she sees it all
Samantha Cotworth never planned to become a teacher. That was the funny part. As a teenager, she swore she’d never follow in her father’s footsteps—he taught middle school science in the same district for 42 years. But after everything that happened, teaching was the only place where the echoes in her head quieted.
She grew up beneath clouded skies and colonial rooftops, in Newton, Massachusetts—a place built on memory more than dreams. Her mother was a nurse, the kind of woman who could soothe a wound with just her voice. Her father loved Carl Sagan and comic books in equal measure. Sam grew up with wonder as a birthright—but somewhere along the way, wonder started to feel dangerous.
She wasn't part of the story... she was of it.
She was nowhere near the astronauts. No proximity to any wormhole or classified experiment. But the moment the resonance wave hit Earth, Sam fell to her knees in her kitchen, clutching her head as if it had cracked open like an egg. When she awoke, she remembered holding a man’s hand on a dying space station. She remembered a fire in the sand and the sound of Nazca wind. She remembered Renée Lavoie—and she had never met him.
Sam is what scientists like Dr. Amari now classify as highly susceptible. Her mind is a sponge for temporal resonance. A receiver. Whether she wanted to be or not.
The tragedy is that Sam’s life never intersected directly with the mission—until it did. She was just a teacher. A mother. A woman trying to rebuild. But the Pulse changed everything.