After the first of the year in 1989, Jada Seldon had surgery to restore her ability to conceive. Lily Richards assisted at the request of her friend and they did the best they could but, once they cut her open, they knew they weren't going to be able to offer Jada much hope. The Saudi doctors had removed more tissue than was necessary...
Lily and the other surgeons were forced to splice a section from one of her tubes so they could reattach the other one... she would have only one functioning fallopian tube that would be riddled with scarred tissue. Lily sadly informed Jada after she woke up that her chances to conceive were even less than 50/50 because of what they'd had to do.
Jada once again cursed the country she no longer considered her homeland... she was more determined than ever to become a U.S. citizen! She wished that she could pray for a plague to descend upon the evil government that had robbed her of her ability to have children with the man she loved...
**********
The years continued to march on in much the same manner. Natural disasters and severe weather patterns seemed to worsen. The price of oil had started to creep up again in 1989 and the Cold War came to an end. However, the break-up of the Soviet Union sparked outbreaks of violence in southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe as the former Soviet Republics struggled to gain freedom and establish their own forms of government. The region was riddled with malicious dictators and religious unrest...
The Chinese tried to express dissatisfaction with their communist government. Thousands of protesters, mostly students and intellectuals, gathered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in June of '89. While the demonstration was broadcast on television, the People's Liberation Army moved in with tanks and forcefully drove the protestors away. Hundreds were killed, but no official number was ever reported... the Chinese government didn't want to admit it had even happened.
When Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini died, Megan North had hoped it would quiet some of the unrest in that country... but Yosef Madani had warned her it would change nothing. In fact, he'd told her that the one they should be keeping an eye on for the time being was President Saddam Hussein of Iraq... he'd heard through the IOPF that Hussein was planning something...
Sure enough, in August of 1990, Iraqi forces invaded the country of Kuwait to the south. Saddam Hussein claimed it was because Kuwait had been exceeding OPEC quotas keeping the price of oil lower for several years causing Iraq to nearly go bankrupt while waging war with Iran. Iraq owed large debts to both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia because of the war. Hussein was pissed when both countries had refused to forgive the debts when he argued that they had given him the money because they were happy to sit back and let him take out Iran for them!
The U.S. immediately sent military aid to Saudi Arabia to prevent any of Iraq's forces from attacking the Saudi oil fields, which were within striking distance from Kuwait. The U.N. issued sanctions against Iraq and then finally threatened to authorize military action if Hussein did not withdraw troops from Kuwait and release all hostages. He released a few Western hostages but refused to withdraw...
In January 1991, Operation Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm when the U.S. Congress passed a resolution to authorize military force to liberate Kuwait. Unknown to the public and most of the government, Kuwait had hired a U.S. public relations firm to spread sympathetic propaganda to garner support for the plight of the Kuwaiti people being tortured by Iraqi troops... but not all of the reports were true.
Major Jay Hanson had been bitterly disappointed when his request to be assigned to an F-117A stealth fighter squadron that was being deployed to the Middle East was denied. He had known the B-2 bomber pilots were not yet trained well enough for missions, and his request had been denied because they'd needed him to stay and continue training in case Desert Storm lasted longer than they expected...
Which it didn't. By March, it was over... except for the hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells that were set afire by the retreating Iraqi troops at the end of February. U.S., British and French ground forces pursued the Iraqi troops and most people were of the opinion that the conflict shouldn't end until Baghdad was captured and Hussein surrendered. But President Bush declined to pursue that end, and called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. That decision and other missteps by Bush caused him to lose his bid for reelection in November 1992...
Then, in February 1993, the unthinkable happened... a bomb exploded in the underground parking area of the World Trade Center in New York. Radical Islamic terrorists had finally gotten around to pulling off an attack on U.S. soil! Yosef had also warned Megan that it was only a matter of time...
Luckily, the bomb did not do as much damage as the terrorists had hoped but 11 people were killed and thousands were injured. And it also startled most Americans into waking up and finally taking notice that living in a free country did not mean they were free from danger...
Later that year, Brad Seldon and Jay Hanson, both still Air Force Majors, resigned their commissions and joined the FBI to work with Jonnie North. By that time, Jonnie was spending more time in Washington working to try to identify suspected terrorists.
Brad and Jay were pleased when their request to be assigned as partners was approved and they took up the task of working with Major Karen Moss-Estevez and the CIA in trying to track down the group responsible for firing the missiles laden with CFC compounds into the ozone layer. It had happened only a few more times over the previous years but they were determined to make sure it was stopped completely.
The only things that seemed to be going well during the 90's were the leaps in technology. Personal computers became more and more available and affordable and innovative... the Internet and the World Wide Web gave people access to more information about almost everything in the world! Cellular phones increased in popularity as they got smaller and more technologically advanced. It was strange that technology in the auto industry didn't seem to be advancing as quickly as everything else...
It was getting easier and easier for people to communicate and stay in touch... but it was doing nothing to help humans "connect" to each other! There were so many people who were trying, but there seemed no way to stop the forces of hate and violence throughout the world...
In 1996, Megan was surprised when the U.S. government began to acknowledge the existence of more radical terrorist groups that were expressing increased anger at U.S. involvement anywhere in the Middle East. The U.S. was embroiled in a no-win situation... some Arab nations were just as dependent upon us for military protection as we were on their oil!
That was why Megan and Jonnie were one of the first couples to jump on a new GM vehicle that came out in '96... the EV-1... an all electric/battery powered automobile. They had wanted to buy two of the cars outright and were confused when they were told that it was only available with a lease agreement and they were only allowed to lease one per household...
GM came out with the EV-1 because the California government, at the urging of environmental activists Senator Robbie Seldon and his wife Crystal, had passed legislation to mandate strict vehicle emission controls to help alleviate the smog problem so prevalent around Los Angeles and other larger cities. Wayne and Jada had finally located that former GM employee in the early 90's when they found some information on a web site about how to convert a gasoline powered vehicle into a gasoline/battery hybrid... it had been posted anonymously.
Wayne and Jada had tracked the post to its source and given Megan the information. The man had refused to talk to her at first, saying that he'd been paid to keep his mouth shut and his life threatened if he ever talked. But guilt had gnawed at him over the years knowing the technology existed to produce non-combustible power sources for vehicles and that it was deliberately being withheld. That was why he'd come up with a design so people could do it themselves and at least reduce their need for gas and help cut back on emissions.
Megan had promised the man she would not reveal his identity, but she did pass along the information about the web site with the do-it-yourself instructions. He had contacted her about a year later to say that GM had called him to come work for them again when they'd heard that California was talking about imposing stricter emission laws. So Megan had known the EV-1 was coming, but what she hadn't known was that it was only going to be a temporary thing...
Jonathan graduated high school in 1996 and they leased the EV-1 for him and Nuri to drive while they attended UCLA. The boys were studying philosophy and international diplomacy. They needed to fully understand how to communicate with people without using their "gifts." It was an unfair advantage and they had promised their parents that they would be wise and fair in utilizing their abilities.
Tommy Seldon and J.J. Hanson graduated in 1998 and also decided to attend UCLA so they could spend more time hanging out with Jonathan and Nuri. Tommy was also studying philosophy as well as environmental science. J.J. was in pre-med; he wanted to be a doctor like Charlie and Lily Richards. He'd always known his body had a special ability to heal itself and he wanted to work with them in researching what it was about his genetics that made that possible... especially after some incidents with Nuri and Jada that Jasmine had sparked...
**********
Near Year's Eve 1996, Yosef Madani was at Megan and Jonnie North's for a visit to celebrate Jada and Wayne's 10th anniversary the next day. Nuri was living with the Norths while attending UCLA on a student visa. During the party that evening, Charlie noticed that eighteen-year-old Nuri seemed weary and was complaining of a headache, so he went to him.
