ARCLog Day 4
Helena Russell, Personal Log
John told the computer to grant me full access to anything I want so I’m starting my personal log. I suggested to John that everyone do this and that we start counting days from the day we opened the ARC. The computer explained what happened to me and I’ve given Max a big hug for his help. The medical scanner found a single puncture point on my leg where the infection began. All that from being stuck by a cactus needle!
I don’t understand the process the medical system used yet, but I have nothing but time to learn. My only problem is that I’m too sleepy to type any more until tomorrow.
ARCLog Day 5
Helena Russell, Personal Log
I have more energy today but not enough to do more than get up and take my IV to the bathroom with me. I had to wait until someone could help be because I still can’t put my weight on my infected leg. I felt pretty good when John came in and kissed me.
He told me he had moved into quarters on the Command Level so he was closer to me and also the computer center. He said there was so much to learn that he didn’t want to waste time “commuting” between levels. That’s the John Koenig I know.
ARCLog day 6
Helena Russell, Personal Log
John came in with Raul and Max and they were practically bubbling. They found that the ARC turned out to be about the size of a sports stadium or a large city block and it contained 25 levels of that size numbered from the bottom. The Medical Center and Command Center are both on the top level, number 25 where we entered. The computer is under our control now, and John and his team are doing virtual exploration via video monitor and correlating that with the computerized maps.
They found a truck they called a Rover and turned it over to Tony to go back to Hog Pen Springs as well as visiting the other settlements. After he left, they found the equipment bay it came from with dozens more kinds of heavy equipment. Big boys and their toys….
ARCLog Day 8
Helena Russell, Personal Log
Tony came by to see me. He has already been to Hog Pen Springs and Farside and told them about the ARC and that John is in charge. A lot of the settlement folks are ready to join us. Tony plans to go to Farside again today and bring a sick child back with him that Bob Mathias says is beyond the simple remedies he has on hand. Tony said he plans to visit the other two settlements during the next two weeks or so. He told me that the Rover has performed well and that it’s the size of a small school bus, but that it bounces a lot more since there are no roads to follow.
I’m feeling much better and a little restless. The IV is out and I’ve started to hobble about to explore the medical center a little but every time I’m more than 12 feet away from my bed someone comes by to check on me and tucks me back in! It’s very frustrating and I’m glad I’m not my patient.
ARCLog Day 10
Helena Russell, Personal Log
No longer a patient! I’ve been prowling around the Medical Center for the last three days whenever there was not someone watching me. The Center has a 50 bed capacity with an emergency room any big city hospital doctor would die for. All the beds are computer-enhanced diagnosis beds like the one that John put me on and where I’ve been for a week and a half. One of the beds is already occupied by a little girl, Melanie Chambers, with pneumonia from Farside. Her parents, Wayne and Catherine, have only left her side to eat, but they finally took a break from their watch when I promised I’d watch over her while they got a shower and slept in a real bed.
There have been about 25 people from Hog Pen Springs and Farside that have already moved into the Ark and most of them have come by to see me. Pat Osgood told me there are 800 living quarter suites on level 15 and Michelle Osgood is assigning people to them as fast as they arrive. A party of 10 people from Hog Pen Springs arrived on foot while Tony was at Farside. Now is a good time for them to decide since the growing season is over, but the settlements will need to work out something with us since the low-tech infrastructure that they have developed over the last ten years requires a certain workforce. Much of that workforce is going to be drawn to the ARC.
John said that with all the new people arriving we’re going to have to set differing levels of access to the computer system because the computer gives everyone everything they ask for if it is possible. He, Tony, and I are to be the only ones with unhindered access. It doesn’t really matter to me since it is going to take me months to understand everything we can do with the Medical Center.
I’m so glad I can finally leave the MC although another part of me doesn’t want to leave at all. There is so much to learn---new medical tools, treatments that didn’t exist on Alpha and so forth---I could stay here forever. But I won’t because tonight is my first night to stay in the quarters I share with John. I’m not well enough for anything strenuous, but I just want to fall asleep next to him.
ARCLog Day 12
Helena Russell, Personal Log
I’m outside for the first time since John carried me into the Medical Center almost two weeks ago. I needed to see the sky, so John walked with me a little way. It’s funny how I didn’t miss the sky all the time I was on Alpha, but now it is almost a craving. It will be hard to stay inside the ARC for longer than a few days having had a taste of freedom these past years living in the settlement. We exited the ARC at a different point than when we found it. There are several levels that have exits to the outside and we took one that has level ground outside of it. John says there are a lot of exits but some are buried quite deep.
ARClog Day 14
Helena Russell, Personal Log
I’m going to need to go on a restricted-calorie diet! I’ve gained over 4 kilograms since I was admitted to the MC. Good thing none of the clothes I had were close-fitting.
ArkLog, Day 15
Helena Russell, Personal Log
We have given up on the ARC acronym because everyone was calling it the Ark due to the philosophical connection to the biblical ark. The analogy has pretty strong roots, too. So far I’ve found---or the computer has shown me---that we have almost two hundred thousand species of plant and animal embryos, seeds, or tissue samples. All of the tissue samples were prepared for cloning before they were cryogenically frozen long ago and there does not appear to be any degradation of the samples so far.
Yesterday I discovered the ‘growth lab’ that has an artificial womb capable of growing the embryos into viable young. Another lab nearby has equipment for growing embryos from the tissue samples. Although I’m avoiding the term ‘cloning’ with anyone else in the Ark, the lab is essentially a cloning system. Once you have live embryos, they can be moved to the growth lab to create living offspring.
John wondered from the beginning how the medical systems and cryo-freezers had maintained power for so long and that was answered by Pat Osgood and Raul Martinez by the end of the first week. Below the 1st level beneath the Ark are ten massive cold fusion generators only one of which is in use. The power system draws water from the water table below us, breaks it down, and then recombines it to release energy which the generator captures and converts to electricity.
ArkLog Day 16
Helena Russell, Personal Log
I released little Melanie Chambers from the MC today. She is still going to need some rest, but her lungs are clear, and she no longer has a fever. Her parents were both technicians in the Hydroponics Section on Alpha and are already setting up the Ark hydroponics equipment on Level 17.
ArkLog Day 17
Helena Russell, Personal Log
Michelle Osgood came by to show me the school complex she found on Level 16. There are about eight classroom labs all specifically designed for the education of younger children about ten at a time which is far above the number of children we have now. They rooms appear to be set up to automate the learning in some fashion and to have an adult “facilitator” for each lab, but otherwise seems to be very self-contained. The builders of the Ark probably did not plan to have dedicated teachers as part of the contingent of the Ark. We may have to hold an Ark Community meeting to decide how we want to run the school, but Michelle is ready to charge forward and get our children into the swing of daily school.
ArkLog Day 18
Helena Russell, Personal Log
John left yesterday with one of the Rovers (it turns out there are 12 of them and they come in two sizes!) without telling anyone where he was going, but I guessed where he was headed. Raul, who has been given responsibility for the heavy equipment like the Rovers, Dozers, and so forth, told me that John left at noon and would not be back until the next day. I knew then that he was going to get Victor.
Under cover of darkness, he snuck into Paul’s settlement and spirited Victor away to the Rover he had hidden a distance away. They are not stealthy vehicles, and in the dead quiet of the nights here, anyone would be able to hear the Rover coming if he had driven too close. Victor refused to leave without all of his log books containing his observations for the last ten years so John had to make three trips to get it all. I think he must have been discovered by Paul, because he winced when I touched his shoulder, he claimed he stumbled and fell in the dark with a load of Victor’s scrolls.
ArkLog Day 20
Raul surprised John with a new toy he found in Equipment Bay 2. Raul called it a Hopper, but by anyone’s reckoning it is an aircraft of some kind. It’s sort of like a really chunky delta wing craft with just enough room in the cargo bay for smaller of the two types of Rovers. Raul said he found it a few days ago, but it had no power at all and took nearly three days to charge its systems up to full power. It seems to be propelled a technology we don’t know much about---kind of a gravity pusher is how he described it. He let John take it on a maiden flight and John pronounced it ‘cool’. He was like a kid in a candy shop, and the mood didn’t fade when we got back to our quarters.
ArkLog Day 21
Helena Russell, Personal Log
Having Victor here makes it feel like home. I’ve done a complete check and he is in good health. The DC (diagnostic computer) identified numerous artery blockages and prescribed a treatment with a chemical the system says will dissolve the blockages. I don’t know anything about this drug and I have not decided if I want to administer something I don’t entirely understand.
I know John did so when he brought me in, but there was nothing that could have harmed me at that point and he is not a medical professional. The same is true of the little girl who had pneumonia. The DC prescribed an antibiotic and I allowed that to be used and the results were better than I could have hoped.
As a medical professional, I’m torn between wanting to save every patient with my own skills and allowing a ‘black box’ to treat my patient with drugs I don’t know anything about---even though I have two successful cases as examples. I need to decide how I’m going to come to terms with this.
ArkLog Day 24
Helena Russell, Personal Log
I’ve started to peruse the catalog of the cryo freezers and discovered something I think is wonderful, but when I told John he was very concerned. There are 500 human embryos stored there which would solve a number of our problems now and into the future. I’ve always been concerned that we do not have enough genetic variability in our population to make our group viable as the beginning of a human colony. Having 500 unrelated people added to our population over the next 25 years will introduce the needed variety to help us survive as a people.
John is concerned because our people might look at those individuals differently---us and them---kind of thinking as well as whether there is anything ‘different’ about these children. I’ve proposed not telling anyone and introducing them one at a time as a solution when the parents, such as John and myself, are unable to bear their own young. We can now use the Artificial Womb to bring the child to term whether the embryo comes from our people or the cryo stock. It’s true, we do not know their genetic background, but that is exactly the point.
ArkLog Day 26
Helena Russell, Personal Log
I’ve found there are descriptions of all the organisms which we have in cryostasis, and even pictures of their adult forms. There are a plethora of earthly flora and fauna, but some of these animals don’t come from earth. I’ve found 6 species of animal that have never existed on our earth, at not least before the Moon left orbit., and I’ve only gone through about 5% of the species.
What are they? Where did they come from? These are questions I posed to the Ark computer, but for the first time since our arrival it did not provide an adequate answer.
ArkLog Day 27
Helena Russell, Personal Log
David Kano and his family—and most of their settlement—joined the Ark about a week ago. Some of their people decided they prefer the “country life” and stayed at the settlement, especially now that the Ark has set up regular patrols to visit the settlements and they have food from the Ark to supplement what they grow. But David and many others have come and are already working at their new assignments. David immediately began spending 18 hours a day with the Ark computer and his natural affinity with technology made it easier for him than any of the others who have been poking around in the system so far.
Today David said the computer, which has an AI interface, named itself and it now seems to prefer to be addressed that way. The computer named itself Arkham, which David said he tried to change but the computer is adamant about its new name. John kind of winced when he heard the name and asked David to talk to the computer again, but he reported back to John that the computer will not respond to any other nomenclature. I don’t know why they even want it to change the name and I’m too embarrassed to ask anyone why they care.
ArkLog Day 29,
Helena Russell, Personal Log
This morning, the Ark Base Leadership Team met for the 2nd time since the Alphans took over the Ark. The Team surprised me by naming me the Ark Chief Medical Officer, making me only the third person with any official title. At last week’s meeting Tony Verdeshi was named Ark Chief Control Manager and 2nd in command to John Koenig who has been the Ark Commander since the second day of our arrival at the Ark. It was John who initiated the search for the Ark.
Anyway, I’m pretty excited about getting the official posting. I think I’m the most appropriate choice, but having the Team name me to the job is nice. I’ve hardly left the Medical Center since I was brought in unconscious on that first day. Arkham, by the way, has become much more personable and helpful in providing information since his ‘Christening’ a couple of days ago.
ArkLog Day 31
Helena Russell, Personal Log
The Leadership Team passed a resolution requiring anyone who joins the Ark community to wear a uniform. The tattered garments the settlers are wearing when they arrive do not stand up to regular washing and many people were infested with parasites so the clothing needed to be incinerated to protect the health of the Ark community.
The new uniforms are a royal blue jumpsuit that is far from stylish. They’re made of a paper material that will be re-cycled instead of washed but I think they make us all look like prison escapees. Mine also rubs roughly in places I don’t want rubbed that way--and did I mention it looks awful? Someone has to make better looking and better fitting clothing!
ArkLog Day 35
Helena Russell, Personal Log
Victor’s dementia has progressed quite far and he has been returned to the Medical Center twice after wandering naked through the corridors of the Ark. The DC is again prescribing a concoction that it claims will reverse his condition, but I have no experience with the materials included in the drug. There seem to be some sort of nanites, along with other synthesized substances that we never had on Alpha.
When I discussed it with John, his pragmatic side shone brightly when he said I should give Victor the treatment because he could use Victor’s help.
ArkLog Day 33
Helena Russell, Personal Log
Donna Weatherington, from Hog Pen Springs and now working in the recycling department of the Ark, has been spending her off hours working with Arkham to develop new mixtures of the paper-like material the uniforms are made from. She thinks they will be able to make a satin-like material and designs for undergarments and such. I haven’t had a bra in 6 years and it will take some getting used to, but it would help with the unwanted rubbing.
ArkLog Day 35
Helena Russell, Personal Log
My first injured patient since we opened the Ark came in today—and not just one. They are first injuries if you don’t count minor scrapes and cuts, anyway.
Tony’s team, that is Tony and Matt Flannery, went to my old settlement yesterday. Paul attacked them as soon as they arrived, finally exhausting his laser attacking the Rover and getting his rabid followers to use stones against the visitors. The Rover was disabled and Matt suffered a broken right arm when they dragged him from the vehicle. Tony called in to ask for help and a team, lead by John Koenig, flew in with Hopper1 and a group of volunteers.
John flew by them at supersonic speed just above their heads, and then landed to expel the ‘troops’. John said they had a scuffle, and a couple a people were hurt; including Matt, Tony, Melissa Freeman, and Paul Morrow. Tony and Melissa have concussions, and Paul is under sedation with some scrapes and sprained ankle. When he comes out of sedation I’ll try to talk to him, but I’m not sure what I’m going to say.
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