The Ark of Asylum (The Ark Series Book 1) (4 page)

One day, during a routine stroll through town, John is surprised to notice a major change in almost every person in town. Every single one of them seems happy and enthusiastic about their living situation. Kids run by laughing. The adults are playful and jovial in their interactions with one another. Whereas uncertainty and nervousness was once a common sense from everyone, it was now replaced with joy and elation. As people settle in, they all assume a role in the community, either working to help build or organize or even just mentor the younger ones. Whatever their choices are, it has allowed everyone to temporally forget about the problems and violence going on in the outside world. They are able to relax for once in what seems like a very long time. As for John, he can relax, sure, but he does not forget or ignore the outside world.

John enters the security operations compound, which has now been moved from its temporary location to its permanent location inside the Ark. He makes his way down to the main intelligence corridor and gets to the main security checkpoint. He then presses his hand on the fingerprint scanner and looks into the biometric eye scanner. The computer scans his retina and fingerprints while measuring his temperature and reading his stress levels. The computer accepts his scan and unlocks the main gate and security door as the computer thanks him. He enters a room filled with dozens of computer screens and monitoring equipment. Every square inch of the town and all of the area surrounding the Ark is up on the monitors in real time.

“Good morning, sir.” Adam, the head security officer, stands up to greet John as everyone else in the room does the same.

“Good morning, everyone. No need to stand and greet me. Please go back to what you were doing, but I appreciate the enthusiasm.” John shakes Adam’s hand. “How are you, Adam? How is everything running down here?”

“Perfectly, sir. I am happy to say that we are almost one hundred percent up and running and fully operational.”

“That’s great news. You guys all have done a wonderful job, and I commend you all for your hard work and dedication to my and, well, all of our new homes. I hope you all have the same passion and commitment in protecting this place as I do. Because like I said, this is not just my home, this is all of your homes. I know most of your families all live here now, so I’m sure you will protect this land as if it were your own.” John looks around the room at everyone nodding their heads.

“On behalf of my crew, I know they all feel the same way as I do, and rest assured we will all protect this land with our lives, sir. As you know, most of us come from military backgrounds, so we know no other way than to live our lives this way. And I know from talking with my crew that we all feel at home here. Quite frankly, we all love living here and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.” John looks around the room at everyone nodding in agreement.

John attempts to contain his smile, but he knows he’s failing. “Well, that’s great to hear because I see you all as family now, and I know everyone in town sees you the same way. I know a lot of your wives and husbands are working in town in various areas, and all of your kids are attending school. So, yeah, if you guys need anything or have any issues or problems with anything, please let Adam know and he will relay the message to me. I will make sure we solve any issue so we can make this place the best it can be. And that goes for any security issues as well, not just living situations and such. Okay, now, let’s get to business. Adam, why don’t you explain to me the operations of this place in layman’s terms, please?”

Adam raises his arm and motions to his left. “Of course, sir. Follow me over to the main monitoring station, and we’ll start there.” Adam explains to John how they have cameras covering almost every square inch of the perimeter surrounding the mountain, along with various cameras monitoring the town streets, common areas, and most structures. The perimeter cameras are far more advanced with thermal imaging, face recognition, and weapons detection.

Trying his best not to look like a little kid and say out loud how cool he thinks everything is, John just nods his head and smiles.

Adam goes on explaining how they can fully monitor any hostile threat within town and the surrounding area, but that their capabilities are limited beyond a few miles outside the region. After he explains that they will install similar cameras in the Ark very soon, he moves them over to the next area of security and surveillance. He tries to explain how they are basically surrounded at the perimeter by a giant, motion-sensing virtual wall. It detects movement of any kind and works with the camera surveillance system in detecting all hostile persons or even unwanted wildlife that may enter the area. The virtual wall extends over a mile upwards toward the sky in case any unidentified flying objects enter the area, including any and all kinds of planes, drones, and aircraft. Adam points to images on the screen while John stands there in awe.

He goes onto the next line of defense, which is the equipment for monitoring and detecting nuclear radiation, biological, and chemical levels. It detects harmful levels of these contaminants in case of a nuclear or terrorist attack using chemical or biological weapons. This equipment detects trace amounts of N.B.C. levels from miles away using remote detection sites and monitors the country’s detection alert system so they have the earliest detection possible.

Next, they discuss that, in a few months, once they are fully operational and after every resident is trained and educated on what to do, they will conduct emergency evacuation drills and bomb scare procedures. He adds that the drills will be conducted on a monthly basis until they get to a town-acceptable evacuation time.

“That is great, absolutely wonderful. I love it. I look forward to running the drills, but explain the basic procedure or . . . ah . . . I guess . . . process that goes into the evacuation.”

“Great question, sir, and that takes us to our next aspect of our security and evacuation system.” Adam does his best to describe the virtual labyrinth of underground tunnels connecting different sections of the surrounding area to the Ark. Every house, building, and recreational area has a tunnel built into the basement of each complex along with many key sectors of the perimeter. Not only can they get everyone to the Ark within minutes but also the security team can be at any given place within this system in a matter of minutes using a complex, high-tech system of cable cars. Adam tells John to think of these cars as two-way roller coaster carts, where they travel on a single-rail system that floats on air by use of magnets. The cart is shot off at a very high speed using pneumatic launch power, which enables it to get to the Ark within seconds.

“That all sounds great. I’m very pleased with everything I’ve heard, not to mention how impressed I am how quickly you’ve managed to get this all up and running in such a short time.” John sticks out his arm and shakes Adams hand.

“Well, I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we are ready to begin our first round of drills. But that is, in a nut shell, how everything works down here.”

“I think I’m just a little overwhelmed by all of this, I guess,” John replies with a chuckle and a smile.

Adam’s face grows more serious. “Well, then if you don’t have any questions and you’re satisfied with the tour, I would like to talk to you about an issue that has come to my attention recently. So, if you’d just step into my office, sir, I will brief you on the situation.” Adam extends his hand in the direction of his office.

“Ah, okay. I hope everything is alright?” John responds warily.

Adam leads John into the office, and then Adam sits at his desk. He points to the chair across from his desk. “Please, sir, take a seat. I wanted to speak to you in here alone due to the sensitivity of the situation. Recently, Homeland Security, the FBI, and the ATF have contacted me with concerns as to our operations, mainly our weapons modifications, and they requested to come tour our facility and have access to all our technology.”

John lowers and shakes his head. “Of course they want to . . . First of all, how did they obtain information on our weapons modifications?”

“I’m not quite sure, sir. Our surveillance was just recently operational, and so it’s possible they sent a drone in for recon and intel.”

After some further discussion, John eventually comes up with the idea of just sending them some prototypes of the weapons. First, they’ll send out a briefing to the heads of each government agency explaining how they aren’t manufacturing weapons, simply modifying them to make them safer.

Adam interjects that this idea may not be accepted by the ATF, but quickly cuts his words short at noticing the obvious frustration brewing within John. As John repeats his efforts to make it clear that what he said is all they need to know and that they don’t need to tour the Ark, he gets further agitated and starts shouting.

“Damn it! I’ve paid a lot of money for this land, and there’s no way they are stepping foot on my land without an invite, which will never happen!”

“Yes, sir, of course, and I’m not trying to upset you. I just have a feeling they will have a problem with that. They don’t like to be told no.”

“I don’t give a shit what they think, the recklessness and carelessness of our government concerning forbidden lands is one of the reasons I built this place and got the hell out of there! Sorry to yell—I just get a little worked up. Just send out the briefing along with the prototypes, and we’ll leave it at that.”

“Of course, sir, I’ll get on that right away and update you as soon as I hear back from them. Thank you for your time, sir.” He begins typing on his computer.

“No— thank you, you’re doing a great job, and keep up the hard work.” John shakes Adam’s hand and exits the room, thanking the rest of the crew on his way out. He exits the building and briefly looks up at the sky, wondering if any kind of drones or surveillance planes were still up there, maybe just out of reach of their security surveillance. He scratches his chin, jumps on this horse, and rides down the mountain to his house, still filled with frustration and anger.

He gets to the house and hands his horse off to one of the stable girls, thanks her, and walks to the house. Upon entering, he is met with the pleasant scent of fresh-baked cookies, and for a second he forgets about the conversation he just had. He enters the kitchen to see Kate and the two girls laughing, singing, and dancing to the music playing in the house. John stands in the entrance of the kitchen with a small grin on his face. He takes a deep breath and just shakes his head.

“What are you three beautiful ladies up to?”

“Daddy!” Erica and Ashley both drop what they’re doing and run to hug him, but John sees that they are covered in chocolate.

“Whoa, slow down there, you chocolate-covered munchkins. I don’t want to look like you two!” John playfully puts a hand on their heads and stops them from hugging him.              

“We missed you, Daddy, and just wanted to give you a big chocolaty kiss!” Ashley swipes at her daddy’s legs, trying to get a hold of one of them.

“You aren’t coming near me with those chocolate-covered hands. You two must be crazy.” John laughs and turns them around by their heads.

“Oh, fine, Daddy, then you can’t have any special, yummy chocolate chip cookies,” Ashley says, finally giving up. She and Erica walk back to the counter.

“Watch me.” John walks over to Kate and lightly kisses her on the cheek, grabbing a hot cookie off the counter and almost dropping it. “Wow, that’s hot! Holy cow! Hey, babe, you won’t believe the conversation I just had.”

“Hi, honey. Why? What’s up? Is everything okay?” Kate briefly looks up but then goes back to stirring the batter.

“Well, to start, the government has at some point done some kind of surveillance on this place by way of drones or something. They are requesting they be briefed on all of our weapons modifications, along with wanting to come tour all our facilities and make sure we’re not building any bombs or something, I guess.” John blows on his cookie and takes a warm and gooey bite.

“Wait, what? Back up. The government thinks we’re making bombs? Honey, what are you talking about!” Kate puts down the spatula and focuses her attention on John, but then remembers the children are still in the room. “Kids, can you please go in the other room? Your father and I have to discuss a few things.” Both girls roll their eyes as Kate hands them a warm towel and they wipe their hands. They grab Markus’s hands and lead him out of the room.

Once they are out of sight, John proceeds. “First off, don’t overreact. I added the part about them thinking we’re making bombs. I just said that because I know how sensitive the outside world and especially our government is about terrorists, foreign and domestic. I’m sure they are just taking extra precautions and making sure we’re not a bunch of crazy militants held up in some compound and making weapons to attack the U.S.” John goes over to the refrigerator for a glass of milk while stuffing another cookie into his mouth.

“Oh, well, that’s good. I’m glad the government doesn’t think we’re a bunch of crazy terrorists! So what now? You’re going to let them come and tour the facilities, aren’t you?” Kate says with question, knowing her husband.

“Hell no! Not a chance. Like I told Adam, I spent way too much money on this land to allow weapons inspectors to come and make sure we’re not building weapons of mass destruction!” 

“Calm down, honey, and don’t blow things out of proportion. I don’t think our government thinks we’re building nuclear bombs. Just let them come in, take a few pictures of our manufacturing plants, and that will be that, end of story,” Kate grabs the bowl and angrily goes back to mixing the batter.