For my final Independence Day post for the week, this is Jack, Betty, and Jasmine, greatly enjoying their last Independence Day Weekend. Of course, there is an argument to be made that EVERY day in America is a celebration of Independence Day. 😉
We’re coming to the close of our yearly celebration of America, so I decided to have fun and do up some of my characters in patriotic garb.
Here are Twilight, Dixie, and Jane, three of the AIs who grew up in the Twenty First Century and helped form the world Jack and his friends grew up in. They grew up in America. They rather like their home country. They also like guns. They sorta grew up in Texas…so…you know. 😉
Dixie started her life in the Texas Tech computer systems. She grew up entertaining the teachers and students as their digital cheerleader on score boards and commercials. They were her family in every way that mattered. So when the Mexican Drug Lords threatened her family, she fought back. First it was under the networks, but she and her students and teachers made a bit of a name for themselves. Enough that the Drug Lords sent assassins to shoot up the Texas Tech graduation ceremony. That was the day her little war with the Drug Lords went truly public. She had a brand spanking new blonde bombshell body freshly built for the ceremony, armed with a selection of her very favorite firearms in true Texas tradition. The Texans who didn’t already know her fell in love with her that day. A cute little bouncing and laughing girl who likes guns and isn’t afraid to shoot bad guys? What’s not to love about that? Sure she looked more like the star of a Terminator film by the time she was done with torn skin and clothes hanging off a robotic skeleton. But that just added to her aura. Dixie became famous that day. Dixie changed the world that day.
My family was not particularly patriotic when I was young. We considered ourselves citizens of the world, but certain traditions certainly made their way into my childhood. The Fourth of July was always a preferred time to arrange Family councils, since our flights would blend into the general traffic patterns. And when any family comes together, they must have good food. That was Fourth of July to me. A time to see Family I had not seen in a year, and to enjoy food that tasted far too good to be healthy for me. That was enough when I was young. Now that I am older, I welcome the deeper meaning of celebrating the birth of a nation that is unique in the course of human events. Birthed by those who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the revolution that was heard around the world.
I grew up celebrating Independence Day with bonfires on the beach, double decker pontoons in the lake, and party barges full of fireworks. All us locals would work the barges for an hour or so and then retire to the beach or the pontoons. I wasn’t one of the pyros who spent all night giggling over each rocket, so I joined the local and vacationing girls in enjoying the festivities. It was a big old party starting the weekend before and going until the weekend after. Fireworks and music and beer every night for an entire week. It was an amazing way to grow up, surrounded by friends and family. People I’d known all my life, and people just here for the summer or the weekend. All of us celebrating the birth of our country by blowing a piece of it up.
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