THE ARK
Chapter 32

Day3

Brad Warren woke feeling tired and unrested. He noticed that Jill was already up and gone. Throughout the night, he had been awake as much as he had been asleep. He washed up and dressed in the gray jumpsuit that would be the official uniform of the command staff.

He left his quarters and went down to the main level; RJ was in the mess hall eating breakfast, she had on an identical jumpsuit. He got his tray and sat down across from her. He could see that she looked as tired as he felt.

“Morning, you look tired,” He said.

She smiled. “Look in a mirror, you look pretty rough yourself.”

“That would explain why I feel this way,” he said with a smile.

“Did you hear Carter arrived last night?”

“No, I hadn’t heard. How was his attitude with you?”

RJ smiled as she answered. “When I saw him Amy had just kicked his ego around a bit, so he was ok. I sent him right to engineering, to get settled in.”

“Good, I’ll check on him later. Is everyone else here?” Brad asked.

“Yeah, Carter was the last one here.”

“That figures, are we still scheduled to shut the doors today?”

“There is a last minute delivery expected, apparently we’re waiting for a bunch of seeds and grains for planting crops, but they’re almost here and then we should be able to seal the tunnel doors around noon today. They’re thinking it’ll take forty-eight hours to completely conceal the two entrances.”

“Good, it sounds like we’re on target,” Brad stated.

“Amy is working on getting most of the remaining personnel into their capsules. We need to start our final tests of all systems.”

“Ok, if you don’t mind I’m going to make a quick stop at engineering. I want to make sure that there are no problems with our friend.”

“Let me know how it goes,” RJ instructed.

Brad turned right as they left the Mess Hall and went towards the elevator at the end that would take him to engineering. On the way, he stopped at the sleep chamber that housed the capsule that he would be entering in a few days.

Amy was in the chamber, she was assisting the last member of a ten-person capsule into place. He was undressed and covered with a sheet. Brad knew that the sheet served no real purpose except to preserve the modesty of the sleepers. He could see the other nine people, but from this angle, he could not tell the male to female ratio. Twenty years, naked, that close to other people that you had only known for a few months at best was not a pleasant idea. He knew that if he were in that position he would want a sheet too.

As he watched, he saw an IV being started on the sleeper who had just been added to the capsule. They all had their EKG electrodes in place. Another technician was reaching into the capsule and placing a long catheter tube somewhere that Brad did not want to think about. Brad decided that he had seen enough.

As he walked away, he thought back to the catheter tubes and IVs. Would the final sleeper have to hook all that stuff up themselves? He knew that that was something he would never be able to do.

The elevator arrived and he rode it down to engineering. As the doors opened, he immediately heard yelling.

There were two of the engineering assistants looking into the reactor from the hallway. They seemed to be watching the confrontation.

“Are you a moron? What kind of stupid idea was that? If you were half as smart as you thought you were you’d know that doing that could easily overwork the cooling pumps!”

Carter’s voice responded with a nervous edge to it. “Easy man, there is no concern as long as you closely monitor the pumps, and you’ll have a performance boost of about four percent.”

A third voice jumped into the conversation. “Four percent? If you were lucky you might get three, but that’s meaningless. This reactor is already seventy-three percent more powerful than we’re going to need. Why would anyone risk taxing the cooling system to gain even four percent that isn’t needed? You’re an idiot!!”

“Gentlemen! What’s going on here?” Brad said with clear irritation in his voice.

“Carters messing with the automatic cooling systems. These things are carefully calibrated for safety and efficiency by the manufacturers and are within the requirements of our team. But this IDIOT thinks he can make things better, by ignoring their recommendations and making his own custom changes!” explained the engineer named Fitzpatrick in a frustrated voice.

“Carter, this is the last time that I’ll discuss this with you. RJ agrees with me that enough is enough. One more incident with you and we’ll kick you out. If the doors are shut, we’ll sleep you and throw you out when the sleep is over. You are far more trouble than you’re worth. You need to remember that what you’re doing is for the good of a team of ten thousand people. It isn’t about you. If you aren’t able to think past yourself then get out now!” Brad Warren turned and stomped out of the engineering area.

RJ was in the Control center when Brad returned. “How did it go?”

“They were screaming at each other when I got there. I told him that if there was one more incident he was out. If things go as usual he’ll behave for a day or two.”

RJ was silent for a few minutes. “Ok, let’s sleep him tonight. He’s scheduled to be the second on call, right behind Fitzpatrick, for any issues related to the reactor that occurs during the sleep. If he’s awakened he’ll need to put himself back out, when the problem is solved. He will also need to get the others if he can’t handle the issue by himself. Check with the others; make sure that they’re comfortable with him handling issues. If they want, we’ll move Waterman to second on call and put Carter last. Also, make sure that he knows the criteria for when to summon help and what he can do on his own.

“Once that’s done, turn him over to Amy, she’ll show him how to re-attach himself to the sleep systems if needed. Also tell her to sleep him as soon as she’s comfortable with that.”

“Sounds good,” Brad Warren, said.

As Brad left the room there was a beeping from the communications console. “Gate one reports that the last truck we’re expecting just entered the compound,” A young woman named Abby, at the communications station reported. She and Nick would be handling most of the systems in the command center.

“Good, let me know as soon as they’re gone,” RJ instructed.

RJ worked the communications console. In moments there was a voice booming through the speakers. “Draper here.”

“General Draper this is RJ Anderson at The Mountain.” I just wanted to let you know that the last delivery has occurred. If you don’t have anything else coming here we’re going to secure the facility.”

“No RJ, we don’t have anything else for you. Feel free to secure,” Draper replied.

“I assume that means the efforts to alter its course haven’t been successful?”

“No, ten days in a row we detonated two twenty kiloton warheads as close to the thing as we could, but there was no effect. The last pair detonated six hours ago. The thing is just moving too fast for us to get the blast close enough.”

“Ok, I understand. We’ll start locking up now. We should be complete in about forty-eight hours. That will give us a good twenty-four hours after things are complete before it arrives.”

“Sounds good to me. General Fitch is here and we’ve been discussing it. We want you online with us two hours before the comet arrives.”

“No problem. Are we still expecting arrival at 0930 Eastern time?” RJ asked.

“Right about there,” Draper replied.

“Ok, we’ll be online at 0730 your time, east coast.”

“Good.”

RJ disconnected, and pushed an intercom button. “This is Anderson; we’ll secure the facility in ten minutes. All external personnel must be out of the tunnel by that time.”

Several armed guards, waited at the tunnel entrances while others did a quick sweep of the facility looking for anyone that might be trying to remain behind.

RJ got up from her seat and headed for the elevator that would take her up to the main tunnel. As she arrived, she saw that Amy and Brad had already made their way to the tunnel and they too were waiting.

They watched as the last of the external staff left the facility and the word was passed that everyone had gone. Next, four large front end loaders were backed into the tunnel. There were two at each end of the tunnel facing outward and parked next to one another. The drivers of the vehicles quickly hopped out and exited the facility.

Five minutes later RJ pushed an intercom on the wall and told the operators in the communications center to close the doors. Less than a minute later the massive blast proof doors at each end of the tunnel started to slowly close. It took almost one full minute from the time the doors started moving until the time there was the loud metallic “Thunk” as they locked into place.

Brad was suddenly filled with a feeling of being trapped in a tomb. He looked at RJ and Amy and asked, “What becomes of all those hundreds of people who were working on this place, it seems kind of strange just kicking them out knowing that they’ll be dying in a few days.”

“Actually, part of the arrangement for them keeping quiet about anything they learned here, is that they all get space for themselves and families in a shelter about a hundred miles north of here,” Amy answered.

The three of them stood and looked at the doors for several minutes. Finally, Amy said, “If we go to the command center we can at least watch them work.”

“True, we aren’t accomplishing much here,” RJ said as she headed for the elevator.

When the trio entered the command center Brad activated the large eight foot by five-foot LED monitor built into the wall and pulled up a view of the large west entrance. He also brought up a view of the east entrance on one of the two slightly smaller screens.

There were at least a dozen workers at each entrance. They were moving heavy pressure treated wooden beams into place. These beams would serve as a frame for a massive wall that was being constructed about a foot from the steel blast doors.

Nick was at one of the computer terminals and spoke up. “What’s the purpose of the wall?”

RJ answered without looking over. “They will collapse the very end of the tunnel to hide the entrance. The wall will keep the dirt and debris from getting into the door mechanism and being a problem when we try to open them, after the sleep.”

They continued to watch off and on through the rest of the day. When night fell and the workers left for the night, the walls were almost complete.

The next morning after breakfast Amy walked into the Command Center.

“Amy, what’s the status of the sleepers?” RJ asked.

“The only ones awake beside the three of us are, Fitzpatrick in the reactor room, and two technicians Abby and Nick in the command center,” Travers answered.

“That reactor is going to run itself for possibly twenty years; two more days won’t make a difference. Let’s put that guy out. I assume you’re going to ride this out?”

“Yeah, I’m going to stick around until it’s done. There is a part of me that’s expecting to wake everyone up in a week and tell them that this was a big false alarm.”

“I’ve thought that too,” Brad Warren admitted.

“Amy, you get that guy snoozing and I’ll replace us a deck of cards. There isn’t much more for us to do. From here on out we’re just observers,” RJ instructed.

Amy went to the communications center and triggered the intercom. “Fitzpatrick, please report to your sleep capsule. It’s your bed time.”

As she headed for the door, Brad called out. “You need a hand?”

“Sure, it’ll be quicker with two of us,” Travers said.

Anderson had just headed to the Mess Hall to get a refill of her coffee when she was interrupted by a radio call from the team outside.

“Miss Anderson, the demolitions officer wants to talk to you,” Abby said from the communications console.”

“Anderson here, what’s up?

“I don’t know how much this might affect you, but we’re going to blow the ends of the tunnels,” the voice replied.

“Thanks for the warning, we’re all set.”

As the message was completing Brad and Amy returned to the Command Center.

RJ looked over at them and asked, “What took so long getting in Fitzpatrick to sleep?”

“It was bad, RJ,” Brad began. “As soon as he laid down in the capsule and saw the lid closing he went crazy. I guess he’s always been afraid of confined spaces, but he ripped his IV out and was thrashing all over the place.”

Travers continued, “We got him out and calmed him down and I gave him a shot of Ativan. While we were waiting for it to take effect, we cleaned up the blood from where his IV came out. When the sedative took effect we were able to get him back the capsule and sleep him.”

RJ nodded and thought about how she might react when it came time to sleep. She had never liked confined spaces either.

About a minute later, they watched as camera view of the tunnel entrance was instantly hidden in a cloud of dust. When the dust cleared, the tunnel entrance was gone. Brad and RJ thought they might have felt a slight vibration. Amy was not as sure.

Small loaders immediately went to work smoothing out the debris to make it appear more natural. After a few storms and a bit of time, there would be no evidence that there was a tunnel entrance beyond the debris.

Brad changed camera views to look at the other entrance; he was briefly surprised to see that that entrance was already collapsed too and the crews were working on cleaning up the mess.