RENAISSANCE 2.0 Book 1 - Sample Chapters

Chapter 1

Rave had finally figured out how to blow up the world. 

A mere scientific curiosity at first, the idea had gotten under his skin and festered there, like one of those exotic tropical diseases spreading from the most minor of cuts. The idea was simple enough, but had proven quite the engineering headache. 

He petted his baby, drawing more arousal from its contorted pipes, Tesla coils, and crystal oscillators, than the breasts of a woman. But then, women were decidedly more complicated. 

Once he flicked the switch, Earth would enfold dimensions forever. What he was looking at, was a shortcut, a one-way ticket to the multiverse: access to any and all parallel universes. The mind-field created would allow anyone within its sphere of influence (which, after many recalibrations, now covered the entire globe) to slide from this reality to any alternate reality they desired.  

If centaurs and minotaurs and unicorns existed, if they were indeed more than mere imagination, one could easily key to them, and awaken in a magical world more suited to one's tastes. Giants? No problem. Winged angelic people? Again, no problem. But they had to exist somewhere; the machine couldn't create them. However, Rave figured, in infinitely many parallel universes, for sure, they had to exist somewhere.  

His device, in all likelihood, would end imagination, make it obsolete. Instead one would talk of "attunement," "migration," "vibrating to a dimensional frequency in keeping with one's soul-emanations."  

Of course, by "blow up" the world, he meant make it infinitely bigger. But there remained the vague possibility that his device, if it ever got out of tune, despite his efforts to make it forever self-tuning, could reduce the planet to a pile of rubble. A remote possibility. But certainly not out of the question. And worth the risk, in any case, to get humanity to settle in among the stars in such a way that they could never be a danger to one another again. 

His finger hovered over the switch just long enough to allow for some self-aggrandizement. He had done it, after all. He deserved a "You go, fella." 

The doorbell rang.  

Eye to the keyhole, he observed a man dressed in black, possibly a tuxedo, standing erect and firm, looking every bit as calcified as the Greco-Roman pillars decorating his front porch.  

He opened the door. 

"Mr. Rave Landers, such a treat to find you home." The man pushed his way inside the house, eyes hawking Rave's machine. 

"Hey! Wait a minute! Who do you think you are pushing your way in here!" 

With a better look at him, Rave said, "I've seen you somewhere before. I never forget a face. I have quite the eidetic memory," he said proudly. "Yes, it was in a photograph taken in 1836. You held a silver sphere under your arm, smiling like a fool. But that would make you..." 

"People have doppelgangers, Rave." He slid his hand over the curving lines of the time machine, as if he was a fellow suitor for her affections. "Fathers have sons, and their sons have sons. You see how it goes?" 

"No. My memory has never failed me," Rave said, drawing enough courage from his convictions to step closer towards him. "Even clones of the original would veer in another direction after so much time, owing to small errors in the duplication process. The only explanation is you haven't aged at all past the point your development arrested. Quite remarkable, I guess that makes you a fellow scientist yourself." 

"I may as well confess." The man fussed with a tight-fitting leather glove, which he attempted to slip over his right hand, like a snake determined to squirm back into its shed skin. "Many fools ran around like you back then, convinced they had a free hand to remake the world in their own image. That silver sphere I had under my hand then, did you know what that was? Some idiot had decided to suspend gravity. You can just imagine..."