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

by Dean C. Moore

  “Get to it, Epstein. I’m trying to save us from a black hole.”

  “Huh?” Epstein said absently.

  “The fifty million to one odds we’re going to be swallowed by one because of this Higgs Boson collider—”.

  “Oh, that. Their math is correct. I checked it,” Epstein said confidently.

  “Your tracking device, you imbecile. How do you know it’s Hartman?”

  His eyes glued to his monitor, Epstein said, “Who else would be hitting up every Occupy movement in every city across the country?”

  “Any hippie who can hotwire a car, which is most of them.” Faraday rubbed his eyes.

  Epstein mumbled, “Looks like he’s currently in New York City.”

  Crychek looked up from his experiment. It was the first time he showed any sign of paying attention to their conversation. His eyes appeared vacant, which indicated to Faraday he was running war games in his mind to check the logic of Epstein’s conclusions. The guy had upgraded the war games computers at the Pentagon, only to bail when he tired of empowering nincompoops. He could still outperform any of the supercomputers running his software in his head.

  “What is it, Crychek?” Faraday blurted anxiously, unable to endure the implications of his vague expression another second.

  “You better alert Robin Baker. Epstein has found Hartman,” Crychek said, deadpan.

  “Wait, no, I haven’t.” Strangely those words were being uttered from Epstein’s lips. Stranger still was he had managed to beat Faraday to the punch. “I only give this software a thirty percent success rate with this many variables. The guy has too many aptitudes. Confuses the shit out of the software. It thinks it’s looking for twenty people at once.”

  “You found him, I said.” And with that, Crychek returned to his experiment. He was tweaking the settings on his laser cannon which Faraday suspected was an even greater threat to life and limb than the black hole he was convinced they were opening at CERN’s latest hadron collider. None of them had done police work for days. There was just nothing exciting enough on the table.

  “Well, you tell him—I mean her—then,” Epstein croaked. “It’s your turn to look the fool.”

  “I’ve been pulled off that case to chase down a missing science student who made off with his experiment,” Crychek said nonchalantly. “Not that I’ve actually applied myself to the matter.”

  “No shit?” Epstein said. “Why do they need you?”

  Crychek sighed. “His string theory calculations seem to indicate a way to dredge infinite energy out of the quantum vacuum. Well, technically, the sub-quantum vacuum.”

  “Complete nonsense.” Faraday cracked his neck to get the kinks out.

  “There are what, like ten people on the planet even equipped to check the math?” Epstein interjected.

  “I checked the math myself.” Crychek switched tools to continue work on his laser cannon. “At least before he made off with the equations and wiped it from my computer and every other repository on campus. The kid’s correct.”

  “Well, then, you can reconstitute his work for him.” Epstein massaged the back of his neck. “Nothing’s really lost.”

  “You don’t get it, Epstein.” Faraday wadded the paper with his latest calculations, tossed it in the waste basket. “Anyone caught with that formula is dead. There’s no way Big Oil is going to let that happen. What about keeping a lock on power don’t you understand?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Epstein struck a body-builder pose, flexing to counteract the tension in his neck and shoulders, which he hoped would melt away as soon as he relaxed. “I still don’t know why Crychek gets all the good stuff.”

  “What’s the next generation laser you’re working on got to do with the case?” Epstein said as he relaxed his clenched muscles, and more blood flooded his brain.

  “Helps me think.” Crychek picked up another tool from his work table.

  “Show off,” Epstein mumbled, and swiveled back to face his monitor.

  “There are a few lower priority cases languishing on my desk,” Crychek said. Both men suddenly looked less beaten. Epstein swiveled back to face him.

  Faraday was the first to sit up straight. “Oh yeah?”

  “Three of the biomed students dropped out of the program at Cal to pursue their own start up. Their teacher is afraid they’re pursuing an agenda antagonistic to national security.”

  “Okay?” Faraday said, sounding cynical, the air already going out of his tire.

  Crychek tightened down with the spanner. “The software they were working on to simulate novel viruses was close to completion. And he finds it suspicious they left prior to completing it.”

  Faraday did the extrapolating for him. “Designer bugs, any one of which can wipe out the world. And the ability to spit them out faster than a Gatling gun shoots bullets. Definitely worth my while. I was languishing over here, Crychek. You could have spoken up sooner.” Faraday grabbed the file off Crychek’s desk.

  “God, no wonder Robin refers to us as The Three Stooges. And what’s behind door number three?” Epstein asked tentatively.

  “Some graduate students working on their post-doc science project.” Crychek turned the screw to adjust the laser beam.

  “Who have the decency to wait for genius to emerge on schedule for a change,” Epstein blurted. “How old school. I guess that spares me the undergraduate zeitgeist which too often runs afoul of success.” He crossed his arms. “Well, Crychek, what is it?”

  “A Nostradamus computer.” Crychek winced with his latest tightening adjustment. “The software predicts when the next war or riot will break out anywhere in the world, the next flare up of genocide, hell, the next flash mob. So far, it has out-predicted the best analysts in Washington, averaging eighty-five percent accuracy, a good twenty points ahead of its human counterparts.”

  “Sold to the highest bidder!” Epstein grabbed the file off Crychek’s desk. “When did this student go missing with the goods?”

  “Yesterday.” Crychek dropped the latest tool with a thud.

  “Wait a second,” Faraday said, as it dawned on him. “Why did these two projects rate below the one you grabbed?”

  “They didn’t seem that hard to solve. The string-theory kid is using advanced math of his own design to mask his trail. And he’s adept at staying off radar. I ran Epstein’s program on him and got nothing, even after making some upgrades.”

  Faraday and Epstein turned away from Crychek after frowning at the same time to convey just how much Crychek had managed to burst their bubbles. Faraday didn’t have any idea where to begin on his case and, judging by Epstein’s face, neither did he.

  Epstein had already forgotten about having tracked Hartman, which meant Robin would be lucky to ever hear about it. Especially as, seconds later, Faraday himself forgot about it.

  Crychek made the final adjustment on the laser and carved a hole in the wall as large as the Lincoln tunnel.

  Faraday and Epstein gulped.

  “Oh, you’re in trouble now, Crychek.” Epstein put his hands up to his head, perhaps to keep it from exploding. “You had to have killed someone with that blast.”

  “I just saved them billions of dollars with underground tunneling for bullet trains. They’ll get over it.” Crychek tossed a sheet over the device unceremoniously.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Epstein let out a whistle.

  Crychek and Epstein were already lost in their case load. Crychek’s little diversion no longer serving to distract, he had to face up to the case of string-theory kid without the mental crutch.

  Faraday made a sour face, staring at the lot of them. “I’m thinking ADHD has more to do with scientific progress these days than someone who can actually focus for five minutes.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  “What are we going to do about this rising Big Brother phenomenon?” Robin pleaded with Drew with more urgency than she reserved for facial depilation, which she was very on top of, incidentally.
In fact, she was addressing him from the bathroom, where she was in the middle of extracting the offending hairs.

  Drew was on all fours, scrubbing the grout in the tile of the bathroom floor. “You have to stop focusing on the End Days economy from the perspective of the giants. They see their days are numbered, so, of course, they’re digging in and doing whatever they can to forestall the inevitable. But the Renaissance is taking place with or without them.

  “All the writers who couldn’t break into the overly consolidated media industry, thanks to the rising costs of publishing and advertising both that forced publishers to put more and more money into their tried and true celebs, and take fewer and fewer risks on new writers… Now they can make a living self-publishing on Kindle.”

  He upped the intensity of his scrubbing. “Any mom and pop concern operating out of a basement, a garage, or an attic, can take on Microsoft or any giant with a good business plan, the right software, a broadband connection, and a contract with UPS.”

  Attacking the latest line of sullied grout in the tile floor, he said, “People have to reinvent themselves, start thinking more like Richard Branson and less like a victim, but the barriers of entry to the latest business enterprises are now largely in their own heads. The impediments have more to do with replacing acting compulsively with acting consciously, and with constructive time management.”

  “Maybe.” Robin plucked another hair on her chin. She didn’t appreciate how well Drew could “do Robin,” taking up her side of the argument for her, especially when Robin wasn’t sure she agreed with half the things coming out of her mouth. Maybe that was the point in his restating her positions for her, to help her get some distance on her own thinking. Or, to help her find her best ideas buried under the subsequent deluge of more mediocre ones. Maybe mocking her was not his intention at all.

  He turned the corner to give her the frontal view of all those flexing torso and arm muscles, attacking the grout no less zealously. “You’re hesitant to think optimistically because, in your family dynamic growing up, your value-add was thinking critically about everything that could go wrong to compensate for an alcoholic father who also acted impulsively, without thinking of the consequences. You could be assured that some disaster was lurking around the next corner, and the only way to forestall it was to keep sounding the clarion call.” Scrub. Scrub. Scrub.

  “I’ve never discussed my father’s drinking with you.”

  “That’s because I doubt you can face it, even now.”

  Drew was right. Robin had stopped short of exploring the final days with her father even when decompensating during the Hartman murders. Even that degree of meltdown still couldn’t dissolve the barriers to the end-days memories of life with dear old dad. But she still couldn’t hide the marks he’d left on her psyche from Drew.

  He paused so his panting could catch up to his aching body and all the lactic acid build-up, rubbing his lower back. “You have to learn to let go of the cynicism if you’re going to keep morphing into the new you. Letting go of the past is more a matter of shedding old habits and outmoded ways of seeing the world than of letting go of painful memories.”

  Robin knew Drew was right, but she was riding the momentum of safe and secure mental habits that kept exposing her to the same reactions to life, like seeing life through a merry-go-round. She reminded herself that it was probably just as comforting for Drew to slip into their habitual dynamic, with him in the mentor role. Maybe they needed the occasional relapse into their old role play before they could wear the armoring of the new selves without collapsing under the weight.

  He got up and handed her the gummed up toothbrush. Robin pushed it away. “Oh no. If I knew being female was going to take so much time away from contemplating world peace, I’d have stayed male. I definitely have no time to help you hold on to your fragile picture perfect world. Hire another maid.”

  “World peace? You mean, the world in pieces, don’t you? Besides, women don’t need as much time to contemplate world peace because they usually aren’t the ones waging wars.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  Drew shoved the brush into her hand. “I just saved you years of getting over yourself with the latest revelation of how your childhood colors your thinking. You can afford a few minutes for the bathroom floor.”

  Robin had to admit, getting Big Brother off the mind in favor of focusing on the new Renaissance – befitting of her new Renaissance nature – was quite the prize. She bent down to attack the tile.

  SIXTY

  They were celebrating a satisfying conclusion to the mystery of the missing Moonie brains at Jake’s Bar and Grill. It wasn’t too often that a pair of second-rate detectives got to put anything in the plus column. The fact that it was their last solved case of any repute, and it was nine months behind them, was ample proof of that. Not coincidentally, the fact that Gertrude had graduated the police academy was reason enough to get drunk.

  Mort let out a belch that, judging from his reaction, was as close as he came to sex anymore. Santini and Gretchen had time to stifle a smirk, make gooey eyes that spoke of secret rendezvous, and skim the rest of the menu, before Mort was done.

  “Stop trying to blow up my girlfriend’s skirt,” Santini wisecracked.

  “And they say drilling for gas isn’t environmentally friendly,” Mort retorted. He looked to the TV at the back of the bar where still-President Obama was speaking to an enthusiastic crowd, his profundity muted by the din of the club. “Here we go with this Obama-care shit again. I tell you, he’s the antichrist.”

  “You’ve said that about every president since FDR.” Santini poured salt into his hand, and downed the poor-man’s appetizer.

  “And I’ve been right each time.” Mort dipped his tortilla chip in the salsa, arrested its path to his mouth long enough to survey the establishment. It was dark and moody, just like him, and no one in the restaurant bar looked like they even remembered what it was like to be happy. Feeling at home at last, he brought the chip to his mouth.

  “I don’t know.” Santini spied the TV. “I rather like having a president, for a change, that’s smarter than my pet dog.” Thor yapped on cue. “Easy, pal, didn’t mean any offense. I realize they have to climb one hell of a mountain to be smarter than you.” Santini pulled at the loose skin under Thor’s chin, threw a passing glance at the other animals in the pet-friendly pub. “Bush couldn’t get out a line without flubbing it, even reading from a teleprompter. He lost track of where he was, and stacked senile moments inside of one another better than Chinese boxes.”

  Mort sighed sour-faced. “Bush must be forgiven for being a low down drunk prior to his religious conversion, which I imagine led to a lot of that. That’s far more excusable, by the way, than being likable. Do you know how much lying you have to do to be liked by this many people?”

  Gretchen smiled and sipped her beer, enjoying the rapport between the two boys. From what Santini could tell, she had no intention of ever coming between them. Not having to be Santini’s entire universe took all kinds of pressure off her. Not a matter to under-appreciate considering how deep those still waters ran.

  “We’ve had how many decades now of gridlock in congress and the senate?” Santini rotated the base of his glass beer mug one way, then the other, as if boring a hole through the table. “Along comes someone that says let’s work together, let’s meet in the middle, let’s stop knocking heads over stupid shit while the real issues go unanswered… If anyone’s got the schmoozing skills to pull off getting communication going in this Tower of Babel we call a country. Who can complain about that?” Santini swigged the last of his beer, slammed the mug down on the table for emphasis.

  “Give me the Tea Party, any day.” Mort coughed to clear the pipes for the inevitable rebuttal. “At least they have the sense to realize economic recovery is not synonymous with a handout. You give people five hundred, hell, five thousand cash back on their taxes, you extend unemployment, what does that do but prolong judgment d
ay? What the hell has he done to put anyone back to work? To create real jobs?” He exchanged his empty beer mug with Gretchen’s full one. “Didn’t want you to hurt yourself lifting that thing to your chin. Besides, I can only wax poetic when I’m sufficiently plied.”

  “What does the suspiciously quiet lady say about all this?” Santini asked. Since putting the investigation of who was making off with the Moonies’ brains to rest, they had only grown closer, taking full advantage of the extra downtime.

  Gretchen smiled demurely. “I think it really doesn’t matter who you put in office, Big Oil and Big Business owns everyone down both sides of the aisle.” She refused to take her eyes off the menu, as if selecting an item from it occupied far more of her brain. “Republican, Democrat, makes no difference to them.” She found another panel in the menu and scanned with her fingers, deliberated one find after another. “Without meaningful campaign reform, nothing can really ever change, you just keep electing more puppets, who will keep doing what all the others before them did.” Her eyes hovered over the appetizers section. “With the cost of getting elected these days, way too many people own you before you can plant your ass in the White House.”