Paradigm
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Oblivion
Copyright: Universal Pictures
Victoria Young, formerly of Tower 52, woke up slowly and painfully in a place she did not recognize. Her head ached, her mouth was as dry as the dust drifting over the ruins, and she could barely move. She was lying on a hard cot, in a shadowy room, surrounded by dark shapes she could not clearly recognize. All that mattered to her, however, was the man in the silver jumpsuit, bending over her with that one wrinkle between his eyebrows she had seen a hundred times before.
"Jack!" She gasped. "Oh my God, Jack, you're alive!"
"Easy," he replied, placing one hand on her chest to stop her struggling to get up. "Take it easy. You need to rest. We found you unconscious just outside your tower. What in the name of sanity were you doing?"
"Looking for you, of course! What else?"
Vicca glowered up into his calm blue eyes, which surveyed her with nothing more than the detached concern of a colleague. After watching their mission control center explode in the sky and their spare ship lose function, after waiting for two weeks for a signal from Jack that never came, after finally being forced to climb down with a rope when her supplies ran low and Jack's remembered pleas to follow him outside became her only clue, she was, quite frankly, close to panicking. Regulations didn't even begin to cover this. How could he be so calm?
"Please," he said quietly, "Try to relax. Take some water. I'll try to explain."
He picked up a glass from a nearby table; remembering her survival training (even though she'd hoped to never need it) she forced herself to sip it slowly and carefully. Despite herself, the cool moisture calmed her down; she could feel her parched body soaking it up like a flower after rain. In a world that was falling apart on her, it was somehow reassuring to feel that her body's needs were the same.
"Now explain," she ordered, once she was done. "And make it a good one."
"Okay," he said, "But before I do, there's someone I want you to meet."
He gestured, and one of the shadows surrounding them moved into the light of the lamp on the table. Her heart nearly stopped in terror at the sight of the black cloak and armor – the Scavs, she thought, they're holding us prisoner! – but then she looked up, and the stranger's face was human. He was a tall man with shoulder-length blond hair and a short beard, and the look on his face was wary, but not unkind.
"I'm Simon Sykes," he introduced himself. "Leader of what you call the Scavengers."
"They're all human, Vic," Jack added softly. "They've been human all along."
/
The story they told her, taking turns to answer her questions, was almost too wild to be believed – armies of clones, a forgotten wife, a malign artificial intelligence sent to exploit the planet, a heroic sacrifice. Her head spun. She went through two more glasses of water, yet still felt thirstier than ever. It felt like being told that the Earth was flat and the sun rose in the west. It was too much.
She had obeyed Mission Control's every command, supported Jack to the best of her ability. She had done everything right, so how could everything have gone so wrong?
"How do I know you're not lying to me?" she spat. "How do I know you're not some alien trick to mess with my mind?"
"Maybe the fact that we saved your life?" Sykes retorted, raising his eyes to the ceiling. "Are all you clones this stubborn?"
She glared back.
"You know me, Vicca," said Jack, tracing a line between them in the air. "Am I the type of guy who'd go out on a suicide mission for no reason? Well, neither was the other Jack. He blew up the Tet to save us all."
That did sound like her Jack, she had to admit. Reckless. Heroic. Fond of a grand gesture. Still, tears began to sting her eyes as she remembered Sally's promise to buy them a round of drinks. Her leader, her friend, her only companion during Jack's missions, had been nothing but a computer-generated copy of a woman long dead.
"I thought I knew you," she said to Jack, "But if nothing else is what I thought it was, why should you be? For heaven's sake, you're married. How can you be married when you're just a clone of that woman's husband? When you don't know where to find her, or if she's even alive?"
Jack sighed and looked away. Something about him, sitting next to her cot on the dirty floor with his arms around his knees, struck a familiar chord in her; he often looked like this when he was disappointed by her reaction to something he said.
She remembered.
"It's the woman in your dreams," she forced herself to ask. "Isn't it?"
He had told her about those dreams once, asking her if she had retained any similar memories from before the wipe. The look on Vicca's face must have upset him then, because he had looked away in just this manner and dismissed the subject. Vicca had been jealous, fiercely and instinctively so, as soon as he described the woman's appearance: Long black hair. Hazel eyes. Russian. Vicca knew this, because she dreamed about Julia Rusakova as well.
Vicca had always admired her intelligent, soft-spoken colleague. She would have done anything to take her place.
"I'm sorry, Vicca," said Jack, squeezing her hand, his blue eyes brimming over with regret. "But don't you see it's better this way?"
"I don't." She pulled her hand out of his grasp and turned her back on him, facing the wall. "Forgive me if I don't understand how cheating on me with a ghost makes anything better!"
"I wasn't – she's not a - "
"Harper." Sykes interrupted him with a quiet, firm tone. "I think the lady's had enough shocks for the day. Time to go."
She heard Jack scrambling to his feet. He touched her shoulder and she slapped his hand away, too worn out to care how immature that was.
"Listen to your boss, Jack," she snapped, "Leave me alone."
His uniform boots shuffled off, growing fainter along what sounded like a long tunnel or hallway. She was expecting Sykes to leave as well, but to her surprise, he stayed put, settling himself with a tired grunt in the same place Jack had been sitting. She almost ordered him to go away, but didn't; oddly enough, unused as she was to strangers, his presence was reassuring. His bluntness gave her the impression of honesty; unlike Jack, she sensed that he wasn't the type to lie or keep secrets from a member of his team.
"What an idiot," he muttered. "Must be genetic."
She turned over to face him. "Excuse me?"
"When the other one – Harper 49 – turned up here, I was all for shooting him," Sykes admitted, shaking his head. "But Beech insisted we could trust him – because of the girl, you see. Beech was right, of course. We do trust him. Doesn't mean he's not an idiot."
Vicca surprised herself with a rusty little laugh.
"Who's Beech?" she inquired.
"Our leader … our former leader, I mean. Malcolm Beech. The one who went with 49 to nuke the Tet."
Sykes' handsome features darkened, and she recognized the look of a proud man trying to hide his grief. So he'd lost someone too. Maybe this Beech had been to him what Sally – or at least the image of Sally – had been to her?
"Something about some goddamn poem he'd read," Sykes continued. "How can a man die better/than facing fearful odds/for the ashes of his fathers/and the temples of his gods?"
Vicca shuddered. "Really? Well, I for one would rather die of old age."
Sykes' mustache curled up in a faint smile, making him look surprisingly younger.
"Who knows? Now the invaders are gone, that might be a viable option."
The thought of death led to another question, one she immediately wished she hadn't thought of. All the same, it needed to be asked.
"The other Jack … 49, you called him … did he have a - a communications officer as well? Is she … what happened to her?"
"You, uh … are you sure you want to know?"
His hesitation – which she already knew was unusual – only made her more determined.
"Just tell me."
"She's dead."
Vicca squeezed her eyes shut, seeing blood on the insides of her eyelids. Picturing her own body crumpled on the ground. When she opened them, Sykes was holding out a tiny silver triangle – identical to the badge she wore on her own gray dress.
"We found her in Tower 49," he explained, passing it to her with a respectful nod. "Shot by a drone. We don't know what happened there, but whatever it was, at least it was quick. Harper 52 insisted that we bury her in our own graveyard … is that all right?"
The humanity of that gesture, and the awkward way he asked for permission, made it only slightly less horrifying. Still, she nodded.
"How many of us are there?" she whispered. "If we're number 52 … "
It was a nightmarish idea: fifty-two Viccas praying for fifty-two Jacks to come home safely. Fifty-two ghosts of Julia forever between them. Fifty-two teams who would feel lost without Sally to guide them. Unhappiness on an industrial scale.
"You were the only ones we could reach," said Sykes.
She watched him fingering the edge of his black Scavenger cloak, and decided that, whatever had happened to the other couples, she did not want to know. She squeezed Vicca 49's badge until her fingers ached. Had she died alone, or had Jack been there? Had Julia? Had it been jealousy that drove Vicca 49 to activate the drone?
She wondered what it meant that she, Vicca 52, had arrived so easily at that conclusion. Since when had her love for Jack, the best and brightest part of her lonely life, warped her thoughts into something so ugly?
Perhaps they had simply been alone too long.
"All I wanted was to finish our shift and get to Titan," she said, hating the whining edge to her own voice. "We were supposed to join a colony, make friends, be part of something greater … together … "
Tears choked her all over again as she remembered the old daydreams that were never coming true: a beautiful, silver-and-white apartment like the one at the Tower, with a view of the stars. Other women to laugh and gossip with, other men to watch Jack's baseball games with him. Co-workers who could help her out with malfunctioning equipment, and for whom she could do the same. A simple wedding in dress uniform, officiated by Sally, with vows they would write themselves. Children with blue eyes and auburn hair.
How foolish she had been.
"Hey, now … Ms. Young? Victoria?"
Something warm touched her hands, making her look up. Sykes had taken off his black leather glove to offer comfort.
"I can imagine that you must have been though hell," he said quietly, "But, at the risk of sounding cheesy, it's not the end of the world."
"Isn't it?"
"We do have a community here," he said, gesturing with his other hand. "It may not be as clean and comfortable as one of your Towers, but we've got everything we need to survive. Also, I run a tight ship - " He grinned. "Like my predecessor before me. We've got rules, and we live by them. Anyone who doesn't - " He gestured over his shoulder with one thumb and whistled, indicating exile.
Some people might have been nervous, but Vicca only felt relief. she could breathe again. She was a rule-abiding person, and always had been. Now that all the rules she lived by were rendered meaningless, Simon Sykes' warning was like a life vest thrown to someone who was drowning. For the first time since the explosion of the Tet, she could breathe again.
"I understand completely," she said. "What are the rules?"
Sykes' gray eyes, lined with wrinkles from the sun, were surprisingly kind as they met hers.
"You'll have plenty of time to learn. For now, all you need to know is the first rule: we provide for our own. Including you."
He squeezed her hand, then gently took away the badge. You don't need that, his gesture seemed to say. You've got more than a voice from a computer to watch your back now..
For the first time in what felt like decades, Victoria Young felt the beginnings of hope.