Chapter 8: Looking Back and Ahead

Jasper takes a short break from his activism to look back on how far he's come.

About a month and a half had passed since our last day at the Mar-A-Lago. It was at that point when I received the sudden urge to pay my dad a visit back in Augusta and keep him posted on the progress we'd made. Just a couple of days into my stay, I was watching MSNBC in the living room. It was currently airing even more coverage of the movement that my friends and I started.

The entirely redheaded panel was in the middle of a discussion in which they compared my movement with the similar one that my mom had led nearly a decade ago. They suddenly stopped speaking and the network proceeded to air footage of a slightly lower picture-quality, which centered on the previous movement. I couldn't help but smile as a wave of nostalgia washed over me, and for a moment I felt as though I was almost ten years younger, watching that footage live for the first time. Watching my own mother stand up for what she believed in as she led marches and held rallies all over America. Her beer-colored hair in pigtails even though she was in her forties, and her mahogany eyes full of hope and energy.

And then things went sour once they started to show footage of a vocal yet peaceful protest directly outside the White House. President Gonzalez was quick to step out, fixing his scowl on the immense crowd speaking out against his policies.

"Don't all you obnoxious liberals have something better to do than shout nonsense all day?!" I barely heard him say.

"O-ho, it's not just liberals in this crowd! We've got people of all outlooks represented here!" Mom replied snarkily, prompting the audience to break out into more applause.

The president then glanced at the two guards who were on either side of him, before looking back at the crowd.

"Alright, how about this? You protesters get off my lawn this instant, and there'll be no trouble!" Gonzalez continued.

The crowd refused once again, instead continuing to yell in protest. Gonzalez then sighed and pulled a pistol out of his sport-coat, before firing off a few bullets into the air. This was enough to silence the crowd and prompt them to look around. He then snapped his fingers, prompting a pair of guards and an unidentifiable person to rush to his side. The guy I couldn't identify was covered from head to toe in black cybernetic armor with a white G on the chest.

The three guards fired a few shots into the crowd, prompting them to retreat, scattering in all conceivable directions. Fortunately no one got seriously hurt. That is until Gonzalez spotted my mother struggling to get away, isolated from the frantic, rapidly shrinking crowd. I saw him adopt a wicked smirk as he cocked his gun again, prompting her to turn around and spot him. Right as her body was facing him, he pulled the trigger not once, but twice. The first shot nailed her right in the crotch, and while she was still reeling from it, the second bullet hit her in the chest.

At that moment, I was back in the shoes of my younger self. Watching my mom let out a blood-curdling scream as she collapsed backwards onto the pavement, her face erratically twitching in pain. It was such a dramatic moment that it almost looked as though it were occurring in slow-motion. I could still hear the prominent thud she made when she fell flat on her back, blood not hesitating to gush out of her wounds soon after.

"Noooooo!" I remembered Dad and I shouting as soon as we saw that.

"Ha ha! I'm a brave president! I am a brave president! Take that, Obama!" Gonzalez shouted from the TV screen as he blew off his smoking gun.

Once the old footage came to a close, I turned down the volume and allowed myself to think. Without a word, I looked to my right, noticing two large pictures on the wall, encased in plain black frames. One of them consisted solely of Mom, posing in her tight white T-shirt that had the words "HAIR AND EYES DON'T MATTER!" crudely painted on it in black, and was just a tad too short, providing a glimpse of her C-section scar. She was holding a handmade sign with the same message. The second frame contained a newspaper clipping, detailing the article that focused on her own demise. After giving them a long, hard look, I couldn't help but sigh.

"Hey, son," Dad's voice rang in from the hallway.

I looked behind me and watched him enter the room. With a neutral expression on his face, he sat down on the couch next to me.

"Oh, hey Dad," I replied flatly.

"Just wanted to congratulate you on how much s**t you've gotten done in such a short amount of time. At this rate, you and your friends'll have this presidency overthrown before you know it," Dad said, placing his thick, wrinkled hand on my shoulder. "That, and I've got a little something for ya'."

I watched as he dug his free hand into the breast-pocket on his bowling shirt, before pulling out what appeared to be a small, pointed piece of silver. It looked considerably dented, as though it had been launched towards something very hard at a very high velocity. And it was coated in a thin layer of dried, dark red liquid. It didn't take too long for me to figure out what this was.

"Wait a minute! Is this a... ?!" I asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, the doctors dug it out of your mother's corpse and I asked them if I could hold onto it. Figured it was your turn now," Dad explained. "I know there were two bullets, but for some reason they couldn't find the other one. Sorry."

I took the bullet into my hand and examined it some more. The sight triggered countless emotions within me. On the one hand I was elated to receive a physical memento of my late mother. Yet the fact that I was receiving it only made me more heartbroken at the fact that she was no longer with us.

"Wow, Dad. I... I honestly don't know what to say," I stammered in shock.

"Yeah, well I figured it'd be nice to have, so that way, while you're out there making America great again, you'll have her close to you every step of the way," Dad replied.

"Huh. Well thanks, Dad. I really appreciate it," I replied, glancing at the photos on the wall again with a sigh. "Man, I really miss her a lot."

"Likewise, son. Likewise," Dad replied, pulling me into a hug. "But I'm sure she'd be very proud of you if she could see you now."

"Sure hope so," I replied.

After our stepfather-son embrace, Dad stood up and left the room with a smile. Not long afterwards, my tablet chimed. I swiped the lock open to check my notifications, discovering that it was a FaceTime request from Tequila.

"Oh, hey guys. What's up?" I asked. "Anything happen that I should know about?"

"Well, aside from Gonzalez constantly taking to Twitter to b***h about us, nothing much," Tequila replied. "But we did receive a draft for one of the commercials that Mark helped us make. All we need is your approval, and then we can get this thing on air. Even on Fox News. Here, I'll send you the file so you can give it a watch. Call one of us back to share your thoughts."

I ended the call and waited for another jingle, signaling that I'd received an email. I opened the app and subsequently the video file. The first thing to pop up was a pair of grown men against a blue, black, and white background. One of them was bald and middle-aged, and the other, in spite of his younger face, had a full head of gray hair.

"Hi, I'm Bill. I once worked a job as an insurance agent, but according to the bills that were stamped into law by President Enrique Gonzalez, anyone who goes bald or gray gets forced into retirement," the middle-aged man explained. "I was planning to keep working for at least a couple more decades, but because of these laws, I can't. Our president must be impeached!"

"And my name is Will. I worked as a grocer, but because my hair turned gray a lot earlier than expected, I had to retire early just like my dad here," the younger man added. "And because both of us had to retire before we were ready to, neither of us have adequate retirement funds, and so far our president hasn't done anything to remedy this. So who knows what our futures will look like?"

The screen then cut to what appeared to be a straight romantic couple. The woman was diminutive and curvaceous, with bronze skin and breast-length, jet-black hair full of platinum-blonde highlights. One of her eyes was mahogany, like my mom's, and the other was gray and ringed with yellow. The man was tall and lanky, with curly, shoulder-length, coffee-brown hair and hazel eyes.

"My name is Roxanne Romano-Bordeaux. Growing up, I always wanted to be a lawyer, just like my late father. But because I have heterochromia, I was forcefully drafted into the military. Serving my country is a good thing, but only if it's on my own terms, which was definitely not the case here. And because of my job, I rarely get to see my husband, Trevor," the woman explained, speaking in an odd hybrid between Brooklyn and New Orleans accents.

"That's right. And as for me, I still got to keep my job as a banker, even after the laws were put in effect. But because my eyes are hazel, I'm stuck earning low income, and no matter how much effort I put into my job performance, my pay doesn't go up in the slightest. And because of all this, I'm only barely able to provide for myself and my wife here," Trevor replied, putting his arm around his wife. "This unfairness cannot stand. That's why we support the Looks Don't Matter movement!"

The screen then cut away from them and focused on me, my hair tied back in a ponytail as I stood there in the same T-shirt I'd worn at our very first rally.

"Hi, I'm Jasper Collins, the leader of the Looks Don't Matter movement. All those people you just heard were kind enough to share their stories with us, and they're just a few examples of folks who are suffering under these new laws," I explained. "Feel free to share your stories with us at LooksDontMatter dot com, or on Twitter using the hashtag #MyLDMStory. Together, we can make a difference! Help us free the people today!"

And with that, the video file cut off, but not before showing off a massive, sophisticated logo in the same color-scheme as the background. After closing out of it, I didn't hesitate to call Second.

"Oh, hey Jasper. Tequila already sent you a file containing a draft of our new commercial. We just need your approval and then we'll send it to the network," he said.

"Yeah, and I just saw it. I have no complaints, and I really like the new logo," I replied. "Now what say we get this on air as soon as possible?"

"Sounds like a plan, buddy," Second replied, before he hung up.