Chapter 21: Intake

Clara and I scheduled a meeting of our Advisory Council, all of the Ark Foundation VPs, and other key members of the Ark Society for the first week of January 2042. The topic was the final review of our pickup plan, and the establishment of the dates and locations for our major pickups. Julie and Samantha made the first part of the presentation.

The plan they presented was almost identical to what we had discussed some months ago. There was more detail and a few enhancements to expedite the movement of the residents into the Silo. One of those enhancements was to initially locate the short-term residents on Level 2. In the original plan, we took everyone to their permanent room assignment. By taking everyone to Level 2, we shortened the amount of time necessary to move the residents off Level 1 by more than half. In many cases, people would share a room for the first week, but the rooms were large enough that it should not be a major inconvenience. At least we did not feel it would be a major inconvenience, but once we started pickups, a few of our new short–term residents might disagree. In revising the plan, the idea of placing single women in a room with single men was voted down. The planners decided that would be a bad idea, so we end up with several rooms filled with single men and several rooms filled with single women, but we didn’t force the issue by mixing single men and women in the same room or by forcing unattached women to live with an existing family.

The plan for temporary room assignments passed our review with almost no changes, and the few changes we did make are too minor to even mention. The real test of the plan would be our first pickup. After that, we may need to tweak the things that cause us difficulty.

The main topic of interest was when would we begin the pickups and where would we conduct the first pickup. The Habitation Department had selected 12 pickup sites in various parts of the country. Seven of the sites were east of the Mississippi, and the rest were in major western cities. The logistics of planning the locations of the pickup points, and who would be picked up at each pickup location was mind-boggling. Arranging for the pickup notification letters to be printed and mailed was another major task; all Samantha would say about that task was ‘Thank God for mail merge.’

Tuesday morning, April 1, 2042 was selected as the date of our first pickup, and the place was the Met Life Sports Complex in East Rutherford, NJ. The remaining pickups were staggered at nominal 3-week intervals, and we drew the locations from a hat to achieve some degree of randomness. A pattern to the pickups could result in the protestors being at the pickup locations to greet us.

I am not sure if picking April Fool’s day on the East Coast for the first pickup was an intentional joke. The morning temperature was 45 degrees Fahrenheit and it was raining. I have to admit though, the miserable weather discouraged curious people from coming to the stadium to find out what was going on.

In general, everything went as planned at the pickup location. Most of the problems we experienced were back at the Ark. Our new residents had one speed to their movements and that was dead slow. It took far longer than planned to get the residents from the access tunnel opening, onto the elevators, and to their temporary rooms on Level 2. Clara looked into the matter and learned that the passenger cars were not being filled to capacity, and the new residents were more interested is looking at the sights on Levels 1 and 2 than getting to their rooms.

There wasn’t much we could do to change human nature, but Bob had an idea.

“Jon, let’s use a compulsion on the new residents. Sharna and I can give the residents a compulsion to board the train and fill the cars to full capacity. The compulsion can also make them want to get to their rooms in a quick but orderly fashion.”

“I like it Bob. Let’s try it and if it works, we can use it for future pickups.”

Bob’s idea worked, and things improved. We didn’t get back on schedule, but we didn’t fall further behind either. Our last load of residents left the Met Life Sports Complex at 8:54 PM; we had projected being complete by 6:00 PM.

The advance pickup team stayed behind to take care of the final cleanup activities, which they did the following day. No, they didn’t have to clean the field that was done by the complex’s staff. What our people had to do was collect our marker cones, poles, tables, chairs, speaker system, and the other equipment we used during the pickup. If we had stayed on schedule, that would have been done at the end of the pickup. The equipment was loaded into a utility trailer, which the advance pickup crew towed to the next pickup location where they would setup for the next pickup.

On each of our big pickups, a number of residents failed to appear at the pickup site. The reasons were varied, some acceptable to us and others unacceptable. When the reason was acceptable, like being in the hospital for appendicitis, we added the applicant to our list of cleanup pickups or directed them to a scheduled pick up point. That last pickup was a sop to my conscious. We did not want riots. So to placate the people we knew we would not be picking up, we told people that there would be at least one more pickup scheduled for their area. I really hate lying, so we scheduled a quick pick of the people who had missed their pickups in each area. Somehow I felt better even though what we told everyone was a misrepresentation; I fulfilled my promise so the promise wasn’t a lie.

After our first pickup, most of our complaints came from the unattached women, who felt we were pressuring them into joining a man’s family. Yes, the ladies were right. We were applying a form of pressure to get the woman to join a man’s family; after all, our goal was to repopulate the world and having the unattached women in a relationship with a man would further that goal. The second largest number of complaints came from the men’s wives. The wives rightfully felt we were trying to force them into a polygamous lifestyle. Yes, guilty as charged, and we admitted it, but we did not force the unattached women to join an existing family and we did not force the families to accept the unattached women. We knew that if we just let nature take its course, most of them would do what we wanted.

In my opinion, the one incident that typified the unacceptable reasons for missing a pickup was the reason Mr. Kyle Miller missed his pickup. On April 1, 2042, the Miller family arrived at the pickup point without Mr. Miller. Our staff checked Mrs. Miller and her four children in and directed them to the pickup area. Sharna transported them to the Drytown Silo Freight Yard where they were processed and temporarily assigned to a room on Level 2.

During the processing, Mrs. Miller was asked why her husband was not with her. Mrs. Miller’s response was Mr. Miller was a baseball fanatic and he just had to attend the Yankee’s opening game. He told her that the Ark Foundation would have to pick him up on another day. This was of course reported to the Habitation Department and Julie immediately removed his name from the list of applicants approved for intake. We did not want people who were so self-centered that they would create problems for others so they could get what they wanted.

We knew our screening process was not perfect. Our application process was designed to eliminate certain types of people, and Mr. Miller seemed to be the epitome of the personality type we wanted to avoid. Julie and Samantha started an investigation to determine how Mr. Miller had made it through our screening process and been selected for intake.

Did we have a problem with the screening questionnaire? Were there other misfits that made it through the screening process? Would these misfits create future problems?

What we learned was Mr. Miller was lazy and avoided everything that took any measure of effort. Mrs. Miller had heard about the Ark from a news report and filled out an application for the Miller family. She had given Mr. Miller the questionnaire that we used to evaluate the personality of adult applicant’s. In his usual fashion, Mr. Miller had his teenage son complete the questionnaire for him.

The final decision was ‘Yes our process was not perfect, but the Miller case did not mean that the questionnaire was not doing its job.’ There were undoubtedly similar cases, so we would have to be vigilant in monitoring the activities of our short-term residents.

Mr. Kyle Miller did not take kindly to our telling him that he had been removed from our eligibility list. His initial response was to file a complaint with the police for kidnaping his family. He later filed a lawsuit against us for alienation of affection, breach of contract, and false advertising. The action that caused us the most difficulty was his TV interviews.

The New York police department conducted a brief investigation. They called the Auburn Police Department, and an investigator talked with Mrs. Miller and her children. His report stated that Mrs. Miller and her children had left of their own freewill, and they had no desire to return to New York City.

When Mr. Miller’s lawyer contacted the Ark Foundation, his call was routed to Harry. Harry discussed matters with Mr. Miller’s lawyer. Once the lawyer was informed of the actual situation, he agreed that Mr. Miller did not have a case. None of us, not even his lawyer, was ever able to understand the basis for Mr. Miller’s claim of false advertising.

News of anything to do with the meteoroids was big news and a highly sought after story. A local TV station learned of Mr. Miller’s lawsuit against the Ark Foundation and interviewed him. The reporter giving the interview was an attractive young redhead who came across on TV as an efficient dedicated professional. I was highly impressed with her interviewing skills. I also had a fondness for redheads, especially busty redheads with green or blue eyes.

Mr. Miller was also very good at telling his story and very believable when he misrepresented the facts. His initial interview was followed up by series of interviews on all of the major talk shows. The audiences responded to his story with increased demonstrations at our Freight Yards, and in other cities. Lyle put out a news release to inform the public that known demonstrators would not be allowed to join us in the Ark when it became time to pick up our residents.

Bob’s transporting the demonstrators to Australia had created a major dent in the number of demonstrations that were held at our Freight Yards for about three months. The majority of the demonstration’s organizers had been moving through the crowd stirring up emotions when Bob encapsulated the demonstrators in his force field; they claimed they were trying to keep things under control. It took close to two months for the organizers to resolve their legal issues in Australia and make their way back to Auburn.

Once they returned, their once a week demonstrations evolved into small daily demonstrations that were conducted peacefully. They went back to marching and chanting with one significant difference, they stayed on the far side of the signs we had posted to mark our transport boundary. However, that lasted until the demonstrators became so incensed that they failed to notice they had drifted onto our side of the signs marking the edge of our property. Once that happened with no response from us, they tended to ignore which side of the signs they were on.

Once Mr. Miller’s interview was aired, the demonstrations increased in size and duration. Instead of a couple dozen people walking and chanting for most of a morning, there were hundreds of angry people who showed up just after sunrise and stayed until after sunset, although most took a break early in the afternoon for lunch. Considering what the demonstrators had previously done, we supplemented our Security Guards with a platoon of Rangers. Their orders were to retreat at the fist signs of violence. The Rangers would cover the retreat of our Security Guards into the access tunnel and then they were to withdraw into the tunnel without violence, if possible. If Bob or Sharna did not transport the demonstrators and the demonstrators entered the yard area before the Rangers could retreat, they were to fire a volley aimed at knee height to wound any trespasser who was on our side of the fence line. Mike made it clear that if the Security Guards and Rangers did their jobs properly, there was no reason for the Rangers to have to fire their weapons. The only time that might be necessary would be if the demonstrators were to attack with no warning signs.

The day after Mr. Miller’s initial interview was aired, the local TV station contacted the Ark Foundation to obtain an interview. We declined their request stating that due to the lawsuit Mr. Miller had filed, the Ark Foundation felt that a response at that time would be inappropriate. However, we did reserve the option of providing an interview if the situation changed.

By June 2042, Mr. Miller had become a rallying point for the anti-Ark element. Clara and I met with our Advisory Council to discuss how we should respond to the rising anger being directed at the Ark Foundation and our employees. Our decision was to contact the local TV station that had interviewed Mr. Miller, and arrange for an interview. Harry setup the interview and he arranged for the interviewer who interviewed Mr. Miller to interview me. The TV station’s manager wanted his film crew to interview Mrs. Miller also, so Harry suggested that the film crew do the interviews in the Ark, and the station manager agreed.

Harry and the station manager decided to have the interviewer and film crew on site to film a major pickup and the subsequent processing. Our next pickup was to be on June 18, so the film crew would be arriving on the 17th. The day before a pickup was always busy for Clara and me, so Harry had volunteered to host the film crew in his home for the duration of their stay.

Harry and Belinda had formed a Bond Group and subsequently added Leah Snyder to their group. Belinda, Leah, and Harry left the Freight Yard early in the morning to avoid the demonstrators. After taking care of their errands, they met the film crew’s plane at the airport, and drove them back to the Aurora Freight Yard. Harry delayed their arrival at the Freight Yard until mid-afternoon when the number of demonstrators on-site would be minimal. Even so, they had to run a gauntlet of angry demonstrators. The Ranger platoon opened the gates and stood ready to repel any demonstrators foolish enough to commit an act of violence on our property. Running the gauntlet rattled the film crew, who weren’t used to having that type of anger focused on them personally.

The 18th would be a busy day, so my Bond Mates went to bed early. I would have joined them, but I had to pay a curtesy visit to the film crew and discuss what would be happening tomorrow. The Farrell Bond Group was in Room J1, so I only had a short distance to walk. Belinda answered my knock on their door and invited me in. After introducing me to the interviewer Linda Hall, her camerawoman May Hernandez, and their field director John Hansen, we sat down to discuss tomorrow’s pickup.

“John, what will be happening tomorrow is our crew will gather in the Freight Yard early tomorrow morning, and Bob will fly us to the Mile High Stadium in Denver, Colorado. That is sensitive information right now John, so please don’t make the pickup location public until after the pickup is complete.

“Our on-site crew has been setting up to conduct the pickup for the past two days, so there should be no delays. Bob will land us in the stadium in the pickup area. We will move off to the side and May can begin filming our residents as they are guided into the pickup area. When the area is filled, Bob will enclose them in a containment field and transport them back to the Ark. While he is doing that, more residents will enter the pickup area and then Sharna will transport that group of residents to the Ark. This will continue until we have transported all of the residents to the Ark. While May is filming, Linda can interview me about what is happening at the pickup site. When you have what you want there, we can return to one of the Ark Freight Yards and repeat the process to document the arrival of the residents at Freight Yard and their processing.”

“Bob, can you and I have a private chat without my Bond Mates and Sharna overhearing?”

“Sure Jon. Okay, I blocked the link so go ahead.”

“Would you take a close look at Linda and May? I am getting the feeling that they might make good Bond Mates.”

“You are right Jon. I think they would fit into your group very nicely. John would make a good candidate for Ark Society membership also.”

“When Clara meets them, I think she and Sharna will decide to make them Bond Mates. It is about time that I was able to suggest that a woman be considered for membership in our Bond Group. Clara and Sharna are usually present when we meet someone new, and it seems like they have made the decision before I have even had the chance to say hello. What do you think, will it be fun to surprise them with the news or should we let them tell us that they have found Bond Mates 11 and 12?”

“I think it will be fun for us to surprise them. How do you want to do it?

“Oh that’s easy. Just reconnect us to Clara and Sharna.”

“Clara, wakeup I need to talk with you.”

“Jon, what’s the matter? I had just fallen asleep and I have to get up early tomorrow.”

“Sorry Clara, there is nothing wrong. I’m at Harry’s place, and all I wanted to know is if you wanted to join me in interviewing Bond Mates 11 and 12. Bye.”

I could hear Clara on the link asking what I meant by that. I didn’t reply. It wasn’t ten minutes later, when there was an energetic knock on Harry’s door. I had told Belinda to take her time in answering the door. When she did, Clara and the remainder of my Bond Mates stomped into the room and gave me a dirty look.

During those ten minutes, I had finished describing tomorrow’s events. Before my Bond Mates had a chance to introduce themselves, John, Linda, and May turned to me with an unspoken question of ‘Who are these women?’

“I believe that Harry, Belinda, and Leah have explained our practice of forming a Bond Group. Well these ladies are my Bond Mates. I will let you ladies introduce yourselves to our guests Linda Hall, May Fernandez, and John Hansen.”

Linda and May were having a whispered conversation, when May turned to me and said, “Why are Linda and I getting the feeling that there is something going on here that is not apparent?”

I could tell that Linda and May weren’t angry, so I said, “Are you aware that the virus the meteoroids carry will kill off most of the world’s population?”

All three of them nodded their heads, I asked, “Would you be interested in joining us here in the Ark if you had the opportunity?”

After glancing at each other, they nodded yes.

“Well can you explain why we never received an application from the three of you?”

The three of them looked at each other and then John said, “I don’t know about Linda and May, but I figured the odds were against me. From what I could find out, the Ark will shelter about 2.4 million people. That means that if we just consider the US population, I would only have a 1 in 160 chance of being selected in your lottery. When you consider the entire world, the odds drop to around 1 in 5,000. I decided that I would be better off spending my time and effort in preparing an area that would prevent the virus from getting to me. Some friends and I bought some land that provides us with access to some of the deep cave systems. We are preparing one of those caves as a shelter where we will wait out the virus.

“I asked Linda and May to join us but they weren’t sure if that was their best option. The offer is still open, but it seems they are still looking for a better option.”

After thinking on what John said, I replied, “I think your idea will work John as long as you don’t allow any breeze to carry the virus down to your level. Of course, that leaves you with the problem of ‘How do you get fresh air?’ Although, I suppose sealing the passage way and using a HEPA filter system would let you replenish your air supply. What about you two ladies, why didn’t you submit an application?”

Linda and May whispered back and forth, and Linda finally said, “We didn’t apply for two reasons. Like John, we knew the odds were against us and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. However, the main reason is we don’t get sick. Except for allergies, neither of us has ever been sick from a virus, cold, or other illness. We believe we will be one of your 15% that will be immune to the virus. We will follow the advice on your website and try to avoid contact with the virus, get as far underground as we can, and hope one of the large meteoroids doesn’t hit anywhere near us.”

I considered Linda, May, and John’s reasons. I couldn’t fault their logic, but I felt that they would have been better off if they had sent in an application. I must have been thinking too long for May said, “I don’t know about Linda and John, but I looked into your application process. That questionnaire you wanted everyone to fill out turned me off. It was a personality test, and the thought of spending the rest of my life with a group of people who were just like me was not what I wanted to do. I like variety.”

“I see. I hadn’t thought about it from that point of view May. However, you misunderstood the reason for us evaluating our applicants’ personality. We weren’t trying to find people like us. The purpose of that test was to weed out people prone to using violence to solve personal problems and to eliminate people who were emotionally unstable.

“These types of people can create problems in a large group of people. If you stop and consider the living conditions that we will endure for the next 20-50 years, it is easy to see that we need people who can work together to attain a goal. Infighting and power plays might destroy the integrity of our society.

“I plan to work with the three of you during this interview. I suspect that the three of you are the types of people we want to have in the Ark Society. Why don’t you take the next few days and decide if you might like to join us. I’m certain that my Bond Mates will be more than willing to talk with you about our lifestyle and what you can expect if you decide to join us.

“John, if you will give me the names and addresses of your friends, I will have Bob do an evaluation of them. If he thinks they are viable candidates for our group, I will make them a similar offer also.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am tired and will need to be up early tomorrow morning. I’m going to bed.”

I left Harry’s place and headed home. Clara was right behind me followed by the rest of our Bond Mates. When she caught up with me, Clara said, “I’m going to get you for that Jon. Finding you more Bond Mates is a job for Sharna and me. You need to just sit back and let us do our thing. After all it is just unnatural and wrong of you to look for your own Bond Mates after all your comments about having enough Bond Mates.”

Mary said, “She’s right Jon. You need to let us find Bond Mates for you. Your job is to get us pregnant, and take care of our family. Speaking of getting us pregnant, we only have about nine more months before the meteoroids arrive. All of the preparatory work will be complete in a few months, and we will need to take on our new role of managing the Ark Society. We have been discussing children and decided that managing the Ark Society is going to leave us with a lot of free time. To us that means, it is time for us to focus on having more children.

“Up to now we have limited ourselves to just a couple of kids each. However, as Sharna says, ‘One or two kids each are not going to repopulate the world.’ As our leader, you need to start doing your part by keeping us pregnant.”

“Yeah, I know Mary. I want to have lots of kids with all of you. I just don’t want you to think that I look at my ladies as Baby Factories. Regardless of how many kids we have together, you will never be a Baby Factory to me. All ten of you are my friends, confidents, lovers, mates, and wives. When you add more Bond Mates to our group, I will look upon them in the same way.”

Maggie said, “We know that Jon. That is one of the many reasons why we love you so much.

“Jon, I was thinking about your offer to John. Did you have a function in mind for him in the Ark Society?”

“No Maggie, I just recognized him as someone who could make a positive contribution to our group. Why?”

“Well, I was thinking that he, May, and Linda would make a good team as our Ark Society Historians. Right now, we are going through the birth of a new society, and our descendants may find the process informative. But that means someone will have to document what has happened and is happening, and why we are making the changes in our social structure. We should have thought of this before, but I think we should document what our current society is like, so our descendants will understand why we made the changes that we have made and will make in the future.”

Clara said, “That is a great idea Jon. Maggie is right about our descendants needing to understand the past. I would hate to see them revert to a social structure similar to what we now have out of ignorance.”

After giving Maggie’s idea some thought, I said, “Mary, you and Julie need to get with John and explain this idea. Find out what type of equipment and supplies they will need to prepare the documentary that Maggie described. They will probably want to do this in a video medium, which means cameras, lights, video storage medium, computers, and a video editing suite. Identify what they need and get it for them. Julie, they can probably do the documentation by themselves, but they will also need a video studio, video editors and possibly a producer or narrator to plan out what should be documented and do the voice over to explain what the viewer is seeing. Set them up on Level 16, and if we don’t have that type of talent and equipment, find it for us.”

By the time, we finished our conversation, we had reached our home and everyone headed for their bedroom. Considering how late it was and what we had ahead of us tomorrow, my bedmates and I decided to cuddle up together and go to sleep. Impregnating my ladies would have to wait until we had more time and energy.

Mary woke me at 4:30 AM. I had slept through the sound of the phone ringing, which wasn’t unusual for me when I was really tired.

“Jon, the President is on the phone and he needs to speak with you immediately.”

“Damned, now what has happened?

“Good morning Mr. President, how is your shelter effort going?”

“It is moving along nicely Jon, and we should have everything complete in four months. But that is not what I called about. Do you recall us agreeing to me providing you with two companies of Rangers and one Seal Team?”

“Yes sir, and we talked about it later and we modified our agreement to my getting the entire 2nd Battalion. Do you need some of the Battalion returned to the 75th Ranger Division?”

“No I’m fine with that part of our agreement; I’ve got too many soldiers to deal with now. It’s our discussion about what will happen to our military personnel when the virus is rampant that concerns me.”

“As you know, I want to save as many of our military personnel as I can. I made arrangements for the remainder of the 75th to be assigned to the Government shelters we built, and the Commanders of the Navy’s Special Warfare Groups Two and Four heard about it, so they approached me suggesting that I use their people to augment my Ranger forces. My advisors looked into it and decided that they had skills that might be useful to our survival after the virus dies out.

“The Admiral in charge of the Naval Special Warfare Command thanked me for ensuring that two groups of his people were being taken care of to include their dependents. He asked me if a similar arrangement might be possible for Groups One and Three.

“That is when I remembered that I had offered to provide you with a Seal Team in addition to the two Ranger Companies. Are you interested in acquiring two groups of Seal Teams Jon? Group One is comprised of four Seal Teams, and Group Three is delivery teams, but the makeup of those teams is not clear to me. I would appreciate it if you can find a place for our people in your shelter.”

“Mr. President, when you offered me a Seal Team, it surprised the hell out of me. I asked myself what I would do with them. I still don’t know what I would do with a Seal Team, much less with two Groups of Seal Teams. However, I will find a place for them and their dependents in the Ark; I can always find a good use for trained military personnel. I am assuming that I will be inheriting all of their equipment and supplies in addition to the personnel.”

“Yes that is what I was intending Jon. I will inform the Admiral that he is to expedite the assignment of the two Groups to the Ark and to have his people report to you at the Ark ASAP and no later than two months from now. The majority of their boats and other seagoing equipment will have to be stored at the Coronado Naval Base; it would take more time than we have left to move all of their boats, equipment, and supplies to the Oakland area and put them in storage. Although, I will recommend that they move a few boats and equipment to the Oakland area and put them in storage.”