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

by Dean C. Moore

  Sensing another eruption from Robin heading their way, Drew interceded yet again. “So give us the dirt on yourselves.”

  “Platinos has cancer of the pancreas,” Claire said with less hesitation than it took her to select among hors d’oeuvres. “Or possibly it’s an evil infection lingering from our trip down river in Borneo last year. No one seems entirely sure. We’ve been to doctors on five continents and fifteen countries, and all we’ve got for our efforts is a few more infections and still more exotic diseases picked up to call our own.”

  Robin said, “Don’t you see the irony of the rich dying from their excesses? All the while they deplete the precious resources of the world further to keep themselves going with their high-tech interventions?”

  “Oh, he is a little touched, isn’t he?” Claire said.

  Drew shook her head. “Robin likes getting a rise out of people—comes from being the child of alcoholics, and being desperate to penetrate their drunken haze and self-lobotomies, courtesy of their hourly martinis.” That was a stage of Robin’s life that hadn’t come up in his painful flashbacks at Hartman’s. Considering the impact of the information on him, he wondered why.

  Claire turned to Robin. “We’re landed gentry, darling, takes more than that to rattle us.” She put her hand on Platinos’s knee. “You keep trying though, dear. If we don’t stay in practice, one day we might just drop our guard and say what we think, only to find the quotes in every paper—”.

  “On five continents and fifteen different countries,” Robin said, finishing her sentence for her as pertly as he could manage.

  “Go on,” Drew said, coaching Claire to continue with her story.

  “We did the sweat lodge thing. Platinos’s brain swelled so badly from that they had to drill through his skull and insert a drainage pipe. What did they call that thing?”

  “A shunt,” Platinos said obligingly. He’d shoved a whole truffle into his mouth and had to cheek it to get out the words.

  Robin laughed inappropriately and couldn’t stop. Claire paused, produced a mock pained expression, and waited for the outburst to subside. Robin figured she simply wasn’t about to be upstaged. He resorted to choking himself on the pâté. That had the effect of putting a Toyota’s muffler on a Ferrari.

  Having second thoughts about the rye cracker, Claire set it down, and resumed her report. “We hiked Everest for the fresh air and exercise. The Chinese doctor said the chi in the fresh air would do Platinos good, and cleansing the body was a surefire way to get rid of cancer. So we had an army of Sherpa dragging the Evian bottles behind us, and preparing the raw foods and plucking the goji berries for the smoothies.

  “All he got out of that was frostbite on three toes, and now he’s down half a lung on his left side, as well. They had to remove it from all the fluid buildup just sitting there too long. Let’s face it, a man in his shape shouldn’t have been anywhere near Everest. Just standing in its shadow and craning his neck to the summit gave him whiplash.”

  Robin broke out in another round of the most inappropriate laughter. He was powerless to control himself. “Please forgive me.”

  “Nonsense, I agree with you.” Claire straightened her skirt. “It’s laugh or cry, I told him.”

  “And how about you, darling?” Drew asked Claire. “How are you holding up?”

  Claire sighed demonstratively and paused so her audience could prepare themselves. For added effect, she set the cracker back down on the coffee table. “They’re contesting my estate.”

  “Who is ‘they?’” Drew asked.

  “The Stonehenge people.”

  “The nuts who think aliens built it?” Drew furrowed her brow.

  “No, the real life descendants of the people who built it. You can thank the Al Gore camp for this one. It appears some despicable man in a lab has figured out how to derive sufficient DNA from the ashes in a breakthrough procedure. Stonehenge was a burial site throughout its history. Few people know that owing to all the crazy media stories. From about 3,000 BC according to carbon dating. So there’s no shortage of ashes to analyze.

  “Well, thanks to science reinterpreting history for us, there are now three hundred people and counting who can trace their lineages back to these Stonehenge people. If you can imagine anyone outdoing the genealogical history on my family tree, darling…”

  “So what, they’re claiming they have a more-just right to your land?” Drew said.

  “What do you think? And the Robin Wakefields of the world are all the rage in Parliament right now. Can you imagine these commoners coming into my money? They don’t realize it takes generations just to learn to play the part effectively. The money will dissipate in five minutes like moisture in the desert.”

  Robin erupted in another uncontrollable fit of laughter. His ribcage muscles were so spent, the chuckles were largely silent when they didn’t sound like asthmatic wheezing. He tried to choke himself on the pâté, but it was no good. He was crying he was laughing so hard, and spitting anything that went into his mouth like a howitzer, from the wine to the rye crackers.

  Drew said to Claire, “Here’s what you do, darling. First, have yourself tested. With any luck, you’re a direct descendent yourself. That’ll take a lot of the venom out of the cobras. The next thing you do is rewrite your family history, showing the long wending road taken for the lands to actually come into your possession. Scour the past for any unseemly passages.”

  Claire grunted. “God knows how many people we killed or drove to ruin to get where we are today. That kind of cleanup will likely cost me nearly as much as the estate.”

  “Nonsense.” Drew waved dismissively. “A few well-named archeological scholars who can be bought for a song, I assure you, and a seat at some respectable university—tops.”

  “Maybe I have been making too much of things.” Claire breathed easier.

  “Is this how you do things, plot and scheme at the people’s expense?” Robin panned the faces in the room like a lighthouse beacon. “I guess I always figured as much. It still comes as a shock being privy to one of these closed-chamber meetings.”

  ***

  A couple hours passed with the Cumberlands with Robin feeling an inexplicable sense of delight rising in him.

  “I get the attraction now, darling.” Claire kissed Drew on the cheek, signaling their departure. “That much experience and that much innocence just had to get together.”

  As they made their way to the door, Robin found himself sorry to see them depart. He hugged them zealously at the door. Somehow, despite their despicable affectations, they’d proved themselves quite human and likable. The instant the door closed, Robin said, “I can’t believe they won me over.”

  “You’re an easy mark.”

  “You mean, that was deliberate?”

  Drew smiled. “She wasn’t kidding when she said the rich are quite used to being in the hot seat. She figured the best way to defuse you was to show vulnerability, make herself out to be subject to the same larger-than-life forces and fickle fate as the rest of us.”

  “Platinos’s medical ailments… her estate up for grabs… God, they’re good.”

  “Everyone wants money, Robin,” Drew said, busing the coffee table. “Not everyone will work as hard at it as the landed gentry and captains of industry. But if that’s what you want, and you’re willing to do what it takes, you, too, can travel that road. No one is truly cut out of the loop except by their own hands.

  “Most people don’t have the stomach for what it takes; the price is steep. Even holding on to a fortune someone else made is no joke. The headache and complications of money management, investments, running sum and sundry businesses, will drive you mad. And the skills required do take a lifetime to acquire if you weren’t born and bred to it; she wasn’t lying about that part.”

  “There’s got to be a better way, I tell you.”

  “You keep looking for it, darling,” Drew said juggling more small sampling plates off her forearms than a
professional waiter. “I suppose that’s what I love about you.”

  It occurred to Robin, following the Cumberlands’ visit, that Drew meant to highlight Robin’s progress for him, to get him to trust his own healing process. Look how far you’ve come; you can actually hang with my circle, seemed the subtext of the evening. But Drew’s good intentions had an untoward effect. They signaled Robin that his descent into madness was worth it. The more he turned over the muck in back of his mind, the richer the soil got, out of which still more robust plants could sprout.

  His healthy rational mind would have been able to resist such a proposition. But it was no longer in charge.

  As he contemplated his descent into his own heart of Darkness, Manny sprang to mind. Hopefully, the worst was behind him.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Manny ran and ran and ran, fleeing down one corridor after another until he lost track of where he was in the maze. He had lost track of time right along with the spatial relations. He couldn’t tell if he’d been fighting to survive a week, a month, a year. In fact, as his present blended ever more with his past, he felt as if he’d been fighting his whole life to preserve a sense of self as separate from social expectations, and wild, impulsive urges to tear at those who would dare to shape him in a way different than what he desired. He supposed that was the point of this exercise. To get him to come at life as something other than a fight to the death. Clearly, he still had a lot to learn.

  “Easy there, big guy,” Ronald said, as Manny ran headlong into him. He held Manny firmly, gripping his upper arms. “Let me guess, everyone’s out to get you, right?”

  “Strange, the two of us seeing eye to eye,” Manny said acidly.

  “You got it all wrong. The only one’s out to get you is Mr. Blue.” Ronald pointed. Manny was foolish enough to look in the direction of his extended hand. The blue demon that presumably had schizophrenic Harold running around with his head cut off was pushing through the wall at him as if it were a layer of skin being stretched into shape in a plastic surgeon’s hands.

  Manny gulped. “How does this work?”

  “Suggestion.”

  “You get to put ideas in my head and they actually stick?” Manny’s eyes lingered on the face spanning the height of the wall. “My father would have loved you.”

  “The drug helps.”

  “So that’s what you injected me with, you prick.”

  Ronald withdrew his hands so Manny could see the needles concealed on the underside of his rings. Blood trickled out the pinprick holes on Manny’s upper arms.

  “Mr. Blue runs interference for me so I don’t have to deal with emotionally needy shits like yourself.”

  “You ever consider you aren’t a people person, Ronald?”

  “Yeah, but the benefits program is to die for, and what other job these days gives you ninety percent downtime to do with what you like? Now, go on, don’t keep Mr. Blue waiting.”

  Bastard. All this time he’d pitied Harold. Of course, Harold didn’t need medications to see Mr. Blue.

  “Why, there you are!” Stephanie said as she rounded the corner. She huffed and puffed from all the sense of urgency. “Look at this!” She held up a CAT scan of Manny’s brain and shoved it in his face to emphasize the importance. “See this damage to the prefrontal cortex? That can make you prone to impulsive outbursts of violence.”

  Manny seethed. “Trust me, you’re all the excuse I need.” His eyes drifted back to Mr. Blue, making taunting faces at him. They could at least space their night terrors so they didn’t upstage one another, Manny thought, wondering if he should direct as well as act in the story of his breakdown.

  “We need to get you into laser surgery this minute to zap that little invader.” Stephanie grabbed his arm.

  “You want to parboil my brains?”

  She reassuringly smiled at him as if he was a child, but Manny saw only the teeth of a starved piranha.

  “It’s probably a coffee stain, you damn drama queen.” Manny pushed away from both of them, trotted down the hall.

  ***

  “Wait till Saverly sees this,” Stephanie said, waving her trump card.

  Ronald grabbed the CAT scan out of her hand and lit it afire with his Bic.

  “What are you doing?!”

  “You want to extend this guy’s expiration date with what he knows about us?” Ronald said menacingly.

  “He doesn’t know shit.”

  “He’s a cop, he reads between the lines.”

  ***

  Manny, racing down the halls, used his panting to push Stephanie’s words out of his head—feeding extra O2 to the oxygen-starved region of his brain triggering the horrors. It’s a diagnosis, Manny, not a destiny.

  Then again, twenty years under dear old dad might drive organic brain syndrome better than genes, the way an alcoholic’s body adapts to feed off the alcohol. Genetic mutation to fit the environment in true Darwinian fashion. Or maybe it’s a legacy from your great great grandfather, a recessive gene choosing now to rear its ugly head.

  Shit, Manny, you’re supposed to be consoling yourself, not making it easier on Nurse Fearmonger.

  When Mr. Blue made an appearance, coming out of the wall beside him, it was a blessing. If a drug could do that to his mind, what was he going on about over a few defective genes? Saverly would set him straight. Better yet was the fact that Saverly had mentioned nothing about any tumor, meaning this was just Nurse Fearmonger plying her trade. Little bitch. The whole point of studying them in advance, Manny realized, was to eliminate their potential to screw with his head. So let’s not undo all your good work.

  Manny next ran into Margie. The staff was coming out of the rooms the way gophers poked their heads up so you could knock them down at a carnival booth. “There you are. Been meaning to tell you, Saverly is very pleased with your progress. You’re stressed, even panicked at times, but you’re thinking under pressure like a real pro. We’ll turn you into a CEO yet.” She gave him a pert kiss to the cheek and went about her business.

  Manny kept his distance. Seeing her as the tell-them-what-they-want-to-hear player.

  Just because your life’s become a horror story, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the thrills and chills of the genre, Manny. Remember that one? So let’s have a little fun, shall we?

  Ronald cornered him at the next turn in the maze of hospital halls. “The ground beneath your feet is hot coals.”

  “Yeah, right. You have no power over me, powder puff. The ground beneath my feet is as cold as ice. How’s that for auto-suggestion, you auto-asshole?”

  Then Manny screamed and jumped from the hot coals he was convinced he was seeing beneath his feet. How does he do that? he thought, running off, just to keep his feet in the air as much as possible.

  He jumped on a mattress in an empty room and regarded the ocean of fiery hot coals all around him. What was behind this? Maybe all that time he was watching Ronald mess with Harold, he was unwittingly training his own mind to respond to his rhetoric. Maybe the guy had Mesmer-like qualities. Shit!

  THIRTY-NINE

  SOME DAYS LATER

  Manny darted into Rupert’s room. Only it wasn’t Rupert’s room. What the hell?

  He looked up to see Ronald changing the numbers on the door of the room across the hall and smiling wickedly at Manny. Bastard. Dr. Confusion was at it again. That’ll teach him to rely too heavily on easy handholds.

  From now on, he’d count the number of steps to and from strategic egresses. He had a mind for numbers, if not the one his father wanted. He doubted he’d have to resort to scribbling on his forearm to keep track of them all, but he could take to wearing long-sleeve smocks just in case.

  He smiled back at Ronald as if he could care less. “Where’s Rupert? We’re late for our afternoon walk. If that artificial leg isn’t flexed, it gets brittle and breaks. Bet you didn’t know that. Kind of like people stuck in one place too long.”

  Ronald held his shit-eating grin, evidently satis
fied he’d still gotten the better of that exchange.

  Rupert rounded the corner. “There you are, you old coot.” He grabbed Rupert by the arm. “Where’ve you been? We’re late for our walk.”

  “We take walks together?”

  “Every day now for a month,” Manny explained patiently.

  “They really need to up my vitamins.”

  Manny surrendered Rupert’s arm at the next intersecting hall, and dashed off, feeling like shit for abandoning him. But, no doubt, courtesy of his affliction, which was blessing and curse both, he had already forgotten about Manny.

  Manny grabbed the latch on the latest door, and took a deep breath. If asshole Ronald had been at it all night, he may have gone so far as to entirely shake Manny’s orientation.