All the waste removal plumbing will be in the space under this floor,” he continued. “You can see that there's a backup source for everything. If there is a problem with the SF016 lines, a secondary source has been built in. That kind of redundancy is the same for everything,” Cowan explained.

“If all body processes are stopped, why is waste removal a concern?” RJ asked.

“In truth, the body processes aren't stopped, just dramatically slowed down. With the continual infusion of SF016, which contains a combination of water and nutrients amongst many other things, there is still the need for waste removal. The urine output for a sleeper is on the average the same in one year as it would be in a day if they weren't sleeping.”

RJ found she was impressed. There were pipes and conduits running all over the ceiling, but they were exceptionally well organized and were even color-coded.

“I read in one of your reports that approximately ten percent of the sleepers used in the tests have needed to be sedated. Is that because of a side effect of the SF016?” RJ asked.

James smiled. “No, in almost all the earlier tests the sleepers have been in individual capsules. There isn't much room in them, and most people experienced claustrophobia, and because of that, some of them have had a tougher time than others and needed to be sedated. For your team, there will be very few individual capsules. Most will be contained in large open chambers like this. You can think of this room as one huge, individual capsule which has five thousand sleepers in it. The only people who will need individual or small group capsules will be those people who might be required to wake up individually and make repairs, deal with emergencies, or confirm that it is, in fact, time to wake the others.”

“That makes sense; I've got another question if you've got time.”

“Actually, I have a little over two years,” Cowan agreed with a smile.

RJ chuckled at his dark sense of humor and continued. “There's something else I don't understand. I've read about studies which have proven that long-term immobility actually speeds up the aging of bones and muscles.”

James nodded. “That's quite true; there have been several studies over the past few decades. There was one in 1966. It showed that three weeks of immobility aged the bones and muscles by as much as twenty years. That's one of the reasons why we've been working for so long on what's now known as SF016. Putting someone to sleep was the easy part; stopping the aging process and keeping muscles from starting to atrophy was the challenge. SF016 is not a single drug, but a mix of thirteen different compounds which work together with the breathing gas to create the full sleep effect.”

“It all sounds very impressive, but I won't pretend to completely understand it,” RJ admitted.