Chapter 4: The Empty Side of Loneliness

“I used to do shows for drug dealers that wanted to clean their money up ... They gave me twenty-five thousand dollars in cash ... Never been that terrified in my life. Because I’d never in my life had something that somebody else would want ... Then I thought ... That’s what women are dealing with!”

— Dave Chappelle, Dave Chappelle: The Bird Revelation. Directed by Stan Lathan. Produced for Netflix. Originally released December 31, 2017. Written and performed by Dave Chappelle. © 2017 Pilot Boy Productions / Netflix. All rights reserved.

The days came and went. Kathryn woke up. She went to sleep. She could not be sure how many days had passed, but they drifted by. She laid with her husband in bed, but after that last night of cuddling and intimacy, she found herself not wanting to be sexual with her husband.

It was not that she did not love him. She very much did, but the problem was that she just felt emptier than ever before.

Their daughters were grown women. They had no intention of having children again, but to be told she could not have children by her own husband felt wrong somehow, as if the choice had been stripped from her.

That was the injustice. When the choice was hers, not having children sounded like a blessing. But in this moment, some stupid, fucked up, piece of shit scientists stole that from her!

She shouted and she wailed and she cried into her pillow, knowing no one and nothing would hear her.

After what felt like months, but was probably closer to two weeks, she went out into the living room area, and she found there were more amenities than she should have had. There were extra blankets and nice silverware and even a few new appliances that she should not have had.

When she went to the kitchen table, there was a note. It said, “Vault business”, but she didn’t know what the fuck that meant. With how things were going, she doubted very much that she would find out.

Whenever she had the strength to go outside, all everyone seemed to care about was finding out who this new Overseer was.

Kathryn could not care less. She was tired. She was hurting.

For all of their talking, none of her neighbors seemed to care, nor did any seem to be reacting how she was. In this single way, she felt more isolated than ever. In the end, she wondered if she were mad or if everyone else was.

The saddest, darkest detail she recognized was that she could not talk to anyone about the matter, so she suffered in silence.

That was until someone came to her door and knocked.

Michael Trent was a simple man. He liked the fact that he had made a quarter of a million dollars a year after taxes, that he owned three houses, that he could get a table at the Lucky 38 if he had so wanted, and that his wife had been faithfully his while he had (unknowingly to his wife) been fucking his secretary for the five years before being put into cryo-sleep.

When he knocked on the door of the Walkers, he was hoping that Kathryn would be his secretary’s replacement.

If Keith had been given the same news as him, that meant Kathryn wouldn’t be having any babies either.

In that, he knew she would give almost anything to have kids.

If he needed to fuck her behind her overconfident husband’s back, what did Michael care?

They were in a Vault. The normal, mundane world, the idea of infidelity might be wrong, but this was to propagate the species.

Michael would be doing his American duty by giving Kathryn what she needed.

He knocked on her door, and smiled.

“Oh. Hello, Michael. What can I do for you?” Kathryn asked as she held the door open.

“The missus wanted me to make sure you know that you’re invited over for a ladies’ afternoon of Bridge in a few days.”

He smirked as he loomed over her.

“Yes. Is that all?” Kathryn asked, entirely uninterested.

“Well, actually...”

Kathryn held up a hand.

“Is this it? You tell me that your wife invited me over to play cards in a few days and you just thought that you’d ... what? Try to get in my pants?”

That caught Michael aback.

“Well, I know you heard the bad news about the whole—”

“You heard some husbands can’t knock up their wives and your first thought was wait until I would answer my door and I would throw myself at you?”

“Well—”

She swung her right hand so hard and fast that when his cheek caught the blow, he was left stunned, looking down the hall as she slammed her door, taking her key and walked down the hall.

He had no idea what he was going to say or do. When he came back to his senses, Kathryn was gone, and he realized that she might tell his wife, so Michael turned and bolted for his own lodgings, hoping Kathryn was not there.

She went wandering without a single thought to her safety or destination.

As she thought on the matter, she could not help but loathe men entirely.

Where the fuck was her husband? He was gone in this godforsaken Vault, doing God knows what! Then there was this asshole in Michael. He was married. He had children...

He had children from before...

Just like her.

As she wandered and went, she did not know where she was going. Part of her knew she was surrounded by people, so she went into an elevator to get away from the others, but even that was not enough for Kathryn.

She didn’t want to be in the fucking Vault anymore, but escape was impossible. She could not run either. No part of her recalled touching a button in the cylinder cage that went up and down.

The elevator shuddered as it descended beneath the polished residential levels of Vault 615. The clean white walls gradually gave way to more exposed piping, hanging cables, and the low mechanical hum of machinery laboring somewhere out of sight when the door opened.

Kathryn looked around; suddenly, her issues felt ridiculously small. Kathryn was greeted not by another immaculate hallway or those uniform living areas that were tantamount to glorified apartments.

What she found, some might call it organized chaos, but she found it to be just a hog’s sty.

The floor stretched so far she could barely see where it ended. There was no hall. She had seen glorified basements with a better use of their square footage. Half-disassembled Mister Handys hung from ceiling rails like silver carcasses waiting for surgery. Their metal shells were opened to expose nests of wiring. There were no work benches, but there were tools splayed everywhere.

At something near the center of the large, flat room sat Leo.

He was hunched over the opened chassis of a Mister Handy, sleeves rolled to the elbows, a small screwdriver turning carefully between his fingers. His tongue was poking out of his mouth. Kathryn realized that he was wearing a pair of dark-rimmed glasses as he studied a cluster of delicate circuitry beneath the robot’s exposed plating.

Leo looked entirely unconcerned with appearances unlike her neighbors, and strangely enough, her husband. Grease smudged his work uniform and up his forearms. For the smallest moment, Kathryn could not help but find his appearance to be ridiculously attractive.