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

by Dean C. Moore

  “So we go after her next?”

  “Nah. I didn’t get that vibe from her. She’s a healer and a seer. If we fall off the tracks despite her best efforts, that’s someone else’s problem, not hers.”

  “That assessment changes, you let me know.”

  “Yeah, pal. It won’t be the first time I’ve been accused of being fickle.”

  ***

  What was the lesson Robin’s unconscious had for her in drawing her to these particular Renaissance types? Was it, “Everything in moderation?” “You continue to be drawn to those who cannot rein themselves in, because this is one more scar your father left on your psyche you have yet to heal and, until you do, I’ll keep showing you this tendency to excess in yourself and others? This tendency to overcompensate.”

  Robin thought about the quantum realm and how the nature of the experiment affected what was observed. And how it was impossible to know anything with absolute certainty. Maybe there were some lessons here pertaining to consciousness, as well. The more she examined the underlying etiology for her psyche and that of the Renaissance types, the more elusive it became. There comes a point where understanding fails, and she has no choice but to change her life without ever being able to exhaust all the reasons she was the way she was. The quantum theory of multiple worlds suggested that all the possible underlying reasons for why she was the way she was continued to be explored to this day—and forever—in innumerable alternate realities.

  Robin let the subject go. She had power of mind enough to address these and all her other concerns now that she had access to the obelisk. For now, the focus was on bringing Drew into the fold.

  ***

  Ezra felt himself drifting off thanks to the monotony of air travel, and the cradle-like rocking of the aircraft riding the pockets of air. The airplane’s shudders made others tremble but, in his case, merely added to the hypnosis.

  Before his consciousness faded entirely, he wanted to establish a link with Davi’s mind. He wasn’t sure he could do it on his own.

  He gently grabbed hold of Grace’s hand. She was asleep. Hopefully he could tap her power of mind to achieve what he was trying to do. She was more advanced than him in these things. The fact that she was asleep and so couldn’t really say “No,” was a moral question for later.

  He no sooner touched her than felt the channel open.

  The Yanomami’s tribal spiritual leader felt a rising wave of anxiety as he heard ruffling sounds at the edge of his village coming from the forest.

  Ezra was thrown out of his mind and back into the plane.

  He took a deep breath and squeezed Grace’s hand even harder, hoped not to wake her. Ezra fought to reestablish the link before it was too late. Something really bad was about to go down.

  The miners tore through the jungle, weapons in hand, swept them like lighthouse beacons in search of one target in particular. For now, they were ignoring the screams of the fleeing natives.

  They found their target. The one man not moving, who had remained calm and unflappable. Davi. He raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture, walked towards them. “How may we help you?” the man of peace asked.

  “You can die,” came the answer from the pack leader. He fired his weapon first. The others discharged theirs at Davi, as well, on the go signal.

  Davi was reduced to chunk meat, broken and scattered over the ground by the violence of the machine gun fire.

  Ezra, enraged by the killing of his mentor, reacted paradoxically; he further calmed himself, so he could lock in the altered state necessary to do what had to be done.

  He manifested before the armed miners in avatar form. Seeing him materialize before their eyes, the miners had no trouble deciding who should receive the next deposit of bullets. They interrupted their slaughter of the villagers to concentrate on Ezra.

  At first, the bullets bouncing off him did nothing to snap the miners out of their trance of hate and anger. It took Ezra a while, as well, to acknowledge that these were the ones who had escaped Davi’s earlier thought-projections. Ezra figured the moral message of the Aesop’s fable was clear enough: As you sow, so shall you reap.

  When they weren’t getting anywhere with the bullets, they lobbed grenades at him. Then the rocket launchers emerged. Seeing more villagers being hurt by the shrapnel off the explosives meant for him, Ezra reacted emotionally.

  He threw up an energy field to block the exit of the frustrated killers, who had finally acknowledged retreat was their best option, only to find that option closed off to them.

  Ezra watched as the miners ran into the shield, to be trapped there like bugs in amber. He dryly observed them writhe and scream in the energy field, which was fine-tuned to amplify their nervous systems’ appreciation of pain, and, of course, to inflict that pain for all eternity. The transdimensional frequency it vibrated at was well outside of time’s reach.

  The energy field drifted into the void of space, rippled before the subquantum currents like a flag in the wind.

  He saw the shield touch down on another world, where it rose like a monolith.

  The primitive hominid species clubbing their kill to death with wooden sticks that came to a head in the skulls of their enemies, paused from what they were doing to gaze up at the strange import to their world. They screeched in fear and retreated from the strange monolith.

  Gradually, their curiosity got the better of them.

  A few charges prompted by fake bravado later, each one ending in the same fearful retreat before actually reaching the monolith, and they finally built up enough nerve to touch it. Then found it cold to the hand. The leader put his ear up to it, whereupon he heard the screams of the men trapped inside.

  Convinced they were witnessing a manifestation of their gods, they brought peace offerings. Set out baskets of fruit and vegetables. Then, later, their most recent kill, a wild boar.

  But nothing seemed to appease the gods; the screaming of those inside did not abate, frustrating the locals. They clubbed themselves in agony over not being able to figure out what the gods wanted of them.

  Ezra squirmed in his seat.

  And then he came to.

  His boring transatlantic flight seemed no less interminable for all his departures into la-la land. Grace was fast asleep beside him. He released her hand.

  Ezra closed his eyes just to shut out the tiresome film playing on the screen overhead. God, people could be frivolous.

  “Careful, Ezra,” intoned the female voice in his head.

  “Who is this?”

  “Robin Wakefield.”

  “Advisor to the largest underground movement in the history of the world? Protector of the Renaissance types everywhere? That Robin Wakefield?” When he was greeted with silence, he said, “Sorry. I’m rather well read. Just the alarmist conspiracy theory rags, mind you, nothing any sane person would put any credence in.”

  “This is a dangerous path you’re on, Ezra.”

  “Yes, I know,” he confessed. “It opens the door to the dominion of the warring gods.” Again, silence. “Sorry, but I did say I was well read.”

  “If you had emanated enough love at those miners, they would have dropped their guns. They would have changed their ways forever. When you’re working with energies at this level, you want to lock in your heart chakra. Otherwise, things…”

  “…Get uglier still.” He really didn’t need her to fill in the rest for him. “If I’d stabilized myself at my heart sooner, I’d have reached Davi in time to save him. As it was, his psychic impressions couldn’t penetrate the fog of my negative emotions.”

  “Don’t beat up on yourself. That’s just more proof you’re sinking back into your power chakra, whose instability led you to act out. When you get down on yourself, you just turn the violence inward. You cannot end force with more force.”

  Ezra breathed deeply. “I’ll change my ways, I promise.”

  “I think you’ll find ego games even more seductive at this level. You have many h
elpers, Ezra, who can help you resist the siren’s call, not just me. Draw on all of them.”

  And with that, the voice faded.

  Ezra eyed Grace beside him, more thankful she was at his side than ever. Thankful, what’s more, for the Yanomami who had taught him to open a bridge to the spirit world.

  Robin was right; he had armies of the dead at his disposal. Now, if he could only use them as she suggested.

  ***

  Alexis peeled the all-natural cotton diaper off her infant. Without fail, she cursed herself silently for going with cloth over disposable each and every time she changed them. It was just too much to imagine restoring virgin white linen to its former state of grace after its descent into poo-poo land, seventh rung of Dante’s hell, where odors are always at their ripest. But she couldn’t stand the thought of plastics or synthetic fabrics of any kind against her own skin, far less her infant’s, which would be even more sensitive. Maybe it was a gene she’d inherited, but not in thirty-five years of modern living had anyone come up with an alternative to cotton, not even a cotton-blend, she could tolerate. Silk was the one exception, but for short periods only. It wasn’t grounding enough. Maybe she’d spent a prior life in a desert where the sand was always grating at her skin; she could never shower enough to be rid of it, never get into a fabric that wasn’t rubbing her raw, moreover, with all the sweating and chafing against her own extruded mineral salts. Possibly, the only reason she wasn’t a nudist in this life was, however many lifetimes later, the trauma was finally abating.

  She dunked the baby in the kitchen sink, which, from her perspective, must have felt like the Roman baths. She giggled at feeling the pressure of the plumes ejected from the nozzle muted only by the water in the tub the jet had to thrust through.

  Finished with the wash cycle, Alexis lifted Rhonda out of the sudsy water and dunked her into the rinse water, grateful for the dual sink. Both sinks were temperature controlled by the computers built into the stainless steel basins. The rinse water was saturated with fragrant oils to keep baby Rhonda’s skin silky smooth and rid of rashes. Lending back support with one hand, she used a chamois to gently scrub baby Rhonda’s skin with the other, just like waxing a car.

  Finally, Rhonda was ready for drying, accomplished readily by holding her up to the fan. Mommy loved fans and air blowing over her in massaging swaths. She’d picked up the addiction on a two-week visit to New Tampa, Florida, where the breeze was always blowing. Now she couldn’t go anywhere in the house without being under the spell of one or more fans, either overhead, or of the standing, rotating, or fixed fan-boat propeller variety. The cyclone followed her cunningly around corners and through locked doors courtesy of her husband’s slavishly attending to her every whim.

  Finished with the front, she rotated baby Rhonda’s backside to face the fan, at which point she kindly exploded the last of her prior meal out her ass, and all over the room, thanks in no small part to the fan. Some of the detritus landed on Alexis. The moment could only have been made more choice if Rhonda’s first words were, “Got ya.”

  Gazing around at the disaster site, she realized it would take a professional crime scene cleaning team a week or more to return the room to its original state. All she could think of was her poor husband having to do it, because she had to report to work in five minutes. This was supposed to be her heroic tour of duty, interceding for him, so he could sleep a while longer. Not to mention getting some quality one on one time with her daughter for the sake of reawakening her maternal instincts.

  “Is your mommy giving up on greatness to play domestic goddess with you, sweetie? Only to find she isn’t particularly well cast in the role?” Suddenly the thought of foregoing her life as a bagger of bad boys of the first order, a premier predator pouncer, didn’t seem like such a hot idea, even if she knew she had her priorities straight.

  “No, you’re not,” came the voice in her head, telling her just what she wanted to hear, only it wasn’t hers. This was a presence, an intruder violating the sanctuary of her headspace. “You’re going to be just fine. Your Zen is domestic bliss. It is here where you lose yourself and find yourself at the same time. It is in this zone that you’ll do your best work. And no bad guy will be safe from you.”

  “Thank you for that,” she said out loud.

  “I would think ‘bad girl’ would be more appropriate,” her husband said, showing up in the doorway in time to take things wildly out of context.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Sweetie, it’s why they invented semi-gloss paint and tile floors,” he said, not missing a beat, and taking the baby from her. “You get along to work where the shit never stops flying.”

  Baby Rhonda laughed madly, enjoying her handiwork. Evidently she harkened from the Jackson Pollock school of art.

  Alexis said in a no-room-for-argument tone, “I’m scheduling a babysitter and tonight we’re checking into one of those theme hotels where we bathe in a giant champagne glass after mud wrestling in a vat of semi-sweet chocolate.”

  “Maybe vanilla chocolate, considering the point of the theater therapy.” Holding the baby away from them, he kissed her to take the edge off the smart-assed retort.

  She trudged out of the room, staring at her nose to throw the field of view of the entire room out of focus. It was that, or be paralyzed with guilt.

  Once inside her unmarked police car, she said, “You still there?” talking to the voice in her head. When she didn’t get a response, she turned the key in the ignition and listened to the soothing sounds of the engine turning over and then humming nicely. “Thank God for those metal fillings in my head. The reception must be better in the kitchen.”

  As Alexis backed the car out, she pondered the concept of talking to angels. She wondered how that played with her mundane domestic life, uninspired and undoctored in every way. To mess with the formula would just be to admit that it was somehow inadequate. She questioned if it would ruin the whole shtick, like switching genres midway from drama to theater of the absurd. Maybe only with the occasional interruption...

  FIFTY

  Drew, having been made privy to Robin’s outreach program with some of the other Renaissance types, felt both reassured that this wasn’t the latest psychotic break, and troubled over what he was going to do to contend with this latest aspect of her unfolding. She was already off on safari a lot with her shamanic healings of the ones who had crossed her path, only to die prematurely, convinced they had encountered her for just that reason, to get the extra help on the other side they needed. Then there was her penchant for entering fugues, calling up DSM-IV psychological profiles to open channels to netherworlds within his world that he’d just as soon not know existed. He didn’t want to know about Tesla towers in Alaska shielding the planet in preparation for interplanetary war. He didn’t want to know about strange obelisks in the desert being dug out only to turn themselves on for unspecified reasons.

  On and on it went.

  The seer was living up to her promise to see the world with fewer and fewer filters and blinders, imposed by her own prejudices and preconceptions; her limited frames of reference; and without her own life narrative making too much that didn’t fit it extraneous and superfluous; with a need to hold on to sanity with a death grip long gone courtesy of the Hartman affair. She seemed perfectly content to keep her mind at the bleeding edge of chaos and order. He was proud of her, but it wasn’t making their lives any easier. Nor did her health seem entirely unaffected. She couldn’t expect to lie in bed for weeks at a time and not go downhill fast.

  In the spirit of facilitating the falling of the latest Berlin Wall in her mind, he said, “Robin, I’m glad you let me see inside your head. I always assumed… but I was wrong.”

  “Wrong about what?”

  “The Renaissance types you’re trying to mentor… They’re all naturals like you. What about the hybrids, the chip-enhanced, the ones only part human and part machine? And what about artificial intelligence in its purest
form? The robots? There are not one but three vectors to the future. And they will likely influence one another in an untoward manner.”

  “To say nothing of Mother, or an increasingly sentient internet. Looks like Seriana didn’t miss capitalizing on her potential. Mother will likely have a hand in comingling all three vectors to her own personal ends.”

  “And yet I sense that realizing this, you’re not about to alter your agenda one stitch.”

  Robin sighed. “Let me get a handle on the naturals first. One thing at a time. They seem to be coming into their own a little ahead of the others.”

  “Is that true? Or is that just wishful thinking? You attract to you that which you are. It doesn’t surprise me you’d be a little blind to the goings-on with the hybrids and A.I. When I told you to investigate what was going on in Berkeley’s science labs, what did you think I meant?”

  “Clearly something else. Drew, even if what you say is true, I have to consolidate one camp at a time, then and only then can I see how to play the chess pieces off of one another.”

  “Funny you should mention chess. It’s a game of war. You sure you aren’t seeing the writing on the wall, and hedging your bets with your favorite team?”

  “Even if that’s what my unconscious is up to, my conscious mind is going to have to find inroads into all camps if anyone is to survive.”

  “And none of this strikes you as the worst kind of messiah complex? I mean, what makes you think you can lead the naturals, far less each of these different factions? Christ, you’d dare to mentor Mother herself? What madness is that?”

  “And yet we all have a purpose under God, don’t we, a life mission we feel we were born to. Even if we feel inadequate to the task initially, God will see we get everything we need to fulfill it.”

  “Where did you hear that claptrap?”

  “Something Hartman said once upon a time.”