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

by Dean C. Moore

  TEN

  “What the hell?” Sergio Santini, the Oakland detective in charge, kept bouncing his eyes between the separated skull cap that lay on the floor some distance away and the dead man’s exposed brain pan, burnished clean of brain matter. “This psycho has to be Berkeley born and bred.”

  “Yeah, our crazies just aren’t this creative.” Mort Willis had been partnered with Santini for over a year now, and they were finally past the adjustment phase. Not quite able to guess where the other one was going yet, but no longer distinctly uncomfortable in one another’s presence.

  The fact that the man’s body had been found on the floor was a real inconvenience. Santini suffered from arthritis of the hip, making crouching down to examine the body more closely a real bitch. But his near-sightedness wasn’t entirely corrected with glasses either, owing to the astigmatism. That meant he had no choice but to stoop to the floor. That, or rely on the camera guy to furnish him the eight-by-ten glossies. Santini was too old school for that; trusting his instincts, and even his failing senses, better.

  Mort figured for a pair of guys in their forties, they weren’t exactly poster boys for preventative medicine. He suffered from Tourette’s syndrome secondary to a punch to the side of his head, and walked with a bit of a shuffle, whether from the same blow or another shortly thereafter, he really couldn’t say. Fighting crime was right up there with professional sports for living with injuries later in life, only without any of the financial benefits.

  “Damn. Shit. Shit. Shit!”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth,” Santini said, covering for him. With the crime scene photographer in the room, they had to maintain some sense of decorum in the presence of the body.

  Mort noticed the bubbling stained linoleum on the kitchen floor, the chipped linoleum counters, and the Melmac plastic dishware in the sink. “I realize even these low-rent dives command a princely sum in this real estate market, but you’d think his humble lifestyle’d earn him some gratis heavenly grace. Like maybe one get-out-of-being-murdered-free card.”

  Santini snorted. “Really? This joint is the Ritz next to my place. I don’t exactly hear angels singing.”

  Mort smirked. “I haven’t gotten any signs from the almighty that my humble lifestyle has put me out in front of the pack any, either.”

  Now that the shock of the ambiance was wearing off, Mort was tuning in details of greater relevance to the case. He played with the spittle, rubbing his thumb against the tip of his index finger, found the constituency of the fluid closer to WD-40. Holding a strand in a pair of tweezers under a magnifying glass, he said, “And what’s with the dog hairs that aren’t dog hairs and saliva that isn’t entirely animal saliva?” They hadn’t had time confirm with the C.S.I. boys, of course, but the m.o. was too much like the other crime scenes for Mort to feel he was putting his head on the chopping block with his suppositions.

  “Nothing like being in spitting distance from a university with more research grants than I have distant cousins. We might have to cross the line over into Oz for help on this one.”

  “Damn. Damn. Damn. And no, that’s not the Tourette’s this time,” Mort confessed. Santini smirked, gave the room the final once over. “Besides,” Mort said, “they’re knee deep in the Hartman case. It’s on us to find Wolf-Boy on our own.”

  Mort regarded the makeshift Moonie shrine on the folding dining table pushed against the wall that left just enough room to eat. “I guess we can cast aside the cult-war theory. Can’t see Wolf-Boy being welcomed within any religious faction.”

  “On the contrary,” Santini objected, “society’s castoffs are their bread and butter. Still, you think if another sect set out to mock the Moonies, they’d be a little less obtuse about it.”

  Santini rubbed the kinks in his lower back. “Let’s start with their social workers,” he said, his mind switching gears. “With Berkeley living up to the Statue of Liberty motto—give us your sick and your lame—they’ve got everyone from lepers to wolf boys flocking here like it’s the Promised Land. They may be here for the Berkeley ambiance, but half of them can only afford to live on this side of the city line. Damn liberal enclaves are going to be the death of me. Maybe one of their social workers has this guy’s card on file.”

  “Maybe we aren’t thinking out of the box enough.”

  “Who is, these days?” Santini groused.

  ELEVEN

  “Have you been following this case about the missing brains?” Epstein said. He was one of the Three Stooges working out of the basement lab in the Berkeley PD building. Robin frequently consulted all three to help him manage the escalating complexity of pursuing any case in Berkeley. They were techies extraordinaire. And while cutting edge crime scene investigatory methods were their meat and potatoes, they frequently strayed into neighboring sciences, having the kinds of minds that were just too brilliant to be hemmed in for long.

  The Three Stooges had more patents between them than the patent office had shelves. Their world class skills were in no way inside the budget of the Berkeley PD. But as it turned out, born and bred to Berkeley, they were a little too peculiar for most anyone else to handle. Robin referred to them as the Stooges, because, personally, he thought they were a laugh riot. Though, Crychek denied having a sense of humor, Faraday was comical only in his extreme cynicism that nothing was ever going to work, despite having more inventions for things that did work than the other two Stooges combined. And Epstein had this way of sounding stupid, despite a two hundred plus IQ, that was comedy along a different vein.

  Robin replied, “No, I’m afraid the case of the missing brains holds little interest for me, unfolding as it is in Oakland. That’s like voluntarily going back to Kansas after living in Oz.”

  “Hear, hear,” Crychek said, though it wasn’t for the reasons any unsuspecting party might think. He had no use for “local color.” “Is there any crime over there that doesn’t lead inexorably back to crack abuse? Our services would be about as useful as lipstick on a whore.”

  “Agreed.” Faraday played nervously with his stress ball, which seemed, if anything, to fire him up. “God, drugs have really gutted that city. Drove through Newark, New Jersey one time, same thing. Between the mobsters and the smokestacks, T.S. Elliott couldn’t dream up a drearier wasteland.”

  “Hey, speak for yourselves.” Epstein twirled his pen between his fingers as if auditioning for the inevitable debut of the Olympic event. “You know how many urban renewal patents I have pending thanks to America’s hollowed out inner cities? I designed bacteria that eat smog and soot off the sides of buildings.” He pressed down on his four-color pen, changing the tip from blue to red. “Diamond glazing that keeps things in pristine condition way past our sun burning itself out.” He shifted the pen from red to green. “And motorcycle helmets that relay more intel about the urban battlefield than GI Joe in Afghanistan would know what to do with.”

  Under the force of his thumb, green ink yielded to black. “Don’t get me going on the money to be made refurbishing this country from the neglect and abuse of a ruling one percent that couldn’t give a shit, so long as there’s money to be made from somebody somewhere in this world. Forget if they’ve burned through every disposable dime U.S. citizens might have.”

  “Stow that shit, at least until Robin leaves. Or we’ll never hear the end of these bleeding-heart causes,” Crychek croaked.

  Robin ignored their latest digs, which he knew they only doled out in jest, well, except for Crychek. “You guys have anything for me on Hartman’s wonder drugs, or where the hell he might have made off to?”

  Crychek said, “If you’ll put your nose under my microscope, you’ll see what’s going on in a hurry.”

  Robin did as requested. He had no idea what he was looking at.

  “You might want to cue him a bit more,” Faraday interjected, evidently not sure about the use of pronoun, judging from his hesitation and his running his eyes over Robin’s dress. “Not everyone
’s mind is the black hole for scientific aptitudes yours is.” Being a giant among giants, Crychek was frequently made to feel like a fish out of water, even here.

  Taking no offense, and showing, in fact, no emotional response at all, which he would have fancied beneath him, Crychek dryly reported the facts. “Hartman’s drug stains the brain cells with a phytopigment distantly related to curare, an Amazon jungle—”.

  “We know what curare is, Crychek,” Faraday said, objecting to being spoken down to. But more to the point, he was sufficiently fascinated that he figured Robin could bloody well read between the lines for himself for the sake of speeding the story along.

  “Instead of arresting the motor nerves, it compromises the brain cells’ ability to secrete the proper balance of neurochemicals, selecting for some, deselecting for others. The result is akin to self-lobotomy. Anxiety reactions are diminished. But so is striving or purposefulness in general. Although the exact reaction may vary from individual to individual depending on the imbalances in their brains to begin with.”

  “Anything which suggests where he might head to next?” Robin asked.

  “You can forget that,” Faraday scoffed.

  “This guy’s very back to nature—”. Epstein took Faraday’s stress-ball away from him and batted it against the wall with an actual baseball bat. “the way modern day pharmaceuticals are pumping shamans’ brains for herbal remedies that go back generations. This, so they can synthesize the key ingredients in quantity back in a lab after concentrating and patenting them, for the sake of monopolizing the market. Not that I’m complaining. I have five mill in a mutual fund dedicated to biotech; I’m making a fortune along with the rest of the planet rapers.” He clubbed the ball against one of the walls for a second time. “I like to think my other patents balance the scales enough that I can still be thought of as one of the good guys.”

  “So you’re saying, look somewhere outside the city?” Robin said.

  “I know it’s not much.” Epstein lowered his eyes guiltily.

  “He failed with the chemistry approach,” Crychek said. “If I were him, I’d mess with the genome more directly, perhaps with an RNA reverse transcriptase, the way AIDS gets into the cells and takes them over.”

  “You’ll check for where in the country this work is the most advanced?” Robin asked. He panned his head around the room so they understood he was directing his question at all of them.

  “Yes.” Faraday grabbed the ball back from Epstein. “While I hold out zero hope of getting anywhere with that approach, I agree with you in principle. If this guy hates dirtying his hands more than necessary, preferring to play philosopher to lab tech, he’ll want access to the most advanced facilities to avoid having to reinvent the wheel himself.”

  “Why don’t you have any faith in this approach?” Robin had to ask.

  “Do you have any idea how many firms, big and small, are out there chasing the next breakthrough smart-drug, with an aging global populace losing their minds to senescence? Not to mention global competition making it so everyone has to smarten up to hold down their job a day longer—including young geniuses at the top of their games?”

  Robin grunted, felt as if he’d taken a knee to the gut. She hated to admit Faraday might have been right for once in feeling as pessimistic as he did.

  “Maybe you should beat them at their own game, then,” Robin said. “That way, Hartman will come to us. There’s Epstein’s 401k to think about, moreover.”

  They scrunched up their faces as if seriously entertaining the idea. But Robin knew if they didn’t have an answer or an angle of attack to the problem jump into their heads then and there, they’d be off to the races, chasing down some other radical notion.

  Assuming he was reading faces any better these days, he saw only one more reason to despair.

  TWELVE

  Having given up on college campuses as a fertile testing ground, Hartman and Winona toured the various People’s Movements in search of souls worthy of becoming his next disciples.

  “We have some hard truths to face about our protest movement.” Evers’ voice crackled over the booming microphone. “The first is that while our outrage is genuine and justified, we, as of yet, have no clearly articulated ideology to replace the bankrupt thinking of the one percent, no alternative organizational structures to offer that don’t confer far too much power to a privileged minority.”

  Vans Evers, speaking to the general assembly at Occupy Denver, stopped Hartman dead in his tracks.

  Vans Evers’ eyes swept the audience like a lighthouse beacon for reactions, evidently gauging if it was okay to press on, or if his prior points needed underscoring. There appeared to be enough head-nodding, and little enough restlessness, that he segued to his next point. “Every revolution before us has failed precisely because whether one argues for socialism, democracy, communism, or leadership by divine rule, those in power will continue to do what they have always done, abuse it.”

  “Oh, I like him,” Hartman exclaimed.

  “Shush, honey,” Winona reprimanded. “I think this could be highly therapeutic for you.”

  The park setting, with winter rapidly approaching, pitted Vans Evers against the elements for his audience’s attention. Young college-aged couples, hugging one another for warmth, allowed their attention to drift as they unwittingly turned each other on with all the rubbing up against one another. Vans Evers seemed shaken, his voice faltered somewhat, as heads turned to kiss one another.

  He pressed his lips to the microphone to accommodate the uptick in wind velocity. “So the question becomes how to create the checks and balances necessary to curb abuses of power, to make those in charge responsible to those they are supposed to represent. When we created our own government, it was with these checks and balances in mind, but they have easily succumbed to the global powers of transnationals. No national government so far has been able to withstand these modern-day carpet-baggers.”

  Vans Evers last remarks won converts, and recruited the attention of those whose minds had wandered. Isolated claps and catcalls came as ringing endorsements.

  Hartman hugged Winona, his raised excitement triggering a show of affection. “What we want is to make more like Evers. We need an army of philosopher kings with socio-political savvy.”

  “Shush.”

  Hartman, who had melded with the basketball team for additional cover, to keep him from towering over the surrounding students, reminded himself that this was more of a struggle for Winona to keep focused, explaining some of her grouchiness.

  Vans Evers’ words careened louder from the echoing loudspeakers: “I’m a believer in taking things to the next level, going beyond protesting to participating in newly formed human networks that distribute power in a more egalitarian manner.”

  The crowd erupted, many using the clapping as much as an excuse to warm their hands as to signal agreement. Several blew against their hands; steam jutted out their mouths.

  Vans Evers, after seeing outliers wander off to hear what the other speakers had to say, increased the forcefulness of his tone as a countermeasure. “We can create new NGOs and CSOs devoted to bridging private and public interests, force concessions between government and big business both, so neither can run rampant over the land.”

  He paused to accommodate the applause.

  Relaxing into character, Vans Evers worked the mike stand like a rock star, leaned into it to make room for the uptick in passion. “But wait… Even though I hold these truths to be sacred, I’m an even bigger believer in not rushing to fill the void.

  “We need time to let go of our clinging psychologies that created this world of neediness in the first place, from those bedeviled by greed at the top where no amount is enough, to those bedeviled by it at the bottom, where too little too late is a fact of life.”

  The loudest whistles of agreement and catcalls came from those sporting dreadlocks, wearing tie-dye tee shirts and Birkenstocks. But some of the Republican gu
ard, students wearing ties around tightly-collared, pressed shirts, clapped meekly, as if not wanting to alert their neighbors of a softening of their stance.

  “I love the pregnant void idea,” Hartman cried out to Winona. “What a concept. Endure the pain of the vacuum, allow it to serve as the crucible for the new consciousness. Like Zen advocates resting in Witness state. One thus allows Spirit, that which is beyond definition, to breathe life into our mental apparatuses, transforming them from lead into gold. The divine ground realigns our neural nets, links them into higher integral orders capable of channeling more consciousness.”

  “Yes, dear, I think you said it better, but he’s definitely on your wavelength.”

  “I’ve heard enough,” Hartman said. “That’s one person who gets it. What we need to find are the ones on the verge of erupting into Vans Evers-like consciousness. Let’s go sit in on one of the smaller groups, hope we get lucky.”