Victoria Tomlinson

Victoria Tomlinson is a participant in the Lot Six experiment and the woman who becomes Andy McGee’s wife. Her story is framed by two kinds of evidence: an ordinary first meeting, defined by a borrowed pen and Andy’s immediate attention, and a later account of the experiment’s lasting biological and psychic effects, which distinguishes her abilities from his.

First Encounter

At the testing session, Victoria asks Andy to borrow his pen because hers has run dry. He turns to hand it over and notices her tall figure, light-auburn hair, clear complexion, powder-blue sweater, short skirt, and wide white ribbon. The narration marks the moment as the future couple’s first encounter: after she accepts the pen, she smiles her thanks and bends back over her form, while Andy carries on with his own paperwork.

The scene makes their eventual marriage emerge from an unceremonious beginning rather than from a dramatic declaration. Victoria’s request is practical and brief; its importance comes from what Andy sees in it and from the knowledge, supplied retrospectively, that she will become his wife.

Marriage and the Experiment’s Aftermath

Victoria and Andy are among the twelve people who took part in the experiment. When Andy later wakes from a doze, he finds her sleeping peacefully on the cot beside him, her hands folded between her breasts. Looking at her, he recognizes that he has fallen in love with her; the feeling is described as deep and complete. The quiet image of Victoria asleep beside him thus supplies an intimate counterpart to the experiment’s clinical setting.

A later conversation establishes that Victoria and Andy are the two participants who married each other. Of the original twelve, only four remained alive, according to the information then available to Quincey. Their marriage therefore belongs both to their private history and to a dwindling group of survivors linked by the experiment.

Psychic Ability and Significance

In explaining the experiment’s effects to Captain Hollister, Joseph Wanless rejects the idea that Andy simply passed a single factor to Victoria. He describes Andy as an X factor after the experiment and Victoria as a Y factor: both were affected, but not in the same way. Wanless identifies Victoria’s retained ability as low-threshold telekinesis, contrasting it with Andy’s mid-level mental-dominance ability. He calls their daughter the Z factor, whose nature remains uncertain to the people studying her.

Victoria’s place in this account is consequently distinct from both her husband’s and her daughter’s. The experiment’s consequences do not produce one uniform inherited power: Wanless presents three related but differentiated cases, and Victoria’s telekinetic ability marks her as an active part of that pattern rather than merely the link between Andy and their daughter.