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

  “…another get-smarter-fast-or-die scenario,” Robin said, finishing the thought for her.

  Robin couldn’t believe Drew was still accessorizing before the mirror. More of that womanly demeanor shining through the increasingly male exterior; he could only hope the magnetic force it exerted would pull her back from the abyss. Watching her dress had become one of their things of late, as a way to help him adjust to a sinking feeling more compelling than quicksand. So far, the desensitization therapy wasn’t taking.

  Feeling down on himself for the less-than-exemplary performance during this latest debate, Robin reminded himself he’d come a long way over the years trying to hang in there with Drew. Her cultural sophistication and political savvy, inherited from her genteel North Yorkshire, England upbringing among the landed gentry—obscene royalty even by old world standards—imbued her with an unparalleled understanding of human nature. Not to mention a distinct ability to make it work for her.

  The PhD in psychology didn’t hurt, either.

  “I’ve got to go.” Robin shoved his gun in his holster, usually the first thing he put on, even before his socks. But of late, he didn’t need any extra temptation to arrest control of his destiny the only way he knew how.

  Robin supposed that was one more reason to hang in there, the hope being he’d absorb the psychological and philosophical sophistication from Drew to manage the situation between them, well, to manage any situation, for when things got a little too thick at the office. Just yesterday, there was word of a double homicide, cop on cop. The day before, it was news of a hunky homeless person hiding out in the library stacks on campus having slept with over fifty college students, who now had been exposed to the AIDS virus as a consequence. Robin didn’t have a clue how to tiptoe through either minefield while avoiding getting emotionally blown to bits. Without Drew to handhold him through all of it, he may as well hang up his badge now.

  Furthermore, not too many people married someone they wanted to grow into, their best friend, and their lover, all at once. If the equation was faltering, he reminded himself, not even Einsteinian physics explained everything.

  As he sauntered towards the door, she said, “I’ll walk with you up Telegraph Avenue. See if you can spot who the real criminals are in the crowd.”

  He found himself nodding despite himself. Practice makes perfect, after all. Think of all those hotheads, Robin. They’re not going to wait patiently out of respect for your learning curve.

  If today is a repeat of yesterday, just remember, Robin told himself, your whole life is a dress rehearsal for that day when you can actually face life in the buff without freaking out.

  As open and as accepting as you are, as welcoming of life’s diversity, and still you’re undone by present shock. It makes you wonder what the far more rigid personality types are doing to get by.

  ***

  While strolling up Telegraph Avenue, reports came in to Robin’s PDA. The SMS texts summarized the events of the prior day, from the hours he was off-duty: in sum, more disturbing, mind-blowing happenings occurring without seeming rhyme or reason. Few had survived any of the mishaps—certainly not mentally intact, perhaps because few had been schooled like he was being schooled. He turned to Drew and said, “Let’s do this.” He slid the PDA in his pocket, intent on getting a head-start on his day by squeezing in more homework.

  Telegraph Avenue was Robin’s Zen garden. He savored and doted over every character he found there as if the precious colors they contributed were just perfect to offset the rest of the menagerie of flowering souls. He smiled at Bubble Lady, who rewarded him by blowing bubbles in his face. He nodded at Juggler, juggling tangerine tennis balls and spouting astrophysical proofs of imminent alien invasion. Born and bred to Berkeley, Robin was proud to be part of the most progressive city in the world, his own politics generally more inclusive and tolerant than most, even here.

  “We passed two ex-cons already who’ve killed before in all likelihood, and will almost certainly kill again,” Drew dryly informed him.

  “You’re just saying that to mess with me.”

  “Nope. You missed it because you’re so in love with your precious peacock characters. Regardless their sole contribution to the human race is to parade about its genetic mutations in sufficient numbers to pass themselves off as a second Cambrian explosion of creatives. But only you are fooled, apparently.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll look closer. If I can just learn to be as hateful as you…”

  Drew smiled. “I suppose, with you not coming from money, hateful is an acquired taste.”

  Robin’s mushy liberal sentiments created no shortage of friction with Drew, who had little patience for this anything-goes society, finding little appeal in the ever widening sphere of chaos that reigned in her mind the further she strayed from civilized—meaning her high-society—norms, and the further she went down Telegraph Avenue towards campus.

  “There,” Robin said. “That one. He’s got serial killer written all over him.”

  “That’s the mayor. Which means you’re only half right. The serial killer part. You can bet he hides it better than that.”

  “Shit, it’s true. I met him once at a function. What is his name?”

  “With a memory like that for names and faces, you won’t be climbing the promotions-ladder anytime soon. Maybe you can double down on the next one, if you’re still in a gambling mood.”

  Robin picked a face out of the crowd which held promise. “What about him? I’m thinking at least breaking and entering. He looks as if he’s prowling for the first purse he can snag and be off with down the street.”

  “That’s Terrence, one of the campus janitors. He’d give you the shirt off his back.”

  “I give up.” Robin sighed with frustration, just as a passing couple from the burbs gave them a condescending look that Robin could read just fine.

  Walking on, one of the fortune tellers caught Robin’s eye. “Give her some money.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s the real deal. I can see it in her eyes.”

  This from the guy who’d just struck out twice at reading the far more glaring things in people. Fully intent on blowing Robin off, Drew noticed the fortune tellers to either side of her squirm up and down the row of forecasters at Robin’s words. That alone sparked her curiosity. She decided to humor Robin, and threw a fifty dollar bill on the charlatan-till-proven-otherwise’s table. “Just one lusty insight’ll do us; we’re in a hurry to catch a ceremony; it appears today we’re to be married to fate.”

  “You’ll make out well on your trip to Washington,” she said eying Drew.

  “Trip to Washington?” Robin said.

  Drew’s grip tensed. “It’s nothing.”

  To Robin, the reader said, “You won’t make out so well on the trip you’re going on—at least not at first.”

  “What trip?” Robin said.

  The fortune teller whistled and shook her head. “Timothy Leary’s got nothing on you, man.”

  “Told you; just another charlatan.” Drew dragged them away. Though she found it spooky how the psychic had pulled something out of her head she was thinking about at that moment.

  “Robin, you need a better lens into the future so you can strike more preemptively against your bad guys. You might want to look beyond the colorful characters on Telegraph Avenue. The research labs at Cal Berkeley are where the future criminals of genuine concern are forged. Not forgetting the labs inside their own homes. You ignore those characters at your own peril.”

  ELEVEN

  Raj Raahi staggered out of his ratty tenement not knowing what hour it was or what day, though he was certain of the week; he had midterms on Friday. Bleary eyed, he stumbled over the cracks in the walkway. He hadn’t shaved or showered in days, and couldn’t remember the last time he had taken off the clothes he was wearing. But with little time remaining, he had to prioritize. As it was, routine daily tasks and weekly errands were the least of his concern
s. Sleep had become the biggest enemy.

  “Hey, man, you look like you could use some daffodils.” The reedy, nondescript teen looked like a weed growing out of the fissures in the sidewalk. Someone, on any given day, Raj would have been happy to step on. How do you harm a weed?

  “Huh?”

  “Dr. Death March,” the teen coached. Frustrated by Raj’s cluelessness, he came clean. “Modafinil, man. Mod for short, very mod.” He chuckled.

  “Sorry, I don’t do drugs.”

  Pusher shifted balance from foot to foot as if trying to stay warm. It was only then that Raj registered the wind and the cold. It was enough to give him a face peel on the cheap.

  “Not recreational drugs, man, smart drugs.” The face talking to Raj looked vaguely reptilian due to the hoody masking his hair and puffy eyelids with an absence of eyelashes. Raj realized Pusher’s nondescript features owed in part to his being Asian, possibly Chinese, and all Asians looked the same to Raj.

  “Oh yeah?” Raj said. The fog was lifting from his mind merely on the pretense of juicing it further.

  “You don’t need sleep on these. Work clear through the night.”

  “Excellent.” Raj felt saliva returning to his dry mouth, desiccated for days, as the drool ducts kicked in. “How much?” He guiltily scanned both sides of the street to see if anyone was watching. Raj, of Indian descent, realized that to the Caucasian and black walkers-by, they were just two undistinguishable people talking.

  “Twenty percent above what you’d pay on the internet, man. Not including express shipping. Consider it a convenience fee. No wait. No fuss, no muss.”

  “Side effects?”

  “Just makes you want to study like crazy, man. Boosts incentive. Raises dopamine levels in the brain. It’s practically a health-food.”

  “You sure there’s nothing you’re not telling me?” Raj tried to read Pusher’s expression better, but he didn’t have the poker-face reading skills up to the task of spotting his tells, certainly not past the blinders of a culture and genetics so alien to him.

  Pusher reached into the right hip pocket of his jeans.

  “Here, man.” He handed over a copy of Smart Drugs II: The Next Generation. “Complimentary copy. I sell most of the drugs in here, so it’s just good business.”

  Leave it to Berkeley dealers to supply their own literature, Raj thought.

  He was cheating in his competition with the other students. But in the cosmic scheme of things, guilt meant nothing, only success. Last he checked, university policy basically stated they could not care less, so screw it, one more reason to feel vindicated.

  “It used to be no one could get through life without befriending at least one computer programmer and web designer,” Raj said. “Now, I want to know who the hell gets through college without a designer drug dealer.”

  “You’re catching on.”

  After negotiating the price down several notches, Raj handed Pusher the money. The poor man had never haggled before with a merchant from India’s Bihar province.

  Raj hoofed it down to the corner, filled a brown bag with mangoes from the farmer’s temporary and undoubtedly illegal stand on the corner of his block, paid for it. He headed back towards his flat, fully intent on surviving until midterms on mangoes and smart drugs.

  Back in his flat, Raj set down the fruit and the pills, forgot to recharge with both, and checked his rats.

  The loft space was essentially one giant emporium of mazes, each one designed to test the rats’ smarts. He was doing pre-human trials to see which nexgen smart drugs were most effective. Ones not in Pusher’s book, or any updated versions of it he’d find on Amazon. Explaining why he had had time forget about the drugs Pusher was dealing; just too far removed from his bailiwick.

  The irony had only now occurred to him that he’d never tried any smart drugs on himself. But then, he’d always been at the top of his class. It was only upon coming to Berkeley, where he was competing against others who were all top-of-their-class that he had to find a way to take his game to the next level. And not sleeping as much and working three times as hard as anyone else seemed like a perfectly adequate solution until even those behaviors left him falling short of the mark.

  He canvassed from Plexiglas-covered maze to Plexiglas-covered maze with increasing resignation and despair. So far, there were no standouts. He wasn’t entirely sure his rats weren’t doing worse than normal, for all their vita-nutrient regimens.

  Ironically, his one superstar was the hamster running over ten miles a day on his spin-wheel, and showing no signs of slowing. To override Raj’s timer on the wheel, which he had designed to keep the animal from driving him nuts throughout the night, took monster ingenuity and determination on the hamster’s part Raj was beside himself to explain. He tapped the cage to get the hamster’s attention, but it was too lost to ecumenical zeal for climbing unclimbable mountains, much like himself.

  Yawning, Raj rode the latest wave of fatigue to submerge his hyper-rational processes in dream-like watery states of consciousness. He reached for a mango, and the modafinil. He repeated one of each every hour, happy to find fatigue was a thing of the past.

  With six mangoes and six daffodils filling his belly, the long-awaited revelation struck him like the blow of a hammer.

  The hamster was the key.

  Whatever the hamster was on, it was clearly working. Only, Raj hadn’t put him on anything; he wasn’t part of the study.

  He checked the hamster-feed, noted the long list of ingredients to hide the fact that it was largely junk-food for hamsters. He felt ashamed, but also clueless as to which artificial ingredient might actually be serving as Miracle-Gro for mind and body alike.

  It dawned on him that if serendipity was the cause of the breakthrough, then it might not be the feed.

  He eyed the water dispenser, which was molded over. And the food dish, which was empty. With all his attention on the rats, the poor hamster had been the unwitting recipient of gross neglect. Dietary restriction combined with eating its own feces and drinking mold-infested water to create a super hamster. Considering how penicillin was discovered, Raj had his hopes pinned on mold-water being the tonic of choice.

  He quickly forgot about midterms. There just wasn’t enough time to isolate the breakthrough of the century. With any luck, he’d never have to return to class. He’d start his own biopharmaceuticals plant right out of his flat.

  Raj wasted no time switching up the nutrient regimens the rats were on. But deciding who was going to get what was complicated. The enzymes in the hamster’s digestive tract might be the ingredient that made everything work, unlocking the magic in the mold. Or he might simply be a creature of divinely mutated genetics, surviving in spite of scurvy and other diseases running rampant through him even now courtesy of malnutrition.

  Raj felt overwhelmed by the challenge of isolating exactly which compound was responsible for super hamster.

  The constant caterwauling from the streets wasn’t helping his concentration. He flicked on the TV to mute the sounds of gunshots, rapes, murders, and drunken car crashes occurring outside. And he walked from window to window, twisted the venetian blinds shut on each vignette desperate to paint a picture of End Times in aggregate.

  The newscaster reported on the latest promising smart drug breakthrough. If he didn’t pick up the tempo of discovery, he was in serious threat of being little more than a footnote in history, his own contributions drowned out in the noise of creativity.

  He phoned Wajid, his Indian friend from Ahmedabad, chastised himself for not straying beyond his ethnic circle, but he could still think faster in Hindi than in English. Wajid was a computer whiz. With his help, Raj would be able to hack his way into supercomputers across the country to find the number crunching speeds he needed to fast track his experiments.

  Inside of a half hour of Wajid’s arrival, Raj had laid out his reasons for optimism.

  Wajid was as impressed as a fly on a desiccated cow’s carcass.
“You’re out of your mind, man. Smart drugs? You and everyone else. Couldn’t you pick some pasture less picked over?”

  “Look at that hamster. This promises to be more than a smart drug. Boosts everything. Physical performance. Longevity. Hell, even offsets malnutrition.”

  “Or you’re just imagining things in your sleep-deprived delirium. Not like you’ve had him under scientific observation. He may be sneaking out at night through a hole in that cage and feasting on your vitamins.”

  Raj redirected Wajid’s attention to the TV. The newscaster estimated RadTek’s revenues this year at three and a half billion, following release of its latest smart drug. “Need I say more?”

  “Shit, I can get better odds purchasing a lottery ticket.”

  “You’re gonna lower those odds for me with your computer magic. Devote all your time to shooting down all your own objections with what you find on line. Shiva knows, I sure don’t have the patience for it. I got a mountain to climb and my toes already show frostbite.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll give you a couple days. Long enough to rule out which one of us in this room is the biggest dickhead.”

  One key component in place, Raj moved on to clearing the next obstacle. He needed the sensitive instruments that could help him extract the DNA in his precious mold.

  Luckily for Raj, the era of garage biology was upon them. It took but moments to buy himself a molecular biology lab on eBay. A mere $1,000 got him a set of precision pipettors for handling liquids and an electrophoresis rig for analyzing DNA. Side trips to sites like BestUse and LabX rounded out his purchases with graduated cylinders, and a PCR thermocycler for amplifying DNA.