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

by Dean C. Moore

  The remaining whalers didn’t need an encore performance to drive the point home.

  They rowed feverishly towards the giant whaling ships, all three of them. Some jumped in the water and free-stroked back, feeling no desire to wait for the row boats to pick up enough steam under waning muscle power, thanks to bodies sapped by fear.

  Victor found it disconcerting Cristo could remain down this long.

  The big picture came into focus moments later. The bastard was just waiting for enough of them to get aboard the mother ships to feel a false sense of assurance.

  Cristo emerged out of the water, levitated, his hands held wide like Christ the Redeemer, the back muscles flexed into a V-shape like a cobra’s head. His legs pressed together and toes pointed as if he had had prior dance training and was playing to the cameras. Come to think of it, most of this probably was being filmed, if not by the ship’s security cameras, then by someone below deck with a cell phone and access to a portal. When was anyone not being filmed? So maybe there was a method to Cristo’s madness. Superheroes had to look “all that” after all, if they expected public support.

  Cristo emitted lasers from his eyes, effectively sawing the mother ship in two.

  By the time he had ascended into the sky above the ship, both ends of the ship were headed below the water.

  God, I hope someone is capturing this on film, Victor thought. Oh, shit, I think that’s the sidekick’s job, Victor. Leastways, when he gets back you can have something to say for yourself besides “I know you’re delirious on hate hormones, but please don’t kill me.”

  He grabbed a video camera out of one of the many tote bags lying around deck, there more for ready access to energy drinks, smokes, and Evian bottles to help the crew power through the arduous work of butchering whales on deck.

  He started filming, but had trouble keeping his eye to the camera, not wanting the smudged viewfinder coming in between him and the HD rendering his unencumbered eyes provided.

  For Cristo’s next stunt, he dove from his aerial perch high above the water under mother ship two.

  Once again Victor waited. Okay, buddy, get to the punch line. These are You Tube fanatics we’re talking about here. Attention span: zero.

  Victor watched as Cristo flew the ship up and out of the water. He gulped. All right, I’m getting that he draws his strength from the water, like Poseidon, but really? I mean, how much do you get from water, Victor? You can barely bench press an extra twenty pounds fully hydrated.

  Victor observed Cristo angle the ship he was now dangling precipitously overhead toward his own ship, and cock his arms as if he was preparing to use it as a missile. “Not cool, buddy. I’m the cameraman and beloved sidekick. Oh shit! This is going as well as the last hundred times you didn’t listen to me.”

  Cristo let go of the ship. Victor dove overboard—backward—so he could get the shot of the century from a slightly better angle relative to his survival.

  Some seconds later, Victor surfaced and wiped his eyes. “I got all wet for this? What am I supposed to do with this origami you’ve got going here?” He gulped. Oh, not to worry, Victor.

  Cristo flew through the wall of the first mother ship that was supporting the weight of the second mother ship overhead.

  “Did you just tear through metal like butter? I never read any Submariner comics where he could do anything like that. Try to keep it realistic, pal.” Victor flinched at the sound of explosions below deck. “Oh, I get it, you were thinking of me and the shot of the century. Damn considerate of you.” Anticipating where that blast was headed, he said, “Now if you could just fly me out of harm’s way in the nick of time! Not to sound like a nag or anything.” That hull wasn’t going to contain those explosions below deck a moment longer. “God, I hope he has supersonic hearing to go with the rest of the skill set.”

  Both ships exploded in front of his camera, held overhead, as he kept his arm in front of his eyes for protection.

  The next thing Victor knew, he was being lifted out of the water and away from the blast radius, the camera still running. Let’s hope that was his beloved friend doing the flying, and not the Grim Reaper.

  Watching the rising flames and plumes from overhead, Victor writhed ineffectively against the superbeing that had him in his grip. “What is it with hanging me by my ears? I’m really not a déjà vu kind of guy, not when we’re talking about revisiting these kinds of memories.” He looked on as both mother ships sank. “Great. Look, pal, you may not need a boat, but I do. And those row boats down there—forget about it. I can’t row on account of my bursitis, and that bad disc in my lower back.”

  He didn’t like the look Cristo was throwing him. “Still in killer gear, I got you. I’ll wait until you’re in a more accommodating frame of mind to whine and carry on, because it’s clearly about everyone getting a chance to do their thing.”

  Dangling from Cristo’s clenched fist, Victor felt like bait on a hook. With such a fate in mind, he fell asleep rather than ponder the future.

  ***

  When Victor awoke, Cristo was dropping him off on Archer’s boat. The two had gotten separated after a collision with a whaler had thrown them overboard, leading to their subsequent capture by the bad guys. At least that’s how Victor remembered it. He couldn’t be sure he just wasn’t caught up in a lucid dream pursuant to drifting aimlessly at sea for days on end, dehydrated and sunbaked—as was often the case with their kind.

  Victor watched Cristo fly off. He waved the high-def video camera in front of Archer by way of an explanation. “You want some motivation for those Japanese vessels to leave these whales to fuck alone? I think I have just the ticket.”

  “Did I just see what I thought I saw?”

  “I’ll let the thousand eighty horizontal lines of resolution do the talking. Expect to replay this a few times before the ‘new normal’ cuts past all the denial.”

  ***

  Cristo flew back in the direction of the pod of decimated whales, wondering if it was telekinesis he was using to get him there. All he had to do was think about it, and he could do most anything he wanted.

  The blood still hadn’t dissipated from the water when he arrived.

  The healthy whales were screaming nearly as loudly as the dying whales from the frustration of trying to keep their injured loved ones alive. They kept unproductively nosing them to the surface.

  He descended toward the water.

  Once below the surface, he telekinetically ejected the harpoons. He put his hands up to the whales and, with energy emitted from his hands, his entire body glowing like a deep sea life-form, he healed their wounds.

  The next step: erase the traumatic memories.

  Swimming along their surfaces, he kept sucking the hellish images out of the whales. He used his palm chakras the way leeches used their mouths to suck blood, only they were keyed to another lifeforce entirely, one more ethereal.

  The holocaust scene all but erased, he played with the whales in the aftermath.

  As they breached, they batted him from one of their tail fins to the other, using him as a volleyball in their netless game.

  They took him for a ride on their noses, straight up and into the air. They let him hover overhead in the air just so their teammates could splash him by belly-flopping themselves along their entire lengths.

  He had the time of his life sharing in their gaiety, knowing he was the cause of it.

  ***

  When Cristo came back into the moment, the Alaskan ice storm still threatened, closer now, and the Lady in Red still hovered before him, making him wonder if everything that had played out in his head had transpired over a matter of minutes instead of hours.

  “So what, I have to worship the lady of the winds, light candles, say prayers, and you will bestow these powers upon me?”

  “We don’t achieve greatness by worshipping false gods. We achieve it by leaning into our fears, by embracing our demons, and learning the lessons they have for us. We see
our crosses as blessings in disguise. And most of all, we act as if our true nature were divine, because it is.”

  “A lot of what I did in that joy ride through the future was anything but holy.”

  “Morphing from man into superman isn’t for everybody. I suppose the path is fundamentally more Taoist in nature; it was a Taoist who gave us acupuncture and taught the first Zen masters how to channel chi energy to function as gods. Yoda, and the Jedi knights of Star Wars, use their methods. Others would do better to choose a path of humility. By tying their hands and embracing their mortal limitations, and leaving to God alone to pass His paintbrush across the big canvas, they will find the divine instead in myriad small ways. They will lead dull, comparatively inconsequential lives, and will arrive at enlightenment all the faster for it.”

  “Something tells me I’m cut from the same cloth as you, and that’s why you were drawn to me.”

  “You should be forewarned, as self-transcendence goes, my path is the most dangerous path of all.”

  “So be it.”

  The Lady in Red vaporized before his eyes.

  The storm was kicking into high gear finally. Maybe it was time to crawl inside his tent and forget about how far his anger could take him against nature’s fury.

  There’d be time enough for that later.

  SIX

  Perdue and his posse drove the SWAT truck along the last of the dirt road leading to the logging operation in the Amazon rain forest. The ZAPPER trailed behind the lead truck; it was the repurposed sanitation vehicle being used to disappear and dematerialize human bodies, which they’d repossessed from thieves running one very creative car theft ring. Both vehicles braked in unison. The men inside jumped out.

  Purnell took one look at what was going on and needed to be restrained; Perdue grabbed his arm, and yanked him back. “Now who’s the yard dog just dying to be unchained? Get ahold of yourself.”

  In Perdue’s pincer grip, Purnell wasn’t going anywhere, so he figured he may as well settle down. He was so worked up, moreover, he was starting to black out.

  “I got this.” Widget hiked down the slope from the road, thus sacrificing a better angle on the action vis-à-vis the giant deforestation vehicles. But he put himself within range.

  Purnell couldn’t believe his beloved John Deere had a hand in any of this, but they did make quality gear, including that forest killer he was eyeballing. A little more mud splatter and the John Deere logo would have been entirely covered.

  Widget telekinetically took control of the harvester with the pincers meant for grabbing trees and cutting them off at the base. He swung the arm around and sent the pincers at the trailer with the security personnel, capsized it, and blocked any hope of exit.

  He then sent the pincers through the windshield of the guy running the hydraulic harvester that picked up the felled trees, stripped of branches, and loaded them onto flat bed trucks.

  He ripped the guy through the windshield of the cab, held him aloft in the pincers, then tossed him in front of the Kobelco dirt mover leveling the road to free up access to more forest. It was a quick burial.

  Widget’s next little mental exercise involved directing the pincers at the loggers on the ground, unprotected by the exoskeletons of any of the logging machines. One by one, he flung them into the In-Woods Chipper. The caws of the crows and other vultures flying overhead masked his victims’ outcries. The birds, summoned by the dead animals which hadn’t had time get out of the loggers’ way, were only too happy to be distracted by the human body parts coming their way.

  “Enough, Perdue. You’ve made your point. Stop already,” Purnell pleaded. He’d watched enough working-class slobs bite the bullet to exorcise his rage. Now his bleeding heart had shifted focus.

  “Sorry, no can do.”

  Purnell glared at Perdue as if his acid gaze might be enough to melt his resolve. He got as far as he usually did coming up against him directly. “Not even you are this much of a sadist.”

  “It’s a practical matter.” Perdue assessed the field of action as he talked. “I need to see how long he can go before his powers fade. It’s a test each of us’ll be sitting soon enough. Lest you forget, Widget is the only one who can make gadgets sing for him. I need to know exactly how far I can push him.”

  “And by extension, me, I’m guessing. You bastard.”

  “God, it’s like old times. Love me or hate me, just not both in the same day. It makes my head spin.” Perdue pulled out a stick of double mint gum and chewed it, perhaps to get the taste of aerosolized humans out of his mouth. Purnell couldn’t imagine the scent of pine mulch did much to antagonize him.

  Purnell returned his attention to Widget, who took control of one of the bulldozers and heaped the dirt in its giant maw onto a fleeing screaming logger. But it was Purnell who felt buried alive.

  Chew Toy, so nicknamed because he was forever befriending animals and distracting them with chew toys, which came in handy to get around attack dogs, decided to implicate himself in the scene with the loggers. He was a Native American with a far different attitude toward nature, and so was undoubtedly anxious to jump into the action.

  A flock of ravens descended on one of the loggers who probably found it challenging enough to dodge the big rigs, spinning wildly out of control, without having to duck killer birds. Each time he knocked the birds off, there was less of him.

  He was soon staggering, absent a lot of skin and musculature.

  After the birds had settled on him for a third time, he was still alive, though no longer able to move. One of them must have severed his spine. His vocal chords continued to work just fine.

  “Sorry, boss. I should have awaited my cue.”

  “You’re in it now, Chew Toy.” Perdue sounded only slightly annoyed. “Keep at it. We need to test your endurance, too.”

  When Purnell returned his attention to the killing field, male deer and moose with giant racks were chasing down loggers, intent on skewering them. They met with intermittent success, as did the panthers and crocodiles coming out of nowhere, drawn by Chew Toy’s psychic magic.

  “I’ll have to keep this trick in mind for when the boys could use a break from the fighting,” Perdue said. “The animals make pretty good back up.”

  The security contingent managed to free itself from the upturned trailer at last; they crawled out the windows like bees from a thwacked nest.

  “Go Long, you got this?” Perdue said. Go Long was their sniper, who could drop a guy at a mile out, favorable winds or not.

  “Yeah, I got this.” Go Long maneuvered himself into position with his high tech rifle.

  Purnell stepped towards Perdue. “That’s a lot of time trials to run at once. How many stopwatches you got?” Perdue ignored him. Purnell realized his griping wasn’t contributing anything useful, not even reining the men in any, from what he could see.

  Go Long took the scope off his target, angled his rifle’s muzzle forty-five degrees away, then fired.

  The ricocheting bullet followed a complex trajectory only Isaac Newton could explain. The mark kept running after his head exploded from impact with the shell.

  “Nice.” Perdue explained himself to Purnell to help soften the grimace on his face. “If they can’t tell what direction the shot came from, they can’t very well take out the shooter, can they?”

  Go Long took out a couple more of the befuddled security team using the same methods before they got a lock on Perdue and the team on the hill, and bore down on them with their weapons.

  Perdue stopped any of their bullets from reaching them by throwing up a force field, using the energy-channeling Robin had taught him.

  The shooters, seeing what was what, even if they couldn’t explain it, took up better cover. Not that it helped them against Go Long’s bullets, which could find any trajectory needed to get to them. He could fire looking into their eyes, and have the bullet land in the back of their heads.

  Purnell bent over and heaved. He pulled hims
elf up by grabbing hold of Perdue’s arm, in time to see the man coming toward him, mumbling, “Help me!” Blood bubbled out of his mouth as he continued to wrestle with the deer that had impaled him on its rack.

  “Sure,” Perdue said. He grabbed the impaled man’s shoulder, and turned him to ash with the current he could send through his body. “You see, Purnell. I can remain a humanitarian, even in the thick of things. You worry for nothing.”

  Purnell bent over and threw up what was left in his stomach.

  Perdue grunted. “I’m dying to know what went through your mind come time to choose careers. He blew his nose, unfavorably eyed the aerosolized humans in the handkerchief. “Takes me back to 9/11. You weren’t there helping to rescue people, were you, Purnell? I was. There, one more thing to feel guilty about. Can’t believe you haven’t hit your quota for the day yet.”

  Purnell noticed the tone change in Perdue’s voice before he could finish getting out his last dig. He looked up to see Widget hightailing it out of the line of fire. Apparently his powers had failed him. He was now a sitting duck, even on the run, for the remaining marksmen.

  “You might want to hurry up over there, Go Long,” Perdue coaxed. “Or Widget might take offense.”

  Go Long’s ability to calculate trajectories failed him, forcing him to target his marks the old fashioned way, which also greatly limited the ones he could get at from his position. Perdue picked up on this without him having to say anything.

  “God damn it. You want a job done right…” He extended his hand in the direction of the loggers and reduced the field to flames with a sweep of his hand, left just a bubble around Widget so he could finish getting home to the rest of the group. The ray shooting forth from his palm caused the heavy machinery to explode, adding contour and dimension to the plumes of flame.

  Widget made it back, collapsed at Perdue’s feet, gasping.