Stories, both long and short.

PART THREE .

Leonardo had hardly slept, reading again through his own biographies.

The world felt slightly off kilter when he sat up and stretched.

It was the year 3000 and he’d died over a thousand years ago. Salai, Melzi were dead. There was no more royalty in Italy or anywhere else. The titled ‘Mona Lisa’ was the best regarded painting in history, even if couldn’t be exposed to direct light anymore, due to its faded colors. The Last Supper had its own funeral.

Leonardo was both dead and alive.

He flexed his hands again, and longed for his charcoal pencil. Leaving the rather cramped and cluttered room that the doctor, Rain, had allowed him to stay in, Leonardo looked around.

She’d said he had free rein of her ‘lab’. So what did that mean? Could he use the box where she’d made his clothes yesterday?

Guessing it was a safe bet Leonardo traced his steps back to where he’d ‘woken up’ from yesterday.

Rain was hunched over the glass desk, eyes far away. Her brown hair was messily curled around her face and the light from the glass was casting her in harsh shadows. She didn’t look up when he called.

Shrugging, Leonardo guessed it was probably safe to go and use the machine. He took his time to study it, running his fingers around the edges of the box, trying to see if could be removed at all from the wall. It seemed to be part of it, and the display at the top lit up when he ran a finger across it. Word were displayed but Leonardo couldn’t read them. He tapped some of them, but the machine simply beeped at him. He frowned and considered it for a moment.

“Italian?” He asked aloud and the machine blinked and the words reappeared, this time in perfect legibility.

Leonardo had to admit this century seemed to be a lot more convenient than the one he had died in.

“May I have a stick of red chalk?” He asked aloud, again. The machine blinked at him again and the within a moment it appeared. It was already sharpened to a point, ready to use. Leonardo picked it up and turned it over, marveling.

“And a notebook, maybe eight inches by ten inches?” He held his hands apart to demonstrate, unsure if the machine would need a visual example.

That too was ready for him, neatly bound with wire spirals and cream colored paper. Leonardo grinned.

“Thank you.”

The machine beeped and Leonardo might have imagined it, but he could swear it sounded pleased with itself.

Leonardo took both of these and walking back out of the room, traced his way back to the kitchen. Kam was standing at another panel in the wall talking to a young woman. Leonardo stayed just out of sight as he listened.

“I don’t know when I’ll be home. Rain…She’s working on something big, really big and I need to be here.”

“Ugh, that sucks but I understand.”

Leonardo tilted his head. Her sister? The woman’s skin was darker than Leonardo’s or Kamala’s.

“Thank you sunshine. I love you.” Kamala pressed her fingers to her lips then to the screen. Leonardo’s heart jumped up to his throat. That was not her sister.

“Kisses babe.” The woman copied what Kam had done and smiled at her. The two shared a quiet moment before Kamala turned off the the screen.

Leonardo walked in right as Kamala was turning around from the communication board, rubbing a hand over her face. She jumped slightly.

“Da Vinci!”

He held up a hand. “Mi displace, I am sorry signora.” He had questions but from the wary look on her face he guessed they would have to wait.

She shook her head, her long black hair slightly tangled from sleeping on it. “Sorry it’s okay. I just wasn’t expecting you.”

He sat down and Kamala rubbed her arms awkwardly.

“Uh, did you sleep okay? Were you comfortable?”

I’m having this conversation with Leonardo fucking Da Vinci, and that’s the best I can come up with?

He gave her a frighteningly familiar half smile, one found in every art book for a thousand years and she nearly fainted.

“Ah, not really. I found my mind too alive to sleep.”

“Yeah I bet,” she muttered. “Do you want coffee?”

He tilted his head. “Coffee?”

“Oh was that not a thing yet for Italy yet? Weird. Uh here, We’ll start with a dark roast that has cream and sugar and go from there, okay?”

Soon Kamala had plied him with a cup, and Leonardo found himself warming to the slightly bitter beverage. Kam had settled in with hers, and she seemed to be both trying to avoid looking at Leonardo and watching him intently, her eyes wide and head tilted.

He waited until after she’d set her coffee down to clear his throat and ask, “That woman you were talking to, who is she?”

Kam stared at him, eyes wide and hands frozen around her cup. “How much did you hear?”

Leonardo shrugged. “Just the last part of it, when you were saying goodbye.”

The women rubbed a hand over her face, then dropped it to rest listlessly in her lap.

“Okay, look. What you need to understand is that it is the year three thousand. I know things were different back in your day, witch burning and crusades and all that, but things are different, better now.” Kamala paused, looking at Leonardo. “So you can’t come at me with ‘It’s against the bible or whatever’, okay?”

Leonardo swallowed. A large bubble of warmth seemed to be pressing it’s way upwards to his throat, making it difficult to speak.

“She is your lover?” He asked, voice hoarse.

Kam sat back with a defiant look. “Yes. She’s my wife.” She stuck out her hand. On her ring finger was a simple white gold band, with a single sapphire embedded in the middle. Leonardo was hardly aware that he was smiling until Kamala snapped “What?”

He looked up at her. “It is legal, here? To be with your own sex?” She nodded, and Leonardo burst out laughing, feeling a weight he didn’t even know he had lifted from his shoulders.

To pursue whoever he wanted, even if they weren’t the right kind of person? Not to forever be looking over his shoulder whenever he touched Salai a moment too long, or couldn’t muster his excuses for his continued bachelorhood?

The future was magnificent!

In between his gasps for breath, Leonardo explained his reaction to Kamala, whose face cleared after she understood.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were gay.” She covered her face with a hand. “I thought you were going to be super devoted to god, or something.”

Leonardo waved it away, still grinning. “It is fine. I’m just glad I know now.” Kamala tentatively smiled back at him.

“Where is your wife then, she doesn’t come with you?” He asked.

“We live in Cairo. She works for the bank there,” Kamala explained. Leonardo nodded.

“Ah, so she is Egyptian?” That would explain the darker skin tone.

“No.” Kam tilted her head to the side. “She’s from Louisiana.”

“Where?” Leonardo leaned forward. Somewhere in France, perhaps?

Kam shook her head. “Here, let me show you.”

XXX   

When Rain came bounding up to the kitchenette, Kam and Leo were bent over the table, looking at the Wikipedia articles for the Union, of all things.

“Making friends, Kam?” She asked lightly. Kam turned around.

“I figured one of us should.”

“Hey, we’re friends. Right Leonardo?” Rain tossed the question over her shoulder.

“Of course,” he demurred, lowering his eyes and dipping his head.

“Oh don’t roll over for me Mister Leonardo. I’m not one of your patrons,” Rain sang out, arranging her own coffee now. She was so old fashioned, to still have a single machine dedicated to making beverages.

“But you did do me a service, bringing me back to life.”

“Who else would I have done?” Rain questioned seriously, curious to know his thoughts. Leonardo spread out his hands.

“Plato?”

Kam let out a little huff of amusement. “See?” She mouthed at Rain.

“Hush you.”

XXX

“How’s it going?” Clio let out a little gasp when Spectra walked out of the room adjacent to where she was standing. Dressed in formal wear, the hyena was oddly out of place compared to the two women wearing lab coats in and da Vinci in pajamas.

“Fine. Rain’s done it,” the Muse answered, gesturing with her chin at the formerly dead man. Spectra let out a little chuckle.

“Impressive, for a human.”

Clio scowled. “I like him.” He reminded her of when she was younger, and when her sisters still existed. Although, he was much younger than she was.

Spectra grinned. “You have such a soft spot for humans.”

“And you don’t? Aren’t you following some human boy right now?” Clio snapped.

Spectra shrugged. “Frank is fine without me. He’s barely doing anything important right now anyway. Bothering you is more fun.”

Clio huffed, and waved a hand at the Trickster. “Go away. Bother Monaco. He’s on an assignment right now as well.”

Spectra grinned. “Oh yes. I heard. Big one too.”

Frowning Clio turned her solitary eye to Spectra. “What do-” But the Trickster was already gone. The Muse crossed her arms over her toga and huffed.

“Showoff.”   

XXX

“I want to make another,” Rain whispered to Kam after dinner. She dropped the plate she was holding, the little paper thing floating to the ground. She wished it had been glass so it would have shattered satisfyingly but replicated Chinese didn’t come with glass plates.

“Excuse me?” Kam demanded.

“I think we should try something different this time. I have a theory that we could-“

“Rain. No.” Kam was shaking her head vehemently. “I won’t help you again. Absolutely not.”

“I didn’t even finish-“

“Because I’m not helping you bring back another living breathing human being, damn it.”

Rain froze and raised her eyes to Kam’s face slowly. Her amber gaze was as hard as stone.

“Okay, fine. Fine,” Rain said coolly. “You don’t need to help. I’ll leave you out of it, Kam. Don’t worry.”

Kam was standing rooted to ground as Rain brushed past her.

“I can do it myself.”

“Then I guess I’ll leave,” Kam said, matching her cold tone. She clenched her hands at her sides. “You’ve made it clear this entire time you’re just going to go on with whatever you want to do, so I might as well not even be here, huh?”

Rain didn’t turn around. “If you think it best, then go Kam.”

Kam swallowed the lump in her throat, croaking out an ‘Okay fine,’ before spinning away on her heel.

Rain continued into the lab.

XXX

Kam left within the hour. When Leonardo asked her where she was going Kam just shook her head and wished him luck. As far as she was concerned, Rain could do whatever she liked, but Kam wasn’t going to be dragged into the consequences of what she was realized was a terrible idea.

Leonardo was in the kitchen, fingers working as fast as his mind. It was refreshing to have something that worked as fast as he does. In one hand his charcoal pencil, and the other skating over the glass surface. The charcoal sketches over the paper, the texture feeling just right while his eyes go over his own notes and the newest medical studies. It’s nice, having to put forward some genuine effort to learn about the human body all over again. He was mildly impressed by how much of it he manage to get right.

Rain had been down in her lab all morning after Kamala left. Leonardo didn’t know what she was working on but he had his own hypothesis on it. However, prudence made him keep his mouth shut.

XXX

Rain carefully dropped her blood onto the DNA sequencer. If she was correct then this time wouldn’t require any breaking into famous landmarks to steal skin cells.

She ran the search program that she’d complied last night, watching as possible matches to her DNA were found and discarded. There were more than she expected, Genghis Khan, Marco Polo, English royalty, minor French landholders, until finally…

“98% Match Found.”

Rain smiled to herself and looked at who had enough of her DNA sequence to be able to modify into another historical figure, this time created from nothing but her blood.

She brought up the profile and for the first time in her life, hesitated.

“That… is not who I was expecting,” she muttered to herself. A genius was one thing, but a man like this was not someone to resurrect lightly.

Maybe Kam had been right.

However the thought of Kam’s words made Rain see red for a moment and she smiled savagely as she opened the DNA sequencer.

No one could tell Rain when enough was enough.

XXX

Leonardo did not see Rain for hours, and was left alone to his own devices, so he started trying to figure out what some of the derelict machinery that was in ‘his’ room was used to be used for.

Having no instructions, Leonardo allowed his mind to run free, connecting this and that, with whatever he bits and pieces he found. By the time Rain came back upstairs, there was a small blinking box in front of him and a million pieces of metal on the glass table.

Rain paused, seeing the kitchen covered in machinery.

“Remind me to set you with your own lab. What’s that do?” She asked, pointing to the box.

Leonardo shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”

Rain nodded absently. “You know how to use the replicator well enough, right? You can make yourself food?”

Puzzled, Leonardo nodded. He’d been using it successfully all afternoon.

“Good. I’m going to be in my lab. Please do not interrupt me until I come back out. I’m working on a delicate experiment.”

Leonardo nodded again. “Are you making another one?”

Rain hesitated before she headed back down and that told Leonardo all he needed to know.

XXX

Rain finished preparing, the machines once again humming to life and the raw material used for the bone structure and organs in place on the table. She had her own blood transfusion in a couple of bags next to the table. She nearly shook with eagerness as she punched in the last of the information.

“Okay, Robespierre. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

EPISODE THREE: An Offense of Man and God.

PART ONE.

France 1519.

The room was dark and heavily scented with candles.

Leonardo knew why. It is because the smell of death is offensive to one who has not familiarized themselves with it and he will soon be dead, and therefore offensive.

He struggled to keep his eyes open, even though the room is warm and comfortable, and he was exhausted.

But there was much yet to do! There is so much he does not know, but he wanted to, needed to…

He was dying and Leonardo was frustrated by the fact.

“Sleep, most worthy of men.” King Charles whispered, leaning over him. Leonardo smiled sadly.

He was a fool, his most dedicated patron, if he thought Leonardo does not know what was happening to him. Leonardo knew more about how the body worked than this man could imagine.

From further back he can hear his assistants crying and trying to comfort each other. He knows that Melzi, the kind hearted son of his heart is trying to hush his tears but still cannot face Leonardo before his death. Leonardo wanted to comfort him, tell him “Do not cry, do not shed tears for a life so well spent, and how unlikely it should all be that any of it should happen to the bastard son of a slave.”

Idly he wondered who will tell Salai, who has left him long before. Leonardo has left him enough land and property for Salai to support himself for at least a while, but considering how Salai spent and steals, Leonardo thinks he’ll probably be seeing the ever caustic flame of his loins before long.

‘Do not cry, little devil. Soon you will be joining me,’ Leonardo thought, his breathing slowing a little more. It is curious, how much death is almost like falling asleep. His useless right hand, having seized into a claw earlier this year, twitched compulsively on the bedspread. He wanted to makes note of what it is like to die, so maybe it will be of use to…to…

Well, to someone.

That’s all Leonardo has wanted, to be of use to someone. His mind splits like a rotten fruit under all of the thoughts it has, to the point of sometimes paralyzing him, but Leonardo has always wanted to show that there is a reason. Something greater that forever eludes him.

But if he could name it, present it that would give Leonardo the greatest satisfaction.   

Leonardo kept his eyes open for a moment more before the inevitable happened and they closed. With the last of his strength he whispered what he has always known in his heart, what has haunted Leonardo up till this moment, and he believes that he should meet the Divine with a clear consciousness, if nothing else.

“I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have,” he whispered.

The wail goes up in the room as Leonardo ser Pierdio da Vinci, the first genius of man, breathed his very last breath.  

XXX

In the year three thousand:

Leonardo opened his eyes. He blinked in confusion for a moment, trying to place his surroundings. When he closed his eyes he had been dying in the arms of the King of France. Now he was in a place that looked, smelled, and felt strange. Leonardo doubted this was the gates of paradise.

The room he had just been is gone. This one is far too bright and Leonardo squints up, before he realized he doesn’t really have to. His eye sight seemed to have been miraculously restored.

Curious, Leonardo held up a hand for examination.

Instead of the wrinkled and clawed appendage that his right hand had been come in recent years, it is smooth, and there is no resistant at all when he flexed it.

Nothing hurts and he can see clearly.

Leonardo took another breath and another.

He was not dead.

He was very young and not dead?

Curious.

Leonardo became aware of a sound like birds chirping and turned his head. A tall woman, dressed in white like a bishop was staring at him, mouth open.

“Leonardo?”

It is his name and he turned his head again.

An older woman, also dressed in white was leaning over him.

“Leonardo? Can you hear me?”

“Si, yes I can hear you Madame.”

“What?”

Leonardo drew his eyebrows together. Her accent is unlike any he had ever heard before, almost like it’s been coming from the back of a cave.

He repeated himself and her expression clears like a summer thunderstorm. She hit her forehead and whipped around to the younger woman, snapping her fingers.

“The translator! I forgot all about it! Kam!” The other woman crossed over to them, holding a small black ball in her hand.

“I’m going to put this in your ear alright? Don’t worry signore.” She grabbed his head in a gentle but tight grip and moved him so he was facing sideways on the table. Leonardo shivered, just realizing he felt cold, and bare.

Leonardo felt it dropped in and jumped when something like a thorn stabbed the inside of it.

“Is that better?’ Leonardo twisted in amazement. Her Italian in now flawless and he can place her accent even, as if it is from Florence.

“Yes!” Leonardo touched his ear, trying to feel for the pill, astounded. It must have gone deeply into the canal if he can’t even feel it anymore and the small sting is also rapidly disappearing. “What was that?” he asked in amazement. She grinned at him, her unusually light colored brown eyes glinting in satisfaction.  

“A universal translator, so I can understand you and you can understand me.”

She beamed at him for a moment, astoundingly bright white teeth, whole and unstained, against her coppery skin.

“How extraordinary!” Leonardo muttered and sat up.

“Oh my god.” The young woman muttered, hands up to her face. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe we did it…”

“I also forgot clothes.” The other one muttered, looking at Leonardo’s bare chest. Then shaking herself from a reprieve, she looked back up at her face.

“Wow, then they said you were tall and athletic, they sure meant it huh? I’m Doctor Rainbow Miller.” She held out her hand, slightly scarred and nails clipped very short for a lady, to him.

“A doctor?” Leonardo asked.

“Yes of course- oh right. Fifteenth century. Yes, I’m a woman and a doctor.”

Leonardo nodded, mind still whirling even as he did so.

“And you are Leonardo da Vinci. The greatest mind from the Renaissance.” She said, eyes shining.

“The what?” Leonardo asked.

“The time period you lived. That’s what it’s called now, the Renaissance, when people finally started using their brains again.”

Leonardo laughed at that again and did a sitting little half bow. He wished for a shirt at least, but was not sure if he should ask for one yet.

“I’m glad I could contribute!” He smiled, but couldn’t help but feel oddly self-conscious about the title.  

The younger woman let out a hysterical sounding half laugh.

“My god, he doesn’t even know what he did, oh my god Rain, what have we done, what have we done?” She muttered, a hand half covering her mouth and her green eyes impossibly wide. Leonardo thought she looked a little like the traders who came from Egypt or beyond, her skin darker than Rainbow’s and her features rather kind and sleepy looking. She stared at him as if witnessing a miracle.  

Rain rolled her eyes. “That is Kamala. She’s my ex-intern, or I guess you would consider her my assistant. Ignore her breakdown, she’s just being dramatic.”

“Dramatic!! We just brought back Leonardo Da Vinci! If there was ever a time for drama now is it, Rain!” Kamala said.

“Brought back?” Leonardo asked distractedly, wiggling his toes and deciding that walking would probably be safe. Nothing hurt, at least and everything seemed to be in the proper place. His body looked as it had when he’d lived in Florence for the first time, after he’d left Andrea’s workshop to start his own. He made to get off the table. His legs did indeed support his weight and none of his muscles had atrophied. So his old body had probably not been used. A new body had been created then?

Hmmm, how interesting. He tried to think if anything was missing from his mind, and wondered if he would even realize if any of it was. If you did not remember not remembering, would you ever know you had forgotten? Leonardo itched for paper and looked around for anything to write the thought down on.  

Leonardo thought that he should be more concerned that he can’t remember being dead but right now he was too interested in looking around the room he was in. It almost seemed like it was made of the clearest glass he had ever seen, so smooth it looked like a still lake. He reached out and ran his finger along the cold surface he had been lying on. It looked like the metal that was used to make steel for swords, but it had a hollow sound when he flicked it with a nail.

Leonardo was aware that silence had fallen and turned back to the previously bickering women. Rain was staring at him in amusement, like he had learned a trick and Kam was still clutching her face, looking extremely frazzled.

“Pardon me, did you ask me something?” Leonardo chanced. Many times he had been berated for his own absent mindedness.

Rain shook her head, smiling slightly. “No, no. Sorry, here let’s get you some clothing. Walk with me, signore.”

Rain held out hand and assisted in helping him walk, not evening batting an eye at his nudity. Kamala turned her back and blushed, however.

“Ew,” she muttered, quietly. Leonardo frowned. Andrea had used him as model, there was nothing offensive about his body. At least in comparison to some of the naked men he’d seen.

“Grow up Kam,” Rain snapped, looking annoyed. Leonardo noticed the hand that wasn’t gripping the inside of his elbow held onto a walking stick, made of some kind of light colored metal. She didn’t seem to exert much force in lifting it, so he assumed it must have been hollow for her to lift it that easily.

Leonardo wondered if he would be able to see how it worked.

Rain had been looking at him with an amused and questioning look. “What’s the last thing you remember Leonardo?”

He considered the question carefully.

A dark warm room. Crying. ‘Sleep, the best of men.’ He was tired, and had closed his eyes.

“I… Did I truly die?” Leonardo guessed, feeling uncharacteristically nervous and unsure.

Rain nodded casually, and guided him over to a square hole in the wall.

“Exactly. Peacefully in your bed, at the ripe age of sixty-seven, pretty good for someone who lived so close to the plague years.”

As Leonardo processed this she spoke to the hole.

“Mens cotton shirt, white, large.”

Leonardo gaped at what she requested appeared. He ducked to look to see if he could find the nimble tailor who lived in it. But it was a hole that ended about a foot and a half back, completely closed on all sides. He looked at Rain in amazement.

“How?” Leonardo demanded, quickly getting over his own death in the face of new and very interesting data. Death was commonplace, Leonardo had seen it many times. This was the first time he’d ever seen something created from nothing, however.  

She grinned at him and held out the shirt.

“Clothes first, then answers.”