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

by Dean C. Moore

  Gretchen grunted. “At least here they’re reduced to old school methods in order to put an end to us.”

  She studied the Steampunk Invasion sector, where Milton and Fabio had nestled themselves in amid the steam-powered inventions being cultivated. This quarter called to Gretchen more than the others for reasons she was tempted to explore. “The sooner we get Fabio up and running with that time machine, the sooner he can be off in another timeline where they can’t reach him. That accomplished; this seems as good a place as any for a well-earned break from reality.”

  Santini wasn’t sure the Renaissance Faire was his idea of relaxed fun. Then he got a load of the Knight Fight, with knights going at one another in mock battle that looked real enough from where he was standing. He suddenly felt very motivated to lose Fabio in some alternate universe, so he could have a little more time in this one. “Yeah, I could use a break from babysitting.”

  They strolled through the steampunk sector, and marveled in turn at all the inventions. Santini asked, “How does this man-into-gods thing work again? We take advantage of the collapsing timeline to heal emotional scars from long-forgotten past lives, and grow in power until—”

  “There’s more than one way to make the most of a Renaissance age,” Gretchen explained. “Better access to past life recall is the least of it. Access to alternate realities and fantasy worlds may do even more to coax the genie out of the bottle.” She pointed to a steampunk veteran as he fired his electro-gun at his lab partner, knocked him on his ass with a bolt of lightning. “Why shape yourself with memories you’re exposed to thanks to accidents of history, when you could shape yourself with much better clay?”

  Santini harrumphed his concession to her superior logic.

  ***

  “Verily, dear sir, your contraption is quite the sight. Prithee, behold my wondrous making. She shall set the world ablaze.”

  Fabio wasn’t in the mood for interruption, but he figured, better that, than the man grow still more intrusive. Besides, he seemed a merry enough sort, his pot belly extending itself at him like a cushion to rest his weary head. He sported an archer’s tunic more suited to playing Robin of Locksley, but not everyone here was all that focused on authenticity.

  Fabio traced the complex swirling glass and metal pipes through its labyrinthine twists, and arrived at the conclusion pretty quickly that this was a distillery. It was all the more impressive as Fabio couldn’t imagine glass-shaping techniques could be all that advanced in medieval Europe. Beyond stained glass windows, and the occasional spectacles, uses for glass had to be as constrained by imagination as by primitive techniques.

  “Yah, this is truly marvelous,” Fabio said. “Your distillation technique works by freezing, then removing the ice.”

  Known as a “Mongolian still,” Fabio was aware of similar devices developed in Asia in the Middle Ages, but his neighbor’s apparatus seemed more inspired. “Huzzah! Dear sir, Huzzah!” Fabio exclaimed. He wished he could show his excitement better in period-appropriate English, but he was glad to extract that much from the merriment going on around him, which he had largely tuned out.

  Pot Belly offered him a drink. Fabio sipped it sparingly, out of politeness, not wanting to slow the work on his own device any, and made out as if it was the greatest beverage on Earth. “Huzzah!” he exclaimed, holding up his glass in toast.

  “God’s teeth, man, what is this thing?” Pot Belly said, still unable to puzzle out the intricacies of Fabio’s device, and stepping closer.

  “A time machine,” Fabio said.

  Pot Belly spit out his drink, gulped, mumbled, “As you will,” and waddled back to his area, his tail tucked between his legs.

  “Maybe next time, say it’s a new way of marking time, and leave the rest to their imagination” Milton offered, in his fatherly way. He slid the latest module into place.

  ***

  “What’s this?” Santini picked up the brass rifle with the double shoulder harness and fashioned it to his shoulders. He made some tweaks to improve the fit.

  “You got it. Hey, how did you know how to attach it?” the kid asked, after checking Santini’s adjustments for himself and finding them just right.

  “Just a lucky guess.”

  Santini depressed the trigger, but nothing happened. “It seems to be busted.”

  “Nope. You just need the tube it attaches to. It’s a fire hose nozzle, uses seventeenth century technology to deliver better pressure than our modern nozzles.”

  The kid attached the hose, Santini depressed the trigger, and shot an arc of water high into the air. The manufactured rain landed outside the steampunk-era zone on a barn-raising team; they seemed happy for the relief from the hot sun.

  “Cool, huh?”

  Santini smiled. “Very cool. How about we make some tweaks?”

  The kid suspiciously regarded him as Santini undid the piece he needed for Fabio’s time machine, pocketed it, and replaced it with another part. “Hey, what are you up to?” the youth said, not sure how much more forthright to get, having spied the Judge in Santini’s shoulder holster.

  After exchanging another part, Santini attached a plastic bottle to the gun, fired it at the metal sculpture in the neighbor’s work area. The metal sculpture smoldered as it melted.

  The kid laughed at his neighbor’s misfortune. “The Acidifier! Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” the kid exclaimed.

  “Instant action hero.” Santini pointed to the battle zone in the steampunk section of the Renaissance Faire.

  “Yeah, I guess I’m not getting much play over here with my glorified water pistol.” He took over the weapon, felt suddenly empowered. “This should earn me some respect. Hey, maybe I should call myself Death Ray. What do you think?”

  Santini smiled, patted him on the shoulder.

  Metal Carver, showing off his sculpture to a passer-by, screamed as he beheld the half-melted monstrosity. “A pox upon thee!” he shouted at Death Ray, after seeing him touting his new weapon, aimed suspiciously in his direction.

  “Calm yourself,” Death Ray bellowed back. “’Tis an improvement.”

  “In sooth, thy dank cavernous tooth-hole consumes all truth and reason!” Metal Carver yelled.

  He poured water on his sculpture to keep the acid from eroding it further, gasped, then twisted his face in uncomfortable knots. “Thy vile canker-blossom'd countenance curdles milk and sours beer.”

  Renaissance Faire attendees breezing by, pointed at his sculpture, and laughed garishly.

  Metal Carver refused to take the insults on the chin, and returned them in kind. "Thou art a churlish, dismal-dreaming fustilarian." He cupped his mouth to get out the next one: "Thou art an artless, crook-pated, fawning, mewling, elf-skinned puttock." “Thou art a gleekin flap-mouthed foot-licker!”

  Death Ray paused briefly on his way to join the war play. “I’m so sorry, dear fellow.”

  “Ah, worry thyself not. I think I was born to hurtle abuse. I’ve never felt better.” He shook his fist at his latest detractor. “Folly-fallen giglet!”

  Santini, his coveted time-machine part in hand, returned to his work alongside Fabio, several booths over. It was doubtful either Milton or Fabio would appreciate his little tweaks, he thought, eying the two busy with “important matters.” His small fixes may not mean much to how the machine worked its magic, but it’d keep it going long past its expiration date.

  ***

  A few hours later, they appeared close to the finish line.

  Santini lent a hand by following the assembly instructions, which taxed his mechanical acumen, honed as it was on restoring ’40s-era cars. But so far, he hadn’t run into anything which had truly stymied him. “We ready to fire this baby up?” He slipped his module into place, and fastened it down.

  “I think so,” Fabio said. “You’re marking time in your own fashion,” he added, more defensively, having picked up on the urgency in Santini’s voice.

  Milton quickly rescued the kid’s
bruised ego. “He’s just concerned for you. His detective’s antennae don’t work as effectively in this era, meaning the men in black may get closer to you than he’d like.”

  “That makes sense.” Fabio stepped back from the machine. “I think it’s ready. Maybe we should give it another good going over first, though.”

  Santini could tell from the kid’s tone and the way he was regarding Milton, his real concern was leaving his new father figure behind.

  “You’re all grown up now, kid.” Milton’s eyes watered. “I’m sorry we didn’t get more time together, but that’s how it goes sometimes.”

  “You could come with me.” Fabio averted his eyes.

  “I could, but Aala couldn’t,” Milton said. “She thinks it’s the devil’s device.”

  “You could educate her.” Fabio tightened a part that didn’t need tightening.

  “I can’t get to sleep anymore unless I first walk counterclockwise around the bed ten times,” Milton said. “Don’t ask me why.”

  Fabio laughed. “Yeah, I see why it’s easier to cave.”

  He gave Milton a big hug, as Santini took The Judge out and dispensed justice before the man in black coming at them could finish flinging his knife. The knife veered off course and landed close to Gretchen, who was giving the device the once over for the kid, making sure everything looked as it should.

  She picked up the knife and handed it to Fabio. “Consider it a parting gift, just in case any more come at you on the other side. These guys tend not to take ‘no’ for an answer.” She gave him a big hug of her own.

  Fabio fired up the machine, and took a seat. In the final analysis, Santini thought, the device perfectly fit the whole steampunk vibe. Maybe, with a little more time to explore the era, Fabio would realize he lived back then, and he’d been thwarted from building the device at that time by a man in black, and so was back at it, intent on completing unfinished business. Maybe after he’d taken enough twists in the labyrinthine maze of timelines, the maze would clear his head, like those hedge mazes were designed to do in England that Gretchen loved to tell him about, and he’d recall the original trauma that had shaped his lives down to the present day.

  The threesome waved at him, and he was gone.

  Santini was sorry Mort and Aala had missed his departure; they’d certainly worked hard enough to get him here. Pot Belly stared, mouth agape, beside them, having been drawn imperceptibly by the humming of the time machine. “Drinks next door for all those who need it,” he said, his tone world-wary.

  TWELVE

  Mort struggled with the hinge pin connecting the canvas-covered wooden-ridged wing of his craft to the fuselage. As he fought to hammer it in, a crazed-looking woman took up a seat on the other side of his workbench. Her hair was frizzed, and the frizzes were frizzed. Her face was dirty, as were her clothes. The big, piercing, unblinking eyes, which shone like jewels by contrast, only added to her deranged demeanor. She set down a line of balls in front of her, mounted on posts.

  “You know what these are?” she said, tauntingly.

  “An ostrich egg poacher for an army cook? If so, I’m betting the patent holds to this day.”

  “It’s the largest alignment of planets in thirty thousand years.”

  “What does that mean?” Mort groaned from the effort of tapping the pin in the final inch it was determined not to slide.

  “We don’t know. But something big, I imagine.”

  “Look, lady,” he said, holding the part in his hand at another angle to obtain more freedom with the ball-peen hammer. “My body is filled with billions of cells, all in ‘alignment.’ And I can’t get them to do what I want, most days. So what do you think a few paltry planets getting together halfway between me and God is going to do?”

  “Non-believer!” she shouted, firing spittle at him. “You’ll be sorry you didn’t prepare your mind.” She picked up her rack of balls, and waddled away.

  “I’m already sorry,” he muttered. “Take me a lifetime to erase the memory of you.” He sunk the pin in with the ball-peen.

  Mort attached the second of the butterfly wings to his aeronautical conveyance. To what end beyond calamity, he wasn’t sure. So far, all the daredevils before him had succeeded in pedaling off the lip of the ramp jutting beyond the cliff only to crash and burn in the river below to roaring laughter and jeers from less than sympathetic Medieval-era revelers. Apparently going back in time was no way to find sympathy.

  All the same, he climbed on his inelegantly conceived monstrosity, and pedaled out to “suicide point.”

  The prevailing winds turned favorable. He counted that to his benefit. On the other hand, gravity was no friend to his body, not at two hundred and thirty pounds. Maybe there’d be time at least for a short prayer on the way down.

  On his way over the cliff, he found it most curious he wasn’t demonstrating Galileo’s theorem for him: that two masses, of disproportionate size, drop just as quickly. Instead he really was flying.

  Only now he seemed to have a much bigger problem.

  The sky was thick with insect-looking, paper-winged craft just like his, powered on steam and coal-driven engines. This was the past, all right, only no past belonging to any timeline that he was a part of. He cursed Gretchen for encouraging him to follow his heart. Big oafs weren’t supposed to have hearts. This was one of those steampunk realities that belonged strictly on the pages of fiction. As if accessing past lives wasn’t bad enough!

  In scratching that itch to be an ace pilot, he had opened a door to the unfinished business of the past, as Gretchen would argue. Only, which past? This was another timeline entirely. Was there no such thing as past and future lives? Were they in fact all being lived concurrently? Maybe the point of living out every possible role in every possible alternate reality all at once was that God knew no other way to squeeze Himself into the physical realm, to be both limited, and limitless at the same time.

  This “past” seemed every bit as present and as visceral to him. Maybe he hadn’t gone soft in the head like one of those New Age freaks, tuning in alternate realities as if their heads were the best possible place to site a SETI satellite dish. Maybe this was men in black technology and he was getting zapped into an alternate timeline because it was the best way to incapacitate him. Or worse: he’d wake up one day, if at all, like those monks in caves he heard about, his hair extending to his ankles, and his fingernails grown through the palms of his hands. Since his mind accommodated terror far better than New Age goop, he found it curious he wasn’t succumbing to his worst fears, and instead thoroughly enjoying his bizarre tour of Dimension X.

  “Ahoy there, matey!” the pilot shouted from the plane buzzing him.

  “I’m not from this reality,” Mort shouted. “I have no explanation for how I got here.”

  “Did you receive a shock recently to your sense of self?” Mort noticed the chap’s medical bag in the empty seat behind him, helping to explain why Dr. Giddy hadn’t missed a beat.

  “It’s fair to say I live in a state of shock,” Mort said.

  “That might do it.” Dr. Giddy checked his cockpit controls in between dispensing medical advice, fought to keep the wings of his plane level. “How about a hypnotic suggestion? Have you found yourself vulnerable enough recently for someone to plant a seed that could grow into this?”

  “Sister Gretchen possesses a keen sense of timing when it comes to opening her mouth, yes.”

  “Shock plus a hypnotic suggestion. Even better. Of course, it helps to be a little loose to begin with. You know, given to drifting off in your mind.”

  “I’m definitely no drifter.” Mort was adamant on that point. When their planes separated under the prevailing winds, Mort steered to bring himself closer to Dr. Giddy.

  “Those on the road to find out, will be shown the way. A blessing or gift then, from above.”

  “Is it possible none of this is real?” Mort inquired thoughtfully.

  “Most assuredly. Consider this
place a transitional zone, a holding tank, until your mind can get around its resistance to astral traveling.”

  “Is that what this is?”

  Dr. Giddy shrugged. “If I’m your alter-ego, then I’m likely just as confused as you are.”

  “Enough with this silly conversation, already. Theater of the absurd is most undignified for a man of my nature.”

  “As you wish,” Dr. Giddy said, then increased thrust on his steam powered plane, and disappeared in an uproar of propeller noise.

  “What a crazy coot.”

  The delusion refusing to fade, Mort considered other possibilities. Maybe I’m synced with Gretchen and Santini, and it’s their loose-mindedness taking me down. Maybe old Frizzy Hair was right: it’s on account of the astral alignment that happens every few thousand years; Maybe that’s how the last Renaissance age happened. Maybe the last few turns of the zodiac wheel primed the pump for even bigger departures into la-la land. Maybe I’m getting a hang for skipping timelines, even if I can’t entirely explain it.

  He let the hows of it go, and settled into the steampunk era. That’s when the real magic started.

  ***

  They landed on some English nobleman’s estate grounds. Actually, Mort had been forced to land by an engine that kept stalling on him. He was examining the problem when another aeronautical enthusiast came in for a rough landing beside him. He was as curious about Mort’s steam-powered engine as Mort was about his diesel-powered engine. They all but forgot their own craft, and started tinkering on the other guy’s bird.

  Both planes featured rear propellers borrowed from fan boats currently cruising the shallow waters of the Florida Everglades. The twin engine front propellers on Mort’s craft were half again as big, whereas the other intrepid fellow’s craft had only broad wings up front.