Chapter 2

I was in my office the next day thinking about yesterday’s TV announcement. It was my first public step in pulling our Arkians together into an organization that could reclaim the United States from the devastation caused by the meteoroids and the virus.

I was never one for worrying about the world as a whole, so my primary interest was always my country. Our former neighbors, Canada and Mexico, are defunct. The few surviving citizens of those countries will probably have minimal effect on those of us living in the United States, which is also defunct. At some point, I will probably have to change my view of what makes up my country, to include the entire continent. For now, I will limit it to what was the United States. I will leave it to my descendants to worry about incorporating the survivors living on the parts of the continent to our north and south.

I had fantasies as a boy of becoming the President, but I never had a serious desire to be a King or a Dictator. Therefore, I am very uncomfortable with my current position. I was raised in the United States and served in its military. I firmly believe rule by one person, or a committee, is the wrong type of government for us.

Our founding fathers established a government that provided freedom to people who had been dominated by King George. I personally believe what they created evolved into something far less than the ideal they intended it to be. I am also aware the signers of our Declaration of Independence paid a heavy price for placing their signatures on that document. Many of them were tortured and killed by British soldiers, and the British Army also searched for and killed their family members. This retaliation was a direct result of their signing the Declaration of Independence. I don’t want my friends, family, and descendants to suffer as a result of my decisions and actions, so I need to give considerable thought to what is the best for us now, and in the future. A great deal of planning and effort will be needed to bring that about. I can’t do it alone and I won’t have to.

During the years preceding the meteoroids’ arrival, the official members of my Advisory Council had grown to eighteen people. My official Advisors and I consulted with a few people to gain their opinions, but the people we consulted with weren’t Advisory Council Members. Between our official and unofficial advisors, I received more advice and opinions than I think I needed.

I kept my Advisory Council small for a reason, although eighteen isn’t really small, and I hope we end up with a new government that is also small. Putting too many people together to make a decision can be a problem, and too few is also a problem. My job now will be to ensure we have the right balance and the means to adjust the balance of the government structures we create to meet future needs.

Today, my Advisory Council and I are meeting to define the approach we will use in creating the Ark’s Government. My hope is the organization we define will devise a structure to govern us similar to that defined by the Constitution, and that the structure will meet the leadership needs of the wasteland we still think of as the United States. If Clara and I provide our Arkians with the proper guidance, then they will succeed. If not, then Clara and I as everyday citizens can modify the new government by working from within as we rebuild our country, and as our situation evolves.

It will be nice to hand over the reins of government to someone else. Yes, I know that idea is a fantasy. Clara and I will always be in some policy making position of the government. Bob and Sharna will require us to have that level of involvement. But if we do things right, then we will be able to offload the majority of the planning and decisions we are currently involved in, as the sole decision makers.

I opened the meeting with, “Alright, people, let’s settle down so we can finish this meeting and get home early. The main reason for today’s meeting is to discuss the organization that will define our new government. Just to be clear, we are not and will not create the new government’s structure.

“Prior to the arrival of the meteoroids, Clara and I ran the Ark Foundation as a privately owned business. What we have now is no longer a business, but a new society. Currently, those of us in this room are an informal government that is guiding our people. So far, our Arkians have been amenable to our rule, but that will change and our Arkians will want a say in how they are governed.

“We need to involve our fellow Arkians in defining the new government. The structure that will define the government needs to be something like a committee; but it must provide a means for everyone to input their thoughts to the committee, and for the committee to provide feedback to them.

“Rather than us or the committee deciding what to implement in forming the government, I think we should allow our Arkians to provide ideas for the various aspects of what the government should do in governing us. The committee can take the ideas that the Arkians provide, and use the ideas to define the government’s structure and its operating procedures. I see this as a gradual, repetitive process. First, we create the basic structure of the government. Then as our Arkians approve the components of the basic structure, the committee will fill in the details of the structure, and how it will operate.

“Last night, I explained most of our current situation to our people in regards to what their world has become. We know there is more that they need to know; but for now, we need to let them come to accept that part of what their new world is like. Tomorrow morning, I want to make another broadcast. In that broadcast, I want to define the structure that we will use to create a new government. I am open to suggestions ... Yes, Harry.”

Harry said, “We’ve briefly discussed a new government during prior meetings, and I have been thinking about the best way to do this for a long time.

“As you said, the obvious answer is to form a committee. It needs to be large enough to do the job, but I can foresee problems if it becomes too large. Our people will generate an immense number of ideas so a large committee will be needed to process those ideas. The problem with that is, a large group of people cannot make decisions in a reasonable period of time.

“My answer is a tiered structure of committees. I think the lower portion of the structure can process the ideas, and thoughts, submitted by our Arkians into understandable groupings of similar ideas that can be presented to a relatively small central committee that will evaluate the ideas and use them to define the government. This central committee will then pass feedback on what they designed back to the Arkians who generated those thoughts and ideas.

“At some point during the creation process, we will need to get our Arkians’ approval on the basic elements that make up the government’s structure and on the details of how those elements will function. I’m not sure of the best method to be used to obtain approval, but we do need to implement a means for doing so.

“For the committee’s structure, each of our four Silos’ twelve residential levels has eighteen corridors and each corridor has a hundred and sixty residences. So I am thinking of us forming a committee for each corridor with a committee representative for every group of ten residences. We will have sixteen representatives per corridor committee, and that means each level of a Silo will have eighteen sixteen-member Corridor Committees.

“The people living in each of a level’s eighteen corridors will elect members to represent them on a Corridor Committee. The eighteen Corridor Committees will then elect representatives from their committee to represent them on a Level Committee. The twelve Level Committees will elect representatives to form a committee for the Silo, and the four Silo Committees will elect some of their members to represent their Silo as a central committee. The primary function of the three lower level will be to consolidate the ideas. I see this consolidation as forwarding a single idea to the next higher level of the tier, when the residents submit identical ideas. Since the central committee will be pulling everything together and doing the final summarization of the ideas, I think of this committee as the Summary Committee, but Central Committee would also be a good name for it.

“Overall, the tiered-committee structure is large and a little complicated. But the Ark is really an immense structure containing over a million adults, so I think we will need something like this to do the job we want done.”

When Harry sat down, I said, “Thank you, Harry, and I know the creation of the government is a complex process and will take a long time for us to do it properly. Carol, did you want to add something?”

“No, Jon, I just have a question. Harry, you said we would have each member of your Corridor Committee represent ten residences. That doesn’t seem like a lot to me. Shouldn’t we have each representative handle more residences than that?”

Harry responded with, “The representative is representing people, Carol, not residences. I’m using residences as a simple way to apportion the people in the corridors to a representative. We currently have an average of about three or four adults in each residence, and with our young people growing up, the average will be higher in a couple of years. The current average means each representative will handle about forty people, and forty people can generate a lot of suggestions.”

“You’re right, Harry. Ten residences per representative makes more sense when I think of it in terms of people. That’s all I had, Jon.”

“Okay. I see Larry wants to add something, Go ahead, Larry.”

Larry said, “When my group was working on creating a new legal structure, it was evident to us that we would need to create a new government. Our former government’s structure will not work for our new situation. While we did discuss the structure of a new government, we didn’t try to define it for we thought all of us should be involved in the process. Jon wants to obtain ideas from all of our people and provide feedback to them. That sounds like a better idea to me than what we were thinking of doing and Harry’s idea for a structure to process the ideas also sounds good to me. I suggest we use Harry’s idea as a starting point.

“If I understand how his tiered committee will work, it will allow the occupants of each residence to provide input that will be organized by topic and funneled upward through three committees to what Harry wants to call the Summary Committee. By the way, I like that name better than Central Committee because I associate Central Committee with the Russian government.

“The Summary Committee will process the information and provide feedback to the occupants of the individual residences. Creating a Government TV channel may be a good way to provide general and feedback information to our Arkians. An interactive TV program would allow the residents to input their ideas, and review feedback from the Summary Committee; alternatively, we could do it as a computer program.

“I would also like to point out that a delegation from the Advisory Council should be part of this Summary Committee. If we agree, I volunteer myself and those who worked with me in creating our legal code to become members of the committee, since we are the ones most familiar with the new legal code. I also feel that the former Congressmen should be blocked from membership on the committees.”

“Thank you, Larry. When it comes time to consider the makeup of the Summary Committee, we can discuss your offer.”

I looked around the table and saw Sam wanting to add something. His tense body language told me that, in addition to him eagerly waving his raised hand to gain my attention, so I pointed at him and said, “Go ahead, Sam.”

Sam said, “I agree with Harry’s suggestion and most of Larry’s comments. The comment I disagree with is, blocking the Congressmen from membership. That would be a very bad precedent to set. However, it occurred to me that if we structure the committees correctly, only one Congressman would be eligible for membership on the Summary Committee.”

Larry interrupted to ask, “What do you mean by that, Sam?”

“Well, Larry, from what I remember, all of the Congressmen wanted to live in the same corridor and next door to each other, and we arranged things to accommodate them.

“Now each corridor has one hundred and sixty residences, and the rest of the corridors’ rooms are used for storage. So if the Corridor Committee is structured as one representative for each group of ten sequential residences, there would be two Congressmen on that single Corridor Committee. If I’m wrong about how the residences divide up, we might have four Congressmen on the one Corridor Committee. I would see only one or two of that Corridor Committee’s representatives serving as Level Committee members. That means a maximum of two Congressmen would be eligible for the Summary Committee.

“As representatives are selected and move up to the Summary Committee, it is unlikely for both of the Corridor Committee’s Congressmen to become Summary Committee members. By doing things that way, the Congressmen get to participate and we won’t end up with all of them on the Summary Committee. The good part of that is the committee structure and their fellow Arkians will be the ones keeping them from becoming Summary Committee members, not us.”

Larry raised his hand so I nodded to him and he said, “I like that idea, Sam, but that ratio will create a problem for the Level Committees. At two members per corridor committee and eighteen corridors, the Level Committees would only have thirty-six members. I suspect that is too small of a group to perform the task they will have to do; I also think the Level Committee should be less than a hundred people, which sort of implies the Level Committees will be made up of three or four members from each Corridor Committee.”

Sam said, “What if we divide each Corridor Committee into two committees with eighty residences per committee. That will give us thirty-six, eight-member committees, and if each committee sends two instead of four representatives to the Level committee, we would have a hundred and forty-four members. That should give us enough people to do the work. If we want, we could cut that down to one representative per Corridor Committee and then we would have seventy-two people on the Level Committee.”

I acknowledged Harry and he said, “I’m okay with it, but I don’t see the advantage of having two committees per corridor. To me, sending one person from an eight-member Corridor Committee is no different than sending two people from a sixteen-member Corridor Committee. However, if we do go that way, I suggest one committee for the odd-numbered rooms and the second for the even-numbered rooms.

“One other thing, Sam. Your math is off. Two committees per corridor would be thirty-six committees per level, not seventy-two. Therefore, two representatives for each of the thirty-six committees would give us a seventy-two member Level Committee, which is about the size Larry seems to favor. But, that also means that four Congressmen could end up on the Level Committee.”

Larry said, “Harry’s right about the math, Sam, and I don’t see any advantage to two committees per corridor either. However, both ways are okay with me. The representation ratios are the same. But to the people in a corridor, I suspect Sam’s idea of two committees per corridor will give the people living in the corridor’s residences a sense of better representation. Furthermore, if we go with one representative per committee being on the Level Committee, which would be two people per corridor, only two of the Congressmen could be possible members of that corridor’s Level Committee. As Sam said, that prevents the majority of the Congressmen from ending up on the Summary Committee, which was my main goal. However keep in mind that one person per committee will only give us a thirty-six member Level Committee.”

Looking around the table, I could see almost everyone nodding their heads in agreement.

“Alright, it looks as if we have that part settled, so let’s vote on that part of the structure. The structure so far is, each corridor will have two Corridor Committees; one committee representing the odd-numbered residences and the second committee representing the even-numbered residences. Each group of ten consecutive odd-numbered or even-numbered residences in a corridor will be represented by one Corridor Committee member, for a total of eight members per Corridor Committee. Each of the thirty-six Corridor Committees will select one of its members to represent their Corridor Committee as a member of the Level Committee, which gives that committee thirty-six members.

“Did I define that correctly, Larry?”

“Sounded good to me, Jon.”

Harry interrupted with, “Wait a minute, Jon. I thought we were going to create a larger committee. Seventy-two people is what I recall.”

“Sam said, “You’re right, Harry. That’s what I remember hearing. But, I like the idea of small committees, so for now, I think we should go with thirty-six people. Once we define what those thirty-six people have to do, we may want to increase the committee size to seventy-two.”

Harry replies, “Okay, Jon, thirty-two for now as long as we can increase the size if the workload is too great.”

“Alright. All in favor, raise your hand.

“One hand per person, Sam.

“All opposed ... lower your hand, Harry. If you vote both ways, one vote will negate your other vote.”

With a smile, Harry said, “That’s okay, Jon. It’s going to pass anyway.”

Sam and Harry liked to interject a bit of humor into our meetings and it sometimes became a competition between them. I sometimes wondered if they were the class clowns in their high schools. Their antics were nothing new, but their humor did break the tension that sometimes developed during serious meetings.

“Since we had a sea of hands in favor and only Harry’s one vote in opposition, the motion is approved.

“Now all we need to do is define the structure of the Silo and Summary Committees. Any ideas? ... Go ahead, Harry, I figured you had an idea of how to do that part also.”

“Thanks, Jon. We now have twelve, thirty-six member Level Committees per Silo. I’m thinking the Silo Committee should be about the same size or perhaps slightly larger than the Level Committees. So I suggest each Level Committee elect four of its members to represent them on the Silo Committee. That would give us forty-eight members on each of the four Silo Committees.

“I haven’t been able to come up with a good rationale for the number of people for the Summary Committee, but my gut feel is ten members from each Silo Committee plus our Advisory Council representatives. Anyone else have an idea?”

Sam and Larry looked at each other and Sam shook his head. So, Larry said, “The Silo Committee size sounds good, and like Harry, I don’t have a good feel for the Summary Committee size. I think we should table defining the size of the Summary Committee until we have a better feeling for its workload.”

Ashley, one of Sam’s Bond Mates, raised her hand, so I told her to go ahead and join the conversation. She said, “I don’t see why we should use workload to define the size of the committees, especially the Summary Committee. When Carol and I were working for Sam on the construction effort, we felt overloaded all the time. Sam told us if we were overloaded to go find ourselves a couple of assistants. I suggest the committee members find themselves a few assistants if their workload becomes too great.”

There was a lot of head nodding at Ashley’s suggestion, but no one seemed to want to discuss the matter further. I proposed a second vote defining we tentatively set the Silo Committee at forty-eight members and the Summary Committee at a nominal sixty-four members pending definition of the two committees’ workloads. My proposed measure passed with the stipulation that the members of all committees could have as many assistants as they needed to get their job done.

After looking around the room to ensure everyone was satisfied with what we had done up to this point, I introduced a new topic for discussion. I should mention that Clara and I had agreed that we should stay out of the committee discussions as much as possible.

I said, “Let’s address how the committees will process the workload, and what that workload might include.”

Larry’s and Harry’s faces lit up with that, so to be fair I said, “Larry, since Harry went first last time, why don’t you start us off with your ideas.”

“Thanks, Jon. As I said, my group gave forming a government some thought. The workload as I see it for the Corridor, Level, and Silo Committees will be consolidating similar suggestions and organizing the suggestions according to topics.

“Now I think the Summary Committee will have to define the topics they plan to address in the coming meetings. Our Arkians can submit ideas for those topics and the Summary Committee can meet to address the ideas and then submit the results to the Arkians for a vote.

“To assess the scope of the job, we took in about one point four million people; children were about a fourth of that number. That means we have a little over one million adults who will be giving us ideas on how to create the new government. If we get an average of ten ideas from each adult, and I think the actual number will be far higher, we will have to consider over ten million suggestions. Although many of those suggestions will be the same or very similar to others.

“What that means is we need to create a computer program and database that will allow each of our residents to input an idea, track their idea through the organization, evaluation, voting, and incorporation process. The program will also need to provide feedback to the resident on the results of voting on their idea, and if the vote approves the idea, how it is incorporated. I also think we will need an appeals process for those residents who feel their idea was not accepted because it was not understood.

Harry interrupted and said, “Excuse me, Larry.

“Jon, Larry and I have discussed what he is talking about. I agree with what he has said and what he plans to say about how ideas should be processed. However, the details of submitting and processing our Arkians’ ideas are extensive and in places very complex; so we will be here forever. I suggest that we form a subcommittee to define a system for processing the ideas. We will also need to define a means of tracking an idea created by an Arkian through the system.

“Do you agree with me, Larry?”

“Yeah, he is right, Jon. With this many people involved, it could take a day to just agree on the basics, and a couple of weeks to work out the details. I volunteer Harry and myself to co-chair a committee of about a dozen people to do the work. We can present what we design to the Advisory Council once the process and details have been defined.”

“Alright. Since the two of you agree that it will take too much time for this meeting, go ahead and put together your committee. Anyone who wishes to participate may do so.

I introduced the next topic by saying, “Clara, since you brought the subjects up yesterday, please explain your ideas for a Frequently Asked Questions board and a televised Question and Answer Interview program.”

I hadn’t added these two topics to our formal agenda, but I had told Clara that I wanted her to address them in the meeting, and this seemed like a good time to do so.

Clara said, “When Jon finished his televised presentation yesterday, I told him we would be swamped by questions, and I brought those two possibilities up to him.

“A FAQ board is pretty straight forward; although considering the number of questions we have been getting from our Arkians on Jon’s presentations, I think we need to organize the questions by categories, and remove the questions and answers if they become obsolete.

“The Q and A Interview program could take two forms. Linda or one of her helpers could formally interview one of us about various topics or she could do man-on-the-street interviews. Our viewers could suggest topics and people to interview, and these interviews could be five minutes or longer in duration and packaged into one-hour presentations. I also think that after one of our interviews is shown, she should do man-on-the-street interviews to gather feedback on what Arkians think about the interview.”

Clara nodded to me to indicate she was finished, and as I looked around the table, I saw that almost everyone’s face had an expression of approval. I asked, “Does anyone wish to second those ideas or do we need further discussion?”

No one seemed interested in discussing the ideas, so Samantha seconded the motion to vote on the ideas, and I said, “All in favor of both ideas raise your hand.”

Since everyone’s hand was up, I skipped the step of voting on the individual ideas, which got me a dirty look from Harry and a smile from Sam. Personally, I think the FAQ idea passed without discussion for we were all tired of dealing with our Arkians repeatedly asking us the same basic questions and we all knew the interview programs were a good way to get our activities publicized.

My Bond Mate Susan had very little to do since her position as the President’s Advisor to the Ark ended, when we went into lockdown. So I said, “Susan, I would like for you to work with Linda, May, and John to establish an ongoing Interview Program. You are to be in-charge of the effort, so recruit yourself a staff, and claim one of the empty offices near the TV Station as your team’s workplace.

“Thanks, Jon. I will be more than happy to take on that effort.”

“Jane, add the FAQ board to your list of things to take care of. I know you are busy, but put together an organization to do the work and oversee it.”

After throwing the back of her hand against her forehead and slumping in her chair, Jane said, “Okay, Jon. It’ll be just one more of the many tasks I’m overseeing.”

We all got a chuckle out of Jane’s overdramatic acts when I gave her another task. It was also evident that Susan was happy to once again have a meaningful task to occupy her time. I just wish I could give everyone in the Ark a task to keep them occupied. The lack of things to keep everyone busy was one of the factors in our next agenda item.

Mike Henderson had been the Sheriff of Placer County and Bill Johnson and Sheryl Malloy had been two of his Deputies. That had been true until George Lyle and his associates created problems for us. I recruited the three of them putting Mike in overall charge of the Security Department and directly in charge of the External Security Department, which was essentially a military unit. That was a good fit for him since he had been a Captain and company commander in the Army’s Rangers. Bill and Sheryl were in charge of our Internal Security Department, which was essentially our Police Force.

Since it was Bill who brought the problem to my attention, I said, “I will let Bill explain our next agenda item.”

After standing and looking around the table, Bill said, “The Internal Security Department is starting to have difficulty with a few of our new residents. While we were sick, everyone was either too sick to get into trouble or they were too busy to have time to create a problem. But as we recovered from the virus, there has been less and less for the majority of our Arkians to do. We are starting to see a corresponding rise in people creating problems. So far, the problems are just minor infractions of our rules, regulations, and laws, to include a few petty thefts. Unfortunately, most of the problems seem to be coming from the younger members of our population who are forming gangs. The gangs have had a few minor head-to-head clashes, which were primarily no more than shoving matches. But, I expect the problems will escalate.

“My concern is that the situation between the gangs is going to get far worse than it currently is. If it escalates, as I think it will, about the only thing I can think of doing will be to have Bob and Sharna transport the gang leaders to wherever they took that TV Reporter who organized the rock throwing. I believe that action would be viewed by our Arkians as a totally inappropriate response for the offenses committed. Sheryl and I need any suggestions that anyone can think of to prevent a major confrontation?”

No one seemed to have a suggestion they thought would work. While we were thinking, I got this really wild idea, so I said, “Bill, there is an agenda item on one of our upcoming meetings that might help. I am going to move it up to this meeting and hope Mike is ready to address it.

“Mike, can you discuss your idea of a further expansion of the External Security Department. If we start the effort now, it might alleviate most of Bill’s problems, and we may be able to accelerate our return to the surface. I suspect you can use the extra, trained personnel to secure the areas we will be claiming as our territory.”