Chapter 8: Growth of the Ark Foundation

After Clara and I made the presentation to our final group of 23 ladies, we returned to the house and met with Harry and Sam to go over the overall work status and to discuss our ongoing tasks. Harry and Sam let us know they would be at the new Headquarters building early Monday morning to start setting up their offices. Harry and I talked about finding buyers for rare earths, isotopes, and metals, while Sam went over his updated construction schedule with Clara. Harry told me about the buyers who had contacted him and the quantities that they were interested in purchasing. I had forgotten most of what I had been told about this market, so Harry explained the market to me again but in more detail. Instead of buying troy ounces, customers bought kilograms, and a kilogram is equal to about 2.2 pounds. Instead of hundreds of dollars per ounce, customers paid around $20 per kilogram. For us to make any significant amount of money we would have to refine and sell tons of a material.

I told Harry that my intent had been to stockpile materials that were valuable, hard to come by, and not found in California. By stockpiling precious materials that aren’t found locally, I hoped that people would be less likely to question where we had obtained our bullion. I told Harry that I didn’t think this was the market for us and he agreed that it was only good for camouflage and probably not worth the effort. I’ll leave the sale of precious materials to Harry for I am obviously in over my head. Harry let me know that some of the Platinum Group Metals would probably provide us with the misdirection I desired and allow us to make a nice profit, assuming of course that Bob and Sharna could retrieve an adequate amount of these and other valuable metals from the asteroids they had discussed with us previously.

For some reason, as Harry spoke, I envisioned us delivering a ten-foot cube of asteroid to our buyer and having to explain where we had gotten it; Bob was having fun with me again by planting thoughts in my head. I had learned that Bob liked to tease me and loved practical jokes, while Sharna was the more serious of the two. His idea of a joke was to slip a ludicrous idea into my subconscious mind and see how long it took me to discover what he did. When I learned about this form of what he considered humor, it explained the weird things that had occasionally popped into my mind over the past few months.

I asked Harry if we were ready to sell off more of our bullion and he told me No. Harry explained that with us setting ourselves up as a non-profit organization, we had to be careful to balance our finances. We could have problems if our income from donations exceeded our expenses by too much during any calendar year. Some IRS auditor might declare our excessive income to be profit, even though we would be spending it on meeting our expenses in future years. Once that happened we would have nothing but trouble with the IRS. The only reason he had agreed to sell off as much bullion as we did was we would have some very large startup expenses for the Ark Foundation, and we would need to put a very sizeable amount of money into a Construction Account in order to contract with a construction company to do the work we needed done.

That didn’t make a lot of sense to me. After all, if a charitable corporation’s expenses are fixed and the annual contributions exceed the expenses, the corporation should not be penalized. I could see increasing expenditures to spend the excess contributions. But what would happen if that increased level of expenditure in helping people, needs to be continued for several years and contributions fall dramatically. The people being helped will suffer; their suffering will be cause by some law that says you have to spend what you get or lose your tax-exempt status.

Harry said, “That isn’t exactly right Jon. Tell you what, I will manage our finances and you manage our mission. I will keep us solvent and you keep us on track and meeting our mission goals.”

I agreed and since we were through talking, we wandered over to see what Sam was showing Clara. As we approached, we heard Clara ask Sam for a copy of the file. Sam and Harry had come to the presentation together, so after transferring the file to Clara’s laptop, Harry and Sam said their goodbyes and left.

Clara, Mary, and I sat back and relaxed for the first time in weeks. Other than picking up the necklaces tomorrow, we had nothing to do until Monday morning.

Looking at my ladies, I said, “We need to go celebrate.”

Clara and Mary looked at each other before Mary said, “What are we to celebrate?”

I smiled and said, “Take your choice. We can celebrate our relationship, the purchase of the building, the progress we’ve made during the move-in, or that it is Friday. Pick one.”

Mary said, “Gee that’s a difficult choice. I think we need to celebrate our relationship.”

“I like that choice Mary. Where do you think we should go Clara?”

“Humm, I feel like dancing. Let’s have dinner at the Carlton.”

The Carlton was one of Auburn’s more popular local restaurants that had excellent food, a live band, and a dance floor; the band wasn’t the greatest but they could carry a tune. We called for reservations, freshened up, and went out to eat.

Over dinner, the three of us talked about our childhoods and how we were raised. The conversation moved on to other topics and finally ended up with what we wanted out of life. As we talked, I recalled the conversation Clara and I had with Bob and Sharna about longevity. I redirected the conversation in that direction to find out what Mary would like. Clara understood where I was heading in the conversation and got Mary to talking about her beliefs about extremely long life. Clara finally came right out and asked Mary if she would be willing to put off having children for about three years if her life expectancy and child bearing years were to be extended to three hundred years. Mary thought about Clara’s question for about ten seconds and said yes. I looked Mary in the eyes and in all seriousness asked her if she wanted us to arrange for her life expectancy to be extended. Again, she said yes. So Clara told Sharna that Mary had agreed to the life expectancy extension and asked her to start it immediately. Sharna agreed and we went back to our dinner and conversation.

Once we finished eating, I would alternately take Clara and Mary out onto the dance floor. All three of us ended up on the floor for one of those fast dances where there is no contact between dancers. The next number was a slow romantic dance. We stayed out and danced together. At first, it was very awkward with the three of us together. We finally got our act together and just hugged each other while we shuffled around the dance floor.

After our waitress dropped off our check, Mary asked Clara if she was serious about the extended life expectancy. Clara gave Mary all her attention and said, “It’s a series of treatments and Sharna has already started you on your first treatment; there is no going back now.” Somehow, I sensed an ‘Oh Shit’ in Mary’s mind as I headed to the cash register to pay the bill; it must have bled over from my link with Bob. After paying the bill, we headed home with Mary driving since Clara and I had both indulged in several drinks. Mary drank on occasion, but didn’t really care for the way alcoholic beverages made her feel.

I was awake early Sunday morning and the girls slept in for a change. I sat out on our porch with my morning coffee, so I wouldn’t wake Clara and Mary. As I sat there, I tried visualizing what this area would look like once construction was underway. There would be the train tracks leading into the access tunnel, a switching network for moving rail cars to holding tracks so they could be loaded, and of course, multiple sets of holding tracks with cars partially or fully loaded. Then there would be a parking area for all the people who were working in the Silo and row after row of shipping containers waiting to be unloaded or picked up. It didn’t seem like a pretty sight to me.

Clara joined me in the swing about that time with her coffee and offered me a penny for my thoughts; so I told her about my thoughts. We both agreed that we didn’t want to live here when it got to that state. Clara never paid me that penny now that I think of it. Yeah I know I can be a cheapskate, but in this case, it’s the principle of the thing and besides, I need a new way to pull her chain. I think Bob’s sense of humor has rubbed off on me.

I suggested that we go house hunting after lunch and Clara agreed. Mary joined us a short time later, so we explained our plans to her and the reasons for the plans. We took care of personal business after a leisurely breakfast until it was time to leave for the jewelers. The jeweler opened his shop at 10:00 AM and we were a little early, so we found an empty bench and waited for him to open. While waiting, we talked about where we would like to live. When the door opened, we went inside and the jeweler greeted us telling us that he would be right with us as soon as he finished opening the store.

We waited and watched as he and his assistant brought out tray after tray of jewelry and put them in the display cases. When they finished, he apologized for keeping us waiting and told us he would be right back with our necklaces. I guess people tend to remember you when you place two ingots of bullion worth close to four hundred thousand dollars in their hands as if they were just a couple of packs of chewing gum. He returned in a minute or so with two black velvet boxes.

When he opened them, we took the necklaces out of the boxes and examined them. Clara and Mary just stared at them with awe in their faces. I smiled for I really liked the way they looked and I also had a similar feeling of awe. To me, they symbolized our relationship. We tried the necklaces on for fit and did a detailed inspection for any flaws; they were perfect. The jeweler had us sign for them and returned them to their boxes. We thanked the jeweler and asked when the balance of the order would be available for pickup. He estimated that all of the necklaces would be complete in four weeks. We asked him if possible, could we get one more necklace by the end of next week. He said yes, so we thanked him and left the shop with our two necklaces. We started walking toward our bistro when we heard someone shout “Reppa”.

I turned to see who had called me and saw Seajacks standing about fifteen feet away; he had his knees bent, right hand in a cast, and his left hand at belt level under the right side of his jacket. He was glaring at Mary and me, so I handed the necklaces to Clara and told her to move off to the side, if she could. As I turned back to him, he pulled a huge revolver out of the waistband of his pants. It wasn’t that large really, it just seemed that way for I was staring down its muzzle.

People started moving away from him as fast as they could and I moved between him and Mary. As I extended my hands out to my side with my fingers spread, I thought of my body armor and mentally said reactive, and then told him I was not armed.

Seajacks said to me, “I don’t care. I’m going to kill you first for stealing my woman and breaking my hand. Then I’m going to kill her for being unfaithful and leaving me.”

While he was telling me this, he was slowly preparing himself to squeeze the trigger. I said, “I didn’t steal Mary, and I didn’t break your hand. You need to put your weapon away for shooting me is the worst thing you could possibly do.”

I didn’t know if Seajacks saw them, but there were two Auburn city police, about 75 yards away, and they had started moving toward us at a trot with weapons drawn. Seajacks smiled at me and pulled the trigger.

Ah shit. All I really remember of it was a flash and very loud boom, and then the mess the bullet made of his face and head when it hit him in his left cheek. When the officers got to us, one checked Seajacks although it was obvious that he was dead, while the second officer covered me.

In a loud and excited voice, he said, “Drop your weapon.”

I’m not sure where he thought I had a weapon for I was standing with my empty hands in plain view and had been since Seajacks had pulled his weapon.

I replied, “I don’t have a weapon.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I never had a gun.”

Bob told me that the deputy was recalling me with my empty hands in plain view the entire time he and his partner had been coming toward us. He relaxed a little then he said, “If you didn’t shoot him, who did?

“You aren’t going to believe it, but he shot himself.”

The officer checking on Seajacks stood up and told us that Seajacks was dead; this was no surprise to anyone. The second officer told his partner what I had said about Seajacks shooting himself.

The officers thought about it for a minute then one of them said there had only been one shot. They looked at Seajacks revolver and at his head. According to Bob, they had both seen the gun in his hands, and that it had been pointed at me at a point blank range. They agreed that they both saw Seajacks fire the revolver, and that a bullet had hit Seajacks while I was unharmed. It made no sense to them, so they decided to let their superiors figure it out.

They called in the shooting, and while one officer secured the crime scene, the second started taking statements from the witnesses. Clara, Mary, and I found an empty bench and sat down. Our plans for the day had been canceled by Seajacks’ stupidity and we suspected that we had a long day ahead of us answering the questions the police were going to be asking us.

I contacted Bob and told him that I thought the circumstances warranted him creating a temporary link for Mary and Harry; he agreed. I called Harry at his home using my telephone and told him what had happened. He said he lived close by and would be there in a few minutes. Before he hung up, Clara and I told Mary and Harry to remain calm for Bob was going to equip them with a temporary link so the four of us could speak privately. The first time we contacted Mary, her head jerked up in surprise and after that, she remained calm. I suspect that Harry had a similar reaction, but I wasn’t there to see it.

Harry hung up his phone and used his new link to tell us how he wanted us to handle the situation. Namely, tell it exactly how it happened, but don’t mention our force fields. If asked about the apartment incident, repeat what we said on our statements. We told Mary that they would separate us, but we would be able to talk with each other over our mental links. Mary relaxed a little and seemed to become more confident knowing she wasn’t going to be left alone; well perhaps physically separated, but at least we would be with her mentally which is what was important to her.

Harry showed up in about 15 minutes and identified himself to the officers as our lawyer. When he took us aside, we verbally told Harry what happened and that we were willing to cooperate with the police. After about an hour of waiting, two police detectives approached us. Harry identified himself as our lawyer and agreed to us telling them what had happened. They separated us and then started interviewing us one at a time. Harry listened in on first one and then the other interview. Each of us told them what happened and when asked what he had meant by stealing his woman and breaking his hand, we each told about how he had attacked me at the apartment complex. Harry only intervened when they began asking how a bullet fired at me hit Seajacks. What Harry actually said to us out loud was, “If you don’t know, don’t speculate.”

Over our link, he told us to say we didn’t know and to not mention our body armor. It would only cause us even more problems.”

After our initial statement, the detectives still didn’t know how the bullet Seajacks’ fired at me managed to strike him in the face. They decided it would be best if they continued questioning us at the police station. So they took us down to the station in separate vehicles and placed us in separate interview rooms. Harry followed us in his car.

Our stories matched the witnesses’ statements and the recollection of the two police officers who had witnessed the shooting. Harry told them they could question us, and he told us to not answer any questions unless he was in the room. Everyone’s statements had matched, so their only problem was, how the bullet he fired hit him in the face. We answered all of their questions except how the bullet had hit Seajacks. The police approached that question in several ways, and Harry intervened and stopped us from answering that question every time it was brought up. Harry said something to the effect of it being impossible and that they knew it, so he was not going to allow his clients to speculate on how the impossible had happened. Harry finally put a stop to the questions, most of which we had already answered at least twice, and a short while later we left the station.

I brought Bob and Sharna into our group discussion to ask if Mary and Harry could keep their temporary links until the risk of police contact had passed and if there was any risk in them keeping the links active for that long. They agreed that there was still a need for the link, but they advised us that while the risk was minimal, the link should be deactivated except when needed. Bob said he and Sharna would monitor Mary and Harry continually and activate the links if it became necessary. We would also be able to have Bob or Sharna activate their links if we needed to reach them.

Mary and Harry were disappointed to learn that they were not going to be able to keep their links. Sharna, Harry, and Mary suddenly disappeared from our link and Clara told us that Sharna was going to privately explain to Mary and Harry why they couldn’t keep the links. It was after 4:00 PM, and in all the excitement, we had forgotten about lunch. Our stomachs were now telling us that they needed to be fed. The four of us headed for the nearest diner in Harry’s car and Sharna rejoined our link en-route.

Immediately after Seajacks’ death, Clara, Mary, and I had remained quiet except when responding to a question and externally we projected a strong, calm facade, but internally we were in an emotional turmoil. We were constantly talking over our mental link to reassure each other that we would be all right for we had done nothing wrong; that was why we were so quiet. One of the main topics we talked about was did we bear any responsibility for Seajacks’ death. I could sense over the link that Clara and Mary’s concern was more for how I would react to Seajacks death than for themselves.

Our basic concern was that the police would come to the decision that we set Seajacks up by not telling him about our body armor and that they would find me at least partially to blame for his death by setting my armor to the reactive mode of defense. This was one of our reasons for not explaining how the bullet fired at me hit Seajacks. We knew that if they didn’t know about our armor, they couldn’t use it against us.

It may have been my military background, but I felt no sense of guilt over his death and I believed the world was probably a better place without him in it. I suppose the police could claim that setting my force field to reactive could be considered an aggressive action, and that would make me at least partially responsible for Seajacks’ death. As far as I was concerned, not talking to the police about our armor was the right thing to do.

I may have been lying to myself about not having any blame in his death, but my position was that he had made his choices and his actions had created a lethal set of circumstances that resulted in his death. Therefore, all blame should fall on his shoulders. I didn’t think that Clara and Mary had ever been involved in an event that led to someone’s death, so they held different views than I did and I suspected that they felt a little guilty. Bob informed me they both felt that we should have done more to stop him from taking the actions that he had, and that undefined ‘more’ would have prevented his death. Privately, I agreed with them in that we could have done more, but I doubt it would have changed the outcome. Down deep in my subconscious where I didn’t want to look, I think that I wanted him dead because of the hurt and anguish he inflicted on Mary.

Sharna had deactivated their temporary links, so we talked with Mary and Harry verbally over dinner about how we should handle any follow up visits by the police. He told us to do the same thing we had done during our interviews. Answer their questions truthfully, but do not answer questions about how the bullet hit Seajacks. If they learned of our body armor or asked any questions relating to it, we should just tell them that we were not going to answer their questions on the advice of our lawyer. He also told us to call him if the police went beyond what we considered reasonable questioning. Toward the end of our meal, I sensed that Clara and Mary’s attitude toward me was changing; I wasn’t sure how to describe it, but it seemed that they were becoming very clingy. It was late when we finally picked up our car and got home. Before we headed to bed, Bob and Sharna activated Mary’s link pulling all five of us into a group discussion.

Mary’s link deactivated and we decided bed was a good idea, so Clara and I said goodnight to her. Clara and I headed for the master bedroom while Mary went to her room. Once we closed the bedroom door, Clara attacked me. Our clothes disappeared as if by magic and I found myself flat on the bed with Clara on top of me. I wasn’t aware of when it happened, but my shaft was buried deep in her pussy and she was holding my hands to her breasts. Our lovemaking could almost be classed as mutual rape except that we were both willing and active participants. When we finished, we lay snuggling in each other’s arms until Clara suddenly went stiff. She told me she would be right back and left the room. Two minutes later, she returned dragging Mary by her left forearm.

In a loud demanding voice, Clara shouted, “I am your Mistress and that is your Master; now strip, your Master needs your attention.”

As Mary removed her nightgown, I contacted Clara over our link to find out what was going on, but all she said was ‘later’ and shutdown the link. With that, she turned to Mary who was staring at my cock and said, “Tend to your Master, all I want to hear from him are moans, groans, and screams of pleasure.”

She then shoved Mary toward the bed. Along the way the shove turned into a dive and I was covered by a beautiful naked woman doing everything she could to make me a happy man. As my pleasure built, a second set of stimulating hands joined the first pair with Clara stroking me and ordering Mary to fuck me senseless. In seconds, Mary had mounted me and my pleasure grew exponentially. With Mary riding me and Clara kissing and stroking me, my pleasure grew until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I came hard, harder than I had ever come and passed out. When I regained consciousness, Clara was snuggled up to my right side, Mary was snuggled up to me on my left side, and they were both sound asleep. I relaxed and went back to sleep. Tomorrow, I would look for answers.