RENAISSANCE 2.0 - Book 2 - Sample Chapters

Chapter 66

The demon-haunted mind to which humans are subject the instant their self-awareness lapses and they lose that healthy distance on themselves self-deprecating humor allows for, didn't take long to reestablish itself in Robin and Drew, the demons eager to reclaim territory lost.  

Drew sat opposite Robin at the kitchen table trying to follow his end of the conversation. But it was clear from the delayed responses, and glazed-over eyes, the innocuous answers, that she was fixating on Robin's budding feminine features. Each morning, Robin's breasts seemed bigger, the hair longer, the facial features, already strikingly beautiful, that much more smooth and refined. Robin might not have caught on to what was going on had Hartman not forced him to revisit such paralyzing moments in his own past, and cracked the door wide open on his closet of cherished repressions. He might have assigned such lapses to the grieving process, to a personal retreat, to an unconscious desire to push Robin away as Robin had tried to push Drew away, instead of to sheer shock. 

"So what other changes did you make around here that I should know about?" Robin asked. 

Drew just sat across the kitchen table from him, coffee cup forever en route to her lips, like a Michelangelo statue left incomplete. The master would surely have finished carving Drew's face into something more angelic had he not died from wrestling with his own homoerotic desires. Drew's eyes would occasionally move jerkily to another part of Robin's form, as if a hand-cranked camera now controlled their fate, while the rest of her remained statue still. Finally, she smiled impishly, and said, "I think I'll leave it to KAC to break the news to you. Far be it from me to rob her of the joys of your unfolding relationship dynamic." 

As Drew settled back into shock-ridden default mode, staring this time at the conspicuous absence of facial hair on Robin's chin (Robin had never had much facial hair to begin with), Robin decided to change tactics. He got up and started flinging open cupboards. "I think I'll cook you breakfast for a change." He was half hoping the shock of Robin cooking them breakfast would snap Drew out of it, the idea of eating his cooking versus her own gourmet-tasting food, but nothing came of the gesture. She just didn't register the real implications of what he was saying, which was how it had gone all morning.  

"Drew, where do you keep the big frying pan?" 

"Where I keep the small one," KAC responded. 

"Oh yeah," Robin said, looking up. It was the first time Robin realized he was in shock himself, not remembering lessons already learned. Drew startled at the casual way in which Robin responded to KAC's voice, as if he were talking to the real Drew, or to the "preferred" Drew, in feminine form.  

"Okay, help me put some things together of your own creation. I don't want you to feel like you're slumming," Robin said. He wasn't of a mind to trigger any more neurotic episodes, as Robin and Drew had enough to contend with just with one another.  

"The green onions are in the refrigerator, bottom shelf," KAC said.  

Robin gasped. "Wow, these are the perkiest, lushest green onions, I've ever seen." 

"Thank you," KAC said with pride. "I took the opportunity to order them yesterday, anticipating Drew's return." 

Interesting. Robin didn't know when Drew was getting back, and neither did Drew. He let the thought pass-crowded out as it was for contention in his mind with another realization. In his peripheral vision, Robin could swear Drew had squirmed slightly in her chair. Was she getting jealous of his relationship with a disembodied incarnation of her former self? If so, Robin's campaign to alleviate her sense of shock was just piling one shock on top of another. Great, Robin. 

He chopped the scallions without any further conversation directed at KAC to help reroute the direction this drama was taking. But KAC grew impatient. "Here, let me do that for you," she said, as if it was all she could do to hide her sense of injury. She sicced a counter top robot at Robin, which grabbed the knife out of his hand, and proceeded to cut the onions properly.