Free Video Game Recruiting (Corporate Marines Book 1) by Tom Germann Page B

ago, with everyone bringing stuff and making it a bigger party than ever.
    Her dad was getting better, but it was hard on Tina and she was pushing herself to do well in school and everywhere else.
    Years later I looked back at this and thought that my mom was also setting me and Tina up, as she really liked her and so did I. My last memory of Tina was of her walking away from me in the food court, and I couldn’t stop checking her out. She never noticed ‘cause she was glaring at her phone and I wondered who had sent her a message that was that much of a problem.

Chapter 12
    T he next day I had to go visit my grampa with Dad. He was grumpy and always had been. When Grandmamma passed away, he had gotten grumpier and Dad never really liked going to visit him because, as he said, “Grampa is stuck in the past and what went wrong for him. He needs to look forward, but it’s hard for his generation to do that.”
    When I would go there, it was usually with Mom. I was always nervous because I always got grilled on what I had done and was going to do with myself in the future.
    This time Dad was going in on one of those rare days off. Mom was organizing a charity drive to work on improving the Projects, and so here I was.
    We drove there in silence, with Dad listening to the latest stock reports and reviewing what was going on in the markets. He was the head of the state’s training department and kept telling me how important it was to stay current. “If we fail, then the Corporation fails, which means that people will lose jobs. If I do my job well, then I maintain the jobs. And if I do great? Then more jobs are created.”
    I never faulted him for working so much. It was why we had what we did and Mom could stay home and we could have the great parties in our area.
    I just checked out the scenery as we drove along. There were beautiful trees and small parks all over. We were heading into the downtown core, and we went from detached houses to townhouses and lots of apartment buildings. It was a smooth ride with not much traffic on a Thursday afternoon. Having four lanes going right through the city was the best thing that city planning had ever done.
    We didn’t go fast, but it was a constant speed, and with mostly electric cars there was not much noise or pollution. Heck, when they built the underground rapid transit lines for bulk transport, that was just top-notch and traffic was decreased a lot.
    But we lived in a state that had more upgrades than elsewhere. I had seen pictures of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, where vehicles were still run on fossil fuels or mixes. All the cities were electric, but the world was a big place.
    It was kinda cool when we took the environmental classes in education. Our carbon footprint had decreased over the last thirty years. Within a hundred, there would only be fuel-burning engines for practice or in museums.
    It was cool to think that way. But I really hoped that in a hundred years I wouldn’t be in a retirement home like Grampa. He was so grumpy and down all the time. I didn’t get it.
    I saw the latest ads for newsfeeds on the billboards as we drove along. The pictures moved and danced along, pushing whatever marketing people wanted.
    When we pulled up to the nursing home, Dad looked at me. “Timothy, would you be okay going to the convenience store and getting us both some drinks? I want to talk to Grampa quickly. He isn’t going to want to see me for long as I’m too much of a bureaucrat for him to handle.” Dad said it with a smile, but I knew it hurt him a bit that his dad wasn’t proud of him.
    “Yeah, sure, Dad. You want the standard Cola that Mom doesn’t want you drinking?”
    He smiled, which was rare; it made him look young. “You got it, Tim!” He handed me a fifty and I headed for the convenience store.
    I walked into the store and headed to the fridges. I grabbed Dad’s favourite and an energy drink for myself. Then I snagged a medium-sized bag of the