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Yankees 2103 part 5
by Mark on 10/13/2003 (2) 
 "We know how to get you home."
Jeter eyed her deeply, his expression unchanged.
"How?"
"Let's take a ride. I'll explain."
Jeter and Kelly Lansdowne left the bar and exited the hotel. They walked past row upon row of small, highly streamlined, 3-wheeled passenger cars. Kelly removed a key chain and blipped the lights on hers.
Jeter scanned the homogenous rows of vehicles, and could not discern any differences among them. They were exact carbon copies.
"What happened? They all look exactly alike."
Kelly blipped the control again, and the gull wing doors swung upward.
"Well almost. At least we get to pick a color."
Jeter slid his tall form into the little car, surprised at the roominess. Kelly dropped the visor down and looked into a small eyepiece.
"Wha-at is?"
"Retinal scan. Only I can start and operate the car. Although no one dares steal anything nowadays anyway."
"What do you mean?"
The little car moved forward in complete silence, not even a whirring of belts or fans, just the sound of the tires on the road.
"That's why I have you here. Let me try to explain the best that I can in the time we have."
Stealthily, they pulled out of the parking lot and merged onto a main road. Kelly tapped a few commands on a screen pad, and spoke aloud:
"Kelly Lansdowne. Destination South sector, exit 23. Authorization Foxtrot Charlie 0005."
The car responded, locking in autopilot. She released the wheel.
"As you may have already noticed, a lot has changed in the past 100 years. Technology has progressed at a much faster rate than during the 20th century due to computer modeling and engineering. This car, this city, the aircraft, freighters, construction and agricultural robots, everything, were designed from start to finish by computers. It only takes 5 years to develop a new technology where it once took 50 or 100 years in your time. But there have been other, more horrible changes too."
The car accelerated in silence to 175 mph on the perfect, unmarred highway. It was past midnight. There wasn't another driver on the road anywhere.
"In 2010 a nuclear war started between Japan and China due to a computer virus planted by Islamic extremist hackers. The Russians got drawn in, India, Pakistan, and in a matter of 8 hours, the civilized world east of Poland no longer existed. Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas were spared. This left a power vacuum in the Middle East, and soon the United Jihad Front,or U.J.F, had acquired nukes and managed to deliver them to the U.S. aboard cargo vessels. New York city, San Francisco, Washington, and New Orleans were completely destroyed by ship delivered Hydrogen Bombs in a single coordinated attack in 2012. A full-scale retaliation destroyed the U.J.F's Middle East bases in Saudi Arabia and Iran. The U.J.F attacked Israel in turn, who also fired missiles back, both were wiped from the face of the Earth."
Thunderstruck, Jeter stared blankly, trying to allow the words to sink in as true.
"Once the pieces were picked up, and a degree of stability was restored, Cleveland became the new capitol city. The population of the country moved to the interior. The cities became walled in fortresses, the countryside empty except for farms run entirely by agricultural robots. Life outside the cities is strictly forbidden, and violators are killed on site. New York, Washington and the other coastal cities were so radioactive, they could not be rebuilt."
Jeter thought of New York, his wife, Manhattan...Yankee stadium.
"D-dear God, is this true? Or is this some kind of terrible nightmare?"
Kelly laughed softly.
"If that's not enough, there's more. A 21st century geneticist, Kathleen Lamping, had discovered a way to modify human behavior throug
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