and his wife had grown apart and she had left - boring and sad, unlike the truth, which was interesting and sad. At some point they stopped being able to recall the name Ouachita, and eventually stopped recalling that he had seen a word in her planner at all.

At some point when he used to smoke, he was in Montreal overnight. At 1AM, he was out on the street smoking, and he watched a bear walk down the street in silence. He backed up a little towards the building, but not enough that he couldn't watch it go. In his memory, the street was totally deserted and silent, although he reasoned that there must have been noise, such as the neon lights, the sound of his breath, and the wind whistling through the buildings.

Another time in Montreal, he lost his wallet. He wasn't sure if it was stolen or had simply fallen out of his pocket, but he spent a couple of hours retracing his steps to try and find it - he wouldn't have cared so much, but his wedding ring was inside it. He didn't find it, and cancelled his cards and got them replaced. Six months later, he returned to Montreal, in a different part of the city, and was recognised in a bar he visited by the bartender. When questioned, he said that he had his wallet behind the counter, as someone had handed it in after it was left on a table. There was nothing missing from the wallet, and he had no idea how it had got there.

He kept the same plane as they had in their 20s all through his life, which was why the cargo plane they used to smuggle passengers had a row of seats at the back - he said these were "for freeloaders" although he enjoyed having someone in the plane to talk to, rather than just himself or the plane. Interestingly, this was a definite violation of the law despite his self-proclamation of being somebody who followed the rules.

The Pilot had heard rumours from other pilots about a hospital in the middle of nowhere in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and that others were wary about flying around there. His friend Callie told him there was a facility called the Institute which was heavily secure and did experiments on criminals - or sometimes artists, miscreants, subversives, the poor, and children, although nobody had any proof.

### Helping Hester

In about 1984, the Pilot's friend Paloma asked him to transport a woman going by the name Georgia from Philadelphia to Portland. He knew this was not her real name, and said that he would choose a new one for her when he introduced her to his friends (Callie, Leah, and Kara), who she would be staying with before the next plane ride.

Callie, Leah, and Kara were theatre people, who he said would enjoy spending time with another artist. He knew Leah from when he lived in Fort Worth, and she was a mechanic. The Pilot said they would probably rope "Georgia" into their theatre, but that it would probably be fun.

He instructed her to go to the Karibu Diner on the 14th at 21:00, where they could meet for dinner and work out how to get her onto his next flight. He said he could not get her all the way home, but could eventually take her to South America, where he had a friend that could get her on a boat.

The Pilot corresponded with Callie, Leah, and Kara while their guest was staying with them, and heard that she seemed distant, and perhaps paranoid, and they had been worried about her. The next morning, while the Pilot was taking off, he thought he saw someone matching a similar description to the shady figure Hester had described, and took the takeoff a little too fast, although he assured himself and Hester that he had simply been paranoid.

The plan upon landing in Chicago was for his friend Jen (he promised she could trust her absolutely) to sneak Hester home with her, and for the Pilot to arrange the next flight, which would either be to Nebraska, Montana, or Vegas. The plan went wrong, in some way related to the men in suits and sunglasses, with cigarettes and and unpleasant dog pursuing Hester. They were in Chicago for three weeks, and at one point the Pilot had to hide from the Society agents in a warehouse and hold his breath.

On the way to Toronto, he gave her a false name, April Callins, which she would use while she stayed with a man called Gabriel for one night before getting to Houston, and from there San Jose or Tegucigalpa. He said that soon he would find someone they could trust who could get a ship to Auckland from Buenos Aires or Santiago and get Hester on her way home.

However, things again did not go to plan. At some point during the week, they were involved in a car chase, where Hester drove. They escaped without any major injuries, although the Pilot did get a bullet graze on his arm, which he felt quite proud of. Hester divulged her and Oleta's history to the Pilot and explained why she needed his help getting across the world, and why she was being pursued by smoking men with unpleasant dogs. The Pilot later hoped that she didn't tell him just because she felt like she owed it to him. He asked Hester what she would do if Oleta wasn't in Aotearoa when she got there, but then disregarded the question as unnecessarily paranoid and cruel.

He projected that at four o clock, they would land in Atlanta, and there would be a cargo ship going to Sydney from Valparaíso that his friend could get her on. In order to get on it, the Pilot would help Hester get to Santiago with the aid of some "light fraud" and a friend who was willing to switch around some flight records for them. The Pilot volunteered ("selfishly") to help get Hester all the way to Valparaíso by catching a bus or hitchhiking as he had become invested in her wellbeing and enjoyed being part of the story.

He said they would be sad to say goodbye to Hester, as she had made for very interesting company. She inspired him with her very brave actions and her commitment to changing her life for the better. He said he had never been that kind of person, although he wished he had been, for his wife and child. As he came in to land, he mused about how sometimes you just had to accept the limitations of what you were capable of. He felt like Hester was probably going to tell him they were wrong about that. He considered that maybe he could find Sam.

### Alone Again

Unfortunately, the journey did not end as planned. The Pilot was delayed longer than the week he had promised, and in the meantime their contact Robert, who was supposed to be sheltering Hester, cut off contact and possibly tried to turn her in. On returning to Atlanta, the Pilot could not find Robert or Hester, and 'Missing Person' posters with Hester's name and face had been posted all over the city. After a failed attempt to learn what had happened from a neighbour, he realised they were being watched by someone in a van and approached them under the guise of asking for directions. The man in sunglasses did not answer him, successfully creeping them out, and he made their exit as calmly and quickly as possible.

He spent days losing hope of finding Hester, and started to feel some relief from the stress of not being an active smuggler/fugitive. However, he decided to continue searching, as he was worried about her, although he didn't know how to go about the search. He found more 'Missing' posters when he flew into Houston and started tearing them down, although he kept a couple. He drove around the city and found that there were more of them in the west, as well as men in sunglasses lurking on street corners.

The Pilot went to a print shop and designed a flyer meant for her, offering a chance to win a great deal on flights to Santiago and beyond, at a specific time and place the next day (March 14). He added that the special phrase "Use the orange button to talk" (which is how Hester communicated with the Pilot on previous flights) must be used. Despite their generous distribution door-to-door, nobody turned up to respond to the message.

On his way to Los Angeles, he talked into the empty plane as though Hester was there. He hoped she didn't think he'd abandoned her, and apologised to her on multiple counts. He also seemed to disregard or overwrite some things as he was saying them, suggesting that he was planning what he would say to her once he found her. As he left LA, he reflected that he didn't like the city much, and didn't "fit" there. That wrongness was thrilling at first, but quickly wore them out, and he always ended up itching to leave after a day. However, he did like the view as he traveled up the coast to Seattle, and how the landscape transformed.

In Montreal, he ran into an old associate of Coleen's, who he hadn't seen in twenty years or more. He chatted with the woman, catching up, and she implied that she was working in journalism but wouldn't be pressed for any details, although the government was potentially involved in her work. She said that she had observed over the last few weeks that a strange agency she was watching seemed to be looking for someone, coordinating their efforts into leaving a misleading trail of flyers and trying to lure someone out. The agency knew that this person they were looking for was a woman, and which ride she hitched out of Atlanta, that she spent time in Birmingham, and then was in Jackson, before finding someone to take her to New Orleans.

The Pilot confessed that he was meant to be heading to Kansas City, but managed to swap that job out with a friend so that they could fly to Louisiana and try to track down Hester before anyone else did.

### Searching

While in Little Rock, Arkansas, the Pilot was scheduled a delivery of crates into the Ouachita Mountains with no recipient address and almost no other information except greensheets with special delivery instructions that required a driver. The incident made him recall Coleen's mysterious affiliation with Ouachita, in a sudden flood of memory.

The Pilot was asked to transport Karen Roberts from New Orleans to Houston urgently, which he agreed to. During the flight, he thanked Karen for all her work with KR Development, which revitalised the American continents after the Reckoning. Just before they began their descent, the Pilot asked Karen if she might be able to put him in touch with somebody who could help him find his family. He wanted to know whether anybody in KR Development could help him find Coleen's settlement, possibly in the Ouachita Mountains, so that he could reunite with her and Sam. He supposed that if Karen told him, she'd have to kill him, but planned to contact Karen's assistant, Emma, the next day, just to "check" that everything was okay, and receive any messages she might have had for him. He thanked her one last time.

Later the Pilot transported a cigarette-smoking man with a dog who made him nervous from Los Angeles to Seattle. According to the Pilot's friend Charlie, who had put them in contact, he had waited a whole week to fly specifically with him, rather than take a flight with some other pilot. While rambling to him, the Pilot mentioned that he was never sure what it was people like him did for a living, although he always assumed it was government work for some reason.

The next passenger they took on a flight was Paloma, who claimed to have found Hester in Albuquerque. He remarked to her that he could still smell the cigarette smoke from his previous passenger. On the way to Albuquerque from Seattle, the Pilot stopped in Little Rock, acting on information from Karen about Coleen's Cradle. 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. On the walk, he broke two toes and got his face cut badly by a branch.

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, his daughter, and he was escorted there by Helen.

When he saw her, Sam was playing in the river with a long stick. She was a tall nine-year-old redhead with a ponytail in a green shirt who had her mother's hair, voice, height, walk, and the Pilot's chin. He watched her playing with the other children by the river for half an hour, but did not catch her attention, deciding it would be unfair to her when he knew he couldn't stay in the Cradle. Eventually, he thanked Helen and she took him back to the clearing blindfolded, where he descended the mountain again. On returning to the motel in Little Rock, he found a magnetic tracker under the wheel casing of his car and smelled cigarette smoke outside his hotel room that night. He hoped he hadn't put Coleen and Sam in danger.

Back in the plane on the way to Albuquerque, the Pilot recounted the encounter to Paloma and expressed his relief at her having found Hester, looking forward to seeing her again.

### Reunion

The Pilot picked up Hester from Albuquerque, where she had been laying low working as a waitress named "Nell", to fly her to Santiago de Chile and get her on a boat bound for Aotearoa. He told her about his search for her and about finding Sam, although he began to second-guess his decision not to try and talk to her. He found himself wondering about her interests, if she could whistle, and other things that seemed relevant now that she was a real person in his mind and not a concept. He wondered if the Society was far enough from the Great Reckoning, with enough knowledge of how family systems cause tribalism and violence, that people might be allowed to know their children again. Since the Pilot was raised outside of a family system, he didn't have the tribalistic values of the old society to pass on, so the cycle could be broken. He then dismissed the idea, saying that many scholars and learned people have studied the issue much closer than he had and probably knew what they were talking about.

In the midst of his thoughts, he was contacted by the control tower at SCL with an urgent message and told that his wife had been in an accident. The Pilot radioed ahead to his friend Alejandro, who would wait on the runway for Hester and help her on her way to Valparaíso and a boat. He apologised profusely to Hester for not seeing her off properly, but he had to turn the plane around as soon as they landed and fly back to Little Rock. He did not stop to offload his cargo or make any of the flight arrangements that he would normally have to. Somehow he was able to pick up Sam, who was on her own, and they took off again. He asked a few questions, worrying about Coleen, but said she doesn't have to answer and he will stop talking if she wants him to.

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 Pilot's least favourite kind of weather to travel in is rain, even though it's not that hard, because it "just seems like a bad idea."
* The fake Missing Person posters that were put up during the men with cigarettes' pursuit of Hester stated that she had last been seen in August of 1983. Assuming they chose a date not too far from the present as to appear a lost cause, this puts the Pilot's trip to Houston in March 1984.
* A fan on Reddit pointed out that in our world, the area known as Yellow Hook lost that name and became Bay Ridge in the mid 19th century, because of associations with the Yellow Fever. Because this area of Brooklyn has evidently kept the name Yellow Hook in the Pilot's time, this fan speculates that the timeline of 'Within the Wires' as a whole diverges at least as early as 1853.
* In the final chapter of *You Feel It Just Below the Ribs*, Miriam Gregory is picked up and driven to the next airport by a man named Blake. Blake is shown to be very fascinated by planes, saying that he loves excuses to go to the airport and watch the planes take off. It is possible that person was the Pilot, unknowingly helping another person to escape the Institute some ten years before meeting Hester.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Black Box Cassette #2: PWM to MDW
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Black Box Cassette #3: MDW to YYZ
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Black Box Cassette #1: PHL to PWM
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Black Box Cassette #4: YYZ to ATL
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Black Box Cassette #5: HOU to LAX
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Black Box Cassette #7: MSY to HOU
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Black Box Cassette #6: LAX to SEA, SEA to YUL, YUL to MSY
8. ↑ Black Box Cassette #8: LAX to SEA
9. ↑ Black Box, Cassette #9: SEA to TIL, TIL to ABQ
10. ↑ Black Box Cassette #10: ABQ to SCL, LIT to ???
11. ↑ The WTW Timeline Diverges Earlier Than Previously Suspected - Reddit
12. ↑ You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.363-365