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Yankees 2103 part 2
by Mark on 7/1/2003 (1) 
 Joe Torre pounded frantically on the cockpit door.
"What in God's name is going on? Let me in!"
Captain Berry opened the door.
"That's what we'd like to know, Joe. Calm down and sit back down. When we figure things out we'll fill you in."
Torre returned to his seat, pulling his cap tightly over his eyes.
"Try all frequencies, Chuck. Maybe we lost our transmitter antenna. If that doesn't work, try your damn cell phone."
Steele's eyes lit up
"Jack! Lookout!"
A giant skyscraper loomed a few thousand feet ahead in the darkness, its crystalline shaped form illuminated by thousands of dazzling white lights. Berry kicked hard right rudder, throwing the 747 into a tight sideslip. A cacophony of screams arose from the Yankees, as the plane attained zero G, and slowly leveled out again.
"My God, what's our altitude? Altimeter says Angels 6000, but that CAN'T be right. That would make that building over a mile high!"
Steele checked low band ground radar.
"S-sir, that's a correct figure sir, that building is over 6000 feet high!"
"How can that be, there isn't a building in the whole world that tall. Maybe..."
Berry trailed off as the rising sun began softly illuminating the landscape below. Not one, but 6 giant skyscrapers, over a mile high, hugged the Lake Erie coastline. Row upon row of smaller buildings, 2500 feet or so, fanned inland in a radial pattern, close along the banks of the Cuyahoga River. The city of Cleveland, once a small speck on the northern great lakes coast was a sprawling Megalopolis, panoramic, reaching south into Ohio further than the eye could see.
The planes autopilot suddenly kicked to life, seizing the controls. The radio suddenly locked and a booming voice shook the cockpit.
"Historical aircraft please copy. What the HELL are you doing approaching Hopkins, and where did you come from? You running stealth on that monster? We're routing you to Forbes field on the lakefront. You've got a lot of explaining to do once you hit the tarmac!"
As the autopilot over flew Hopkins, Berry knew something very, very strange had occurred. The 2-mile long runways, once visible from 15 miles away, were gone. The airport was a small, one-mile square dot, with dozens of 400 foot or so diameter white circles painted on it. Berry looked closely, and could see why. All of the aircraft landing at Hopkins were VTOL, or vertical take off and landing, but were much, much larger than anything he had seen before. The body and wings were triangular. The enormous aircrafts were about 300 feet from wingtip to wingtip. Some were nestled tightly inside the circles. Others were hovering, approaching the circles, levitating, than slowly sinking to the ground.
"Jack, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Yeah, were not in Kansas anymore."
Jeter, now thoroughly shaken, lifted the window shade again, with a trembling hand. The Cleveland he knew was gone. A sprawling spider work of roads, behemoth towering skyscrapers and brightly illuminated 40 lane highways formed an orderly, congested latticework in the soft light of the morning sun.
Jason Jiambi, rising a few feet above his seat, pensively eyed his teammates.
"Hey, something is really, really weird here. That's lake Erie, and that's exactly where Cleveland is supposed to be, but this city looks like it belongs in a science fiction magazine."
Torre shot in:
"Exactly. Look over there, that's the Detroit end of the lake to the west, and there's Canada to the north, but it looks like a third of lake Erie has been filled in and developed. Look at the height of those towers, and the city is 5 times as big as I remember it, and everything looks so new."
The great 747, seized by remote autopilot, overflew Hopkins, gently sloped east on the artif
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