A/N:
So I have a theory that the house on the lake was actually built by a Jack Harper.
Maybe the very early sets of Jack & Victoria were chock full of memories.
Maybe an early Jack had all his memories without any dream triggers and decided to run away from Victoria, just because he was so confused about being back on Earth with no return trip memories, and where was Julia?
So he builds the lake house, but is forced to return to Victoria, and then she tells the Tet they're no longer effective, bing bang boom, now it's time to activate a new team.
Eventually all his memories start taking longer and longer to return, until we reach the 49th Jack and Victoria, and the Tet has had to severely wipe them, and imprint the drone like façade.
But unfortunately, Jack's unconscious mind is still strong, and the dreams begin occurring, triggering his daytime memory recall.
Eventually the events of Oblivion occur, and by then, Jack has been sneaking off to his lake house for a few weeks.
It feels like home to him, because he built it. 49 didn't, but the very first Jack did.
All this is just my theory, and I don't own the characters, but i do own the idea. Forgive any liberties i've taken, as it's merely all guesswork.
Something is wrong. He can feel it deep down in his gut. When he wakes up to a beautiful sunrise, and he's in bed next to Victoria, his flight officer, his co-pilot, and most certainly not his object of affection, he is extremely lost.
What happened after they went on the mission to Titan?
Victoria stirs awake beside him, and it's an automatic reflex to flinch away.
"Good morning Jack. Did you sleep alright?"
His face tenses, and he can't force a smile,
"It was better than Returning from Delta Sleep to consciousness, that's for sure."
She's the one who smiles, and then without a single comment on their arrangement, she gets up and moves out of his line of sight.
"Where are we?"
He makes the mistake of asking, and he hears it in her voice, she hasn't got the mental turmoil that he does.
"Tower 1. Where did you think we were?"
Jack swallows, and shrugs,
"Just a bit fuzzy I guess. Still Waking Up."
"Don't worry; I'll make some coffee for you."
Suddenly he does worry. Worry that he's losing his mind.
He walks around what she's called Tower 1, and it's nice, a spacious apartment with a dark green color scheme, something so bare and minimalistic he wonders how long they've been there.
It's certainly been more than one day, as he seems to know the layout of the place before he reaches a room.
When he circles back around to the kitchen, he can smell the coffee.
Finally something familiar.
He takes a cup, and walks over to the helipad, where a strange and beautifully shaped ship is sitting. The only thing he can think of to call it is a Bubble Ship. It resembles three bubbles surrounded with metal trimming and a cockpit big enough for two.
He turns to ask Victoria if she wants to go out for a spin, but then he realizes that could be a dangerous joke to make.
She's already dressed, and is halfway up the stairs when she turns to him and says,
"Be careful out there."
He's the only one going out in the ship.
It takes him over a month, and even then it's only a bare skeleton of a house, but he finishes it. The house on the lake. The one he promised Julia.
He hasn't been able to find her, in all his patrol flights and fulfilling his assigned duties, there's never been a sign of her or the rest of the crew.
But one afternoon, when he returns to com, Victoria is silent, and does not reply after he repeats his greeting.
He arrives back at the tower to find her standing still, just inside the sliding glass doors.
"What's going on? Why wouldn't you answer me?"
Victoria shakes her head, and reaches up to press a button. It doesn't unlock the doors, it pages the Tet. Their mission control.
The warm familiar drawl of Sally fills the air, and she asks what's wrong.
Victoria tells her that she's having trouble with her technician, him, and that he's unfit for service.
Jack pounds his fists on the glass, and begs her to open the doors,
"You don't know what you're doing!"
"Are you an effective team?"
Sally asks the common question, and tears are falling as Victoria answers in the negative.
A damaged, and forgotten, for the last week at least, drone flies up from the cargo garage below, and before Jack can utter a protest, shoots Victoria.
The glass slides open, and he can only think of the lake house, and how Julia never got to see it, before he is ash.
Jack Harper from Tower 27 finds the skeleton of the lake house and begins to fill it with knick-knacks he finds on missions.
He finds the first box of records in the rubble of a store just down inside a cavern only a few feet from a radiation zone.
The record player is there as well, and he listens to the music of his ancestors, before he realizes he is crying.
Why him?
Why did he find this?
Who is the dark haired woman he sees when he sleeps at night?
She's always there, and she always looks right at him, before he wakes up.
She's driving him mad, and he begins to avoid Victoria.
He only visits the lake house one more time before Victoria calls mission control.
Jack Harper from Tower 40 discovers the first book.
It's burned beyond recognition of the title, but the first page that's readable says something about how "It was the best of times; It was the worst of times."
He begins to collect any and all books he finds in ruined buildings, and brings them back to the lake house. It's such a simple design, but so perfectly elegant in that simplicity.
It reminds him of home.
Where is home?
He can hardly remember his own parents, much less the name of his hometown, now that he's getting a memory wipe every six months.
After the first year, he suddenly falls asleep reading at the house.
By the time he's gotten back to the Tower, Victoria is a sobbing mess. Thinking she'd lost him the second he went off com.
He can't tell her the truth, and that's why they aren't an effective team.
Jack Harper from Tower 49 finds the lake house.
He marvels at each and every item there. So remarkable how they survived in this one place.
It feels like home.
The basketball hoop and ball are just another lucky perk.
He spends a little time there every week, usually just before he gets a little lecture from Victoria about the potential danger of going off com for so long.
When he falls asleep, and wakes to the sound of a ship entering the atmosphere, suddenly he can feel it. A change in the air. Something as if he can taste it.
All these strange dreams that have been plaguing him, perhaps this is going to help him figure things out.
When he flies around the crash site, and he sees how familiar the ship looks, he can swear he feels his heart skip a beat.
He knows this ship.
Somehow.