RENAISSANCE 2.0 Book 1 - Sample Chapters

Chapter 3

Robin Wakefield walked in on his wife doing something he didn't want to see her doing: pulling her pantyhose over her penis.  

God, this is going to be an adjustment. Robin smiled politely. Ah, the times, they are a changing. He remembered when sexual identity was less liquid of a concept.  

Keep an open mind, Robin.  

Do not, repeat, do not react with fear or emotion. Your unflappability is all you've got to get you through this.  

"You going in early? That's a first," Drew said, mercifully zipping the pants over the offending member. Robin didn't need to seizure right before work or experience blackouts that could compromise any claims on his insurance, which hopefully covered loss of sanity.  

"The crazies need catching," Robin replied. He kept the rest of that thought to himself. Drew didn't need to know that beating up and imprisoning bad guys was a great vent for frustrations at home. 

"You got bad guys crazier than we are?" Drew said. "You're hopeful."  

Robin was glad to see Drew had lost none of her wit. Charm, on the other hand... 

Drew had elected to undergo the steps in gender reassignment surgery in reverse to see if the shock of the penis undid her resolve, explaining why she was strapping down her breasts. The gesture recalled how the Chinese had once bound the feet of young girls to ensure they stayed small and "beautiful," with just as little thought to the torture involved.  

Robin wondered how much more loss was in store for him in the days ahead. Maybe Drew's determination to change her sex would be the least of it.  

In a collapsed world economy, individuals were getting pretty desperate. Reinventing oneself had become all the rage, up to and including elective sex changes. Females, as it turned out, were climbing corporate ladders faster than men, enjoying a historical surge of discrimination in their favor. Seen as more emotionally stable, more people-friendly, and willing to work for less, they were the current darlings of corporations everywhere, especially in executive positions. Even in government, long the bastion of patriarchal dominance, they were virtually strip-mining congress and the senate in their favor. Most editors at major publishing houses were already female, controlling the fates of unpublished writers; they too were doing their part to float the bubble of rising feminism by ensuring that those who got the word out got published ahead of those who didn't.  

Ordinarily, Robin would be happy to admit women were owed their day in the sun; it was just a matter of the scales of justice balancing finally. But he was paying a steeper price than most for this new embrace of womanhood. Drew was nothing if not finely attuned to game playing. And making sure she stayed afloat on the shifting tides of political and economic power very much went to her raison d'etre.  

She had thus elected to buck the trend, and change from a woman to a man, because she calculated she had the political finesse to go against type and make what was an increasingly unworkable position for others, her ticket to even greater political power. She had every intention of being the one person in government both sexes came running to when they couldn't get past the gender barrier of their political adversaries. By being the one man sensitive enough for women to confide freely to, and the one man who understood women deeply enough to assist men past their clumsy come-ons, she would become the true fulcrum of power in the senate. 

Speaking of mentally preparing for what else might lie in store for you... "What's your take on the headline news? You've got to admit it's getting pretty crazy out there." 

Drew took a deep breath and sighed. Maybe she was getting tired playing the role of divine oracle in his life. Maybe he had been using her social sophistication and political savvy, which included admittedly penetrating insights into humanity-he who manipulated people best had to know them better than they knew themselves-as a one-stop shopping solution to his own naïveté.