"Well, it's a big city. I think we should go in, but I think we'll probably have to give up the Jeeps, due to too much traffic. The best thing to do would be to get off 104 when we get to Fairport."
"Fairport?" Gary asked, looking at the map once more.
"It's a long ways around, sort of, but I think it might be the best way in. I think we have to get down in the city, at least at first anyway, just to see what there is. Like Gary said, who knows? Could be that the police are still there, or at least someone in authority."
"Nice pipe dream," Gary returned.
"You're probably right," John answered, "but I would bet that glow we could see across the lake last night was Rochester, and if it was, that means the power is at least still on. They just gave the okay last year to Rochester Gas and Electric to fire up that new nuclear plant out in Livingston County."
"Where's that," Frank asked.
"Well, Rochester is in Monroe county, Livingston county starts out past Henrietta, which is a small suburb of Rochester. It's maybe fifteen miles or so away from the city itself, I guess. There was a lott'a bitching when they first proposed it, but it ended up being built anyway. Anyway, I'm starting to sound like Gary now I guess. The whole thing's computerized from top to bottom. Oh they have people working there, but they're only there in case something goes wrong, not to run the place. Even if something does go wrong, the computer shuts the whole thing down, not people. They supply electric for the entire city with it, with some to spare. All the excess power that the place produces gets sold to New York City. They built a new plant to handle it downtown, on Broad Street. It's a ways from the lake, so if that was Rochester we saw last night, the plant must still be up and running. That means there may still be some sort of control there, you know, police, or something, at least other people I would guess anyway..."
"...You know, I think I am becoming a Gary clone. I guess I should get back to what I was saying before I started running at the mouth. Fairport looks like the best route in. We can get off at Webster and shoot across 250 straight into Fairport, and from there we have several routes to choose from. There are quite a few loops that surround the city, Can-of-Worms it's called. Most of the traffic would be there. They rebuilt the whole system just a few years back so it would be easier to get around the city. Almost all of the old routes in and out were pretty much secondary after that, you know, really light traffic. But all of those routes in should be pretty well open."
Gary traced the route on the map as John spoke. "Looks good to me too," he said. "Looks like we can get pretty much anywhere on the east side of the city from there."
"We can," John agreed, "but don't let that map fool you. It's not as straight forward as it appears. I think we'll head out on East Avenue from Fairport. Try that first, and see." Gary looked for East Avenue on the map, but couldn't find it.
"Thirty one," John said.
"Route 31? Gary asked.
"Yes, straight out of Fairport. It's really East Avenue still to me, but I think they list it as Route 31 on the map," John said.
"Got it," Gary replied.
"It doesn't go straight in anymore like the map shows," John warned, "They changed it. But it goes far enough to hit Winton road."
"According to the map," Gary said, "it'll take us north or south, and that opens a lot of ways in to the city."
"Sounds like a done deal," Frank said, as he turned on the air conditioning in the Jeep.
"Hey," Gary said, "don't you feel a little guilty driving around in a stolen Jeep with the air on?"
"Nope, If you're gonna steal something make it something nice, I always say," Frank replied, with a smug look on his face. "Besides, it's getting hotter out, isn't it?" he asked, turning the conversation back to something more serious. "I mean I'm from Washington of course, and you never know what it's going to be like there. Cold in the mornings, usually, even this time of year. Summer doesn't last for long, and I guess I expected it to stay cooler here too."
"It does stay cooler, or at least it did," Gary said. "It can get hot in the summers, maybe edge up to the eighties, even low nineties on very rare occasions, but not this high. I really gotta believe that there's another reason for it. Could be its heat from the missiles, depends on where they hit, but I really doubt it. Maybe Frank's right, maybe the poles have changed. Of course its right back to the friggin' scientists you know," he continued, "only time will tell on that one, I guess. Remember that Japanese island that had the quake about five, six years ago?"
"I did a short article on that," Frank said. "Moved it, right?"
"About six feet," John said, "and that was just a quake, not a nuclear blast. Who's to say what a large blast would do? Or several large blast's for that matter? I don't pretend to know."
"I don't guess we'll be finding that out right away," Annie said.
"No... More wait and see," Gary said. "I'd sure like to get my hands on a compass though, but who knows if a compass could tell us much? Probably not anymore, I'd guess. Shit, where the hell can you find a good scientist when you need
