Our personal enclosures were insulated wood boxes with a door. Mine was located next to Tia’s. The enclosure measured eight feet high, eight feet wide and ten feet long. A closet was constructed at the back of the enclosure with shelves along one wall to store our personal things. A thin mattress served as a bed. It rolled up to allow more room for the day’s activities. John had provided a light switch for the LED lighting system and a single outlet for personal electrical items. It was sparse at best, but it would have to do. A chair would have been nice, but that seemed like a luxury at this point. Each room had an LCD clock on the shelf. When the lights were off it would have been pitch black, if not for the backlit display on the clock. It allowed us to move around and still see something.
I was exhausted. It had been a long and trying day. I changed into my pajamas and covered up with the two blankets that came with the room. The Futon wasn’t that soft, but it was better than nothing. I had been mostly free of the nightmares that plagued me in prison, but tonight they returned with a vengeance.
I awoke to the sound of someone pounding on my door. I was shaking as I stumbled to the door.
“Carl, it’s Tia. Open the door!” She continued pounding until I opened the door.
“What?” I asked.
She looked me over quickly with an alarmed expression on her face. “You were screaming,” she said.
I looked down at the floor. “I had a nightmare, that’s all,” I replied.
“That’s all?” she said. “You sounded terrified.”
“It’s okay,” I replied, “I…”
“No,” she said firmly. “It’s not okay. I’m here to protect you.”
“I don’t need—“
“Yes, you do,” she replied. “You need me. I’m here for you. I talked with Nancy and she said you shouldn’t be alone right now, especially with the nightmares.”
“Tia, I…”
“Carl, stop and look at you. You’re still trembling. You’re sweating and your hair and pajamas are soaked. I’m taking care of you.”
The cold air from the cave was soaking through my pajamas. I felt like I was freezing. Tia quickly went inside her personal enclosure and came out carrying her pillow and blankets.
“Inside,” she said. I moved back into my enclosure. She came in and closed the door. I couldn’t stop shaking. Tears began flooding my eyes and I heard a wailing sound come out of my mouth. I couldn’t stop. Tia quickly took my pajamas off and put clean ones on me. She wrapped me in the blankets and helped me lie down on the bed. She sat against the side wall and cradled me in her arms with her blankets wrapped around both of us. I wept harder than I could remember, until I finally fell asleep.
I awoke feeling as if I had been beat up. Everything hurt. I looked up. Tia was still sitting up; sound asleep with her mouth hanging open. She looked cute that way, but I doubt she would have agreed. I didn’t want to wake her, but even the small movements I made were enough to do the job. She opened her eyes and looked at me.
“You okay?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah, I’m just really sore for some reason.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “You’ve been through a severe trauma and it’s got to come out.”
“Yeah, but after all of this time, I thought…”
“You weren’t ready to process it until now.”
“So why now?”
“Maybe it’s safe to deal with it now. You’re away from the system that did this to you; you’re out from under their control.”
It made a certain amount of sense. “Look, I…”
“Don’t apologize,” she said, “Nancy told me healing from this kind of trauma is a long and painful process. The only way is through it. I understand. You can’t offend me, you aren’t imposing on me. We’re doing this together. I’m here for you, no matter what it takes — I’m here.”
I started crying again. My hands were shaking. I held on to her.
“It’s alright, I’m here.”
I woke up, surprised to learn that I had fallen back to sleep.
“Feeling a little better?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think so.” I looked at the clock; it was almost nine in the morning.
“We should get up and get our showers and some breakfast.”
John had provided each of us with terry bath robes and slippers. Tia opened the door to my room and went next door to get her robe. Several people were rushing down the aisle in the cave. I saw Ed and called out to him.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
“The forest fire outside,” he said. “The doors to the cave are overheating. We’re afraid they may fail.”
“They don’t have a heat sink?” I asked.
“A what?”
“Something to draw the heat away from the critical parts. Every computer processor has a heat sink on it to draw the heat out and keep it functioning.”
“That’s not going to work,” Ed replied. “You can’t do that to an entire door.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Why not what?” Tia asked as she came out of her room.
“The cave doors are overheating and are likely to fail,” I explained. “They need a heat sink.”
“Of course they do,” Tia replied. “Let’s go see what we can do.”
When we arrived at the main door, people were running back and forth carrying buckets of water and throwing them on the door.
Ed introduced us. “Tia and Carl, this is Randy. He’s head of maintenance.”
“The concrete fiber mix is starting to break down from the heat,” Randy said. “We’re trying to keep the door bathed in water, but between the heat and the water the door is disintegrating. If the door fails we lose all of our oxygen to the fire, the cave will fill with smoke and we all die.”
“How much Aluminum do you have?” Tia asked.
“Aluminum?” Randy said. “Uhhh… we have some sheet metal, some angle stock and some liquid Aluminum.
“Liquid Aluminum?” I asked.
“Yeah, paste like stuff,” Randy said. “You spread it into cracks and it hardens. You can drill into it just like regular metal. We use it to anchor all of the personal space enclosures to the rock walls of the cave.”
Tia and I looked at each other. “Get it,” we both said at the same time. “Bring all of the Aluminum you have to this door, and tools; saws and drills,” I said.
“I’ll go check the other door,” Tia said. “I’ll be right back.”
I looked closely at the structure of the door. The steel frame held the concrete fiber mixture in place. The spacing looked good for what we needed.
“Okay,” I said, “cut the angle pieces here, here and here. Cut the sheet metal one foot wide, same length as the angle pieces. What have you got for screws?”
“Self-tapping sheet metal. Will these do?” Randy asked.
“You bet,” I replied. “Attach the sheet metal to the angle pieces with the screws like this, here, here and here.”
“Got it,” Randy said as his people went to work.
When the first piece was ready I showed him where it fit on the door.
“Okay, spread the liquid Aluminum on the concrete part of the door where this fits, and set the angle piece into the liquid Aluminum,” I said. “You’re going to have to move fast. With this heat the Aluminum is going to set up very quickly.”
Randy set the first angle piece into the liquid Aluminum with the sheet metal sticking out into the cave.
“Ouch!” Randy shouted. “Damn, that didn’t take long to get hot.”
“That’s the point,” I said. “The Aluminum paste delivers the heat to the angle and then on to the sheet metal which radiates the heat into the air. You can spray the sheets down with water if you need to move more heat out of the door.”