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

by Dean C. Moore

  That left the small problem of how to get in and out of the plant with a generator without paying for it. She toyed with the idea of charging it on Fabio’s credit card. After all, he would soon be lost in some other timeline, so what did he care? But her belief in karma meant she was convinced he’d find creditors hounding him there without understanding why.

  One step at a time, Aala, she thought. Be as surefooted as the panther at night.

  ***

  Aala eyed the security guards at the entrance to the Cumins plant, finding little to like about them. Their brusque manners. Their sour faces. Their extreme attentiveness. “Women count up the faults of those who keep them waiting.”

  She stole around to the other side of the building. The windows were far too high for anything but a tree monkey to reach. She sighed. One hurdle after another. She checked her watch; she was running behind schedule. Soon she’d need the assembled time machine just to get her back in time to be of any use. “Necessity knows no law.”

  She tried another side of the building. “Need teaches a plan,” she said, examining the truck backed into the cargo bay to unload its stores. The driver exited the cab, whistling, and stole into the plant.

  She waited for the workers to unload the first flats, and be off with their forklifts. Then she jumped into the cab, stared at the fifty-two gears in the gear shift and groaned. “Never marry for money; ye’ll borrow it cheaper.”

  She fired the engine up, wrestled with the gear shift. “No rose without a thorn,” she grumbled, straining to find a slot that’d do.

  She slipped out of the cargo bay and down the road. “Now let’s hope the damn thing was actually delivering generators.”

  ***

  Movinus eyed the empty cargo bay facing the street, absent a truck. “How did I get so turned around? Hey!” He shouted for the nearest workman. “How do I get to cargo bay two?”

  “You’re standing right in front of it.”

  Movinus glared at the gaping void and gulped. “Treachery is the poor man’s curse.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Ergh!” Derringer screamed, lifting the section of pipe into place and crushing it in the process.

  “Don’t throw a wobbly. Take a break, mate. Don’t worry, I got this.”

  Derringer couldn’t deny he’d been at the brute-force labor for three hours straight and was getting to where he couldn’t see past the sweat in his own eyes. He climbed out of the exoskeleton and wiped the latest splash-over from his brows. “Thanks, mate. I owe you.”

  Fabio climbed into the exoskeleton, powered it up.

  He then ran faster than human legs without hydraulic power assist could carry him.

  Derringer, foggy-headed, shouted “Hey!” after him, a nonplused expression plastered across his face. He took a weary step forward into the ditch, collapsed face down. Fabio caught his reaction in his hyper-reality video-assist faceplate inlay, which served, essentially, as a rear-view mirror.

  He jumped in back of the black van waiting at the edge of the construction site, its doors left suspiciously wide open. He slammed the doors shut behind him.

  And he was off.

  Milton, seated behind the wheel of the van adapted for parapalegic drivers, steered the vehicle, working the accelerator and the brake pads with his hands, as they made off with the very expensive piece of electronic hardware. The exoskeleton was designed to assist construction workers and restorers with keeping London’s historic buildings from sinking. Thanks to the city’s many rivers, the poor water-soaked soil, which was never meant to support anything heavier than a miniature horse, was swallowing history in virtual quicksand.

  “I appreciate what you just did for me, old fellow,” Milton said.

  “Ah,” Fabio said dismissively. “I could probably have built you one inside of a week, but this was way more fun. And besides, we have a pretty major construction project on our hands,” he said, eying the work crew fighting against fate to restore the old building, their chances of success now greatly narrowed. He felt a little guilty, to tell Milton the truth, but hid this thought from him.

  ***

  “Yeah, that should work.”

  “A playground?” Milton pulled the van to the curb.

  “A big sand box sounds like just what the doctor ordered.” Fabio slid the door open. “I expect you’ll be falling on your face a lot ‘til you get the hang of this thing.”

  “Nonsense.”

  ***

  Milton peeled his faceplate off the sand to laughter and cheers from the kids, who immensely enjoyed the suspense of his slow motion fall, wondering if gravity would ever win out. Some clapped ardently, figuring his highly successful comic routine deserved no less.

  He was moving so slowly and so clumsily in the exoskeleton, some of the kids decided they would have more fun crawling up him and jumping off the gentle giant into the sea of sand below. And so they did, screaming with glee.

  Milton looked only slightly perturbed by the kids enjoying the piggyback rides on his back, and the circus-like rides of his swinging arms. He whipped them side to side in his arms as he over-corrected in his torso, adding mad screaming delight to the kids’ outpouring of joy as they hung on for dear life.

  Fabio heard some of the moms on the sidelines talking: “God, he’s like a room full of babysitters in one.” “I wonder if he hires out for parties.” “He’s obviously here scouting up business.”

  ***

  A couple hours later, Milton was gently lifting the kids off him and setting them down in a well coordinated manner, able to achieve fine “muscle” control throughout his body at last. When the kids sobbed in protest, he let them climb back on and jogged around the perimeter of the sand box to happy screams. He tossed them in the air, juggling them three at a time, made big “oopsy” faces and gestures every time he dropped one into the sand.

  When he hoisted himself into the van under his own steam, mothers far and wide were rushing him their business cards. “Can you slice a cake in that thing?” “You mind if we tell the kids you’re Megatron?” “Do you mind lifting the car to help my husband change the oil while you’re there? His back has been giving him hell.”

  ***

  Aala had the spools of copper wire laid out and the rest of the supplies she was instructed to beg, borrow, and steal, as need be, on the big flat worktable. She was admiring her efforts when Fabio and her husband Milton came sauntering through the door, Milton in his new exoskeleton.

  “Look what I can do!” Milton proclaimed, cutting loose. He followed his jig up with some moon-walking, and break-dancing on the floor.

  “We practiced at the children’s park,” Fabio explained. “He was quite a hit with the kids. They’ll be looking for him when the new comic-book heroes debut next month.”

  “I blame Dancing With The Stars for everyone thinking they can do the rhumba without offending the gods,” Aala said.

  Milton, in short order, grew winded all the same. He collapsed on the bench by the worktable.

  “Ah-ha, look what I can do,” she said, rallying to Milton’s aid with one of her potions. Milton smelled the pungent stew and made a sour face.

  “My wife and her magical remedies.” He held his mug up to Fabio in a mock toast.

  Fabio had his face buried in a copper coil. He put a strand of it in his analyzer. “This is pretty poor grade copper,” he complained. “I’m not sure I can use this.”

  “My spirit guides assure me it’s the missing link that’ll make the whole thing work,” Aala said. “They sent me on a journey to get it Odysseus himself would envy.”

  “Hmm.” Fabio sent a bolt of electricity through it and registered the response. “Wow. Milton, you might want to listen to your wife more.”

  “In truth,” Aala said, “though I’m woe to admit it, the gods may have had some help this time from your self-evolving algorithms. It was not easy to sort out who was doing what, mind you. Took all my skill and years of divining.”

&nbs
p; Glances went around the room in a quick game of eye-billiards. No one seemed particularly in the mood to entertain the prospect of the gods or algorithms messing further with their lives. They quickly averted their minds; Fabio put his back into his work.

  Milton grimaced when he realized the exoskeleton was too bulky for him to get the cup of herb tea to his mouth. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

  Aala fetched him a straw.

  Milton no sooner downed the drink than he was up and about assisting Fabio with the parts to his time machine.

  “Ah-ha. See? Where you’d be without me?” Aala parked her fists on her hips.

  “We’re missing at least six items from the list,” Milton said.

  Aala threw her hands into the air. “The dog that digs deepest finds the bones.”

  Milton rummaged through the pile until he found what he needed. “That’s better.”

  She shook her head at the two mad hatters lost in their mental machinations, going from the drawings to assembly and back to the drawings, and arguing in between. “The winter will ask what we did all summer,” she said. Aala put them out of her mind, and padded into the kitchen.

  After brushing aside a roosting chicken, Aala wrestled her incantation book out from between the cookbooks on the soiled and scratched linoleum counter. “For later, when he’s in the bath.” She turned the page. “For later, when he’s asleep.” She flipped to another entry. “For later, when he’s too tired to remember his own name.” She deliberated this latest one, then nodded. “The patient thief is as a tree whose root runs deep as he waits for the sweet fruit.”

  She returned to the living room, pulled out a chair on which to stand, and extended her hands palms-up to her husband’s head. “Injury vanish!” She said that a few more times around his head, which was the part she was most concerned about, then made her way slowly down his body to attend to the wasted muscles.

  Fabio was giving her the “What’s this crazy woman up to now?” look Milton was all too familiar with. “Ignore her,” Milton suggested. “It’s the secret to all long marriages.”

  Fabio’s eyes twinkled. “Considering what we’re up against, I’m up for prayers, incantations, sheer dumb luck, and whatever else she cares to throw in.”

  Milton bore down with his crescent on the part in his hand. “So, what put your mind onto this contraption?”

  Fabio thought about it a while before answering. “I was deliberating what to do with myself one summer.” He continued to tinker. “I needed a break, something to get me out of my head. I thought of all the usual clichés for a college kid on break: crab-fishing; sword-fishing cold, treacherous arctic waters, where I’d spend as much time fighting for my life as to reel in the catch. No chance to get introspective with jobs like that. But those gigs were all taken by the time I had the bright idea. So I landed on gold mining, which wasn’t as high paying, but certainly as arduous and as dangerous.

  “Then I got trapped for nearly two weeks in the deepest mine in the world.

  He exchanged the crescent for the pliers. “I didn’t have much to do with myself but dream of impossible ways out. So I started thinking: What if I could beam myself anywhere in the universe, just by thinking about it? I decided that was too dangerous, since I might end up inside a rock. So I focused on time travel. Like those Zen masters who teach themselves how to levitate. But I decided by the time I got the mental muscles in place for that, I’d be an old man, dead or rescued. So instead I decided I’d scribble the equations for the time machine on the notebook I used for a diary. The equations alone couldn’t rescue me, but at least my mind wouldn’t have time to imagine the worst.

  “The idea worked.” He set the pliers down and picked up the Phillips head screwdriver. “By the time they pulled me out of there I had enough of the equations written down to believe the concept was doable, despite what everyone in mainstream physics has to say on the matter. But by then, who knows? Maybe I was crazy from breathing all the vapors down there.”

  “What other high risk things do you like to do?” Milton asked.

  Fabio stiffened, but couldn’t detect any accusations in Milton’s tone. So, he relaxed. He hadn’t really thought of himself as courting danger before.

  “I cliff dive, and cave dive.”

  “That’s it?” Milton wrestled getting the two coverplates around his component.

  Fabio racked his brains. “A buddy and I ventured into the Rocky Mountains one winter without supplies. Nearly killed us. We just wanted to see the scenery. We were both pretty burned out on the urban jungle.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “What are you, my priest?” Fabio thought he detected some attitude in the old man’s tone this time. But he felt like he was talking to his father—the father he never had. He was angry with Milton for the limit-setting, as if he was trying to draw a barbed wire fence around Fabio’s lifestyle. But he couldn’t deny that the absence of someone to care had driven him to do a lot of unsafe things, he didn’t even acknowledge as risky until now.

  “I was just wondering if you deliberately drew the men in black to you,” Milton said.

  “That’s crazy.”

  “No argument there.” Milton tweaked his component with the tweezers.

  Fabio stewed on the revelation, not exactly liking how it made him feel. “What if you’re right?”

  “Then I’m guessing these equations of yours are just convincing enough to rankle the powers that be without actually being all that workable; the thrill ride of the chase by the men in black being what this is really about.”

  “Yeah, I could see you wanting to get that concern out of the way,” Fabio said.

  ***

  Mort threw a weary glance at the Milton/Fabio duo in the background, working tirelessly on their time machine, noticed the sun setting out the window behind them, and promptly put them out of his mind. They were starting to wear like a pair of impacted wisdom teeth.

  He wrestled with the archipelago of hassocks on the living room floor, jumping from one “island” to another in an effort to get one the right height for him relative to the rocker-recliner. “There it is.” He sank into the chair at last, and enjoyed the ripple of relief flowing through his body. “I remember when I didn’t have to get my feet up over my head just to get blood flowing back to my brain.”

  He popped the lid on the beer and guzzled it with the can held below his mouth, sucking the beer up through the bellows-like action of his lungs. “Sorry, I tend to drink beer the way a wolf laps milk,” he said, noticing the strange look Santini was giving him. “Which reminds me… Whatever happened to that dog of yours?”

  “He’s one of us now, a defender of the Renaissance, protecting the guardians of the new age from men in black who want to keep us imprisoned in the past forever. In a status quo befitting the powers that be. In a world without hope and challenges to established authority.”

  “Christ, I didn’t ask for a reading of the gospels.” Mort finished guzzling the beer, managing to get the liquid inside the can to defy gravity with the same sucking action.

  He scrunched the can in one hand. Finished crushing it into a coaster by squeezing the ends together between his fingers, he hammered the aluminum the rest of the way with his fist against the side table. He added it to the stack of “coasters.” “The idea is to stack the dominoes so they don’t fall and to not stop drinking until they do. Gotten it as high as the ceiling before. Had to lower the table so as not to spoil the game.”

  Mort reached into the fridge the size of a large safe keeping his treasure under lock and key, and retrieved another beer. “Now where were we? Oh yeah, you were about to tell me about your dog.”

  “I did. He reaches out to me psychically from time to time to reassure me everything’s okay. I suppose he’ll maintain the link in case he ever has to call in the reserves.”

  Mort stopped blinking. “I should have held off on this conversation until the dominoes were a little closer t
o the ceiling.” He took a second to figure out how to broach the subject in a more acceptable manner. “You know, every once in a while, you can find me walking around the place talking to my dead wife, too—as if she were in the room, mind you. So I know what grief and guilt does to a man. Hate to have anyone assess my character at that particular point in time. They’d come away thinking I was coo-coo for Coco Puffs.” When Santini didn’t nibble at the bait, he added, “I guess what I’m saying is maybe it’s time to lay off the guilt over what we did to those Bullmastiffs. That or get another dog, or—here’s an idea—put an APB out on Thor. Hell of a fine animal. You’ll never top that one.”

  Santini smirked, realizing his bond with Thor would strike people as mad, even the ones who were open to the idea of psychic connections between animal-lovers and their pets. “Yeah, maybe I’ll do that,” he said, in no mood to argue the point.

  Mort found the goat staring at him inches from his barcolounger. He leaned his head into it and they butted heads. Santini observed him repeat this ritual several times. “Hey, don’t hurt that animal,” he said.

  “Should have kept one of these when I was training for the Golden Gloves.”

  ***

  Ardel materialized at Fabio and Milton’s worktable, his body taking on form and solidness slowly, as was his style; should any eyes be on him while he was manifesting, better they think they’d seen a ghost. The two scientists were eating Chinese takeout in the kitchen, just out of sight, and talking excitedly about their invention.

  He picked up one of the components and turned it over in his hands. A time machine? I’ll be damned. You can see where this is going. Just a matter of time before the naturals and the tech-enhanced boys are at one another’s throats. Robin Wakefield, much like himself, was a natural. Someone who was learning gradually to do more and more with her mind. But there were many timelines in which the tech-enhanced used their cyberenhancements to accomplish much of the same thing. And still others, where A.I. started to surpass what levitating Zen masters could do. But his kind, whatever their pedigree, was still in a distinct minority. That was the problem. As time went on, the stakes kept rising to get that kind of consciousness more widely propogated. Robin was a turnkey figure like himself who could facilitate such dissemination of higher consciousness, once she’d fully come into her own. That made her of inestimable value. As so few civilizations endured past that critical juncture of too much power coming into the hands of so many people without the emotional and mental maturity to handle it. So, what was she doing with this lot? Why had their paths crossed?