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

by Dean C. Moore

  Ezra added the gun shop card to the “keeper” stack, wondered about his motivations for doing so. “So, in the end, you need a sea of dumb, low achievers who you can bully and intimidate into doing anything you want, even at the cost of micromanagement, because, while not terribly serviceable to begin with, as it turns out, they can be built up, molded; they’re more compliant than the self-confident, opinionated middle class type. And this new underclass will only be around until they’re replaced by robotics and IVR software, which is already happening, probably in less time than it takes you to type in what I’m saying.”

  Ezra collated his two piles of business cards; they were threatening to capsize. “And the last man standing is the one percent, the über-smart or über-political, who can continue to stay ahead of the ascent of artificial intelligence a bit longer, but not much longer.”

  Restuffing his wallet with the “keeper” cards, he said, “So you see, we’re all screwed. We should all be building the kind of world in which we can be something besides victims of our own madness. But that requires visionaries, who went extinct some time ago. As it turns out, corporations with fascist business practices don’t have much need of them, either. I mean it takes twenty years to enact one good vision. Plenty of time for visionaries to starve for lack of work.”

  He stuffed his discard stack of business cards into the meshed pouch of the seat in front of him. “If we could get those visionaries to be entrepreneurs, small business people, then we might be off and running, but there’s no money for that. The fat cats sucked it all out of the system in their zeal to keep everyone in their place and dependent on them.”

  He tucked his wallet back into his rear pants pocket. “And lest I forget, it takes everyone agreeing to play the game a different way. Otherwise, the first business to implement ethical practices, big or small, will be crushed in a global economy by competitors hampered by none of that.”

  “You’ve got a healthy dose of loser psychology,” Grace said, referring to his well-argued defeatism. “It’s turning around. There’s health consciousness and health food creeping into all those groceries peddling death on a stick. There are green energy alternatives to Big Oil that those who care buy into; they’re the ones driving the Prius dotting the landscape.”

  He noticed with some satisfaction that she’d still typed all his insights into her article.

  “People are making a difference,” Grace professed adamantly, “and they’re making it by finding reasons to succeed despite the odds, instead of looking for one more reason to fail; to be reasonable, and just concede ‘game over.’ Maybe you need a kind of divine madness, and a willingness to adopt the NASA credo: Failure is not an option.”

  He laughed. “Maybe.” God, they weren’t even off the plane yet, struggling to stave off bugs that would eat them alive without mosquito netting and burn-sticks smoking through the night, and already he was pushing her away with a spoonful of the very aphrodisiac that had won her over in the first place. Maybe he was proving her thesis for her: If he wanted the world to change, he better start with himself, and his need to think making sense of the madness was some kind of defense against it.

  EIGHT

  “God, remind me why we’re here again?” Grace said, slapping the back of her neck to kill a mosquito not much smaller than the plane they just disembarked.

  They’d taken just enough steps away from the American Champion Scout bush plane to realize it wasn’t just a ride, it was a sanctuary from all this. And now, ejected from its belly, reality was setting in fast. The humidity wore like a soggy woolen blanket.

  “You’re investigating the shift in global consciousness to see if it’s evident even here—at the edge of the world.”

  Grace groused, “You used to sound erudite to me. Now you sound like an insufferable prig.” Evidently, impatience incubated well south of the equator.

  “It’s the humidity. I’ll try to think in shorter sentences, something our brains can still work with while bleeding out our ears.”

  “What got me on to documenting the emergence of this Renaissance age?” Grace asked, sounding convinced he was lying to her.

  “A street person in Berkeley. Said the second coming of Christ was not one person. It was the entire human race reaching up to embody Christ-consciousness in our darkest hour. You—fancying the logic that it is indeed darkest before the dawn—booked a ticket out here. In all fairness, you used the rest of the street scene in Berkeley to confirm something major was afoot.”

  “That sounds biased. Isn’t Berkeley the consciousness capital of the world?”

  “We had this argument, remember, on the plane ride over here? I lost. According to you, it may have started there, but now it’s everywhere. And those of us with an ounce of consciousness have to spread ourselves far and wide to ensure the tipping point pushes us beyond even Plato’s wildest imaginings, and not towards greater fascism.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m just not that smart, or that deep. In your heat-driven delirium, you have me confused with someone else.” Grace wiped her brow and flicked the bullets of sweat off her.

  Ezra confessed, “I admit, I spruced up your philosophy for you. It does seem to be why I’m along; to rescue you from the shallows of maudlin mental machinations.”

  “I hope I’m paying you enough.” She swatted another giant insect off her, and watched its body twitch on the ground. “God, I see why people eat insects down here. It isn’t openness to new ideas; it’s fucking revenge.”

  She strained the muscles in her face, perhaps to distract her from the heat-induced pressure on her brain. “That man coming towards us looks like he wants to eat us,” she said. She set her luggage down to focus on the tribal elder’s crazed eyes and pernicious peacock coloring.

  “Is that hungry-looking native why you put down the bags in the middle of the airstrip, so you can run?” Ezra glanced around to make sure incoming pilots weren’t looking to make future landings any easier by marking their trail with Ezra and Grace’s splattered remains.

  “I’m hoping I’ll look more delectable if I’m not straining.”

  “I’m assured the blood thins, and we will adjust to the heat and humidity over time. There’s no need to pull the ripcord just yet,” Ezra said, in his most reassuring voice, the one he usually saved for tantruming ten-year-olds.

  “Bring me up to date on these people in case I change my mind about defusing him.”

  “The good news is, the Yanomami are only endocannibals. Meaning they burn the dead bodies of their loved ones and stir the bones into their food in order to transfer their strength and spirit to themselves.”

  “Strange how reasonable that sounds.” Grace sounded surprised at how genuinely un-shocked she was by the report.

  “They live communally. Women on women sex is forbidden, if caught, punishment is usually death.”

  “But men on men sex is allowed, even encouraged?” Grace asked petulantly.

  “What can I say but that sexism takes many forms,” Ezra said.

  Ezra set down his bags. If he held them a second longer, he would have qualified for the Olympics strong man competition.

  The native was finally at their feet. He looked strangely feeble and athletic at the same time: his skin leathery, his physique lithe, his largely exposed skeleton, exaggerated by enlarged joints, giving him the armored look of a praying mantis.

  “We are excited to have you among our people,” he said. “I am Davi Kopenawa Yanomami.”10

  “Is your village far from here?” Ezra asked, shaking his hand.

  “The village I live in is called Watoriketheri. It is in the Mountains of the Wind.” He pointed to his village. It seemed to be located somewhere close to the moon, fighting for prominence in the sky against a naked sun no less covetous of attention.

  Grace’s plastic smile looked like the one thing that might hold up to the weather. “I think I may need some water.”

  The old man reached for a leather pouch against
his waist.

  Grace drank until she felt able to rejoin the conversation. Handing Davi back the water pouch, she inquired, “May I ask why you’re so pleased to have us?”

  Somberly, Davi said, “My Yanomami people see what is happening to our communities. They are terrified.”

  He picked up their bags for them and walked effortlessly, ignoring their gaping mouths. After a couple missed beats, Ezra and Grace hastened to flank him.

  Davi continued with his story. “The miners invaded our reserve and came to our communities feigning friendship; they lied to us, and we were taken in. Then their numbers grew; many more arrived, and they began bringing in machinery that polluted the river. The pollution killed the fish and the shrimp, everything that lived in our rivers.”

  Grace wept as Davi spoke. Ezra had never known her to be such an exposed nerve. Maybe it was another symptom of the tropical heat. Maybe it was her determination to save the world combined with her recognition of just how blind she was to what needed saving and why. As a journalist, she must have felt a responsibility to be more socially aware. Maybe her grief emanated as much from guilt, not just over her naiveté, but over a sense of hopelessness which Davi refused to share. She seemed to understand now that he couldn’t laugh under the weight he was carrying. It appeared he, too, was sporting his own wet woolen blanket on top of the one thrown on them by the humidity, an extra layer that should have killed him. It was a steep price to pay for not hiding from the truth.

  Having politely escorted their luggage to the edge of the landing strip, out of harm’s way of the landing planes, Davi just as politely left the bags there. It was a very brutal lesson in “letting go.” Evidently, they would travel from this point out on gumption alone. In any other circumstances the act might have elicited argument, but as it was, the logic of lightening their load, even to take the first step on their journey, far less the last, penetrated past the migraine barriers thrown up around their brains by the heat.

  ***

  Davi was quiet during their quest on foot into the mountains; he seemed to understand intuitively that the journey was arduous enough for bodies not conditioned for this degree of physical activity without his sad tale sapping the last life out of his visitors. Ezra was beginning to wonder if Olympic athletes were conditioned for the straight-uphill hiking, which Davi refused to let wear him down.

  As at peace with the silence as with the rain forest, when Davi did speak, it was usually to answer questions put to him. Ezra and Grace, too, appeared to be bathed in a greater sense of calm than either had known before; perhaps it was a matter of standing in Davi’s aura.

  Historically, if things were quiet too long, Grace would prod Ezra with questions, drowning the silence with the ensuing data dump. She didn’t play that game with Davi quite so much. As for Ezra, his mind was seldom so unclouded by deep and meaningful thoughts aimed at making sense of the human madness. His Herculean efforts to that end struck him as his own form of lunacy. Ancient Greek philosophers would have loved him; he may have been one in a past life. Maybe access to tropical rain forest hallucinogens would open the corridors of time to him, take him back to the days when he expounded at length on the nature of reality to eager listeners, unlike today, where the more common response was usually a yawn.

  The Yanomami were known for their hallucinogens. Ezra would have followed Grace to the ends of the Earth without such enticements, but he would also take what salves he could get.

  ***

  It slowly became apparent to Ezra that Davi’s sense of calm was as pragmatic as it was spiritual; it conserved his energy. Manuals on surviving the Amazon rainforest—which Ezra had boned up on as part of his lingering Boy Scout preparedness training—proclaimed that panic exhausted the body’s reserves as opposed to staying calm. So, don’t do it. Davi’s sense of calm, going beyond what any gringo was capable of, was a logical extension of scientific reasoning.

  Every so often Davi would take a machete to a certain kind of plant, and hold it out for Ezra and Grace to take a drink. It spewed water like a waterfall; they bathed their faces under it, let the water run over their shoulders and down their chests.

  When Ezra rolled up his sleeves in a desperate if futile attempt to escape the heat, without so much as an explanation, Davi rolled the sleeves down. Ezra realized only belatedly that he was trying to save both of them from scratches and insect bites that could take their lives in absence of the immunities Davi had built up over a lifetime and had inherited from generations of living in the rain forest. What’s more, his leathery skin performed double duty, making it a lot tougher for insects to drill through, while freeing up his limbs to move more nimbly through the jungle.

  Davi pointed to the mats of insects, like patches of fog drifting over the land. Later he pointed to a bee’s nest easily the size of a VW Beetle. “Insects indicate water nearby. Bees seldom go more than two miles from a large body of water.” Their guide was wasting no time on instructing them on survival. As a professional student of life, Ezra was pleased. Grace seemed to enjoy the National Geographic pointers that might well work their way into an article for the magazine. But Ezra’s mind keyed to the more sober rationales for the jumpstart on their education. Trying to navigate this dense jungle without knowing the landmarks, without having spent the time here and developed the kind of eidetic memory for such things, the way Ezra’s mind held on to philosophical dictums, all it would take is lifting their eyes off their guide for a few seconds to be forever lost. Death would follow a short while later, closing up around them like the dense foliage closed out the sun. The jungle, teeming with life, also meant the strongest alone survived; most of the plants were every bit as capable of doing them in as a wild boar.

  Ezra had seen to it he wore rubber jungle boots, and Grace, waterproof shoes. He also toted in his backpack plastic bags to wrap their feet before putting on their shoes. He kept an eye on his feet and Grace’s, in case either of them got wet, recalling from his reading never to wear wet socks. Over time, chronic moisture led to tissue breakdown and left feet vulnerable to fungus and other infections. He could thank Costa Rica Rainforest Outward Bound for that little chestnut. Still, for all his homework, it had taken Davi all of thirty minutes to erode his cockiness.

  They’d already be dead if it weren’t for him. They couldn’t have packed enough water for this journey with a dozen Sherpas.

  ***

  They had made their way through the jungle for five days en route to the Yanomami village. Heading downhill in the jungle led to water and to civilization, Ezra recalled from the many survival tips he’d stuffed his brain with. He had long given up on any idea of ever heading downhill. Wherever Davi’s tribe was, it was among the clouds.

  Davi led them over a log rather than allowing them to wade across the river. He dropped a beef jerky strip in the water to make a point. The piranha devoured it in a jumping frenzy, that from their up-close perspective, made Ezra feel as if they were shooting a shark documentary.

  Included as part of the sightseeing, Davi pointed out: boa constrictors, and the anaconda big enough to swallow one of them whole; the jaguars; the poison arrow frogs. Ezra knew of these dangers from his reading, but still did not have the eyes to see them as Davi did, or the ability to think quickly enough to get around them.

  These weren’t exactly harbingers of hope.

  NINE

  The Yanomami village lay on the border between Venezuela and Brazil. It was built like a football coliseum, one extended oval. The “bleachers” were shielded from the rain by a thatched roof. Families slept in the sheltered sections, separated only by posts, and interacted in the uncovered commons in the center of the oval. The Yanomami clearly took their communal living very seriously.

  Upon arrival, Ezra and Grace found themselves being caressed and patted down by swarming prehensile limbs as if swimming headlong into a school of squid. It took them a while to realize they were being stroked for a reason, to relieve their aching muscles and
restore flexibility to their stiff and sore bodies. The women carted Grace off overhead, in a maneuver Ezra had only witnessed formerly at rock concerts, and shortly thereafter, the men did the same with him. The natives’ speaking in Xirinian, curiously, helped cushion the transition to their alternate reality; the banter blended seamlessly with the breeze and the birdsong.

  Ezra and Grace spent the next few hours being massaged into an altered state of consciousness from which they hoped never to be separated again. From there, they drifted off into still dreamier states, from within which, lucidity was surprisingly sharper than ever. It was as if a veil had been lifted between their physical mundane world, and the spirit world. More than that, as if, in fact, the spirit world comprised numerous dimensions enfolded within spacetime, concomitant with it. And all it took was for the crystal of the mind to be polished and focused in order to diffuse the white light into the rainbow of higher realities, each more dense and full of life than what the white light alone could reveal.

  Were these ancestors of the villagers speaking to them from beyond the grave? Crying out for salvation on behalf of their descendants? Working to untie the knots in Ezra and Grace’s reasoning about the nature of life in a way that Davi alone could not do? Seeing into their minds beyond Davi’s abilities? Paying the steep price as he did of the limited perception that comes from being incarnate in a physical body? Especially one so out of tune with the true nature of things, with the white light that masked the rainbow. Although, just possibly, that was the secret of the Yanomami: they retained their connection to the rainbow of alternate realities about them from within their waking state. Ezra would set himself to testing that hypothesis on awakening, assuming he was not now more awake than ever, while strangely so out of it.