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

by Dean C. Moore

  “Chukkers?” Robin said. After a brief period riding the cresting wave of her Eurospeak, British English was back to sounding like a foreign language.

  “A polo match lasts about one and one-half hours and is divided into timed periods called chukkers. There are six chukkers in a polo match. Each chukker is seven minutes long. A bell is rung to indicate thirty seconds remain in the chukker. A horn sounds to terminate the chukker. Breaks between chukkers are three minutes long, with a five minute halftime.”8

  “You should consider life as a sports announcer,” Robin said. “Your approach is a bit dry and no-nonsense, but quite authoritative.”

  “I moonlight from the car, which doubles as a sound-booth during my broadcasts, with the cloth roof up, of course. It’s my fallback position in case cars get any smaller, and my next lord is less given to antiques. A radio-announcer’s booth overlooking the sea will provide for the perfect balance between my claustrophobia and agoraphobia.”

  “I see your strategic thinking goes far afield of polo.”

  To their immediate left, also watching the polo tournament in progress, was Drew, flanked by his mother to the left of him, and his grandmother to the right of him. In their growing restlessness, their conversation was growing interesting. Robin allowed Toby to slip away into his magazine, as she switched her focus to the family Grimm.

  “These Arabs, brown skinned peasants, all of them,” Ernestina said, watching how they muscled one another out of the way as much as they did the opposition. “This is why you don’t give poor people money. They squander it, and civilization is reduced to sand castles that wash away with the rising tide.” Robin figured that comment was solicited by the Arab whose horse and mallet had grazed Ernestina as he strayed over the line, causing her to spill her bourbon into the grass.

  “There’ll be a solar flare any moment, blinding the whole lot of them,” Lady Harding said, and sipped her gin. “I saw it in a vision this morning when I was getting out of bed.”

  Robin heard Drew uncomfortably shift his weight in his chair, his patience wearing thin, just six minutes into the match. Robin leaned forward so she could see him better in her peripheral vision to lend moral support.

  A group of the Arabian sportsmen rode the line with their horses and mallets too closely. “Which one of these savages is your husband?” Ernestina asked, after recoiling from the grass and mud flying at her.

  “The one with the beak a toucan would envy,” Lady Harding said. “I think you can see it from here. I rely on his other protruberance to pound me into unconsciousness in the first five seconds so I don’t have to be awake for the rest.” Robin had been briefed by Drew that her loud moaning to the contrary was a strictly out of body experience. Driven into an NDE state by the prince, she controlled her orgasms while floating over her comatose figure like a ventriloquist, making it moan for her.

  “I always had to wear the dick for your father,” Ernestina said. “They didn’t make prostheses all that well in his day. The damn strap-on phallus nearly broke my back. I’m surprised you opted for traditional sex, seems so bourgeoisie.”

  “Kinkiness skips a generation in this family,” Lady Harding said, “which is why you should treasure that sex-changing daughter of ours.”

  “Men are less trouble. There’s no denying it,” Ernestina confessed. “Of course, this complicates the line of inheritance. God help us if he gets a good lawyer.”

  “He’s sitting right beside you, mother,” Lady Harding said.

  “Nonsense, that’s the stable boy.” Ernestina looked over at Drew to confirm. “We had a little fling this morning before heading out to the green.”

  “If I may be permitted to speak from my new position as stable boy,” Drew said.

  “You may not.” Lady Harding fanned herself. “I raised you to lie, cheat, and steal, not act like a commoner by speaking your mind.”

  “Sorry, mother. I’ll be sure to make a big show of killing myself before the help, later.”

  “That’s better.” Lady Harding eased up on the fan. “I keep a set of dull knives in the kitchen drawer. Make sure the cook understands it’s your turn to get histrionic. She can be quite territorial.”

  Robin observed Drew put his head in his hands and weep. “I just don’t think he has the stomach for behavior mod,” Robin said to Toby.

  “Behavior mod?” Toby asked.

  “Behavior modification.”

  “I thought you meant behavior modern.” Toby turned another page on his Science as Culture magazine.

  “Was that sarcasm? I suppose, under the circumstances, a growing viciousness is therapeutic.” Robin was finding that absently regarding the polo match was a thin shield against the Harding family madness, but a shield all the same.

  “This can’t be good,” Lady Harding said, regarding the planes overhead, and the electrical surges rippling around them.

  Shortly thereafter, the planes, acting as catalysts for the storm, sent bolts of lightning from the agitated clouds tearing through the polo match and the spectators on the sidelines.

  “What is it?” Ernestina said, holding on to her hat.

  “The end of the world, Mother,” Lady Harding explained.

  Ernestina replied thoughtfully, “Are we dressed for that?”

  “We certainly brought the right amount of liquor.” Lady Harding watched the latest lightning bolt paint a swath across the canvas of the front lawn.

  “Drew, get in the damn car!” Robin shouted.

  “Don’t take that end-of-world attitude with me,” Drew said.

  “It’s the self-evolving algorithms. They’ve found us. They’re sure as hell not here for your mother.”

  Drew jumped in the vehicle. “Just my luck, your side of the family is the one that attracts the lightning bolts.”

  “Where to?” Toby asked, already planted in the driver’s seat. He had the engine humming nicely under the crackle of lightning.

  “Can this thing outrun those planes?” Robin asked.

  “It’s a 1931 Mercedes S-class,” Toby said. “Of course.”

  “I recommend a tree lined avenue to minimize on direct lightning strikes to the car,” Robin said. Toby floored it.

  ***

  Ten minutes later the car lay broken down by the side of the road, smoldering from a direct hit of lightning.

  Only one craft remained overhead, a stealth fighter circling too low for its stealth capabilities to be of much use. Most likely, the pilot flying it was doing everything he could to override the controls, to no avail.

  “What’s it up to?” Drew said, staring at the plane.

  “It’s beaming a mind ray straight into my head.” Robin rubbed her temples, and winced from the pain.

  “Oh yeah? Can I get one for my mother?” Drew asked. After realizing Robin’s suffering was genuine, he softened, took her more seriously. “Why isn’t it affecting Toby and me?”

  “The self-evolving algorithms are very precise with the frequencies they can lock in. I recognize the signs. This is the mental meltdown effect Hartman triggered in me not so long ago.”

  “We’ve got to get you out of here,” Drew said.

  “No, this is perfect,” Robin said, after relaxing into it.

  “Perfect? This is your worst nightmare.”

  “Once upon a time, maybe.” Robin grimaced from the pain. “But until I can learn to trigger these states better on my own, I’ll take whatever crutch I can get.”

  “What do you mean ‘on your own?’” Drew’s voice dropped an octave.

  “Hartman was pure serendipity. The world we live in today can only be seen as it truly is from a state of mental meltdown. I wasn’t joking about taking a tour through the DSM-IV. I can turn this against them. The longer the attack goes on, the more of the seamy underbelly of life I can expose. They’re giving me the eyes to see.”

  Drew shook her, evidently intent on killing the pain signal to her head by snapping her neck. “I won’t risk you losing it once
and for all. It’s not worth the danger.”

  “Without the proper tools to come up against the growing sentience of the Internet, I can’t match wits with Mother. She can write algorithms to simulate any personality she desires, and play those personalities off one another to her heart’s content for big picture scenarios we otherwise can’t begin to guess at.

  “I need to merge with the Godhead more deeply than ever before in order to identify the happenings that will draw Mother’s attention. I still may not be able to guess at the ensuing stratagems she might roll out to deal with them and to corral humanity in a direction that suits her. But at least we’ll still be in the game.

  “What’s more, without this Godsend, forget Mother, we won’t even be able to stave off the men in black.”

  Drew sighed. “This isn’t logic, this is you giving in to your martyr complex, your need to play rescuer. It’s what brought us together in the first place, you saving me from self-destructive habits nurtured in this hell hole.” He pointed to his estate, still nearby.

  “This is not self-transcendence, as you make out,” Drew said. “This is self-indulgence. And I won’t see you succumb to the quicksand pit of past behaviors any more than you were willing to sit idly by and watch me do the same.”

  “If you’re right, my Higher Self will intervene, and bring the entire house of cards down on my head.” Robin rubbed her temples, trying to find a rhythm that soothed the pulsing pain in her head. “It would never have allowed me to lose it so badly the first time if it didn’t want me to make these realizations for myself.”

  “And what if it can’t get through to you any better than I can?” Drew said.

  “Then the insights into the nature of reality won’t be worth a damn, being ego-driven and not facilitated by the union with God, with the divine ground that is the eye of the tornado.”

  “You’re not incorrigible! You’re impossible!” Drew shouted.

  “We’re on,” Toby said into his cell phone, his hand cupped over the receiver to shelter his voice from the wind. Drew could hear the thunderous applause and wild shouts on the other side of the phone. “Sorry,” Toby said, closing the flip. “We have a lottery running on Robin. I, of course, have bet on her to survive the meltdown.”

  “Against all odds,” Drew said. “I suppose we all have to find creative ways to fund our retirement.”

  Drew jumped out of the car with a violent roar, kicked the ground, and exposed rich black earth beneath the grass. He turned to face Robin. “We have no way of verifying if your biting insights into humanity are any more than the latest paranoid delusions.”

  “Yes, we do,” Toby said. Drew regarded him queerly.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Robin said. “He’s part of the underground railroad here in England. Men in black are a specialty, as is the rising sentience of the Internet, which they are taking provisional credit for.”

  “That’s just bloody marvelous.” Drew emitted another primal scream. “How could I think for a second there was any deranged outlook on the world the Harding estate couldn’t absorb into itself without breaking stride?”

  When Drew had coaxed Robin to relax out of her goal seeking behavior of chasing after Renaissance men to see more of the world in its true form, this wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. He hadn’t figured she’d expand her circle beyond humanity itself to include the Godhead. He should have guessed she’d overshoot the mark, as always. God forbid anyone in this family do anything in moderation.

  RENAISSANCE 2.0 BOOK 4

  “Into the Godhead”

  CHARACTER LIST

  LEADS

  Robin Wakefield

  Drew Harding

  Clay Hartman

  MAJOR ENSEMBLE

  Mort Willis

  Sergio Santini

  Gretchen Sharper

  Perdue

  Purnell

  MINOR ENSEMBLE

  Iona Pax

  Cliff Masters

  Piper Shiftly

  Seriana

  Grace Addley

  Ezra Middleton

  Davi

  Aala Freed

  Milton Freed (“Coma Man”)

  Fabio

  Johnny

  Phoenicia

  Cristo

  Ardel

  Alexis

  Maya

  (Harding Estate regulars)

  Lady Harding

  Ernestina Chadwick

  Toby

  Aart

  Frumpley

  Aggie

  Minerva

  Thornton

  Irene

  Dyspepsia

  Winsome

  Wilder

  Muriel

  (men in black)

  Pontius

  Rufus

  (European Underground)

  Alexandra

  Boyd

  Adrienne

  Brandon

  (Ermies and his street urchins)

  Ermies Paragon

  Bespellion

  Aaron

  Jaap

  (down and out theater people)

  Rupert

  Rake

  CAMEOS

  Rodin

  Dogan

  Darby Gillis (Map Man)

  Abbas

  Asad

  “Benjamin Decker”

  “Chaplin”

  “Greta Gelding”

  “Dimitri Cordova”

  “Merek”

  “Carac”

  “Gloriana”

  Femmy

  Tinker Bell

  Felicia Winthrope

  Elsu

  Adsila

  Aiyanna

  Stan

  Lorena

  Thor

  Sonny

  Norman Welling

  Brutus

  Katia

  Skyhawk

  Festus

  (Ermies and his street urchins)

  Armageddon

  Juriel

  Suzie Six Toes

  (down and out theater people)

  Dreyfus Bowing

  Lucy

  Marnie

  (Harding Estate guests)

  Lord and Lady Harding

  The Oswald triplets

  (Circus people)

  Shrink Wrap

  Strong Man

  Carmine

  Vanessa (The Bearded Lady)

  BIT PLAYERS

  All other named characters

  ONE

  Drew watched the plane circle the mansion a few more times, then pried himself away from the window. “You’d think the thing would have to refuel itself some time,” he grumbled.

  “It’s being refueled in midair,” Toby explained from the seat of the convertible roadster parked in the second story bedroom. Dragging it up the stairs was more manageable than one of the 1930s limousines. Whoever came up with the “live and let live” concept was from a family of addicts, Drew thought, regarding him. For anyone else it was just too exhausting.

  Robin, in the thick of the latest meltdown, droned on, her tone betraying how morbidly depressed she was. “They’re mining space to give them a leg up on the rest of the Milky Way. Already they have outposts on every planet in the solar system. They’re using self-assembling robots for everything, from harvesting asteroids and comets to habitat construction and expansion of the colonies.”

  “Is she being psychic, paranoid and delusional, or just suicidally depressed with schizoid features?” Toby asked.

  “Rest assured, it’s all of the above,” Drew said. “She’s probably having to economize on time by multitasking the wackos clamoring for space inside her head. Best way to keep up with the pressure of psychoanalyzing Mother.”

  Toby clutched the steering wheel as a security blanket. “I never had room in my head for more than two neuroses at a time.”

  “What she’s describing, it’s a good twenty, thirty years into the future. It has to be.” Drew paced, unraveled his cigarettes, and just chewed on the tobacco inside
. “She’s got to be gazing into the future.”

  “It does sound precocious by European Union standards. But I’ll look into it.” Toby grabbed his iPhone, keyed away. “You never know. It’s possible—”

  Robin filled in the rest for him, speaking in a morbid monotone, as she picked away at the wallpaper. “They’re keeping the entire operation out of the media for fear of igniting still more civil unrest. The People’s Movement protests have spread to every city in the world; they’re not looking to swell the crowds further.” She continued to pick absently at the flaking floral design. “Too many are upset the funds aren’t being spent on the half of the world that is starving, and they’re just not high functioning enough to grasp the technologies needed to save them will come from the space program.” The rift in the wall she’d opened up was starting to look eerily symbolic of the tear in reality she was creating in Drew’s mind. “They also don’t want widespread panic. Their reason for jumping the gun with the space program, after all, is the number crunchers have already determined the likelihood of Earth surviving any number of calamities earmarked to befall it even a few years out is vanishingly small.”

  As Drew diverted Robin away from the wall, she continued to talk as if from a trance, not blinking, her eyes focused on some invisible horizon. Like any good séance mediator between this world and the netherworlds, she remained entirely responsive to the questions placed before her by the “seekers” themselves. “Last but not least is the fact that there’s only time to construct lifeboats for the rich and famous that—once launched—will be supplied by the outposts scattered throughout the solar system.” She stroked the bedpost as if only by exciting Satan’s phallus could she expect the flow of information to continue to be this good. “There won’t be enough time to save the multitudes before the next calamity strikes. Elitist agendas are the last thing the top one percent needs to advertise now that the ninety-nine percent is reaching for their throats.”

  “You’re right about one thing,” Toby said, “the crazier she sounds, the saner she sounds, like she’s the only one who really gets it.”