THE ARK

Day 932

Cowan slowly walked across the parking lot to his new dark blue Dodge Durango. He was already very fond of this vehicle even though he had owned it for less than two months. His only regret was in choosing such a dark color. In the hot desert sun, it just became so uncomfortable late in the day.

Cowan still could not understand why he had decided on that color. He had lived in hot southern climates all his life and always made sure to own light colored vehicles.

He unlocked the SUV with the remote on his key ring and immediately the engine was running. Fortunately, today was much cooler than normal and with just the windows all open, he found that the vehicle was quite comfortable

As he drove on, James was thinking about what was happening all of the sudden. It seemed as if the whole scope of the project was suddenly making a drastic change.

James was not bothered by the change, but not having a clearer understanding of the true goals of this new project made him uncomfortable.

The story that Matt had given him had more holes in it than Cowan cared to count, but he suspected that there was probably some truth to it. James assumed the Colonel was not being permitted to give him any details.

Regardless of the true reasons for the changes, the things they were now investigating were things that they had only briefly considered in the past. Now they were going to get to try some of them out. If things went well, some of the long-standing plans for implementing a real sleep event would have to be completely revisited.

As he continued to contemplate the path that they were looking down, Cowan realized that he was only a couple minutes from his house. He thought back on the drive home and was concerned to realize there were large parts of the trip that he had no recollection of. While this had certainly happened to him before it still concerned him each time it happened. He always imagined that he had been involved in a minor accident and not even noticed and just kept driving.

He slowly turned onto his street and had to almost stop for Tuffy the black lab who was slowly wandering down the middle of the road. Tuffy had lived in the neighborhood as long as Cowan could remember. He was now old and slow and mostly, if not completely deaf.

One of Cowan’s favorite photos of his son was of him playing with Tuffy when he was a tiny pup. As Cowan thought about it, he suspected that that photo must be close to fourteen years old.

That meant that Tuffy was at least ancient in dog years if not older. Cowan smiled at this thought and decided that he did not mind waiting a minute for Tuffy to make it past his driveway.

As he got out of the car, he paused for a moment and took another look at the neighborhood mascot as he continued his slow journey.

He entered the house called out, “Kath I’m home.”

“Out on the porch,” came the faint reply

Hearing this, Cowan went upstairs to the bedroom. He quickly changed into shorts, a polo shirt, and bare feet and then went back downstairs to the kitchen. Finding no clean glasses, he opened the dishwasher and took out a still hot glass and while almost dropping it he got it to the sink and ran cool water on it for several seconds before drying it off, adding ice, and the iced tea from the clear plastic pitcher from the refrigerator.

James quickly stirred in two teaspoons of sugar and headed out to the porch.

Kathy could never understand why anyone would sweeten the tea that way. She had grown up in Manhattan. Sweetened tea was something she had never tried until she and James had met in college.

James had grown up in the southwest where sweetened tea was more popular and could not understand her reaction to it. Therefore, he always made it unsweetened for her and added the sugar later for himself.

Over the years, the iced tea had become a regular source of mild amusement for them, each trying to trick the other into drinking the other’s version.

Kathy was standing by the grill and there were chicken breasts smothered in barbecue sauce cooking. There was a pot of water boiling on the side burner of the grill and it looked as if there was rice in the water.

Kathy had prepared the table and now it looked as if dinner would be ready in just a few minutes.

“Hi, it was rather cool out so I thought we would try eating out here,” Kathy said

“Great idea, it’s been so hot lately we haven’t been out here much except to swim. By the way, that smells great. What did you do today?”

“I went into work for a couple hours. Since I’m leaving in the morning and will be gone for several days I wanted to make sure most things were in order in my classroom. I can’t believe that classes will start up again in less than three weeks.”

“I know, it seems like school just got out. I bet you’re already excited about getting a room full of sixteen-year-old punks who have no interest in American History.

“James, I can’t believe your attitude sometimes. Most of the kids are good kids. I’ll confess that many of them don’t see the value of learning about Columbus or the Emancipation Proclamation, but at that age, I didn’t either.”

“That may be true, but what am I supposed to think? When I ask you what interesting things happened at work you tell me about Sandy being pregnant, or Mike who was expelled for fighting or Marsha, who you caught cheating on a test. I don’t hear many stories about Dave who aced the test because he spent all weekend studying just to succeed in your class because he realized its value to his future.”

Kathy smiled as she answered, “Well, I can see that you might walk away with the impression that they’re a bunch of losers but that’s just a few of them. Most are good kids.

As they spoke, Cowan held a large glass plate for Kathy who removed the chicken from the grill and shut off the propane gas.

They finished getting the food ready and sat at the table and both closed their eyes and took a moment to give thanks for their food before they started eating.

As they ate Kathy looked at her husband and said, “Is something bothering you, you seem preoccupied?”

Cowan was surprised by the question. He did not feel preoccupied, but he admitted to himself that he was thinking a lot about what Matt Fitch had been telling him. Obviously, Kathy knew him very well if she could tell that he was a little off.

“Matt got back from his trip today. It seems the Pentagon wants us to move beyond the concept phase. They want to create a facility where a large number of people could be put to sleep for long periods of time.

“The idea is that in the event of a nuclear or biological war or some other global disaster these people could sleep until things were safe to come out.”

“Interesting idea, but how many people could you actually sleep at a time?” Kathy asked.

“That’s the part that makes no sense. I can’t see us being able to sleep more than a few hundred to maybe a thousand at the most, and even that would probably take years of preparation.

“Plus where would we do this? We certainly don’t have a facility available that could withstand the kind of global disaster that they’re talking about. Even if we did, we would need constant power and a staff to maintain everything. We haven’t completed all the automation. A scenario like they’re proposing would take ten years to get going and Matt Fitch is making it sound like it needs to be in place tomorrow.”

Kathy smiled at her husband. It was clear that he had spent a lot of time thinking about this. “This sounds to me like the kind of challenge that you so desperately enjoy.”

James smiled back weakly, “You know, it could be. But with them holding back so much information it’s just a frustration.”