RENAISSANCE 2.0 Book 1 - Sample Chapters

Chapter 4

Radon pressed the button on his earpiece, and smiled wickedly. To anyone who might be watching, he was simply adjusting the volume on his Bluetooth. He watched the traffic hurtle by at forty-five miles an hour, and collide at the stop light at San Pablo and Ashby Avenues.  

He approached the pile-up of cars in the role of the concerned Samaritan, and fleeced the drivers and passengers alike of their valuables. All the while, he pretended to be feeling for pulses and did mock rescues, dragged the limp bodies out of the cars, and applied mouth to mouth and CPR.  

As a crowd gathered, and people jumped on their cell phones to dial 911, his behaviors got more demonstrative. Radon was clearly a saint, no more, no less.  

Other brave souls wheedled their way into his rescue acts, and attended the other crash victims. Radon inserted himself in their dramas. He took on the role of the medical authority determined to see no further unwitting harm came to the victims by careless or simply unknowing would-be rescuers. "Maybe you should let me handle that. You're going to crack his chest with those compressions." "Let me straighten him out so we don't end up crippling him from the neck down."  

It was a little harder to rob people blind with eyes on him from so many angles. But he'd been a magician in his early years. It was really just a matter of calculating the trajectories of the eyes on him, blocking their sight with his own body positioning, and procuring the sleight of hand from their perspective. By attacking people's blind spots, he could make them think he was levitating right in front of them. Fleecing jewelry and wallets was a walk in the park by comparison. Not as much fun as doing magic on stage. Unlike a David Copperfield, though, hacks like Radon had to ply their trade how they could. The complete dominance of the top one percent in every career field in the world was a tsunami wave that had finally caught him as it had caught everyone.  

Radon jumped into the middle of the street as the ambulances arrived on the scene, pointed "helpfully" to the victims who needed attention first. In truth, he was being strategic, making sure his positioning relative to the crowd's sightlines was once again the most fortuitous for slipping away unseen. 

The second his mental calculations confirmed all was a go, he was gone, like a mirage, like no one was ever there. He could hear the testimonials now. "He must have been an angel. It's the only logical answer." He could see the ones being interviewed making the sign of the cross over themselves as they described the man who was simply everywhere at once, saving more lives ahead of anyone's ability to count the injured.

***

"You got him?" Perdue, the SWAT commander, sounded impatient for a reason. This was the third mass murder scene in as many hours. Twelve dead so far. Twenty injured, and counting. 

"Oh yeah, we got him." Robes-Pierre zoomed the GPS Google World map in on their mark. He was running north and east of Ashby and San Pablo Avenues. He appeared headed for San Pablo Park. The perfect place for a turkey shoot, as it turned out. "The controlled EMP bursts he's using to upset the traffic light rhythms are so fine-tuned, he could stop a pace-maker at a half-mile and not bother the cell-phone in the user's hands. Gotta love it."  

***

The SWAT vehicle braked in front of Radon, maybe twenty feet away. Armored police poured out the back end as if someone had thwacked a hornet's nest. He immediately dropped to his knees, placed his hands behind his head. He'd had time bury his booty. They had nothing on him. Not even the Big Brother eyes adjacent to the traffic lights and in stores and cars, the cell phone cams being held on him by awestruck pedestrians, would reveal a damn thing he didn't want them to see. Even if they had their suspicions, it'd never go to court; the circumstantial evidence alone would be just too thin. He smiled. American legal system-gotta love it.