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

by Dean C. Moore

  As he opened the door, Manny found himself sliding down a rabbit hole when he least expected it.

  The room he was in looked more like a robotics lab than a kitchen. Well, this could definitely work in his favor. Appears asshole Ronald miscalculated.

  Manny ran from one robot to the next, yanked the rear panels on their noggins, and crossed wires. He had no idea what the effects would be. They might just stand still and explode. Hopefully, their reconstituted behavior would cause enough confusion to buy him some time and distance from the staff, enough of both to find his way into even more trouble.

  ***

  Manny, eavesdropping out of sight, overheard the exchange between Jim and Stephanie as they rounded the corner of the adjoining hallway. “Mark my words: that Manny Breakman is going to be the death of us.”

  “You really need to trade in that End Days psychology, Stephanie, for some silver-lining thinking,” Jim said airily. “Not every second of every day is a friggin’ crisis. Besides, be careful what you wish for.” He paused to hand her a book, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers. Manny could barely make out the title from his hiding place. “Says here, the more psychic energy you invest in gloom and doom, the more likely you are to make it happen. The universe is very sensitive to these things, picks up on all those thought impressions, and the next thing you know, whack!” He smacked the back of his right hand against his left palm for emphasis.

  They rounded the hall, and the next thing Stephanie knew her head was being stuffed in a microwave. Microwave Man, one of the robots, provided the service. “Five seconds to a side, makes for an evenly cooked meal,” Microwave Man said. He waited five seconds, then turned Stephanie’s head.

  “Get me out of here! I feel my brains boiling!” Stephanie screamed frantically. But Jim, as strong as he was, was no match for Microwave Man.

  “He’s got ahold of your hair. I’ll run and get some scissors.”

  “I’ll be dead by then, you fool!”

  “What did I say about looking on the bright side, Stephanie?”

  Manny restrained his smirk as he darted the other direction down the hall.

  Around the next corner, two triage robots held Ronald in their grips. They appeared designed to check vital signs and ameliorate suffering with back massages, or whatever else was called for. But their combined zeal, taken with the crossed wires in their brains, led to a less than pleasurable experience for Ronald, to Manny’s delight.

  Manny decided to up the ante. “I think he’s suffering from back-ache, guys.”

  The two robots ran Ronald through sufficient torture rack stretches between them in quick succession that Ronald had no doubt shattered a few vertebrae, and could use some genuine lumbar support. Manny said speculatively, “Then again, I suppose crotch rot could be the real culprit.” One of the robots grabbed Ronald’s balls in an effort to do an examination, as Ronald cried out. The other one ripped off his pants to clear a path for a more unbiased examination.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to check for contraband up his anal cavity. Maybe you can palpate for an enlarged prostate while you’re at it.” The robot working Ronald’s back end didn’t hesitate.

  “Confusion is a hell of a thing, Ronald, isn’t it? What’s say we push right on through in an effort to clear things up as soon as possible?” Ronald could barely hear him over all the screaming secondary to having a robot stick his hand up his ass far enough to examine his tonsils.

  “You know, guys, I think I got this all wrong. It’s just an itch on his head that needs scratching.”

  The robot grabbed Ronald by the hair and painted his face across the walls. “Harder,” Manny suggested.

  The robot squeezing Ronald’s balls let go, grabbed his ankles and flung him head first into the wall. “God, that feels so much better. Do it again,” Manny said, throwing his voice. The robot complied. “I tell you, I wish I got service like this all the time. How about you, Ronald? No passive-aggressive shit, no antisocial behavior, just complete compliance with your every wish. A patient’s dream, if you ask me.” By the third head bashing, Ronald was sadly beyond enjoying any more of Manny’s quips, making hanging around and risking getting caught a game of diminishing returns. He bolted down the hall.

  Manny encountered Stephanie as he rounded the bend at the hallway intersection. “Love the hair, Stephanie.” Apparently, Jim had cut it off in Manny’s absence. There was no beautician on the planet equipped to do her makeover.

  “You!” she screamed and pointed past him. “Oh God!”

  Manny could tell she was no longer gaping at him.

  He turned to find an ambulating butcher block, which could only be loosely termed a robot, flinging knives at Stephanie. As circus knife throwing acts went, his wasn’t half bad. He pinned Stephanie to the wall, screaming and flailing. “If I were you, Stephanie, I’d settle down. You must be hard enough to hit at that distance standing perfectly still.” Somehow, the logic penetrated Stephanie’s state of frenzy, and, just as surprisingly, her taxed eardrums and the earsplitting siren of her own voice.

  “Help me!” she screamed, while refusing to twitch a muscle. The next knife landed square in her calf. Oops. There went the last good leg. The other one—eaten away by her efforts to cleanse herself of flesh-eating bacteria—sported a flexi-metal beam connecting her knee to her ankle; it served as a calf muscle for that leg. Perplexingly, her screaming stopped, replaced by whimpering.

  “Silver-lining thinking, Stephanie. With any luck he’ll put you out of your misery – and out of mine.”

  Seventeen paces down corridor A, thirty five paces down corridor B—he made sure to get the address right this time—Manny ducked into Rupert’s room.

  Inside, he found Margie with her hands up in a placating gesture directed at the shop-vac robot. The contraption had more extensions on it than a corporation filing for late taxes.

  Fast-talking Margie was already on the job. “I bet you can help me out cleaning this room. Wouldn’t that be just oh so much fun?” she said to the shop-vac robot, as if addressing a tempestuous child.

  Apparently the shop vac robot agreed. It suctioned off her clothes with one of its nozzles, then, engaging its second suction hose, affixed both suction ends to her nipples.

  “Personally, Margie, I think this is a real growth opportunity,” Manny said. “You can rely on a single coping mechanism far too much, and when it fails you, what is one to do? I myself was never much on plotting and scheming, but those witches Carmichael and Fontanegro set me straight on that. You can’t be all spontaneity and genius in the moment.”

  Manny fiddled with the lock to the door of the locker room, leaned into it, and then bashed his shoulder against it. It was going to take more than brawn to do anything but dislocate his shoulder. This was a metal door inside a metal doorframe inside a stone wall with rebar-reinforced concrete. Lock picking finesse was definitely the far better approach. But he could hear the gathering storm outside. Disgruntled staff was heading his way.

  Poor Margie was in the grips of tentacles, having one stuffed down her throat, as another one constricted about her neck boa-constrictor style. Margie emitted gurgling, per-syllabic sounds past the bendi-cord transiting her vocal cords. Manny said, “How are those other adaptive coping strategies coming along, Margie, now that fast talking is out of the question?”

  Given his success with the robots, maybe Manny did know a little about wiring, from working on cars, fixing toaster ovens, and dishwashers, and all the other self-help things one is prone to do when one doesn’t have the money to hire out for professional help. And maybe he could guess at what some of those crossed wires might do. He had always been quite the handyman.

  Manny poked his head out the door. Yep, big time posse headed his way. The wall of bodies filled the girth of the hall two bodies deep. Maybe if his sense of self kept shrinking, he’d have a chance to slip by them unseen.

  “Let this be a lesson to you, Manny. You need to make peace with some of the more c
olorful characters in your life.” Why do you keep making hell for yourself? You should be defusing these people, not winding them up. Maybe you like to push their buttons because their predictable behavior is soothing. Yeah, that must be it. Another inheritance from dead old dad, no doubt.

  Manny stepped into the hall.

  At least, having been provoking people for a lifetime, and just not being able to help himself, he came with a few abilities mastered to deter hematomas to the brain. Ones caused by arms detached from any sense of self-restraint.

  Manny felled the first row of giants like a saw cutter. Quick jabs to the knees to dislocate the joints. Fast spear-fingered thrusts to the throat to crush the Adam’s apple. He could just as easily have ripped their throats out. But some higher brain functions were mercifully still intact, urging against that. A few pressure points poked to the ribs and back of the neck. It really wasn’t hard to bring down a giant, no harder than anyone else, once you got past the psychological intimidation factor. Dad had made him one hard person to intimidate.

  But in the final analysis, his lightning fast reflexes had been slowed by medications. His judgment, apparently, was even more impaired for thinking he could keep out of arm’s reach of this many goons clustered together in tight quarters.

  “He got you good,” said Reverend Willis, referring to Manny’s kick to Dex’s ribs. Willis was heading up his very own Baptist congregation of three. Until the flock swelled, he was milking this daytime gig of manhandling and beating on patients.

  “You playing football?” That was Tyler’s quip about Dex trying to punt Manny’s head through the wall. He thought himself amusing. Tyler was taking night classes in criminal justice, so he could go work for the prison system. He was sick of psychos.

  “Bastard. He lucky I don’t know what he done lately,” Dex spat, wiping the blood from his lip. Dex was making good money at his modeling gig until beating up on all the male models hitting on him landed him here as part of a community service stint, to help him reflect on all his anger issues. Apparently, the judge hadn’t checked his Myers-Briggs profile, which indicated self-reflection just wasn’t part of his makeup.

  “Make sure he ain’t got no shiv on him.” Reverend Willis, following his own sage advice, frisked Manny as best he could amidst the tangle of limbs.

  ***

  When Manny next opened his eyes he was grateful for the strait-jacket and the padded room. By that point, the restraints were discouraging his bruises from swelling further better than a Victorian-era corset. And the padded walls meant he wouldn’t be adding to the bumps on his head crashing against walls before regaining his equilibrium.

  And he was all alone. He couldn’t imagine anyone was harboring good thoughts about him at the moment.

  The isolation helped curtail the guilt and paranoia secondary to acting out. He knew the game well. A superego on steroids, he had inherited from dad, scolded him incessantly, became ever-more sublimely controlling, and resorted to ever-harsher methods with each loss of control. “You fool; what did you think would happen to you?” “Maybe you thought you’d get smarter with each blow to the head as they knocked some sense into you?” “You never learn.” “If you’re going to act out, at least have the sense to get away with it.”

  Raging against the Superego was an id, just as jacked up on steroids, just as determined to act out. “Yeah, you showed those bastards.” “You think I look bad, you should see the other guy.” “Struck a blow for freedom today, Manny.” “Hit them where it hurts. That’s the ticket.”

  And back and forth the seesaw went with the fragile ego serving as little more than the fulcrum between the two. How many times had he been through these talks with Saverly, treading over the same revelations, only to keep acting out in the same compulsive, self-destructive manner?

  The good news: That was why scenarios existed, to provide the extra time and effort necessary to break down the resistances of the most recalcitrant of souls. Knowing the problem was only half the cure. The other half, he was finding out the hard way, was the truly taxing part.

  ***

  Saverly strolled beside the gurney transporting Stephanie. The knives the robot had wedged in her had essentially transformed her into a butcher block.

  Jim flanked her from the other side of the gurney, lending additional psychological support. “See, I told you to look on the bright side,” Jim said buoyantly. “Not one of those knives hit a crucial blood vessel, or you’d be bleeding out right now. You can thank my positive thinking for keeping you alive.”

  Stephanie reached for the knife in her shoulder, pulled it out, and jabbed it into Jim’s belly. But she was pretty weak, and he had a pretty firm midsection despite not being much on working out, and she didn’t get much penetration.

  “Maybe giving her time to deal with this trauma in her own way is the way to go, Jim,” Saverly said.

  “I can feel the blood pooling in my brain,” Stephanie countered, undeterred. “I have a hematoma, no doubt about it. A blood vessel must have broken under the stress.”

  “One disaster at a time, Stephanie. Let’s try and prioritize.” Saverly patted her on the arm supportively; it was no easy feat to find a space between the wedged knives to do so. “Though I’ll have Jim jot down each of your concerns so you won’t have to repeat them for the doctor.” Jim gave him a why are you humoring her? look before taking the notepad and pencil from Saverly.

  Stephanie grabbed Saverly’s arm. “I bet he poisoned the water in the kitchen.” Saverly realized she was referring to the dispensing machine they used for their drinking water. “He obviously had time in that kitchen. Who knows what else he was up to?”

  Gently releasing her arm, losing patience, Saverly said, “Stephanie, you’re projecting your fears outwards, so you can feel safer inside your own head. Better you believe other people are out to get you than you are out to get you. Each phobia you shoot down, you’re one step closer to healing. Small steps.” So much for his advice to let Stephanie heal at her own pace.

  Saverly gestured to Jim to keep pace with the EMTs and follow her the rest of the way to the exit.

  After they’d narrowed the gap to the sliding security doors a few paces, Saverly turned toward the room from which the strange sounds were emanating.

  Inside the adjoining room, the shop-vac robot was attending to Atterman’s cavity-search fixations with snaking metal extensions down her throat and up her vagina and rectum. Another router pulled constrictor-like against her throat, playing to her autoerotic desires as it strangled her. He thought he heard her moan, “More, more,” but couldn’t be certain past the disruptions to her vocal cords. She sighed delight and release both, after what was unambiguously an orgasm of the most profound sort.

  “Moses, I need you in here now!” Saverly said, raising his voice. Moses appeared out of nowhere faster than a magician condensed out of a cloud of smoke.

  “I got it.” He attended the wires inside the shop vac robot’s brainpan. Knowing Atterman as Moses did, he had to fight his own resistance to moving any faster.

  Saverly left her in his capable hands, figuring she could deal with her own karma. He had to assess the rest of the damage to his psych ward.

  He next bumped into Ronald in the grand hall leading to the emergency exit. The EMTs had fixed him as best they could. He was covered from head to toe in casts. The fact he could still ambulate on his own was a minor miracle, and testament to a fierce determination, probably driven by a powerful sense of revenge. “The good news is, you’re armored like knights of old. You ought to be better able to fend off any attack now,” Saverly said, as cheerily as he could manage.

  Ronald hobbled past him without saying a word, which didn’t exactly throw Saverly off guard. Ronald suffered from antisocial personality, a pretty hefty dose of it. There were plenty of patients happy to leave him alone, if not initially, then certainly after approaching him. So in the cosmic scheme of things, Saverly figured he probably had eked out a fairly
successful niche for himself in his ecosystem of nurses, orderlies, doctors, and nurse’s aides. Leastways, not too many complaints about him made it back to Saverly’s ears. But he realized that some staff were expert at torturing other staff and patients alike without anyone being able to say or do much about it because of how well they covered themselves the rest of the time. The complainers, as a result, would be the ones to come off as antisocial. Clearly, where his eyes couldn’t reach, karma could.

  Saverly found Julianne in the rec room surrounded by four orderlies, each fending off kitchen robots with whatever was at hand. He was happy her coconspirator psychology had kept her safe, the orderlies protecting her while allowing the rest of the staff and patients to meet their fate how they may.

  Reverend Willis, the oldest of the four giants surrounding the pearly white queen like the stamen of a particularly delectable flower, wielded a bed-railing usually reserved for keeping overly-medicated patients from falling out of their beds. Tyler was trying out his karate on Microwave Man. “That setting is unavailable at this time,” Microwave Man kept saying every time he took a kick to his control panel. Dex, his pretty boy looks of no use here, had resorted to distraction of a different sort, wielding a door in front of his robo-attacker. Every time the robot approached, he lowered the door, which confused it, and caused it to turn around.