THE ARK
Chapter 12

Day 936

James Cowan was seated in front of his computer. He was intrigued by the idea that Fitch had proposed. There was no reason why it could not work in theory. Still, it would take a lot of engineering. He had worked steadily on it the whole day before and was making great progress. Fortunately, Matt Fitch was due in this morning and hopefully there would be answers and some idea as to where this was going.

At 0800 Matt Fitch walked into Cowan’s office. Cowan looked up and said, “This is the second time in as many months that you’ve been on time, I’m starting to get nervous.”

“I considered just sitting in my car listening to the radio for another twenty minutes just so I wouldn’t have to take this abuse,” Fitch said with a grin.

With a smile, Cowan continued. “I’ve been working on your idea and I think I can make it work.”

“Good, I need a live, short duration test as soon as possible,” Fitch said

“How soon are we talking?” Cowan asked.

“I want it to begin next week,” Fitch said

“Are you serious?” Cowan responded quickly, but he could see from the look on the Colonel’s face that he was.

“It doesn’t have to be a big test, 3-5 subjects and they only have to be out a week. It just needs to be enough to prove we can do this,” Fitch explained

“I don’t know if we can pull it off quite that fast. We need an airtight chamber in which we can manually control the atmospheric pressure. Not to mention rounding up test subjects,” Cowan informed.

“We have unlimited resources for this; if you need special equipment, locate it. I’ll have it here. If you can’t get test subjects, let me know I’ll have some brought in,” Fitch said.

Cowan stared at his counterpart with wide eyes and finally said. “What’s going on? The military may be promoting and funding this project, but I’m still the project lead. I need to know what’s going on.”

There was a long pause before Colonel Matt Fitch spoke. “Let’s take a walk,” and then he headed for the door.

Cowan quickly got up and followed his friend. From the tone of his voice and his expression, James could see that his friend was troubled. He decided to just follow along for now and let the Colonel talk when he was ready.

They headed outside and across the parking lot. It was still early and the air was cool. As soon as they got outside Cowan wished he had grabbed his jacket, and briefly considered going back for it. However, from the look on his friend’s face, he decided it would be better to just stick it out.

On the other side of the small road that led to their isolated facility was a grassy clearing with picnic tables and a small pavilion setup. The seats on of the picnic table were still wet from a late night rain shower, so both men stood as they talked.

“Unfortunately, there are details to what I’m going to say that are classified and I’m under extremely strict orders not to discuss them. However, let’s say that the military is concerned with the possibility of nuclear or biological threats that could wipe out most all life forms on the planet. They’re looking for a plan to have in place in the event of a mass disaster. Underground and undersea shelters are being developed to have ready if needed. They also want us to be a factor in any scenario. I, or should I say we, have been tasked with getting this thing moving. I suspect they’re going to want us to move ASAP to develop a standby facility to have ready. The idea is we could sleep as many people for as long as it takes for the world to be habitable again. We’ve proven our technology works and now they want us to set it up for actual use. I want the test complete so that when I hear more I have something positive to tell them,” As Fitch said this he felt guilty, but he had been unable to convince Draper or the President that anyone else needed the information. General Draper had helped put together this story, and Matt was under orders to stick to this plan.

There was a definite look of suspicion on James Cowan’s face as he heard this, but he did not question the story.

“How complete does this test need to be?” Cowan asked.

“I think that we need a pressurized environment and to place a few subjects out for five days and a successful wake-up. If we need a couple other people in the test area to monitor events and manually change bags of SF016, I don’t care. We’ve shown that we can automate the process. In honesty I don’t care if it’s all held together with duct tape,” Fitch stated.

Cowan smiled and said “The main sleep chamber can be pressurized; all we need to do is remove the covers from five of the capsules and shut down the computer systems in those capsules. We can monitor everything from the main computer in the chamber. The SF016 will need to be handled differently, and we’ll need staff in there. However, it should be no problem. We won’t need to deal with waste management; there will be no output in such a short test. The individual capsules will serve as nothing more than a bed. If you can get the five test subjects and they all check out medically we can start Monday.”

Fitch had a look of disbelief on his face. “You already had this figured out?”

Cowan answered with a grin. “It came to me last night after I talked to you. By now they probably have the cover doors off the five capsules and the individual capsules systems tied into the main computer,”