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

by Dean C. Moore

  “It’s really just a matter of time until the viruses win out—even without anyone toying with their DNA,” Robin said. “You hear about one contagion after another breaking out in some remote region of the world. Only to spread, mind you, courtesy of easy access to international travel, halfway round the world. It ends up tracked into your living room, leaving you hanging on for dear life.”

  Drew was actually impressed by the monotone and flat pacing of Robin’s soliloquy. Even Hamlet managed to sneak in a few spikes of adrenaline in his darkest hour.

  “You’re forgetting global warming,” she said, just to be bitchy. She sipped her wine, not really paying him much attention.

  “Only an ice age can save us from that. Luckily, we’re ten thousand years overdue. I can’t decide if I prefer to freeze or fry. Can you?”

  “The indecision keeps me up nights.”

  “Me, too!”

  Drew stirred the diced bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes into the steak pan. As the sizzle died down, so did Robin.

  “So you don’t put any stock in cloud seeding?”

  Robin made a dismissive sound. “Silver halide floating in the atmosphere? One more pollutant to get trapped in our lungs, choking the life out of us. The whole concept has been entirely debunked. Great for environmental warfare though. That’s all we’re good for anymore, hell-world applications of the most benign tech. There’s probably someone right now trying to figure out how to turn a microwave oven into an instrument of mass destruction.”

  Robin hadn’t blinked in an hour, and his gaze remained fixed on a spot on the white shag carpeting. Drew was becoming genuinely concerned there might actually be a spot there worth staring at, which would be a stain against her reputation. Robin’s chest had caved in on itself and his head remained upright, presumably because it was the place it came to rest in the absence of inertia. But one good, deep breath, and his head would probably be on the floor, too.

  She had moved on to mocking him when ignoring him just wasn’t satisfying enough. But she needed to look for triggers that might indicate he was ready to put a gun to his head. Figuring that would just be too exhausting, she was feeding the fire in hopes of helping it to burn out. “I really don’t think we’ve perseverated nearly enough on Amazon deforestation.”

  “That’s a hundred cancer cures burning up an hour. Meanwhile, we’re creating more cancers in America than there are Amazon rain forests on a dozen planets to cure. We humans are very good at killing ourselves. It may be that the population hits critical mass, and unconsciously, we start to self-destruct. Maybe the impulse doesn’t come from within us. Maybe it’s part of Gaia, and how she maintains balance on Earth, when she screws up and invents a life form too intelligent for its own good.”

  This was going nowhere. Drew decided it was again time to change tack. Maybe she could demonstrate, how, from a normal state of mind, his thinking could be so much more effective.

  “There are scientists, who, because they keep their minds clear of noise, drained of emotions, stripped of distractions, are inventing a hundred and one solutions to global warming. They’ve created designs for skyscrapers that are giant negative ionizers, which strip the air of pollutants. They’ve concocted algal blooms that trap carbon then die and sink to the bottom of the ocean, sequestering the carbon harmlessly there. They’ve negotiated exchange programs with South American tribes that incentivize them to harvest forest pharmaceuticals for bigger money than they can make tearing down the forest and farming traditional crops—”.

  “Let me stop you right there.” Robin relaxed his posture too much, and fell off the couch. There were no defensive motions, nor was there sound from the impact conveying he’d hurt himself. He just droned on as before, only more lifelessly, sinking into a lower energy well, just when he seemed to Drew, already only a few notches above dead. “All those geoengineering schemes have been debunked; just read Hack The Planet. As we speak, there are, however, scientists opening black holes that can devour our planet. There are scientists working on weapons that can zap us into a state of depression from a distance, or disorient us to the point of panic.”

  “As if you need any help,” Drew mumbled, procuring another side dish. It suddenly dawned on her, maybe Robin was bottoming out during their evening ritual as a form of sundowning. Elderly patients with Alzheimer’s often did worse in the evenings than during the day. Maybe the latest fissures running through his brain were triggering Alzheimer-like mood swings. She decided to keep this revelation to herself, lest he feel rewarded for discovering yet one more DSM-IV state worth celebrating.

  “There are scientists building bombs the size of gnats that can fly into our heads and explode.” Robin suddenly sat up with the verve of a man awakened from the dead. “Why did I think I could afford the luxury of waiting for calamity to strike first? Because the odds of finding the bad apple in the bunch was just too daunting? Best to presume every last project will end in disaster without my divine intervention. Who else to save the day but the last man standing with any sense of moderation? Only a Renaissance man of the first order could balance out all the competing considerations.”

  Robin threw on his coat and marched out the door without another word, evidently having long lost track in his mind of the gourmet dinner Drew was cooking for them.

  “Did he say, only someone who was over the deep end so many different ways at once could possibly be of balanced mind?” Drew asked herself out loud. She shook her head in response to her own question. “Nah.”

  She walked her steak to the dining table and settled into a chair. If Drew’s psyche was more like the East Coast, all pastel colors and soft rolling landscapes, Robin’s was pure Wild West country, rugged snow-capped mountains that punctured the sky, and valleys that descended below sea level.

  If there was one good thing about this emotional journey, finding more opposites between them helped reassure Drew the glue holding their relationship together was still intact, especially with the power dynamic now shifting.

  ***

  Robin arrived home in the middle of the day and collapsed on the sofa. “Saving the world is damned exhausting. I may need to start doing more pushups.”

  Drew smiled and said, “I think you over-intellectualize things to cover for an oversensitive disposition. Take time out to experience life raw and in the buff, without all the shielding. Enjoy your emotional intensity for all it’s worth.

  “Maybe all those diagnoses you’re determined to live firsthand, maybe that’s just your way of piping more emotions into the intellectual Rubicon.”

  She wiped the droppings off the kitchen floor with her duster-sweeper-upper as she talked. “There are less convoluted ways of marrying head and heart; very simple, Buddhist ways, you could try, as well. I can’t ask you to replace one campaign with the other, because you’ve made a damn good case for both. But balance… balance is good.”

  Drew grabbed a kitchen cloth. Her hands worked the counter with loving care, as if she were waxing a vintage automobile. “And take time to get out of your head altogether. Pursue some strictly mindless pursuits as people in power have long learned to do. Jog. Hike. Skydive. Get your power vacations in several times a day.”

  “I like that about you. That a balanced life trumps all.” Robin watched Drew polish the fingerprints and smudges off the shiny kitchen appliances. “For now, my tendencies to excess is how I know I’m alive. But I don’t always want to be that way. You remind me I have options.”

  “Our mutual neediness is no proof of love.” She looked happy she could see her face reflected in the base of the blender, and moved on to shining the toaster-oven. “Neither are our fantasies of one another, and seeing in each other secretly what we’d most like to become. That’s what worries me.”

  ***

  Robin stumbled through campus blind from tears. Some dam in him had burst. Emotions long held in check, he was unaware he was even holding on to, were pouring through. He’d done unipolar depression
. He was ready to turn the page in the DSM-IV.

  He ventured into the small forest knoll near Oxford and University Avenue, where he collapsed on a log before he ran headlong into traffic. Walking blind was clearly not for the uninitiated.

  The log beneath him spoke up. “Get off me!”

  Robin thought he was in the middle of one of his schizophrenic fugues, before he realized the “log” was a homeless man. He had a large, black beard with streaks of gray. Woven into his beard was his every survival need, from jellybeans to beef jerky to joints.

  “I’m sorry,” Robin said. “I had someone capitalize on my generosity of spirit to crush my soul. I hate life right now.” Robin paused to wipe his eyes, caring nothing for Stumpy’s shocked expression, or the squirrels scampering up the trees to escape his booming voice. “I hate that innocent people die while serial killers rely on their sophistication to elude authorities. I hate that I’m not as smart as I need to be to capture them. I hate that life is forever beyond my learning curve, and I have to resort to extreme measures like talking to logs to boost what little smarts I have.”

  Robin pacified himself by stealing one of Stumpy’s jellybeans. Nibbling on it, he wiped his snivels, feeling like a kid who’d just scuffed his knees, crying for mommy’s attention. But saying the words out loud, he realized for the first time just how desperate he was to make himself smarter.

  Could he turn normalcy into super-genius simply by becoming more conscious of the shifting weather of his mind?

  Could he be mindful of blowing the atmospheric ephemera out of proportion, indulging the lightning storms and the sea breezes alike, while also not reacting to them, simply observing, not judging, not suppressing, so the higher self could do its work remolding him? Could he continue to surrender to such a degree?

  “Why do you hate so much?” Stumpy asked, sounding calm and centered, and strangely therapeutic.

  “I’m angry at the world because I’m sick of all the self-pity. It’s easier to deal with things when it’s really someone else’s problem.”

  “I tried that very approach for thirty-five years, look where it landed me.”

  “What new strategy have you tried?” Robin asked.

  “I still haven’t exhausted the logic of the first one. I’d hate to give up on it prematurely, only to find the solution to all my problems around the next corner, justifying the years of hard work staying miserable.”

  “I find that hating keeps disorganized thoughts at bay, helps me feel more focused,” Robin confessed. “If I let go of hating for one minute, I could drift back into disorganized schizophrenia.” Again, speaking his fears out loud had a way of making him more conscious of them. Maybe one needed a confessor to act as an attractor, like a black hole pulling the light out of him.

  Stumpy nodded. “That’s my finding too, yes. It helps to know my scientific work can be corroborated.”

  “My anger protects me from fear of losing control.” Robin fished one of the cheese curls out of Stumpy’s beard. “It’s a friend and companion fighting off the loneliness and helplessness that comes of not being able to assert myself more constructively.”

  “Yes, yes!” Stumpy rolled over on his back to grant access to his stomach now that he was feeling better about their relationship.

  “God, that’s it! Hartman is losing his mind. That’s what’s driving him to murder and lash out in anger: The terror of being in such a wondrous mind as the walls begin to fall. If I could reach him in time, I could show him how to turn the mental deterioration to his aid, so he realizes that a failing mind too can be a gift.”

  “You want to save a serial killer? You’re a local, aren’t you?” Stumpy said.

  “Why, aren’t you?”

  “No, no, I’m just passing through from Santa Cruz. They ousted me and the rest of the homeless for a convention,” Stumpy said.

  “Stay, you’ll like it here.”

  “I can’t. The squirrels keep stealing my candy.”

  “How’s it any better in Santa Cruz?” Robin reached for a joint in Stumpy’s beard, surprised to find a lighter there, too. He lit up, thinking, a few more neurochemical imbalances couldn’t hurt.

  “Big bonfires on the beaches at night. Everyone smokes ganja. The squirrels there are hooked on weed. At least in Santa Cruz I won’t be driving generations of diabetic animals.”

  “Maybe you can get PETA to help finance your relocation.”

  After a moment to reflect, it occurred to Robin to ask, “How is it you know about Hartman?”

  “After relieving myself, I wipe my ass with The Daily Californian.”

  Robin picked himself up and ambled a couple steps away.

  “Spare change?” Stumpy croaked.

  “No,” Robin said. He never carried money on him, and if he did he wasn’t sure how he felt about giving it to Stumpy if he just used it to hasten his demise with more sugary sweets.

  “You can buy me a hamburger off your credit card.”

  Robin stopped in his tracks, turned, and nodded.

  They strolled to the nearest greasy spoon.

  ***

  “You think you have a way of tracking Hartman?” Drew asked, incredulous.

  “His mind is failing him, I’m convinced of it. Maybe we can’t see it, because he’s bright enough to fake it. Or maybe he’s in the early stages of his body failing him, and he realizes there’s no escaping the biological impacts on his brain as well.” Robin absently tidied up the kitchen counter, figuring the neater things got, the more Drew could rest assured her picture-perfect world was intact and the more she could concentrate on him.

  Robin closed the lid on the mayonnaise and stuck it back in the fridge. “My guess is he’ll outsource the wetware work on rewiring his brain to his disciples without telling them what he’s up to. He can more easily get them to do what he wants with his enormous powers of persuasion. His philosophical acumen, and that includes rhetoric, will be the last to go, long after the aptitudes in science.” Robin Windexed a pane on the French doors when Drew’s eyes strayed to it. “And he has Winona to help him find his way around the psychological defenses of his would-be protégés.”

  Robin set the spritzer down under the weight of the latest realization. “That was what was behind his urgency to upgrade his students’ minds in such a condensed timeframe. To buy him time, so they could carry on the rehab work on his brain for him. And when that idea didn’t pan out, he lost it, leading to the slaughter I witnessed.”

  “So you mean to track him through his disciples?”

  “I may have to make myself a student of the mind in ways even I never dreamed of if I’m to locate what rock he’s hiding under. But, for now, I suspect, this is the best way forward. He could wait to see which of his disciples comes up with the best solution before stepping in, or he could just rewire his mind with a hodgepodge of their breakthrough technologies. Either way, he’ll maintain a connection with them which we can use to track him.”

  Used to being in the lead, Drew was still getting adjusted to her new role playing catch-up. She couldn’t believe she was picking Robin’s mind the way he used to pick hers. But not anymore. By comparison, her social sophistication was starting to wear like a cheap suit, and it would never again be possible to see herself as the epitome of haute couture.

  Drew let herself drift back to their prior times together for reassurance the sun wasn’t going down on them, that this was a new day dawning on their relationship. She recalled their dark nights of the soul as Robin suffered the torments of the damned in the wake of Hartman. It was darkest before the dawn, she reminded herself. She wasn’t sure she was glimpsing sunlight yet, though the clues surfacing about Hartman may well be the proof.

  ***

  Sometime after his revelation regarding the true state of Hartman’s mind, that it was failing him, the whirlwind in Robin’s mind settled. It was as if his higher self had been pushing until he got the point of the tumult. Maybe if he hadn’t set himself on a que
st for truth, his higher self would never have pushed so hard. In any case, Robin was looking forward to calm seas ahead. He was really spent.

  He dared to believe the trauma Hartman had inflicted on him was finally healing. Now, all he needed was quiet and rest to finish annealing the fissures in his psyche. He grasped that the breakdown state might very well be his higher-truth state, like a shaman forever venturing into dark netherworlds to retrieve revelations and save souls. But even marathon runners needed to pace themselves. One more trauma, and Drew might well prove even more prescient: Robin would never complete his to-hell-and-back journey.

  FIFTY

  The butcher knife stuck out of Jim’s chest just far enough to send a clear message.