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

by Dean C. Moore

  Manny, watching the standoff between them, said, “Hell, I'll get the wine.”

  Drew melodramatically dropped her napkin on the table. “No, that's okay, I'll get it. You shan't lift a finger in my house, tonight.”

  “Shouldn't you be saying that?” Manny asked, looking at Robin. “I mean, sounds more natural coming from a woman.”

  Robin took the remark on the chin; he decided this wasn’t the time to do an exposé on feminism. Smiling warmly, he said, “Wait ‘til you see the dress rehearsal that goes into being a woman. Takes longer to get into character, trust me.”

  Manny sighed. “Yeah, I remember my wife taking forever in the bathroom.” She’d been dead enough years that Robin had lost count, but Manny still wore the wedding band. “Letting go” just wasn’t in his vocabulary. He fiddled with the band. Robin didn’t appreciate the implications; Manny only toyed with it when he was stressed.

  ***

  Manny watched Drew saunter toward the door to the wine cellar, then listened to her descending the stairs. Hope she realizes I took the precaution of blocking the downstairs exit before coming up.

  ***

  Once in the wine cellar, Drew regarded the door leading out of the house to freedom, and the phone hanging on the support beam, caught in an impasse. If she picked up the phone, Manny would know by the light on the extension upstairs. If she ran for help, her conspicuous absence upstairs and additional time lost might just as readily cost Robin his life.

  Finally, she took a step toward the door, and then stopped again. She deliberated her two options, took another step to the door. Then... hearing the tremble of her lover’s voice…

  She picked up the landline phone with a long cord on the post, and dialed 9-1-1.

  ***

  Robin saw the kitchen phone’s flashing red light reflected in the window. His eyelids retracted faster than theater curtains. He gulped, realizing the blinking red light was precisely what was holding Manny transfixed.

  “Five'll get you ten, the one wine we need is the one we don't stock, and she's having it delivered now. What were you saying about old habits?” It was a really bad lie; he had to hope Manny was in no condition to process it from his current state.

  Manny relaxed, laughing.

  ***

  The bitch was calling the police. A phone in the friggin’ wine cellar, of all things. Got you there. Oh, hell, let’s wait until the snipers show up and they feel safer. This was becoming too much of a children’s game.

  ***

  Robin saw Manny's eyes lock on something behind him. He heard the squeaking floorboard, and winced. Drew was sauntering toward them with a bottle of wine.

  “We thought for sure you were calling out for the perfect bottle of wine,” Robin said.

  “To hell with that.” Drew set the bottle down on the table. “I was calling out for the perfect box of ice cream. Not like I had time prepare dessert. You were supposed to stall him. But oh, no.”

  “You'd think one of us would get our parts right under this kind of pressure.” That was his snide way of communicating, What are you doing back here? He meant for her to call for help and then exit out the back door because, of the two of them, he was the logical choice for stalling Manny. And if that plan failed, he wanted Drew out of the line of fire.

  “Then again, it’s been so long since either of us has entertained anyone of note.” That was her way of communicating, You bring this into my house, and you have the nerve to criticize me?

  Drew worked the cork on the bottle, as Manny finished off his glass to clear the way for the Bordeaux.

  ***

  Pouring the last of the wine, Robin looked up from the dinner table and all he saw was red. He set down the bottle. “Manny, there are about a dozen laser sights aimed at the back of your head.”

  Manny fought to process what Robin was saying. Robin didn’t relish the response he was getting. The drug Drew slipped him earlier had picked the worst possible time to kick in; just when Robin needed him to soberly assess his situation, and respond in a rational manner.

  Robin plopped down his napkin on the table. “Don't give the fascist bastards the satisfaction. We'll get past this, same as we always have.”

  ***

  Manny thought, I let you slip me that drug because I didn’t spend a day under Saverly when I didn’t have to think my way out from under the rubble my mind was left in from one medication or another. He figured Robin could cling to all the false security he needed.

  He could take Robin and the snipers out before the blood finished draining from their bodies. Just hit the floor. Shoot the control panel in the hall, killing the lights. Mix some kitchen chemicals to blow up the ones coming inside. Trot down to the basement, break the glass door in tandem with the explosion. Come up behind them. Use the advanced weaponry or their supply truck against them with the double advantage of owning the high ground. And that’s just scenario A.

  But I see now I need to go back to the hospital. Life here doesn’t hold the challenges for me it once did. You unupgraded mortals, living your lives at half-speed. I’m persecuted by your banality. I could never slow my mind down enough to feel like this was anything but dead man walking. I need to hunt better prey.

  ***

  Manny must have seen how much more clear-headed Robin was, and decided to take his cues from him, Robin judged, reading his facial expression. Then there were the red laser dots roaming the table in front of him before finding their mark. He wiped his mouth with the napkin in his lap, set it down.

  “You're damn right we will persevere,” Manny said, his speech slightly slurred. “The fight must go on. We're too important to lose.”

  “Never forget that.” Robin smiled affectionately.

  Manny stood with his hands held wide. But then he tumbled toward the table. Robin and Drew both gasped, certain the sudden movement would trigger a massacre.

  Manny found his balance at the last second, bent to his knees in slow motion. He put his hands behind his head.

  “If the real world’s got no place for you, anymore, aim higher,” Robin coached as Manny fell to his knees.

  ***

  Manny reflected on Robin’s last words. They reminded him of that book on Zen powers, The God-Men, he’d picked up at Rupert’s bedside. Now that navigating the real world as he knew it was becoming child’s play, he realized...

  The book had been trying to show him the way all along.

  Was he the only one to see the writing on the wall? Or were there others like him, sowing the seeds of their rebirth?

  ***

  “I don’t suppose we could have intervened in that little drama downstairs?” Just Drew rubbed her knees as she sat at the edge of the bed in Robin and Drew’s room, guiltily contemplating alternate scenarios.

  “What?” KAC’s voice sounded impertinent and self-satisfied. “Like you going down there and ninja-kicking Manny’s ass out the window? Snapping his neck with your hydraulic-endowed strength? Or perhaps you wanted me to hire a contract killer over the Internet to take him out? Perhaps suck all the air out of the house, wait for them to pass out, and allow you to carry Manny into the backyard and bury him alive? As if their life isn’t surreal enough already.”

  Just Drew sighed. “There’s no denying your logic. I’m glad one of us is a big thinker.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Natalie Olivetti was lecturing on do-it-yourself designer drugs at the Free University in NYC, as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement’s May 1 celebration. The festivities coincided with a call for a general strike from coast to coast.

  From a grassy knoll of the park, Hartman and Winona listened with pricked ears.

  Natalie was good at making eye contact with her audience as she spoke. “We expect soon consumers will be able to synthesize their own drugs at home for the cure and treatment of diseases using do-it-yourself techniques accessible to anyone. Much like buying toner for an ink-jet printer, the necessary matrices will be printed ou
t from these toner solutions using cell phone apps to tweak the chemistry, and a microwave to finish cooking the solution.”

  “More to the point,” Hartman whispered at Winona, “It decentralizes control and power over health and well-being, wresting it from the hands of those who would keep us forever at un-ease, so we need to purchase more of their feel-good medicines.”

  Winona smiled absently. Hartman could tell she was busy using her psychic radar to pull potential disciples out of the audience for him. That left him free to focus on the merits of Natalie’s talking points vis-à-vis the more egalitarian age he saw emerging before him to his surprise and delight—in keeping with what chaos theorists were calling for.

  Namely, a higher integral order emerging out of the chaos to channel the extra psychic energy the old age could not, to effectively administer to the higher powered minds rocking a much higher consciousness.

  Natalie relied on the quiet of the enthralled throng to project her voice without the aid of a microphone. As the audience was small, and the winds accommodating, she was pulling the act off with aplomb.

  “Not only do these do-it-yourself techniques drop the cost of medications to next to nothing,” she explained, “they open the door for designer, one-of-a-kind drugs fine-tuned to the individual’s needs for far greater effectiveness. Even more startlingly, it allows for next generation drugs that foster various man into superman scenarios.”

  She paused to allow the ripple of gasps to subside. “We can take control of our own genetics, eradicate infirmities, increase our endurance, strength, change our eye color. An age of eugenics in which we don’t have to settle for off-the-shelf items available only to the highest bidder; we can fabricate at home for pennies wonder drugs to satisfy our wildest desires.”

  Natalie continued to gauge the audience’s reactions, to see if her pacing was right, if she had to slow in places, elaborate more, or truncate some lines of the argument. She was evidently an accomplished public speaker.

  The kids maintained a reverential, almost cult-like open-mindedness to what she had to say. But then again, they were more than “true believers.” Many were here to receive their marching orders, to tap the minds of visionaries for the kinds of ideas they could sic their technical expertise on.

  It was a generation born with more tech savvy than social graces, often unable to communicate in basic English nearly as effectively as they could write computer code. Many of them were augmenting her speech with direct feeds from Google on their cell phones, verifying her logic, appending arguments of their own, considering the pointed questions to ask with the help of the augmented reality – all on the fly.

  So much for taking the lecture notes home, studying and digesting them with after-lecture coffee hour discussions. All that was going on live, as several in the throng bounced instant messages back and forth to one another. Others expanded the circle further with Twitter and Facebook.

  Hartman brought his eyes back to Natalie. With a change of tack, she said, “The nightmarish implications of do-it-yourself medications are no less eye-catching. One can imagine the difficulty of policing nefarious individuals with evil designs. But the potential for misuse with any new technology has never stopped the technology from going forward. The potential for ameliorating human suffering always far outstrips the downsides.”

  She elected to take a question as a hand went up in the audience.

  Hartman smirked. He’d been using DIY techniques for over ten years to manufacture his proprietary drugs which granted him super-strength, even if they had fallen short of what he hoped to achieve with them. Apparently he wasn’t as far ahead of the times as he imagined. The new wave was still a few years behind him, judging from Natalie’s lecture, but the future was definitely collapsing into the present with accelerating force.

  At Winona’s prodding, Hartman panned his head over to one of the members of the audience, leaning on Natalie’s every word. Now that Winona had a lock on the type of student Hartman was after, she was using her psychic abilities to pull them out of the crowds with increasing effectiveness, starting with the Occupy Denver movement rally.

  Though Aaron Fisher had spoken up earlier a few times, Hartman had seen no reason to pay undue attention to him. But Winona had gotten a psychic hit when brushing up against him that suggested otherwise. And so far, she’d correctly selected a number of winners.

  As the lecture group disbanded, Hartman decided to approach Fisher.

  “I’d like to talk with you, young man,” Hartman said ominously.

  “Go away, you doddering old fool,” Cora Fielding snapped. Hartman had heard her talk out during Natalie’s seminar, as well, but he hadn’t realized she and Fisher were a couple. She was more territorial than his Bullmastiffs when it came to protecting her property.

  They turned their backs on him to walk away, hand-in-hand. “If I extrapolate from your reasoning correctly,” Hartman said, raising his voice, “You’re contemplating infecting our minds with RNA viruses that essentially turn our heads into super-computers.”

  The couple stopped dead in their tracks. Fisher was the first one to do an about face, showing a stunned expression. “The only thing you haven’t yet figured out,” Hartman explained, “is how to get the RNA-viral computer analogues to swarm into hive minds that can coordinate their efforts across the entire brain, if not the entire body.”

  He took a step closer to Fisher and Fielding. “And after that problem’s solved, the next step will be to employ fractal geometry concepts to interlace more than one hive mind made up of these RNA-viral computers. You’re borrowing from Cantor’s work with nested closed-infinities. I concur it should be possible to continue to add computational space without hollowing out the brain further. But you have a series of difficult hurdles to overcome first.”

  “Who— Who— Who are you?” Fisher stuttered.

  “Clay Hartman.”

  “The Clay Hartman?” Fisher sounded as if his mouth had run dry.

  “Philosophy professor at Cal Berkeley.”

  “Ex-professor,” Fielding said. “You homicidal maniac.”

  Hartman shrugged. “I don’t suffer fools well.” He glared at her and smiled.

  “Neither do I,” Fisher released Fielding’s hand. She didn’t appreciate the gesture.

  “It appears you decoded my cryptic questions for Natalie.” Fisher’s voice was a mixture of alarm and defensiveness. “I certainly didn’t expect anyone to connect the dots.”

  “In truth, I hadn’t given your mad idea much thought until Winona pointed her finger at you. How far along are you with the RNA virus?”

  “Not very,” Fisher confessed.

  “Maybe we should talk further. I rather like the idea of fathering a new age.”

  “Bug off, pal,” Cora chirped.

  “Shut up, Cora,” Fisher said. “Go get lost in the crowd, let the grownups talk.”

  Before Cora could carry on in a huff, Winona interceded, doing damage control for Fisher. “Come with me, honey,” Winona offered. “Let’s go collect intel for the boys they can use to further their aims, so next time they’re less condescending about how much they need us.”

  Winona seemed to be wheedling her way into Cora’s favor fast; she allowed Winona to walk off with her, arm in arm, the conspiratorial overtones in Winona’s voice suggesting she might also have insights into the men’s psyches that might give Cora a leg up.

  Fisher and Hartman chatted as they walked, caring little for who overheard them, figuring there was not likely to be anyone else able to follow the conversation. But they also shifted effortlessly between languages, creating their own private pig Latin on the fly for an added measure of protection.

  There were eruptions of laughter and loud cheers as breaking news from the Occupy website burst forth on phones and iPads to either side of them. Each time reports hit of a demonstration shutting down a business in service of The Man, courtesy of the May 1st general nationwide strike, it was reason enough
to celebrate. Hartman and Fisher were so dialed into one another, the sonic blasts did little to thwart the thought streams flowing between them, and soon were tuned out altogether.

  “Have you thought of coopting the HIV virus for your RNA computers?” Hartman asked. “The tendency of HIV to mutate readily might give you the foundation you need for the Cantor-set arrays of hive minds, each one keyed to a slightly different permutation of the virus. You could erect as many super-computers in our heads as you wanted, and engage them like the shifting panels in a Rubik’s cube, or align several of them as if turning an entire side of that Rubik’s cube a solid color for additional computational power.”

  “God, it’s so obvious when you say it out loud. I’ve been messing around with SARS and pig viruses, focusing more on finding something virulent enough to infect everyone on the planet before pockets of resistance to the virus broke out.”

  “I’d worry less about zapping everyone at once,” Hartman explained, “and more about the designer cocktail that will turn those infected into true believers. They become your early adopters. Once they realize how supercharged they are and what they can do with the extra mental horsepower, they’ll be your most zealous advocates. They’ll sell the next wave of true believers on your idea for you. They’ll be lining up to get infected. Enough successive waves and the reaction will go mainstream. Have you read Moore’s Inside The Tornado? His ideas concerning the natural progression of technological innovation through cycles of public acceptance pertains here.”