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

by Dean C. Moore

  “What do you think?”

  He played with his lighter some more, turning it over and over in his hands, two turns this time for each ignition of the flame. Instead of scratching under his nose, he pinched his nostrils together, as if wiping the oil off his skin. “I think if you can’t claw your way past hate into the higher registers, of creativity, a sense of adventure, a sense of fun, to joy, happiness, feeling carefree… It’s one hell of a formula. A shame I didn’t think of it myself. Then again, not sure I’m smart enough to pull that one off. So I guess I’ll have to live the rest of my life a little more hemmed in by my faulty wiring.”

  She said, “You sure a middle path is any real solution? Mediocrity would have sufficed in another age. I don’t get any sense it’ll get you through this one. Maybe the only thing separating you from greatness is boldness.”

  He rotated his lighter three times before lighting it. Four times before lighting it. Five times before lighting it. “Maybe. I know one thing, though: You’re not going to get a high-performance speedboat to perform by pouring poison in the gas tank.”

  She exhaled her cigarette smoke to give herself a beat to respond properly. “You see, that’s where we disagree. I think you can power yourself off any emotion, just so you’re in touch with what really drives you. And you can use it to transform you, until you can run as effectively off any fuel.”

  “A lot of people think they can do a to-hell-and-back journey like it was some joy ride,” Shareef said. “Most get stuck in hell. Who knows? Maybe you’ll beat the odds. Here’s hoping.”

  “This debate we’re having… Don’t you think most everyone everywhere in the world is having it with themselves right now? How many times a day do you have it with yourself, Shareef? Be honest.”

  He ousted his cigarette on the table in front of her, bent it in half. He eyed it solemnly, before releasing it. And then he stepped out of the room.

  ***

  “What was that about?” Herron said, inferring by his tone he didn’t like anyone wasting his time.

  “Just getting a feel for her,” Shareef said.

  “What’s the verdict?”

  Shareef took a moment to process what had gone on in the room, examining Iona through the window. “These are some seriously sick people. But they’re too high functioning to worry about us. You’ll never pin anything on them.”

  “That’s not a satisfactory response, detective,” Herron said.

  “Why not? Someone higher up the food chain’ll take’em down sooner or later. Sharks can’t help feeding on one another.” He patted Herron on the back. “Relax, chief. I believe in a self-organizing universe. Show me an asshole, and I’ll show you a dick looking to ream it out.”

  “In this self-organizing universe, Shareef, I’m the dick, and you’re the asshole.”

  “Don’t I know it.” Shareef excused himself by ducking out of the room before Herron could think of an apter way to put him in his place.

  ***

  Ragnar wished he’d gotten assigned one of the other two, anyone but this Ainsley character, or Cliff Masters posing as Ainsley. He was drop-dead gorgeous, and slightly effeminate, just not too, the way Ragnar liked his men. All he could think of was bending Ainsley over the table and plowing him. He was getting under Ragnar’s skin a lot better than he was getting under his, and the interview hadn’t even started.

  Ainsley held his cigarette pointed straight at the ceiling, his arm bent in tight at the elbow. He was famous for giving off mixed signals. As gossip went, he couldn’t stand to not have everyone in the room fawning over him. Epic insecurity? Epic egomania? Genius manipulativeness to boost his sales appeal?

  “Is it true you made three million once in three seconds off of pork futures?” Ragnar asked, making sure to invest the line with plenty of awe and reverence.

  Ainsley laughed. “The big money’s in the boring stuff. Everyone wants to shove their money into the sexy plays…” Ainsley slowly rotated the shallow palm-diameter glass ashtray in his hands, causing Ragnar’s eyes to drift to his immaculate manicure, his blemish-free skin. He was already imagining Cliff’s long fingers exploring the nooks and crannies of his body.

  Ragnar missed some items on the list of “sexy plays to avoid” that Ainsley was rattling off, before his attention returned to the subject at hand. “…diamond glazed surfaces that never wear out, the next generation intel chip that will deliver true sentience to the laptop or PDA in your hands, at least on par with your grandmother’s dimming mind.”

  Ragnar laughed on cue.

  “But sexy in itself is no guarantee of profits,” Ainsley explained. “Usually just the opposite. Sexy means the buzz has traveled around the world at least twice before you hear about the so-called ‘choice investment.’ What’s more, by the time the tech company digs itself out of its research hole to recoup its investment, someone has figured out how to lower the cost of manufacturing to squeeze all the overhead out of each sale. It’s a bitch of a business. Doable, if that’s your sole focus. I guess I’m too much of a dilettante.”

  “They say the last time you hosted a benefit for paraplegic kids, the haul was five times what it usually is. How did you pull that off?”

  Ainsley laughed, and relaxed further. Evidently, he loved talking about himself. “The trick with bilking rich people,” he advised, “is understanding the monument they’re erecting to their egos. Some want to leave behind buildings in their name. Others want personal letters from the people whose lives they’re saving. Some want to do it ‘anonymously,’”—he made air quotes with his hands. “Others want all the media hype they can get regarding what saints they are. Once you know how to press the right buttons, the rest is behavioral science. Just like Pavlov’s dogs.”

  Ragnar made a whistling sound as he let out the trapped air in his lungs. “Your mind is one long head-rush, better than downhill skiing. You don’t know how much I wish I had the rest of my life with you instead of just the next few hours, or maybe days, I guess, depending on how this washes out.” Ainsley slouched into his chair as if relaxing on the couch at home. Seeing Ragnar’s eyes darting to his well-defined forearms, and tracing the contours of his chest beneath his shirt, he decided to oblige by asking if he could take his shirt off. “You mind? It’s hot in here,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Make yourself comfortable.”

  Even with his tee shirt on, it was clear Ainsley was cut like one of those Michelangelos dotting Rome’s churches and palazzos. Ragnar was desperate to keep him talking, because then he could pretend to politely listen, while continuing to leer. He’d never been this up close to a god of beauty before. His own modest looks and undefined build precluded it.

  “What drew you to Iona?”

  “She has an androgynous beauty, doesn’t she?” Ainsley said. Nicely played, Ragnar thought. “I mean, the sleek figure, the small breasts, and she’s what, six feet tall? Like one of those unisex models air-brushed to spin everyone’s compass: gay, straight, bisexual, and undecided.”

  Ragnar laughed. He had to remind himself he wasn’t playing mental ping-pong with this guy for the fun of it, but to get to the truth.

  “I’m not sure my reasons are noble,” Ainsley confessed. “She looks good on my arm in public, and in my profession, it’s all about how people perceive you. No one wants the truth, everyone wants the fantasy.”

  “Myself included,” Ragnar said, intending for Ainsley to pick up on the subtext. “What about the ménage aux trois? That about brand image, too?”

  “Definitely. Couples are passé. Too easy for the energy to stagnate. A third person keeps everyone off-balance, and curiously stabilizes the relationship. Besides, sexual preference is getting to be another anchor holding you down. When you have a chance to connect in this world, you better be prepared to take it and go all the way. Otherwise your port in the storm will get washed away with everything else and you’ll be lost at sea.”

  “I can definitely see how the added fle
xibility gives you degrees of freedom so necessary in making your million-to-one-shot count. Can you really fake stuff like that, though?”

  “Depends, if you’ve been acting since the age of two, if that’s your niche, the people-pleaser in the family, the master manipulator, or the peacekeeper fighting to hold the family together, then you’re more identified with being an actor than with any one role you’re playing. And don’t fool yourself, everyone’s playing a role, only they forget after a while, get overly attached, lose those degrees of freedom they need to weather the marketplace.”

  “It’s weird to think I’m being argued into bisexuality,” Ragnar said thoughtfully.

  Ainsley shrugged. “The world, it is a changing. Adapt or die. There’s a lot of people having this debate with themselves right now, I imagine.”

  “Forgive me, but is that where the effeminate gestures come from? Like the call of a mockingbird?”

  Ainsley laughed. “I tend to overdo things. I enjoy looking in the mirror and seeing how I can perfect the smallest gestures and affectations. It’s my Japanese-tea-ceremony approach to life you’re keying on. I could see how you could take the perfectionism a bunch of different ways.”

  “Fair enough.” Ragnar was losing his footing in this interrogation. He had lost track of what game they were playing, far less who was winning. And he couldn’t blame it on the hypnosis of Ainsley’s beauty.

  “I suppose for someone like yourself, it’s easy to imagine you’re above the law,” Ragnar said, reaching for a foothold on this slippery slope of an interview. He was determined to reach the summit to spy the one insight into Ainsley that was going to close this case for him.

  Ainsley stroked his skin as if to enjoy its suppleness. He had been flexing and relaxing his muscles throughout the interview, contorting sinuously from time to time, like a cat stretching to get comfortable in the chair, all part of the floor show. “The masters of the game are the only ones who can make life go their way,” Ainsley explained, “no matter what circumstances they’re handed. Makes seeking certain circumstances rather secondary, don’t you agree? In case you were inferring I had any motivation to murder those two guys.”

  “I guess it makes sense; if you see into people’s psyches well enough to manipulate them, you ought to be able to get from anywhere to anywhere on the game board of life. But wouldn’t that make you the perfect sociopath?”

  Ainsley laughed. “Intent is everything. Intent is karma.”

  “And what’s your intent?”

  “To be all that I can be.”

  “But that’s not enough to settle the question of sociopath versus humanitarian. I guess it depends on how much of a narcissist you are, or conversely, how much you can see other people’s advancement as your own.”

  “Narcissism is a necessary stage of life, Ragnar. Until you love yourself, you really can’t love anyone else. The trick is not to get stuck there. That said, some of us are off to a late start on the whole learning-to-love-thyself thing. The game can help with that. The game is everything.”

  Ragnar grunted tentative acceptance of the thesis. “There’s definitely a lot of that thinking going around.” He supposed that was as much of a confession as he was going to get out of this guy. It was enough to stop thinking of him as Ainsley, that was for certain.

  ***

  “Are we actually free and clear?” Cliff said, sounding intoxicated on his own adrenaline. The police station had ejected them like prey that just couldn’t be digested in the belly of the beast.

  “Nah. They’ll eventually come up with something,” Piper advised. “Time is on their side. The here and now is the only thing we have.”

  They beamed self-satisfied smiles at one another, and footed it towards the Piazza Navona.

  “Never thought I’d find all this iconic architecture entombing,” Iona said, eying the avenue. “The past asserts itself with mind-crushing pressure.”

  Piper threw his arm around her shoulder. “The only past hemming us in is what we created for ourselves yesterday out of our imaginations. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty free to conjure whatever I want.”

  Cliff threw his arm around her from the other side. “Me too.”

  Iona didn’t share their faux-optimism. She wasn’t so sure how much freedom from herself her imagination gave her.

  Of course, she had been at this lifestyle a lot longer than these two. Naiveté did wonders.

  She had the higher body count to prove it.

  Piper’s cell phone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket, zoomed on the picture of Cliff killing Conflict Diamonds Avenger. This one was crisp, not like the earlier blurrier pictures. “Got you,” read the inscription just beneath the photo. “Our covers are blown. Some thoughtful tourist emailed in a high-def photo of you doing the deed in the plaza, and of the two of us chatting beforehand.” He returned the phone to his pocket. “Being drop-dead gorgeous is a curse; everyone wants to document your life, even people who don’t know you.”

  “The game is on, then,” Cliff said. “Good.”

  Iona could only hope and pray the pressure of playing the game would give her the release she sought from herself. So far, only her heists managed that, and even then, only while they were in progress.

  Maybe she would get worse before she got better. Maybe Shareef was right, and the journey wasn’t worth glamorizing. But for people like her, what other choice was there?

  SEVENTEEN

  “This is a nice place you have here. Homey.” Hartman’s voice rang out across the subbasement of the Berkeley PD.

  Epstein, Faraday, and Crychek came out from behind their computers like mice when the lights went out. They did, in fact, appear to be contemplating things going dark on them. Hartman, aware of the effect he had on people, said, “Relax, boys. This is a friendly visit.”

  “How did he get in here?” Epstein said. “The room’s impenetrable. Cracking Fort Knox is a walk in the park by comparison. I know, because I designed this place myself. We’re sealed in down here precisely so the craziness of the world can never reach us.”

  “The more you try to control things, the more freakishly random and bizarre events become,” Faraday said.

  “What’s that, like the fourth law of thermodynamics?” Epstein bitched.

  “No,” Faraday explained impatiently, “it’s the first law of Thomas Pynchon novels, which are far more reliable, incidentally, for detecting hitherto unforeseen patterns in the universe.”

  “Hmm, I’m more of a Peter F. Hamilton man myself,” Epstein mumbled.

  “We came to your attention when you went ferreting around the patent office to see if you were reinventing the wheel or not,” Crychek said.

  Clever, Hartman thought; clearly the brightest of the bunch. Crychek had apparently been entertaining war-games in his head this entire time as to how they got on Hartman’s radar. His voice was flat and unemotional.

  “We’re staring death in the face and all you can do is run mathematical probabilities through that sieve you call a mind!” Faraday squawked.

  “Yes,” Crychek said. “I place the likelihood of us coming to any harm at less than five percent.” He went back to his experiment in progress.

  If Crychek couldn’t be bothered to show emotion at what the others felt certain was the hour of their deaths any more than he could at any other time, Faraday was perspiring in places he didn’t have sweat glands. Judging from how he was taking it, flicking the beading water off him as if it were the last distraction on earth he needed as he paced, he never perspired. His long, ungainly limbs and thin body moved increasingly less fluidly as he got himself more and more worked up. Suddenly the arms and legs couldn’t find coordination with one another; the jerky movements made him look like a praying mantis having second thoughts about his prey. “I told you this would all end badly. How many times did I tell you!”

  “With you, everything ends badly,” Epstein said. “Who could blame us for tuning you out? Ma
ybe this would be a good time to shift my portfolio around, see if I can squeeze some extra profits out to compensate for the years in a coma, and the cost of the life support machines on the off chance I do survive, even if it’s just as a vegetable.”

  “You and your damn investments! Hello, standing three feet from psycho killer with a death count rivaling Jeffrey Dahmer. Did I tell you or did I not tell you this was going to happen?” He turned to Hartman. “I told them this was going to happen. You believe me don’t you?” He returned to his pacing. “Of course, I was sure the Fermi collider was going to open a black hole and devour us before you got here, but I might have been off in my calculations. You can’t blame me for that.”

  He paced and flicked more sweat. “And with this down economy, who can afford scientists of our caliber? Thought for sure we’d have sold out to the Eastern Europeans by now to help them build their dirty bombs with all the unaccounted for plutonium floating around. And we’d be long gone from the likes of you. Surely you can see how astute my thinking was there!” he said, turning to face Hartman again. “Of course there was an alternate reality in which I predicted you’d get here ahead of those and a hundred other equally fatalistic scenarios playing out. So as you can see, no one was ever more right about things going ever more wrong than I.”

  “Will you shut up!” Epstein shouted. “I can’t think over all your blather. There, that should do it. I’m all out of high risk investments now.” He keyed in the final changes on his online brokerage account. “Should generate a constant stream of revenue to keep me alive into the next century, long enough for them to rebuild my brain and shattered body. There, I’m completely Hartman-proofed. Do your worst, big guy.”

  Hartman had sported a grin the entire time; he enjoyed their dynamic. “Like I said, fellas, friendly visit. So, wow me.”