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

  Hartman smacked her skull against the wall so hard the tile cracked. “Have you had a deep thought in your life?”

  Toilet Girl vaulted off the seat. She grabbed hold of his neck with all the force of a loose necktie.

  She screeched, “Yeah, here's one for you: You're an asshole!”

  “I suppose that could be deep – given the right context.”

  He spun Urinal Girl’s head around, and ripped it off. Toilet Girl screamed at the blood gushing out of her friend's neck. She let go of his throat, and ran to the door. She yanked on it, but had forgotten about the doorstop.

  Hartman picked her up by the ankles. “Love the stilettos.” He peeled one off, and gouged out her eyes with the heel as she screamed.

  Beyond the bathroom door, the raucous noise of the beer-guzzling college kids intruded on his inner sanctum. Their merriment and frivolity etched against his exterior like a coat of acid.

  Hartman broke off the heel of the stiletto. “You want to be larger than life? Here's your chance.” He jabbed the heel into her heart. “Maybe you can shock someone into higher consciousness – the kind you could never reach before the stars expelled all their light.”

  As the life bled out of her eyes, he gazed around at the big picture.

  Then – he posed the bodies.

  ***

  Seconds after Hartman’s departure, Jocular Bud sauntered into the men’s bathroom alongside Sidekick Bud. The two twenty-somes eyed the headless body on the urinal still squirting blood from its neck, and the severed head on the sink counter.

  Toilet Girl was squatting with her feet on the toilet seat, her eyes dangling out their sockets, the stiletto heel wedged in her heart.

  Jocular Bud gasped. “Damn! I forgot it was Halloween.”

  He listened absently as Sidekick Bud jumped on his cell phone. “Honey, you gotta get the kids dressed. I know it's Thursday. They do it the day before for little kids.”

  Sidekick Bud passed his hand through the squirting fountain of blood, rubbed his fingers together as he listened to the voice on the other end and replied, “How should I know? Too many psychos in the world to be on the same streets as the older kids, I guess.” He touched the head on the sink. “I tell you one thing, though. We're definitely coming here tomorrow night.”

  Busy peeing, Jocular Bud nodded. “Freaking A.”

  EIGHTEEN

  The townhouse was a Georgetown icon. Not that they were in Georgetown, or going for anything iconic. Some builder just let his sentiments get the better of him. Plenty of woodwork. The overbearing old world charm, Jeannie thought, played an ironic note against her carefree nature, and equally lighthearted breeze through UC Berkeley.

  Adam, a year behind her, at just twenty, wanted everyone to feel good about themselves. So the idea of disappointing the realtor who showed them the place would never have occurred to him. She put on quite a wilting act when he looked less than enthused. But he schmoozed only modestly well, explaining why it had taken him a month to get back in Jeannie’s good graces.

  Adam moaned as the alarm clock went off, flashing 6:00 AM.

  Her nurse's scrubs, white smock and white pants, hung over a fire-cured designer dining chair by the bed. Her nametag read: “Mercy Psychiatric, Jeannie Chalmer.” In smaller print, the nametag declared: “The meaning of Jeannie is ‘God is Gracious.’"

  Adam, accustomed to the morning routine, went from zero to one hundred in half a heartbeat. Upon leaping out of bed, he pounded the clock. He rubbed his eyes as if squeezing them back into shape. “Who the hell teaches philosophy at nine? There’s got to be some law against this. Did you check the Geneva Convention like I asked you?”

  Jeannie smiled, half-asleep. She stirred to consciousness, stretching ecstatically. “Don't pretend you even know what the Geneva Convention is.”

  “So what if I haven't seen it? Has anyone? Has anyone seen the Bill of Rights? The Constitution? We base our entire lives on hearsay!”

  “God, no wonder Hartman indulges your babbling. You have a third of his IQ, but you think exactly the same about everything.”

  “You don't need to be hurtful.”

  “It's six in the morning. Who can avoid being hurtful?”

  “I'll get the coffee.”

  “You'll find my humanity on the second shelf.”

  Jeannie managed to sit up, her eyes still shuttered tight.

  She veritably sleepwalked into the kitchen, not bothering to open her eyes. She was as sure of the path as any blind person, having practiced maneuvering said path sightlessly on many a prior morning.

  Yanking the cup from under the coffee drip before it was close to being finished, she dropped six ice cubes into the black morass, guzzled it. His half-cup in hand, Adam topped his grounds runoff with tap water.

  “Wait for it! Wait for it! There it is,” he exclaimed, “the poor man’s electroshock!”

  She adjusted his head with a chiropractic neck twist.

  His eyes went wide. “What's that supposed to do?”

  “It's desensitization therapy. Keeps me from wanting to snap your neck – providing I do it three or four times a day.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  They pulled up their shirts and rubbed bellies. He kissed her, nodded off. She snorted, and swatted him playfully across the face.

  Opening his eyes, he declared, “Oh, screw this.” He ripped open a bag of coffee, and spooned the grounds into his mouth.

  She laughed. “When did you get so civilized?” Jeannie grabbed the bag and buried her entire face in it, munched a billiard ball-sized lump of coffee. The rest of the bag’s contents spilled to the ground.

  They eyed one another's sorry states. Were they just exaggerating their inability to sustain consciousness, using the joke to get some distance on themselves, or were they being serious? She couldn’t tell anymore. They both chuckled softly in any case, if only to give one another false assurance that they hadn’t slipped over the edge.

  “Yeah, I suppose philosophy class isn't going to do us any good,” she said, and headed back to bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “This is a first floor unit, Adam. My options are limited. I can't jump, so I may as well go back to sleep.”

  “The old man is retiring in a couple weeks. The least we can do is go and pretend we learned something. Besides, we need to speak to those two lesbians to see what we can do for the party.”

  “How many coffee cups does it take to chase away the chauvinist in you?”

  “Hey, I'm delighted they're lesbians. I mean, how better to host a party than to throw not one, but two women at the task?”

  “No wonder Hartman is retiring,” she said, sauntering back to bed. “There’s no halting this backward slide in social evolution.”

  Then, as an afterthought, “And just because Fiona doesn’t smile back at you every time you level your lecherous gaze at her does not make her lesbian.”

  “There’s a better barometer?” he said, genuinely flabbergasted. “I mean, look at me.”

  He grabbed Jeannie, tossed her over his shoulder, and headed for the front door. She figured he was guiltlessly hamming up the cave man act, since she was the one who stuck his mind in this groove.

  With a crane of her neck, Jeannie regarded the upside down view of her apartment. “I appreciate you giving me a fresh outlook on things.”

  But when they passed the full-length mirror, she informed him, “We're not dressed.”

  “At this hour, he can take me as I am.”

  “Careful, I have another half hour of sleep to catch up on,” she said, then promptly dozed off.

  “No problem,” he said. “I don't want you catnapping in class. I tell you, the old man is at his breaking point. No one pretends to get him anymore.”

  NINETEEN

  Inside the philosophy building, Hartman went through his mail, standing against a wall full of slots. He winked at Winona Banks, oldest of the secretaries. She was in her forties, short and ro
und, like a water balloon. It never took the newbies long to realize she was the go-to person in the office for anyone with a problem that couldn’t be fixed. She possessed a razor sharp mind and a sardonic wit, committed largely to surviving the day.

  Winona was already attending selflessly to the new hires, lavishing the same attention on them she did on Hartman and anyone who crossed her path. He figured they both had their own way of saving the world and living by the No Man Left Behind credo. No wonder he was taken by her.

  “Fiona, love,” Winona said, “you’ll want to back up those files to at least five different servers. When four of them crash inside of two days, you’ll thank me.”

  Fiona gazed up from her Vanity Fair, where she was dutifully studying fashion makeovers involving hair-sculpting and dying.

  Winona turned towards one of the other girls in the secretary pool. “Cheryl, I adjusted your chair for you to make it more ergonomic. You’ll notice the difference after a few hours of trying to keep up with transcribing Professor Beiber’s lecture notes.”

  Austin, one of the male secretaries, walked in to find a box of his favorite donuts and coffee on his desk, placed there by Winona, and instantly relaxed.

  “Winona, you think mankind is regressing back to the primordial ooze?” Hartman asked by way of “Hello.”

  Danny Sparks, one of his latest students, barged in before Winona could reply. Hartman likened him to a firecracker that would go off prematurely with the slightest mishandling. Winona took a deep breath in preparation for the blast as he streaked toward her desk.

  “Where the hell is this world philosophy class?” Danny demanded. “This building is a damn maze.”

  Winona threw Hartman a look. “I gather yours was a rhetorical question.”

  Hartman chuckled, and returned his eyes to his mail, keeping the secretary’s bay in his peripheral vision. Danny was studying him.

  Winona returned her attention to Danny. “It's an IQ test, honey. If you're not smart enough to find the class, you probably shouldn't go.”

  “Ha-ha. Glad you can make jokes at nine in the morning. This class is the joke!” Danny cringed and pressed his hand against his jaw. Hartman lifted his eyes from his mail to glare at Danny.

  “Toothache?” Winona asked.

  “From punishing a guy’s fist with my face.” Danny said, as he assessed one girl after another in the office.

  “That where you got the bruise on your forehead?”

  “No, I got that from hitting my head against the wall to help me forget about the toothache.”

  “You sure you wouldn’t like to try Introduction to Logic over World Philosophy?” Winona presented him with the syllabus of Intro to Logic.

  “I appreciate the droll humor to kick-start my brain. But yoga and fog horns couldn’t do it at this hour.”

  Winona handed him some aspirin. Danny poured half the contents into his hand and chewed the pills like candy, shuffled them to the left side of his mouth to avoid further inflaming the sore tooth.

  “Did someone forget to tell you kids this isn’t a party school?” Winona asked.

  Danny replied, “I know you’re a relic, but try to keep up.”

  Hartman steamed at the disrespect directed Winona’s way. She didn’t deserve that, in the middle of trying to help the kid out, no less.

  When Winona took the bottle of aspirin back from Danny, her expression changed, like a clairvoyant getting a hit off the psychic residue Danny had left there. She looked rattled.

  Danny caught sight of Cheryl, with her long jet black hair, returning with a ream of paper. It was the first time he’d held his attention on any one item more than a few seconds; the kid had ADHD in the worst way. He reached for a tennis ball in the pocket of his windbreaker, which he squeezed to an even rhythm. Hartman observed Danny’s breathing change, even his posture. It was so subtle, he doubted anybody else noticed, perhaps not even the kid. Apparently, staying up late isn’t the only thing Danny Sparks is addicted to, Hartman thought.

  Clearing her throat to redirect Danny’s attention, Winona drew over the map of the building's corridors for him with a felt tip marker. He ripped the map out of her hands, and was gone.

  Hartman approached her desk. He watched her reach into her purse and retrieve one of her female hormone pills. “You take those things p.r.n.?”

  “Forget what you heard about female hormones contributing to hysteria. You need the patience of a saint and the political acumen of a presidential candidate, you need some of these.” She popped the pill in her mouth and washed it down with a Dr. Pepper.

  Hartman laughed. “You feel like you accomplished anything in the last twenty years?” he asked.

  Winona was accustomed to these abrupt conversational gear shifts from Hartman, and without hesitation said, “Shit, no. Unless you count not letting age erase every last shred of dignity an accomplishment.”

  He supposed he couldn’t resist her because she had a distance on herself that his students lacked; an ability to stare truth in the face unabashedly without running from it, distorting it, or bending it to her purposes. “It's more than I managed,” he said.

  “Here, let me sort that for you.” She grabbed the mail out of his hands, separated it into piles or into the wastebasket. “Garbage. Garbage. For when you have the time. Only if you want to torture yourself. Only if you're looking for an excuse to get raging mad. Oh, here's one, an invitation to your retirement party.”

  She handed him the card. “You're coming, right?”

  “Looks like I'm hosting it.”

  “We're mounting it at your mausoleum because we didn't want you to drink and drive after realizing your life has been a total waste.”

  “Practical. And what are you going to do to survive my grave disposition?” He leaned into her, allowing the banister between them to support his weight.

  “Tune you out. Same as everyone else.”

  Standing tall again, he said, “I like you, Winona. You're the only one from whom I could ever handle the truth.”

  TWENTY

  As Robin walked the Berkeley marina alongside Drew, tracing the water’s edge, the void-like expanse of water had invited a similar emptiness in his own mind, until he couldn’t take it any longer. He burst out of the silence and oblivion they shared with a vengeance. “And Griswald, the guy with the brainwave machines? What’s your take on him? Strike that. What I really want to know is what happens when someone like that aims their social experiments at someone else instead of at themselves?”

  Drew laughed one of her inappropriate laughs. “We’ve talked about the birth pains of this new age before. The Renaissance grows out of the Dark Ages of consolidation of power, and the slip back into an aristocratic, even a feudal society. The ninety-nine percent that are increasingly on the outs find no amount of smartening up and get-over-themselves schemes, no catalogue of iPad and cellphone apps, are enough to hold their lives together and keep them on top of things. Out of this reality comes a new trans-human, something at once more than human and less than human, but able to cope in this new wilderness, able to function in a society so caustic to our current state of mental and emotional development, we just can’t cope.

  “So it is according to Piaget’s developmental theory with children who undergo incremental growth until small degrees of perfection within a given system just don’t work anymore. The entire brain has to be rewired at a higher level, undergoing a quantum shift to channel the extra consciousness needed to adapt. You could say the global shift in consciousness occurring today is at just such a stage, forced upon the group mind by economic necessity, and base survival.

  “In this time, it’s important to be mindful of two things. One, we’ve talked about already, that the powers that be will do anything to avoid losing control, including everything they can to repress the Renaissance, to see no more than a handful of Steve Jobs types ever make it to market. Far less an entire sea of them, which is exactly what’s needed to shockproof this wor
ld, a world in which for everyone to be in control, no one must be in control.