THE ARK

RJ’s eyes slowly opened, and again she was confused. She was extremely cold, her face felt stuck to the floor, and she hurt all over. For over a minute she did not move, instead, she waited and slowly she remembered.

She peeled her face from the floor and noticed that the vomit was mostly dry. She had been out for a long while. She slowly sat up and there was again some dizziness and nausea. However, it was not as intense this time.

She found that she was shivering from the cold that had seeped into her.

She crawled to the capsule and opened the small built in drawer underneath and removed her undergarments and jumpsuit. While sitting on the floor she dressed as quickly as possible.

She fought to stand and found the dizziness and nausea returning. She fought them both back as best she could and tried to walk. She found that she had to hold onto the wall or some other object to keep from falling.

She kept thinking of the possible reasons for her feeling this sick and the two things that kept coming to mind were a radiation leak in the reactor or a contaminant in the SF016. Either of which could be disastrous for her mission.

She started for the Command Center; there were so many questions in her head. On the way, she stopped at a restroom and went inside. She took a few minutes to clean as much vomit from her face and hair as she could. She also rinsed her mouth out, and then took a small drink. She could tell that she was dehydrated and assumed that much of her dizziness was related to this. She wanted to go slowly, the nausea was still there and she did not want to take a chance of it getting worse by drinking too fast.

She stumbled out of the restroom and crossed the hall to the Health Center. The pain in her joints was increasing with movement. She located what she was looking for and quickly swallowed 800mg of Ibuprofen, with a little more water.

She half stumbled from the health center and continued down the hall. Her balance was better and she stayed close to the wall in case she needed it. She placed her palm on the scanner and heard the electronic voice, “Good Afternoon Miss Anderson.”

The computer voice seemed very loud.

RJ walked unsteadily to a computer terminal and sat down with a thud. She rested for a moment then activated the equipment.

As she was working, she heard a faint noise by the door that she had just entered through. She spun so quickly that she almost fell off the chair.

There was someone standing there!

It was an elderly looking man! His skin was sickly pale and his hair was in a long gray ponytail. His light blue shirt was stained and torn in several places and there were holes in the pants at the knees.

He looked at her for just a minute and then ran for the door. The door opened and he passed through.

“Stop!” RJ called as loud as she could, but her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.

The door slid shut behind the man.

She jumped to her feet and ran to the door. Unfortunately, her balance and coordination were still not up to the task and she landed face first on the floor.

She scrambled to her feet and went as quickly as she could to the corridor. She looked down the length of the hall but there was no one there.

She hurried back to the computer terminal, and had the system seal and lock all doors within the facility. All doors were now set to open to her hand access only. She then ordered all lights within the facility to be shut off except for the lights in the Command Center.

She watched the readout of all systems. In less than a minute, it showed that someone had turned on the lights in the main corridor on the engineering level.

Now she knew where he was. She confirmed that all doors were secured on that level; whoever he was he was trapped in the hall.

She sat back and was confused and nervous. If this man had gotten to the facility, could there be others inside as well?

She got up and moved to her office. She opened the bottom desk drawer and took out the 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol that she had kept there. There was one round in the chamber and she quickly grabbed the empty magazine that was in the same drawer and carefully loaded it. All weapons were stored with the magazines empty. Over time, the spring in the magazines will weaken if continually compressed Therefore they could fail to effectively push the rounds up into the chamber, causing the gun to jam.

RJ knew that this was one of the leading causes of a misfire when she included the emptying of all magazines into the standard procedure for weapon storage before the sleep.

She made sure that the safety was on before placing the gun in the large leg pocket of her jumpsuit. She briefly considered going to her quarters for the shoulder holster but decided that she would do that later.

When she had awakened, she had assumed that it was because the computers had determined the radiation levels outside had been safe for the required three-month window. She had not even considered the possibility that she might have been awakened for one of the four other possible reasons, one of which was intruder detection.

The computer indicated that all doors were securely closed. She activated the cameras in the main tunnel and saw the closed doors and the front-end loaders still in place. Next, she activated the external cameras and the west camera showed that the giant steel doors were still completely covered with debris. She worked the camera that pointed at the east entrance but could not get it to activate. She switched to the backup camera and could see that this door was still sealed but exposed. Most of the dirt and debris as well as the wooden wall were gone. She zoomed in on the door and could see dents and scratches on the door where someone had used tools in an unsuccessful attempt to gain entry. There were some objects on the ground by the sealed door but from the camera’s angle, RJ could not identify them.

There was also the maintenance passage that came in from the top of the mountain. The passage was used to access the cables that ran in small passages to the radar and antenna on the top of the mountain. There were several locked hatches to block access into the mountain. She now activated a camera on the top of the mountain and could see that the dome-shaped cover to the maintenance hatch was locked and in place.

RJ looked at the systems readout and could see that the lights in the engineering corridor were still the only ones that had been turned on.

She pulled up the computer logs and reviewed what had initiated the sequence that had awakened her. It clearly showed that her awakening had been an automatic response to safe radiation levels outside the mountain for three months. Then who was the old man and why had the computers failed to respond to his presence.

RJ checked the computer’s date and felt the color drain from her face. The dizziness came swarming back. Her hands flew over the keyboard as she rechecked the information, but the results had been the same. The computer said that the date was October 6, 2074.

The experts had told them that the radiation levels would be safe in ten to twenty years. RJ reviewed the data three more times and it was clear that the radiation levels had just finally reached the safe level. The problem was that they had been asleep for fifty-four years.

Another thought crossed her mind and she pulled up a list of the EKG readings of all sleepers in the facility, as she did this she noticed that she was holding her breath in fear of what she might find. She was greatly relieved to see that there were only nine units showing no cardiac activity. Nine out of over ten thousand seemed remarkably good. She pulled up a list of names of the possible fatalities and looked through the list. Most recently on the list was her name. This made sense; the EKG electrodes were currently recording no activity. That is because she had removed them well over an hour ago. There were two people in Main Sleep Chamber One and three in Main Sleep Chamber Two. The final three names on the list were Kelly Meyers, Dale Carter, and Joseph Fitzpatrick.

RJ felt increased frustration, nothing was going the way it should have. She stared at the computer for a minute and then thought about Fitzpatrick. He was on the list of people to be awakened in the event of a problem. There were others too. Fifty-four years had passed, had anyone been awakened to deal with problems during that time?

Again, she went to the computer. She opened the log the contained all information about computer generated wake-up sequences. There were three entries. First was today’s event for which she was awakened and there were two other events listed and they had occurred twelve hours apart almost thirty years ago. There had been a failure in the reactor cooling system.

The computer had activated the backup and the reserve cooling systems, but the problem had continued. An automatic wake-up sequence command was sent to the nuclear engineer on call. The records show that Joseph Fitzpatrick was awakened thirty years ago and that after twelve hours without Fitzpatrick logging into the system and answering the alarm the computer awakened the second on call person, Carter. By this time, the reactor problem was near critical.

RJ stared at the screen trying to make sense of this information. If nothing else, it seemed as if the auto wake-up sequence worked perfectly.

At some point, Carter and or Fitzpatrick had apparently dealt with a problem but now both of their EKGs were showing that there was no cardiac activity in their capsules. Had there been a malfunction when he re-entered the sleep capsules? RJ wondered.

Amy had once said they had neglected to test re-sleeping a subject and had no idea of the effect of returning to a sleep.

Then another thought crossed her mind. She got to her feet and quickly headed for the door, as she moved she felt the leg pocket of her jumpsuit and was comforted by feeling the presence of her weapon. She rapidly returned to her sleep chamber, she passed by her capsule and had to step around the mostly dry vomit on the floor. She moved toward the back of the room and saw two capsules near the back that had no green indicator lights on their fronts. One had a blinking standby light and the other had a glowing red light. She slowly approached the one that was in standby mode and looked through the clear cover. The capsule was empty. This was Carter’s capsule.

Next, she went two rows over and looked into Fitzpatrick’s capsule. She let out a gasp of shock, as she stared at the horrifying sight in front of her. There was long ago dried blood smeared all over the inside glass of the capsule, including several bloody handprints. The skeletal remains of Fitzpatrick were face down. RJ could clearly see that one of his legs was broken as were many of the electronics within the capsule. The hoses that connect from the port on the inside of the capsule to the mask on his face were wrapped around the neck. RJ accessed the individual capsule computer and saw the error message from almost thirty years before. DOOR MECHANISM FAILURE.

So that probably explained part of what was happening. The computers awakened Fitzpatrick and he was unable to get out of the capsule due to a mechanical failure. Fitzpatrick struggled and fought to free himself from the capsule but was unable. When he did not respond, the system awakened Carter who handled the problem. However, due to the nature of the emergency, by the time he found out what had become of Fitzpatrick, it was too late to help him.

RJ went two rows over and looked into the capsule of Kelly Meyers. She remembered that Kelly was a nurse, and had seemed very friendly the one time that they had spoken.

It was clear that Kelly had died many years before. Upon accessing the computer, the system indicated that the fatal failure was related to an inappropriate decompression of the capsule.