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

by Dean C. Moore

  ***

  Severick waited impatiently. This would be the last time he tried this approach, that’s for sure. He wasn’t the cast a line and wait type. Finally, a man walked by below. He jumped from the tree, affixed his device to his head, and made rotating motions back and forth, using both hands, until his skull cap was removed. With the man continuing to fight him and attempting to throw him, he sliced through the man’s brain. The extra adrenaline and stress hormones from the live prey undoubtedly sweetened the meat, which was an unexpected turn for the best.

  Amidst his subject’s whirling and screaming, he managed to attract a woman coming their way walking her dog. She let go of the dog and screamed hysterically. The dog made use of his freedom to lap the spill on the sidewalk from the man’s brainpan.

  Saving the medulla oblongata for last, his favorite part, he fought the man until the last as his autonomic systems continued to function fine even in the absence of higher brain activity. The feast, which he hated to bring to an end, as it marked the highpoint of his life, was nonetheless over. That left one thing to do: silence the screamer.

  She labored valiantly to fight him off with a loaf of French bread that was nearly hard enough and long enough to do the trick.

  He dragged her off by her long hair, back across the yard he remembered hiking through to his treetop perch. Once in the neighbor’s backyard, he retrieved the axe from the stump. He held her back against the stump with his foot so he could take proper aim. Regrettably, this just gave her a chance to appreciate the axe coming down on her neck from an unparalleled vantage point; curiously, it was the first time she’d stopped screaming.

  With her head removed, she was a lot easier to carry back to his workshop. He was already contemplating mounting her head as he’d done his favorite Maine Coon as he waited for the head to drip out before walking on, not wanting to betray any more about his destination. But he thought better of it by the time the head had drip-dried.

  He used his device instead to crack the protective shell of her skull, and simply carted off her brain, which, from a distance, could probably pass for a cantaloupe. It was the dead of night, minimizing any need to tone down all the ostentatiousness, but there was no need to throw caution to the wind.

  ***

  Opening his fridge, Severick set the latest offering of human brains on one of the empty shelves. After shutting the door, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, alarmed at the sensation. He checked his forearm and it was covered with hair. “What the hell?”

  He rushed to the bathroom mirror, tore off his shirt, and examined himself more closely. No sooner did he relax than he started to erupt with hair all over. There were even whiskers erupting on his face—in addition to the hair. Oddly, it was the whiskers which bothered him most; he kept trying to push them down. When he finally screamed in outrage, a cat-like sound escaped his lungs, entirely befitting the feline image before him in the mirror.

  When, less than an hour later, the doorbell rang, he’d already adapted to the situation. He navigated the house to the front door in total darkness, opened the door on a porch that was likewise unlit. He had no need for even low level lighting. Though it didn’t occur to him that his eyes glowed like a cat’s when hit by the lights of a passing car. His only cue was the girl’s scream, interrupting her request for his purchase of girl-scout cookies. It had to be the eyes, because he’d taken precautions to blacken his fur and hide his face further under a hat and turned up collar of a trench-coat. The only thing those passing headlights could have revealed were the whites—though perhaps now they were yellow—of his eyes.

  “Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?” she said.

  She was probably trying to defuse the aura of menace by pretending not to notice. He handed her a wad of money. “If you don’t tell anyone about my handicap, you can come back once a week with more cookies.”

  She smiled, set down the box, and ran off. He carted in the box for himself.

  He stuck the brains on a plate and tried chasing down each bite with a handful of chocolate mint wafers; he had to admit, they complemented the dish nicely.

  ***

  Severick whistled as he turned the page on the cookbook, reached for another spice on the spice rack, and topped off the brains on the sauté pan. He twirled the spice rack, reached for another spice, and accented the brains in the second frying pan with it. He had four frying pans going on the stove, and four sauté recipes. He was determined to grow as a person, and not get stuck in a rut, despite his admitted satisfaction with unadorned raw brains.

  The police band crackled on the shortwave placed within earshot on the kitchen counter. “Just placed the last of the cameras in this joker’s territory. He won’t be able to dine on fly brains without it showing up in HD on at least four cameras. Let’s see the bastard climb out of that net.”

  “Roger. Over.”

  Severick sighed mightily. He didn’t have a car, and wasn’t into expanding his range any; power-walking wasn’t his thing. He supposed it was inevitable; at the rate he was going, he was going to be living in a ghost town, or going on a starvation diet if he just didn’t uproot himself and move on. Selling the house in this market didn’t seem like much of an option. That meant going back to the grocer for more cow and sheep brains until the flock of humans could repopulate and the buzz about him died down. He frowned just thinking about it.

  SEVENTEEN

  Coren Gallagher pranced on stage before a packed audience summoned to check in on her latest insights into pop culture, per her PhD on the subject. She wasn’t always this popular, but lecturing on superheroes and their relevance to the mass psyche really brought in the crowds. It didn’t hurt that the Marvel and Disney alliance was raising more superheroes from the dead pages of comic books few adults read, and showcasing them front and center, that no one could avoid taking into their hearts. Digital copies of those films were now beating a path via cell phones and tablets to countries which lacked so much as a telephone pole. Needless to say, her audience reach had never been greater.

  Her black hair was long and wiry, giving her a freshly-electrocuted look that suited her; her personality was jazzed to the nth degree. But she loved her subject matter, so it was easy to stay lit. Considering her lack of tenure, she should have been teaching some interminably boring freshman-required class, for which napping in class was more mandatory than elective.

  Coren believed in superheroes because she was a superhero. Part of the charismatic Christian movement by choice, she had experienced divine healing firsthand. She had been lame all her life, her left leg shorter than the right, and now she walked just fine after someone, a fellow initiate, laid hands on her. She herself had the gift of tongues and prophecy; either sufficed as proof of baptism into the Holy Spirit. She did not question that the age of miracles was upon us. Or that scientists wouldn’t enable these humble mortal vessels to channel God far more effectively in the form of genetic upgrades, that for all practical purposes, would usher in an age of superheroes. Since she had no desire to fly around or climb tall buildings, her own powers were all the upgrades she desired.

  With post-modernism the reigning philosophical and ethical stance on campuses throughout the U.S., she kept her Charismatic beliefs to herself. But, as it turned out, she wasn’t exactly out of line with the post-moderns. She had a green eco-consciousness and a live-and-let-live attitude that played well to it. She parted company with the post-moderns only in so far as she believed some cultures were more valuable than others. She would not put neo-Nazis on the same level as Zuni Indians, the latter being considerably more evolved as far as she was concerned.

  Coren was decked out in the garb fitting of a Puritan woman stepping off the Mayflower.

  “We’re here today to talk about the enduring nature of superheroes in American culture. Considering their appeal abroad, there’s clearly a global phenomenon going on here, furthermore, that transcends our borders. The super-villain’s contribution
to the psychological embroidery of the bad guy will, of necessity, also be explored.”

  ***

  Robin was attending Coren’s superhero lecture for the lowdown on superhero and super-villain psychology alike, and was thus pleased to hear both would be covered in depth. Maybe it was unfair to characterize Hartman as a super-villain any more than it was to characterize himself as a super-hero. All the same, he wasn’t going to limit himself to Freud and Jung in trying to get a handle on what had happened to him, and on putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. When it came to making his mind shipshape, he would take all the help from pop culture devotees he could get for their take on the trends sweeping individuals along.

  He had moved “meetings with remarkable men and women” high up on his to-do list as regards his recovery. So far the plan seemed to be working out well, considering his experience with Laura Bradford. The more larger-than-life-types he had to draw from, the less chance Hartman would have to crowd out the rest. Poor Manny, of course, could not avail himself of such tactics. Then again, maybe Dr. Saverly, his shrink, would prove larger than life in his own way.

  Coren cranked into high gear with her superhero lecture. “The first thing we have to ask ourselves is, do we need some complex, convoluted psychological explanation for what is the most basic of life impulses, to push limits, to extend life into regions in which it couldn’t exist before? This seems a biological imperative as much for the lowly bacteria as it is for us humans. Why then, with the mapping of the human genome behind us, with talk of eliminating sickness and disease, wouldn’t we take the next step?

  “Doesn’t it seem natural to contemplate super strength, super healing, any number of biological alterations typically unique to comic book superheroes? In an age of eugenics, moreover, where boutique features from blue eyes to hyper-intelligence are just ordered up at the time of purchase, why not throw in an ability to breathe underwater, or an ability to fly? Assuming the logistics can be worked out—and rest assured they will be worked out in time—what’s to stop anyone from becoming anything they want to be, providing science can figure out a way to make it happen?

  “Super powers would seem like little less than the promise of a mature democracy which continues to evolve, and in so doing, grants you the right to evolve along any tangent you want. With the biological imperative to spread our seed beyond this planet, what’s more, to ensure humans don’t all perish at the next asteroid impact, or untoward solar flare, or shifting magnetic poles… tampering with the human genome seems unavoidable to ready it for life in alien environments.

  “So the very same conundrums you might like to avoid by dodging the question of whether to be or not to be a superhero, will crop up again and again in other contexts as we begin to migrate through space.

  “Maybe those of you looking for penetrating insights into superhero psychology need look no further. Who here doesn’t really fit the paradigm of: If you can make me better, by all means, please do? Barring a few religious fanatics, of course, who shy away from the idea of playing God. But even these people have to ask themselves, how avoidable is that? Can mankind not take progressively more conscious control of life on the planet if he wishes to avoid unwitting genocide? Look at the destruction of the biosphere, look at how increasingly untenable human life is precisely because we refuse to live with greater consciousness of the impact we’re having on ourselves and on one another. Precisely because we refuse to awaken the gods within, to borrow from Carol S. Pearson, in order to meet the titanic challenges of our times.”

  She paused her pacing on the raised platform to sip from her Perrier bottle.

  “If we have to take issue with superhero psychology, it’s with the idea that a handful of these individuals can solve all our problems for us. We need to solve these problems for ourselves. But we need to do so by all becoming superheroes in one way or another. We have to embrace miracles and wonder in a way that formerly only sages and saints were able to. And perhaps we need to broaden the definition of what it means to be a superhero to anyone who functions exceptionally, and allows that trait about themselves to characterize their life, and their offering to humanity. We will separate our super heroes from, say, a firefighter and more earthly heroes by insisting that he continue to push beyond the limits of the strictly human, as life itself does, as we must all do.

  “And when we see that quest to transcend ourselves as our greatest testament to God, or our higher power, however we define that, we come to see it evermore as the point of life. For what is life, what is the universe, but the God-body, the Becoming-aspect of God, the yang to God’s yin-Being aspect, forever evolving, as the Godhead both evolves and simply is?

  “To go where no man has gone before is something we would have at one point entrusted only to a privileged few, not believing we could overcome our fears to such a degree as to play the part of the hero. But such a role starts to look that much more unavoidable for each and every one of us. Obama is right, even if he didn’t know exactly what he was asking of us when preaching self-reliance: this global economy requires no less of each of us than leaning evolutionarily into the realm of heroes and from there onwards and upwards to superheroes.

  “So the real gap in understanding is in not getting that superheroes appeal to more than just teens. It’s more than people looking to escape their humdrum lives and the monotony and tedium of their existences. It’s more than wanting to enjoy the highs and lows outside the elastic range of the human nervous system, to be as gods as some rejection of their humanity. To become a superhero is a human imperative, and the drive speaks to both the essential truth of who we are, and, more importantly, who we must become.”

  She wasn’t past her intro yet, and the class was already reacting boisterously across a wide range; there were catcalls and whistles, claps, and hands up from students eager to challenge her claim to sanity. The bad news, Robin realized, was if he was looking for deep, penetrating insights into what set the Hartmans of the world apart from the common man, he wasn’t going to find it here. From what he was gathering, Coren’s position boiled down to: embrace the extraordinary in himself as his birthright, and figure out with each passing day how to live up to that truth better. He would pursue her to her office to see if she had any additional handholds for him.

  ***

  Robin had been sitting in Coren Gallagher’s office for over an hour. He hadn’t moved a muscle, hadn’t flinched, hadn’t blinked. And he couldn’t climb out of his catatonia no matter how hard he tried.

  Coren, bless her, remained patient the entire time, periodically misting his eyes with the spritz-bottle she kept for her Boston fern hanging in the planter by the window. She had reached into Robin’s rear pants pocket earlier, and retrieved his wallet, dialed a number from it, presumably Drew’s. She had Googled Robin on her desktop computer, found the references to the Hartman case, and was instantly empathetic. As if she needed no further explanation as to what was going on. Pity, because Robin could certainly use one.

  “I’m no psychologist, but I’d say what you’re experiencing now is entirely normal.” Coren hung up her jacket on the coatrack in response to the sun coming through the window with increased authority. “I’d just keep it to yourself. You want to experience real hell, let them lock you up in a psych ward, fill you full of meds, and then indoctrinate you into their interpretation of reality.”

  Thinking a bit before resuming, Coren said, “Let me see if I can fill in some of the blanks for myself.” She came around to the front of the desk, leaned her butt against it, and folded her arms. “You want to know if exposure to the radioactive fallout of Hartman’s mind is enough to trigger the morphogenesis into superhero? And if so, how long you have to spend in the pupa phase.”

  She grunted. “Well, you might be surprised to know that my Charismatic experiences are pertinent.” She gestured to the leg braces adorning the walls from each stage of her life, which Robin could only take in peripherally, not being able to crane his
head. “The first time I experienced the Holy Spirit moving through me, there was a tremendous sensation of joy and peace. I imagine those were the qualities I experienced because they were what I needed most. Others might feel a sense of expansiveness, or tremendous compassion, or latch on to whichever aspect of the divine is most therapeutic to them.

  “In New Age terms, there is a sense of divine-knowing in tandem with the crown chakra opening, divine-seeing or future foresight with the third eye opening to receive Spirit, and so on. I suppose every religion has their own language to frame what I experienced. Don’t worry if you’re a non-believer in any religion. This is something, once you’ve experienced firsthand, there’s no doubting, and no one who can shake your faith in the slightest.”

  She tended her hanging plants with her spritz-bottle as she tended Robin’s mind. “I would say just look for the signs if you aren’t clear at first. Chances are the signals will get stronger as you get stronger. Until then, signs might include access to insights and cosmic wisdom that formerly you wouldn’t have had access to. Notably, the ability to see and understand things in a flash that people spend their whole lives trying to come to terms with, if they ever get a glimpse of the truth at all.”