The Revolution

Chapter 4

Note: Updated with two new scenes and updated grammar 071424.

Jackie sat alone in his apartment, musing through his day, nursing some yellow tinted liquor. He was hoping to slow his brain enough to finally slip into a sleep.
The movie app he had running on the monitor sitting on a plain wooden shelf across from the bed showed some old war flick that Jackie was only half watching while he scrolled on his metapad. It seemed like every time he looked up he saw a commercial.
He thought about taking one of the tranquilizers his therapist had prescribed for sleep, and then for a split second thought about taking the whole bottle. He shook that thought out of his head real quick.
To distract himself he thought to himself, What was the name of that guy from school a couple days ago, David? David what? A vehicle exploded on the war movie as the name clicked into place, Handcock...
Jackie opened the social app FacePlace on his metapad, and did a cursory search for a "David Handcock." There were surprisingly few hits.
The profile picture of the third David Handcock was a dead ringer for the auburn haired man in the Cafe as if it was taken the day they met. Since it had been a couple of days Jackie decided that it may have been. Jackie clicked on the profile.
A quick look on the page told Jackie the profile photo had been uploaded a year ago. Jackie had no idea why he thought this was a good rabbit trail to go down. He took a swig off the bottle before continuing.
He could feel his knee start to ache so he laid back on the bed, and positioned the metapad where it would require the least amount of passive energy to keep propped up.
Jackie had never been popular in high school, but he didn't think he disliked anyone, and from what he remembered, David was not one of the ones he disliked. He was curious to see what he could deduce about his old acquaintance from FacePlace posts.
Almost the first thing on David's page was a photo of the day he enlisted in the Grandville State Military. Further posts made it obvious that while he had probably joined due to his genuine desire to help people, there was some event in that service that had soured that time in the military.
The Grandville Army was the largest standing military of the seven. Since the last Flux War, the three northern states, Icebane, (I'll name the other two, I'm bad at names) mostly kept small, mostly decorative military forces to remember wartime and to give some of their more rambunctious young people purpose and discipline. Scarsmon had been historically skittish about having any military force lest it damage their reputation of being politically neutral. Shapsville had DSI security forces designed to be corporate security only despite their reputation of employing some of the most elite soldiers on Pangea. And Mt. Vesio, was mainly a loose collections of home grown militia of various states of combat readiness.
In Grandville's Constitution a minimum number of standing army members must be maintained. This number was "carefully devised according to the will of Gaia," and greatly exceeded over 10,000 soldiers. Grandville through a series of targeted recruitment incentives designed to appeal to a specific subset of listless, often poor adolescents had no trouble filling quotas yearly, despite there being no real enemy to fight.
The Service Photos David posted were all of rescue missions after severe weather hit all over Pangea. It was easy to see that David was proud of those missions if nothing else.
As Jackie scrolled further through the photos, he noticed a man standing with David, hugging and laughing and generally having a good time. Jackie pushed down a pang of Jealousy as he hadn't been that close to a human since, when, high school?
There were lot of photos of the two together, Gay? Jackie questioned internally, but he quickly came to the conclusion that he really didn't care, but had a slight curiosity about. If I get a chance I may ask him, but if not, whatever.
David wasn't lying when he said he knew people, as most of the photos were a long line of people talking about David and sharing stories that Jackie soaked up like a sponge.
As of late, many of David's posts had become openly critical of the direction of Grandville politics, a subject that Jackie could sympathize with. A post about the Grandville State Assembly passing a bill limiting sports to segregated male and female BioBirth Leagues with angry cartoon faces plastered all over it, drew Jackie's Attention.
The caption written by David himself said: "The Government of Grandville utilizes systems of control to enforce BioBirth, straight Friendie superiority by threatening people with the threat of ostracism of not deemed pure enough."
If nothing else, he'll be good to get hypnoleaf from, Jackie mused.
Jackie grabbed his bottle and finished off what little was left. He had just enough courage he decided to hit the "Friend Request" prompt at the top of David's page. Maybe something would come of it, maybe not. Perhaps, and this was the most likely scenario, Jackie thought darkly, David did not even remember him.
Jackie looked up to see what was happening in the movie but was surprised to see that a new one had started, some big snazzy action blockbuster full of computer graphics and buff men that somehow didn't know how to wear a shirt that Jackie had somehow missed a couple of years ago. He had just started to settle in when he felt the metapad buzz at his side. He was surprised to not it was a notification from David accepting Jackie's FacePlace Friend Request.
Did I just make a new friend? Jackie thought, I had better not mess this up. He smiled with an optimism he hadn't felt in some time, as he slipped into this new movie.