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

by Dean C. Moore

  Santini ground his teeth.

  “Will you look at the rear cab in this thing?” Mort said. “Whatever happened to manly-man trucks?”

  Santini peeled out. The engine roared above the crackling fire of bramble about them and the hissing electrical wires.

  “Even the engine sounds distinctly feminine,” Mort said.

  Santini gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckle tightness. “I’ll see what I can do to give it more of a manly-man sound.”

  “I’m just saying; you’d never hear a Dodge engine sound like that.” Mort tried to get comfortable past his wide shoulders, which didn’t take kindly to passengers to the left of him and a door to the right. “I’d like to think, as unsettling as this Renaissance age is on my nerves, we can still hold on to the classics.”

  “We can’t hold on to the timeline, which is breaking up around us,” Santini said, “but getting this engine to make manly-man sounds, is enough to restore your world to order.”

  “I’m a minimalist by nature.” Mort tried rounding his shoulders. “I take my coffee black, too, in case you’re interested.”

  “The eternal present,” Gretchen uttered.

  “What’s that you say?” Mort rounded his shoulders some more.

  “I was just echoing Santini’s sentiments.” Gretchen rubbed the alligator ridges on her purse. “A Renaissance age would by default be the closest thing to an eternal present Zen masters of old talked about, which emerges when men forego any sense of limitations, and walk the world as gods.”

  “Maybe we can make that work for us,” Santini said.

  “Yes, it gives me an idea. I think I know where we can hide from the men in black,” Gretchen said.

  “Brains and beauty in the same woman,” Mort said. “Another violation of the classics.” He craned his neck to take in Milton and Fabio, fast asleep, Aala absorbed in making the most of her herbal finds. “And what’s with these two?”

  “They can’t work on their time machine, so they’re sleeping, probably the only times they do sleep anymore,” Santini explained.

  “It’s not natural to sleep once every seven days,” Mort said, “or to sleep standing up, smoking a cigarette, or sitting on the crapper. I keep finding them frozen in odd poses like statues lying around a sculpture garden.”

  “Maybe if you gave them a manual on the classics they could consult,” Santini said.

  “Maybe if you can keep your mind on the road as we search for this Shangri-La Gretchen is talking about, in case it’s any harder to find than the last one.”

  Gretchen was slipping into a trance.

  ***

  Gretchen saw the inciting incident unfolding in a gold mine in Africa. The placing of the explosives as the man hung on the wall, drilled the bore hole to stuff the dynamite. The electrical cord off the generator, helping to pipe in air, gave, sparking, and fell into the box of dynamite below him. The cave blew, and sent a shockwave pulse through the planet too powerful at these depths to send just ripples across the ocean.

  The butterfly effect had been calculated perfectly by the self-evolving algorithms.

  ***

  “You need to brake,” Gretchen said. “The road is going to open up.”

  Santini brought the truck to an abrupt stop, whipping their bodies against their seatbelts.

  The tarmac tore apart in front of them.

  “What? She’s gone psychic on us?” Mort’s eyes remained glued to the chasm.

  “The self-evolving algorithms. I’ve found their frequency,” Gretchen explained, eyes unblinking.

  “I tell you, it’s always the quiet ones,” Mort said, as Santini whirled the truck around.

  “Where did this newfound ability come from?” Santini asked gingerly.

  “When T-Rex hugged me. It all came back. He used to use me to find his men out of time. He called it the Tesla-gene permutation; they all had it, he said. Only, he lied to me about what he was up to. I thought he was trying to protect them.”

  Santini asked, his voice strained, “How could you let yourself get used like that?”

  “Back then, my psychic abilities manifested by talking in my sleep,” she said. “He pumped me for information using the right hypnotic voice, and I never knew a thing. I never knew until I hugged him just a few minutes ago.”

  Santini noticed the color returning in his hands. “How is it you can access these abilities when awake in this lifetime?”

  “Look around you,” Gretchen said. “Our waking state and our dream state aren’t that far apart, anymore. It’s what allowed me to key in the frequency.” She still hadn’t blinked. She was staring, not at what was in front of them, but through the veil of time itself, Santini felt.

  As Santini observed the crop duster plane nose-diving into them, he found it hard to belittle the point about dream state and reality co-mingling uncomfortably.

  He fought to get the truck, not all that responsive—its gear box designed to drag heavy weight, not dodge plummeting planes—to respond in time.

  The plane exploded just to the rear of them. Neither sleeping resident in the back of the cab so much as stirred. Aala continued preparing her herbal mixtures, equally unfazed.

  “Past, present, future, co-mingling,” Mort said, eying what was left of the old biplane. “And now this, our dreams no longer separate from our waking states. This is a fine muddle you’ve got me in, Sister Gretchen. I, who am confused when they print the pages of the Daily Californian out of order by mistake, low budget enterprise that they are. Maybe God’s having to make some cutbacks of His own. Maybe this collapsing timeline, like the collapsed economy, is just part of the whole dearth of spiritual vigor in End Times.”

  “I think I prefer to contend with the Earth opening up before me over you explaining the nature of reality to me,” Santini said.

  Mort grunted, “You and I both.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  “You’ve got a headache?”

  Radon closed the first aid box hanging on the wall. It had been posted principally to minimize absenteeism due to sickness, which was more of a bottom-line concern than anything to do with compassion for the employees. He glanced at the nerdy man.

  “Nah, I’m planting a bomb.”

  “How does that work? They take the tablets, and become walking bombs. But then you can’t be sure when and where it’ll go off.” He returned his eyes to Radon, and focused them once again. “You’re joking, of course. Still, the clever idea seems worthy of attention. We might have to upgrade our security.” He extended his hand for Radon to shake. “Hi, I’m Veryl, chief of security.”

  “The bombs are designed to clear an entire floor. The only thing left will be the safes, rated to be blast proof. As to the bombs’ placement, inside the first aid boxes centrally placed on each floor, or someone who unwittingly takes the wrong packet of pills… It hardly matters. It’ll explode before the subject gets two steps from the first-aid box; seconds after contact with saliva or water.”

  “So you’ve solved the placement and the timing problem.” Veryl shadowed him as he raced up the stairs. “But what madman would kill so many people just to get at the safes’ contents when there’s no guarantee there’s anything in them?”

  Radon hesitated on the landing to the third floor. “You think he’s mad?”

  “Maybe just sociopathic. You’re right, mad doesn’t seem to do justice to the amount of genius involved.” Veryl grabbed his sleeve, keeping him from bolting through the door. “Forgive me, but who are you?”

  “Just someone passing his fifteen-minute break in a sociopathic fantasy, according to you.” Radon opened the door to the third floor with a swipe of his photo ID card.

  Veryl followed him, struggling to keep up. This was probably more cardio than he’d squeezed into the last thirty years. “Just how much time you giving yourself to pick over the safes before the cops and firemen and ambulances and bomb crew and whoever else gets here?”

  “God knows where the safe
s will land. Probably well-clear of the bombsite, I imagine. Should give me plenty of time.” Radon headed straight for the kitchen area with the first aid box. Evidently someone had decided most illnesses followed lunch, due to overeating, food-poisoning, spiking blood sugar... Gotta love those corporate bean counters with their determination to subject everything under the sun to analytics and pie charts.

  He opened the first aid box and slipped in the packet of generic aspirin he was carrying in his hand.

  “Forgive me, but how can a bomb the size of a pill take out an entire floor?”

  “A matter and anti-matter cocktail. Borrowed from the boys at Fermi. An ounce will take out an entire city.” Radon closed the door back on the first aid cabinet.

  “Mind if I tag along, while you scout out the safes, I mean?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, if this turns out to be a psychotic break, as opposed to an act of genuine genocide, I could use the poor man’s vacation in all honesty.”

  Radon was starting to like this guy. For a nervy, twitchy, pasty-faced geek, he had a sense of humor. Then again, who needed a sense of humor more?

  “That and, if the place does go up in smoke, we’ll definitely need to upgrade our psych-profiling.” Veryl addressed the curious look Radon was giving him. “In that skills-test you take to get hired is a psych-profile exam. Bet you didn’t know that? We try to be sneaky about it.”

  “Yeah, I’m big on sneaky. Okay, big guy. Let’s do this.”

  Radon adjusted his pace running down the stairwell to give Veryl a chance to avoid cardiac arrest. “Let me guess, you’re also head of HR, which makes psych-profiling a prominent concern.”

  “Nope. But he answers to me when it comes to security matters. Guess most everyone does, these days.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Can we take a break?” Veryl grabbed hold of him on the landing to the first floor.

  “I gather that’s a vote for psychotic break over sociopathic intent, being as an entire building is about to fall on our heads.”

  Veryl panted, wheezed, and placed his palms on his knees to brace himself. “I think it’s worth playing the odds, considering a heart attack is a pretty sure thing if I keep pushing.”

  Radon smiled. “You’re all right, Veryl, as tight-assed corporate types go.”

  He threw Veryl’s arm over his shoulder and allowed him to use Radon as a crutch in order to ease him out the door before he was ready.

  Once they were across the street, Veryl asked, “You sure this is far enough?”

  “Probably not, but I don’t think you’re going to make it one way or the other. You really need to ease up on those Ding Dongs, big guy.”

  “Tic-Tacs.”

  Radon laughed. “No shit. You built that body on Tic-Tacs?”

  “You talk about fanatical dedication, you decided light-weight.”

  Radon howled so hard, he had to support himself on his knees to catch his breath. “Oh God, here it comes. The moment of truth.” Radon looked up at SkyLabs. “Kaboom!”

  SkyLabs exploded with such hellacious intensity it was a miracle they were still standing when they opened their eyes again. Not that they could see much in the smoke and particulates floating about.

  “I’ll be darned.” Veryl picked up a construction worker’s helmet that had blown his direction and landed at his feet, donned it. “You got me, got me good.”

  “Little late for the hard hat.”

  Radon and Veryl broke out in mad laughter in two-part harmony. Their laughter turned to tears, it was coming out so hard. But Veryl’s tears had more to do with his sobering to the reality of the situation. He pulled his gun and leveled it at Radon.

  “Don’t look now, asshole, but you’re out of a job. Good luck getting another one with a track record like this. You need what’s inside those safes now even more than I do. So what’s say we get to it? Sociopathy isn’t as hard as all that. I’m guessing you’re a quick study.”

  It was a tense moment Radon could have done without.

  “Fifteen years in corporate America. Hell, yes.” Veryl holstered his gun in its nook on the inside of his jacket pocket.

  ***

  “That’s bloody inconvenient.” Radon studied the safe that had landed in a suburbanite’s second story roof.

  Veryl took his hard hat off as if at a funeral. “Great. Now we have to steal a fire-truck in order to steal the safe.”

  “You solve one problem, a hundred others take its place.”

  “I suppose we could use the money to donate to the families who lost their loved ones. Seems the right thing to do.”

  Radon glared at him. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Yeah, I guess that would be self-defeating.”

  “For a second there, I thought you were having the psychotic break.”

  ***

  Veryl drove the phone repair bucket truck onto the lawn. He’d hardly set the thing in park before he heard the gears turning, driving Radon, standing in the bucket, up to the safe wedged into the second story roof.

  “I suppose as thefts go,” Veryl mumbled, “this is more socially acceptable. The most we’re killing this time out is a couple hours of HBO service.”

  Veryl hopped out of the vehicle, put his hand up to shade his eyes from the sun as he studied Radon’s handiwork.

  Radon aimed what looked like a laser pointer at the safe, traced a circle around the top, then pulled off the slab of metal with a magnet grip. He stuffed the contents of the safe—wads of cash; bundles of bonds; and private papers holding corporate secrets that might be worth even more money, come time for blackmailing them, into the bucket.

  And he did so in less time than it took for Veryl to shake his head and say, “Unbelievable.” He cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted up to Radon. “Seems a shame to have this much style and not be the hero of the story.”

  Radon set the bucket in motion, whirred his way down to him. When he was all the way down, he released the lever. “You sure you didn’t get hit in the head by that explosion?” Radon asked. “I tell ya, I’d feel better if you did.”

  Radon and Veryl ferried the contents of the bucket into the cab one handful at a time.

  A couple minutes later, they were headed down the road. Veryl examined the contents of the safe, pulling uncomfortable wedges of paper from under his ass to take a closer look. “You up for blackmail?”

  “That was the idea all along. Who’d’ve thought those safes actually held money?”

  “I still say we’re better than this. You’re better than this.”

  Radon checked Veryl’s scalp; palpated his head with his fingers to make sure there were no gashes. “Nope. No physical damage. Must be more a weakness of character. A lack of backbone, something along those lines.”

  Veryl smirked, and morphed into Robin Wakefield. “I like you, Radon, but you’re racking up a lot of karmic debt. If I didn’t think you could save more souls than you’ve killed with the same master-strokes of genius, I’d just plain give up on you.”

  “Hey, what’s wrong with me? Snap out of it, Radon.” The apparition disappeared the next time he looked over. “Great, a psychotic break it was, after all.”

  He shifted gears. “Shake it off, Radon. A momentary lapse of higher purpose is all.”

  ***

  Robin came to at the side of a brook running through the Harding estate. Trout basked in a still pool right in the middle of the rapidly rushing stream, finding a place out of time for themselves as she’d just done with Radon, playing the part of Veryl. The fish did not seem disturbed by their slipping into another timeline, as she did.

  Muriel, one of the kitchen staff, drifted by her on a raft, her head separated from her torso, resting on her chest. Robin could offer no appropriate reaction. She felt too guilty over having been sufficiently preoccupied by the unholy distractions of modern life to have missed her opportunity to save Radon in this timeline. Not too long ago he’d been causing car a
ccidents just so he could fleece pocketbooks. He’d been put down by a SWAT commander named Perdue with a bullet to the forehead. Radon had evinced the same creative flair for crime, the same Renaissance spirit for visiting a kind of divine madness upon the world, even if it was in sore need of redirecting. She’d missed her chance to intervene then because her psychic abilities had not yet manifested, nor had her increasing attunement to the Renaissance types.

  Now, within the context of the neighboring timelines, Radon was just getting worse. His refusal to face his demons meant he’d get uglier and uglier until he did. You leaned into the moment with fear or love; you couldn’t do both. One road took you, by a succession of alternate realities, to hell, the other to heaven. As you got closer to either, the increased gravitational pull became harder and harder to overcome. Robin lamented not having the necessary psychic energy to pull Radon back from the abyss.

  If she could just learn to lighten up instead of indulging herself in these self-crucifixions out of guilt, a surefire sign that fear over failing at her life mission was now pushing out the love in her heart. She might have the psychic energy she needed to push on.

  Muriel strolled up to her, holding her head in her hand by the hair. Robin glanced up at the headless torso in order to appreciate the full effect. “This is my best gag, lady. You gotta give me something.”

  Robin stifled a smile.

  She returned her eyes to the fish in the river and the insulating pool keeping them from the flow of life whisking by at a frenetic pace.

  ***

  Muriel used her severed head as a lantern, the light shining out her eye sockets, as she navigated into the darkness of the woods bordering the stream.

  Toby, parked in the jeep nestled under the canopy of interlocking tree branches, lowered his binoculars. He regarded the severed head talking to him.

  “I don’t know what to do with her. Complete lost cause if you ask me.”