Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5)

by Dean C. Moore

  “I suppose you’re right, but I still don’t like it.” Faraday squeezed his stress ball. “This thing’d drive me nuts.”

  Epstein deleted a line of code. “I forget you don’t get the ‘different strokes’ concept.”

  “Ha-ha. Here, let me get in there and give it feelers to the outside world. That way if we miscalculate, and her brain ends up too big for household duties alone, she has some outlet besides suicide.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Epstein said. He surrendered his seat begrudgingly. “Besides, she’ll need a way to order groceries and handle home repairs without involving Drew or Robin.”

  “Remind me again why we’re giving them this belated house-warming gift?”

  Epstein threw his hands up. “Dude, we texted Robin the profiles on Hartman and his students, then casually went on with our duties as if it were enough of a head’s up.”

  “Yeah, I guess that warrants the attention I’d give to any A-list customer, instead of my customary half-assed approach.”

  “If that means you’ll call upon the hyper-concentration that’s the flipside of your ADHD, I’d say you better.” Epstein stuck his face closer to the monitor to compensate for lazy eye-muscles which refused to correct focus.

  Faraday squeezed his stress ball, paced, and thought out loud. “We better keep Drew in the loop as the house is her domain.”

  “Yeah, the last thing I want is to piss off someone with her political acumen. I’ll program the AI to send the abbreviated version of what she’s up to to Drew’s cell phone. That way she can take credit for the AI’s work, and share control, rather than wrestle for it.” His fingers flew over the keyboard, as he sunk into a better rhythm entering the revised code.

  Six hours later, both Faraday and Epstein were asleep at their monitors, having forgotten to shut down the program they were working on.

  Crychek entered the basement lab of the Berkeley PD through the vault door. The best bank vaults in the country had nothing on Epstein’s barrier. It required eye-print and hand-print verification. That just put him into an airlock, with doors at either end barring further progress, where the oxygen could be sucked out if the laser scanners running up and down his body for hidden arsenal detected any.

  Finally, he stepped into the bombproof shelter that would make a NASA-capsule builder envious.

  Crychek eyed Faraday’s and Epstein’s monitors, curious. Faraday was passed out, yet his hand kept working the stress ball on auto-pilot. There was a stack of books on Zen next to Epstein’s monitor. He paged through a few of the titles. What would they be programming with Zen aphorisms?

  A half hour later, Crychek was pulling data streams from both Faraday and Epstein’s computers to his computer to check into things more closely.

  From there, Crychek couldn’t resist the temptation to improve on his understudies’ work; he added self-evolving algorithms that would continue to surprise and delight, and keep the Kitchen Aid Computer persona from becoming boring and predictable. Knowing what he knew about Drew and Robin’s evolutionary curves, he realized it was the only way the computer would ever keep from fading into the background, where it would be quickly forgotten along with every other kitchen upgrade.

  FIVE

  Drew helped Robin apply his makeup. It was her idea, part of her campaign to get them to acclimate to one another’s morphing bodies better. She had devised a whole gamut of games for them. The aim was to put some fun back into their relationship, some sexual electricity, while simultaneously defusing the shock and awe campaign of submitting either of them to the other’s sex change. Robin, remembering what was once torture for him, wondered how the same approach was going to lead to deliverance.

  For his part, gazing into Drew’s face—as her hand kept coming towards his facade with the sponge and eye liner—Robin couldn’t shed the uncomfortable feeling that the man applying the makeup was possessed by female-Drew, long since dead and departed, but unable to move on until her soul had managed to say to him whatever it had to say. And any minute now, the man before her would slip out of trance state, and crumple to the floor. Needless to say, he didn’t think much of Drew’s stratagem.

  The makeup applied, Drew sat back. “Voila!” She held the mirror up to Robin’s face. He smiled disingenuously for her benefit. Drew sighed. “All right. Ramp walk next.”

  In this game, they put on an outfit from the “his” and “her” racks as fast as they could, and did their most beguiling struts down the ramp like fashion models. The cameras took note of the sessions to help with the subliminal programming later. It was like those Tony Robbins positive-affirmation seminars in which subliminal tapes were handed out aplenty. Laugh-tracks and clap-tracks filled in for the imaginary audience, and mirrors flanking either side and the end of the ramp allowed them to admire their new forms and one another while walking the ramp simultaneously. Robin, begrudgingly had to admit that the feedback from the mirrors was helping him get into character better with his femme fatale flounce.

  The decathlon wasn’t complete until the third event. They did a striptease dance for one another, took off each outfit with more attention to detail than they’d used to put them on. The final provocative step was left to the imagination, with Robin having to strap his dick down to emulate a pussy he didn’t actually have yet, and Drew having to strap down her boobs which weren’t exactly gone yet. A dancer’s pole had been erected to help facilitate their individual acts.

  While Robin doubted either of them managed to elicit the slightest sexual arousal in one another, they did manage to prove to themselves that they could enjoy the play acting. With enough reiterations, they might forget they were acting.

  Every once in a while, Robin forgot they were play acting, and broke down sobbing. The hopelessness of the exercise made their every effort to stay together seem just as foolish. In between those emotional outbursts were real flashes of passive-aggressive anger, where Robin flaunted his new female form for her, hoping to be as convincing in the part as possible, as payback for what Drew had put him through. To his chagrin, the ploy worked, and not even Drew’s far more advanced theatrical skills could hide the fleeting masks of horror bubbling up in the lava pit of feelings before sinking back down to the bottom.

  SIX

  “What do you think drove Jeannie to kill?” Robin was aware his eyes were glazing over as the vortex of Hartmanesque memories drew him down.

  Drew grunted impatiently. “Who knows? Poor potty training, a genetic propensity to poor impulse control pursuant to a long chain of parents, and their parents before them, with a decided lack of self-policing.”

  “You’re losing patience with having to explain things to me.”

  Drew took a deep breath. “No, I’m losing patience with your martyr complex. You’re so busy off saving the world that there’s little time for us. I need some consideration, too.”

  Berkeley was indeed a foil for Robin’s bleeding heart. He couldn’t walk out the door without walking into someone in desperate need of rescuing, however politically incorrect the sentiment. His police work just put all that under an even sharper lens.

  He sipped his green tea, feeling as if that too were a betrayal. It was just the right amount of caffeine, imbibed with the intent of helping him soldier on with his causes. “We’re taking time for one another now.”

  “Only so you can utilize me to assist you in your campaign to be an even better rescuer.”

  “This is Berkeley.” Robin squeezed the last of the lemon into the cup. “The psych profiles and personal histories have to make it into the police paperwork so the regents know who to go after to ensure no one ever grows up to be a serial anything again, no one turns psychopathic. It’s all nurture over nature in this town.”

  “You’re proud of that, aren’t you?”

  Robin stifled a smile. “Where else is a martyr to blend in?”

  It was Drew’s turn to grin.

  They were dining in the heart of the Gourmet Ghetto, Drew’s fa
vorite haunt in Berkeley outside of her own kitchen, which none of the classier restaurants could hope to match. The woman took the gourmand concept very seriously. Everyone perked up the instant she walked through the door. They lived for her kind of snooty customer; it was their sole reason for being.

  The Epicurious Garden, their current stopover, featured a Zen garden to go with the fancy food court. They were in the garden seating area in the back. The lush gelato helped them see past the crappy parking on Shattuck Avenue.

  A customer confined to a wheelchair due to quadriplegia got his own waitress and busboy to fuss over him as he was wheeled into the garden. The establishment kept an arsenal of additional help around for just such customers owing to the owner’s personal take on political correctness. The waitress kneeled down to make sure she was at eye level with him to avoid any uncomfortably misconstrued condescension. She held his hand as if they were on a date and joked together better than most dates Robin had been on prior to meeting Drew.

  All the extra attention was drawing discourteous looks from some of the other customers, who apparently had another take entirely on political correctness, like possibly paying him no mind was a better way to honor him, so he didn’t feel so “special.” Though the place was usually full of the other type of PC customer, many of whom would find their way over to his table to glad-hand and treat him like a celebrity in honor of his bravery, to ensure he understood how much strength they drew from him. Tonight was no exception; they were practically in a dogfight with one another to prove how superior they were to the competition on the subject of political correctness.

  “I hope this demonstrates for you your own absurdity, madly chasing after every lost soul in hopes of rescuing them,” Drew said, taking in the same phenomenon for herself of Quadriplegia Boy holding court.

  “I really need to buy a book on political correctness. I used to know in any given situation the most politically correct point of view to take.”

  Drew dabbed her lips with the cloth napkin. “Don’t be too hard on yourself for not being able to keep up with the rat race in this town of outdoing one another on the PC front.”

  “It’s a wonder the world’s best politicians don’t all come from Berkeley.”

  “They do.” Drew returned to her gelato. “You try declaring yourself a nuclear free zone in any other city in the country. I dare you.”

  “Coming back to Jeannie… Don’t roll your eyes at me.”

  “We gonna take time to discuss your sex change? The one talk we had on the matter just highlighted your self-imposed martyrdom.” Drew ran her eyes over Robin’s paisley-patterned dress. It was Robin’s turn to roll his eyes. “Not that I’m complaining,” Drew said. “I hated the thought of divorcing you just to maintain my picture perfect take on the ideal couple. This saves me the kind of second thoughts for which you’re so famous.”

  “Ha-ha.” Robin winced at the taste of lemon in his tea. “Some other time maybe.” When Drew gave him that, I’m tired playing second fiddle to your investigations look, he clarified. “I’m sorry if I’ve had to move that down the list of traumas.” Drew softened a tad.

  Robin realized Drew—by trying to normalize his self-image—was rushing to restore some semblance of order and routine in their lives out of respect for the trauma he’d just lived through. In that vein, she wanted to immerse Robin in the soothing ambiance and insulating world of wealth Drew was so good at providing. This fancy dinner out attacked both goals evenly, as frequenting the upscale Gourmet Ghetto had been a long-term ritual between them. But the fact was, Robin felt anything but back to normal, and anything but safe.

  SEVEN

  Robin took up Drew’s practice of dressing the part to help him better get into character as a female. Today, in particular, he sported a light dress, perhaps too light, should Berkeley’s infamously changeable weather set upon him with gusty winds and empower lusty eyes. Ecoskin provided the eco-conscious outfit; he’d gone with the purple Pisces dress. Drew wore a well-tailored suit whose vintage Robin would need Drew’s pedigree to identify, but surely, it was nothing if not expensive. It seemed no more adaptive to sudden changes in the weather.

  One of the street people, a manic depressive off her lithium, grabbed Robin’s forearm as Drew and Robin sauntered past her on Telegraph Avenue. Robin made eye contact and smiled warmly and politely as the woman spewed, “They’re coming to get us.”

  “Who are ‘they?’” Robin asked in earnest.

  Drew, initially impatient with Robin for humoring the witchy old lady, started to smile. She was probably thinking, good, maybe if he gets a healthy dose of conspiracy theory coming back at him, he’ll see what a fool he is for thinking similar thoughts. Since Robin had been relaying details of Hartman’s philosophy to her, Drew was getting an earful of Big Brother at home. Robin had managed to make it clear his own thinking wasn’t that much of a departure point from Hartman’s.

  “Who are they?” the crone protested sharply. “Why, are you blind? They’re everywhere, at every peace rally, every protest, measuring, assessing who the future leaders of the new wave are. So they can cut them down in their prime. What, you think these people play nice when they’re threatened? You think they stop at locking down the major media outlets? They won’t desist until everyone with the gene for thinking differently is stamped out.”

  “Better take a blood sample, I’m convinced you’re related,” Drew said, wise-assed. Robin thought, Maybe he had sounded a little too empathetic relating Hartman’s side of things.

  He suddenly recalled this woman. “Professor Brannigan, sorry, I didn’t recognize you.”

  “Shush. You trying to blow my cover? Professors have been falling left and right. We’re the ones who put ideas in people’s heads. They don’t like those ideas, ‘Poof!’ you’re gone.”

  “Maybe you can jot down your findings, now that you’re undercover, and deliver them to me,” Robin suggested. “I can see they get published anonymously.”

  Brannigan regarded him suspiciously, as if a part of her mind recognized she was quite mad, and that part saw Robin’s request as rational, even if she couldn’t see past her paranoia. “Where can I find you?”

  “I walk the avenue daily. It’s my Zen garden.”

  “Okay, then.” She let go of him and darted off, blending with the crowd.

  “That wasn’t particularly nice,” Drew said.

  “I was dead serious. You don’t know she isn’t acting as the hands of God any less than the rest of us. Just because she’s mad doesn’t mean she can’t be a tool for the divine, spouting wisdom more sublime than anything we can siphon off our higher selves.”

  “God, give me strength.” Somehow it wasn’t enough for Drew to be merely dismissive. “I’m taking you to that cult down by the marina so they can brainwash all those New Age memes right out of you with their neo-Nazi memes. I bet you can detox from those a lot easier.”

  “Ha-ha. How come you can be such a smooth talker when we’re at society gatherings, or around people who matter, and the rest of the time, be such a prig? It’s like you’re two different people.”

  Drew sighed. “Darling, it’s one thing to defuse people before they become a problem, it’s another thing to invite these problems into your life.”

  “So you’re really not a people person.”

  “I’m for peace of mind,” Drew said, “and that usually requires taking the bombs out of people’s hands before their behaviors blow my quiet life to smithereens.”

  “Fine. Just so I get it.” Robin let go of Drew’s hand.

  “You’re pretty crusty yourself when you’re around Manny and the boys at the precinct. So don’t pretend we aren’t all what we need to be to survive the trauma of other people.” Robin ignored her. “What are you doing now?” she said.

  “I’m on the lookout for synchronicities.” Robin felt Drew stiffen even though they were no longer making physical contact. “If I’m on the right path, someone will say or do someth
ing that’s just what I need to hear to make sense of the Hartman case.” Drew shook her head with a condescending smirk. “I can see that,” Robin said. “My peripheral vision works just fine.” Drew’s sneer just froze into place that much harder.

  Three teens had replaced the wheels on their skateboards with chalk. They etched free form art into the sidewalk as they swerved, skidded, and performed stunts around one another and the pedestrians. One wore his hair in a rainbow mohawk, had pierced ears, a tie-dye tee shirt. Silver studs perforated his belt, and chains dangled off his wallet and jeans. The other two were but variations on the dress theme. Robin fixated on the random lines traced by the kids’ overlapping and smeared wheel tracks.

  “What are you seeing?”

  “Faces in the kids’ drawings.”

  “They’re in your head.” Drew sounded more annoyed than alarmed.

  “Means I’m too right-brained right now, so I’m seeing patterns where there aren’t any. Figures, since I’m trying to wrap my mind around Hartman’s big picture thinking. See? I told you, the universe would send me clues to guide me if I just opened to it.”

  “Keep it up and I won’t need contacts anymore,” Drew said. “All the eye rolling will exercise them back to twenty-twenty.”