Jack of Harts

The American flag in Jack’s day is one that has not changed in over two centuries, even as new States and territories have been added. The reasons are twofold, and more. The first is that I didn’t want to have to make a lot of different flags for use in art. I’m lazy, cheap, and a perfectionist. Which means I wanted a single flag. But America has this policy of changing our flag every time we get a new State. And America in Jack’s day has…a LOT of States. So I did a lot of research on flags. And one day, while researching, I realized something. Forty-Nine States reformed the Federal Government in my writing. And we have a 49 star flag on record. It was a very short-lived flag, but we do have it, and it’s public domain. And so the flag that Jack knows with 13 stripes for the original colonies and 49 stars for the States that reformed the Union was born.

The United States of America when Jack grew up was different from the nation we live in now. Three centuries had passed. Political alliances like the Republic of California, Republic of Texas, the Indian Nations, and the Confederation of Dixie had arisen. Those pseudo-sovereign alliances of States maintained many of their own policies and generally ignored the Federal Government’s wishes as long as it didn’t try to interfere with them. I draw much inspiration from Pre-Civil War America in that way, where people were Minnesotans or Texans first, and Americans second. Jack was proud to grow up a Minnesotan on the wilderness border with Canada, acting as a tour guide for rich city slickers. America was a highly divided nation in many ways, but when the Shang attacked and killed millions of Americans all over the Western half of the nation, they united the United States of America in a way that only an outside threat can. Much like after our own 9/11, America stood back up and challenged all comers to come get some. That is the America Jack grew up in, and the America he volunteered to defend.

The Peloran made Contact with us a century before the main story in Jack of Harts. Aliens are normal and accepted in Jack’s worldview, and so is the effective immortality of humanity. He wasn’t even alive when the Peloran made their Treatments available to anybody who wanted them for free. They are like a superboost to the human immune and repair systems that massively slows down the aging process. Jack does not remember a time when people died of old age. It is a foreign concept to him. Yes, he has read about it. He knows it used to happen. Just like people use to get the flu. Or cancer. Or small pox. The Black Death. Addiction to drugs. Overweight. Underweight. Diabetes. They are all artifacts of the past, eliminated by a combination of Alien and Human medical sciences that have literally changed the world. Jack is healthy, and he has every expectation that those around him will also be healthy until the day they die.