Violence. Speed. Momentum.

by Dr DisRespect

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  I dedicate this book to you, my dear readers. Hahahaha. Totally kidding.

  I dedicate this book to my mustache, Slick Daddy, who’s silky and masculine and better looking than all of you put together.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I’LL NEVER WRITE THIS BOOK

  Millions of people tell me every day that I should write a book about me.

  “Help us, Dr Disrespect,” they beg. “You’re the only thing we care about in the universe. We won’t read another word about anything until you write something about yourself. Please, please tell us the secrets of your lore. All we want is to truly understand you!”

  I smile.

  “I’m a six-foot-eight freak of nature with a thirty-seven-inch vertical leap, the Two-Time, Back-to-Back 1993–94 Blockbuster Video Game Champion, and the most dominant international gaming superstar in the history of the world,” I say. “Truly understanding me is impossible. Now leave, before I smack you in the mouth with my flip phone.”

  They say, “Are you being serious right now?”

  I say, “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Maybe I don’t even know. Either way, I’m never telling you, you skinny punk kid.”

  At that point, the millions of people run for their lives.

  But the joke’s on them, because the Two-Time would never, ever do anything to hurt his flip phone. And the truth is, I already have dozens of books under my belt, including volumes 1, 3, 4, and 7 of the Knight Rider paperback series, which I wrote in my spare time under the nom de plume “Paul G. Fitzgerald.” All New York Times bestsellers.

  Of course, none of those books is strictly autobiographical, though the character Michael Knight and Jean-Claude Van Damme’s actual personality were both loosely based on myself (lawsuits pending). And obviously the ravenous public is still desperate to know more about me.

  So I wasn’t surprised when some guy named Nigel called me up from Simon & Schuster wanting to meet about publishing an exclusive tell-all memoir. I even told him I’d take the meeting, not because I gave a crap what he had to say, but because it was a lunch meeting and I thought it’d be funny to order a lot of expensive shit on his tab.

  I landed my jet-black Kamov Ka-27 attack chopper on the roof of the restaurant, this posh, exclusive club in midtown Manhattan Nigel recommended called App Lebeés, which I think is French or Swahili or something.

  “Well, Nigel,” I said as I eyed the restaurant’s sumptuous neon lighting and inhaled the aroma of rich fried onions and meat, “if you’re aiming to impress, you made a good start.”

  He stood. He was skinny, he was pasty, he was wearing tweed. I’ll be honest—it felt a little on-the-nose for someone in the book biz to be wearing tweed. It’s like, why not toss in a monocle and a bow tie while you’re at it, you know? But whatever. So I started to give him one of my firm handshakes, but he and his fingers were so delicate and intellectual I was afraid I might crush them and miss out on my free lunch.

  “Indeed,” Nigel said nervously, “sorry about that, we had to cut back on our expenses—um, why are you wearing sunglasses inside?”

  I snorted in contempt. My “sunglasses” were Google prototype scopes with built-in Sony 3D LCD technology and night vision, allowing me to scan even the darkest recesses of this dark, fancy restaurant for potential ambush by my thousands of enemies. But I didn’t want to embarrass the dude, so instead I just said:

  “I don’t know. Why aren’t you doing squats every day?”

  “What?” he said.

  I laughed and ordered the boneless wings, chicken wonton tacos, brewpub pretzels with beer cheese dip, and a double helping of Neighborhood Beef Nachos™.

  “You, uh, must be hungry,” he said.

  “Nope,” I answered.

  “Doc,” he started, then paused. “Hey—what are you a doctor of, exactly? I’ve always wanted to know.”

  “Right,” I said. “You and everyone else on the planet. Now, what’s up? My chopper is waiting.”

  “Doc, I’m going to level with you. We’re in trouble. People just aren’t reading anymore. Shakespeare, the Bible, the Knight Rider paperback series—we’re publishing all the great classics, but no one cares. We need something fresh, something new, something electric to save literature. We need you, Doc.”

  I think he said something like that, but I don’t know. I was too busy ordering the loaded chicken fajita plate with extra lime wedges, a full rack of double-glazed baby back ribs, and the double-crunch shrimp.

  “Um, you going to eat all that?” Nigel said.

  “Look, man,” I said. “I’ve heard it all before. ‘Blah, blah, Western civilization is nothing without you, Doc. Blah, blah, blah, you’re the Chaucer, the James Patterson, and the Dolph Lundgren of gaming rolled into one.’ I don’t have time to save your pathetic humanities, okay? I’m too busy soaring with the eagles, I’m too busy climbing the mountain of success to the tippity-top, I’m too busy—”

  I paused briefly to order the riblet platter, the eight-ounce top sirloin (extra bloody, because I knew it would gross out Nigel), the balsamic chicken apple salad (because I’m a beast but not a fucking monster), and the Triple Chocolate Meltdown® for dessert.

  “Wait, where was I? Oh yeah. I’m too busy plunging down the waterslide of victory, all six-foot-eight inches of me Vaselined from head to tippy-tippy toe, with my bulletproof mullet dripping like black steel down my back, and my powerful mustache, a.k.a. Slick Daddy, a.k.a. the Ethiopian Poisonous Caterpillar, a.k.a.—”

  “We’ll give you a Lamborghini,” Nigel said.

  I casually took a bite of brisket quesadilla, which I didn’t remember ordering, and which may have actually been Nigel’s. It was delicious.

  “First off, Nigel, I don’t like being interrupted. Second, I obviously already own a 1990 Lamborghini Diablo, so…”

  “I’m talking a 2021 Lamborghini Aventador SVJ.”

  I stopped chewing.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m listening. What color?”

  “Red.”

  I jumped up, sending chicken tenders and Bourbon Street shrimp wontons flying everywhere.

  “Red! Red?! RED???!!! The Two-Time drives black, and black only!”

  “But—but we already bought the car—I barely even have the money to cover this lunch!”

  “I don’t care!” I growled. “Take it back. Take it back or I won’t save literature.”

  “Fine,” he sighed.

  “And I want a thirty-eight-foot offshore racing boat. And a matching trailer. And I want that connected to a 2021 Lamborghini Urus. All blacked out. And with an official Dr Disrespect Logo Decal™ on the side. But it’s cool, I’ll have my guy handle that last part. You can reimburse me.”

  PREFACE

  YAYAYAYA!

  Yayayaya!

  INTRODUCTION

  OKAY, I’LL WRITE THIS BOOK

  So here I am, one day later, sitting in my multimillion-dollar state-of-the-art top-secret complex, surrounded by twenty doggie bags of leftover riblets and nachos, writing this book.

  Nigel, who I guess is my editor or something—wait, are they allowed to change these solid-gold words? Is that even legal?—said something about finally sharing with the world the Doc’s deepest, most intimate secrets. The
untold history of my mysterious, legendary origins and my rise to unparalleled dominance. My treasured philosophies of life, victory, and wiping your ass while still sitting down. Grooming tips for how you too can achieve the perfect mullet-mustache combo (hint: you can’t). And he really, really wants to know what, exactly, I’m a doctor of.

  But let’s be real here.

  I’m gonna write whatever I want, and you and Nigel and the Champions Club and pretty much the whole world are gonna love it.

  You really think I need his Lambos? I already own a warehouse full of ’em! You think I care about his racing boat? I have an entire fleet! You think I needed that free lunch from App Lebeés? I made a call on my flip phone twenty minutes ago and now I own the whole chain. (Turns out it’s not French or very fancy, but I’m making them add an accent over the “e” just for the hell of it.)

  I don’t care what this contract says. This is my book. It’ll have the rhythm of a sleazy seventies muscleman and the ruthlessness of a nineties serial killer. It’ll fly with the falcons to a whole new galaxy of awesomeness. It’ll stare down the long, dark alley of your fears and never look back.

  So prepare yourself for a level of verbal domination never before experienced by man, woman, or child in the history of the written word.

  Then again, no—there is no way to prepare. No way at all.

  CHAPTER 1

  MY MULTIDIMENSIONAL BIRTH

  Every badass superhero has an origin story. Historians, scientists, and Nigel the Editor all say so.

  Batman had that thing where his wealthy parents were murdered right in front of him in an alley when he was a kid. That must’ve sucked.

  Superman had that thing where his whole planet was blown into a billion tiny pieces and his dying parents blasted him off into outer space. Also sucked.

  Spider-Man got bitten by a radioactive spider. Actually kind of cool. But then his uncle got murdered by this dude Spidey failed to stop. Back to sucking.

  But if it’s not clear to you yet—just kidding, of course it is—the Two-Time is different. The Two-Time is special. So the Two-Time has not one but three origin stories.

  One for each dimension I inhabit.

  “But wait,” you say, “why only three dimensions? Aren’t there supposed to be more?”

  You try kicking ass in more than three dimensions and see how great you do, okay? Being a multidimensional superstar is not easy, man.

  “Hold on,” you say, “how different is this really? Didn’t you see that Spider-Verse movie?”

  Shut up. If I say it’s different, it’s different.

  “Wait, wait, wait—”

  Hey! Whose fucking book is this, anyway? Nigel, you’re supposed to be handling security here! I’m sick and tired of these interruptions!

  So, as I was saying—three dimensions, three different origin stories. And here’s the critical fact you need to understand: each of them is equally valid, okay? They’re all completely true and completely false. Completely authentic and completely fictional. Completely silent, like the stealthy snake, and completely roaring, like the jungle cat. All at the same time.

  Okay, fine. Maybe the second-dimension story is just a little better than the others…

  NO.

  That was a test, and you failed it.

  All my origin stories are equal. All different, and all the same. Maybe that doesn’t make any sense, but trust me—it does. Oh yes, it does.

  Think about it.I

  MY ORIGIN IN DIMENSION ONE

  This will be hard, maybe even impossible, for your mind to comprehend, but in Dimension One there was a time when the Doctor wasn’t the Doctor.

  When I wasn’t a chiseled six-foot-eight specimen of athletic superiority. When I didn’t own a multimillion-dollar command center with its own helipad, and Slick Daddy was nothing but a dream above my trembling lip. When the Doctor didn’t even have his master’s degree.

  That time was when I was ten.

  The year was 1992. I was just a little tyke growing up on the mean streets of Oakland, California. Small for my age, skinny, my voice high-pitched and girlish. Cute face, of course, but with a shockingly weak jawline.

  My parents were decent, caring people. My papa drove a minivan and sold used Chevys for a living, and my mama was a grade-school teacher who always wore a fanny pack. They taught me the value of integrity, honesty, and hard work.

  But they didn’t teach me any of the important stuff, you know? Stuff like video games, absolutely annihilating your opponent’s will to live, or looking really, really good.

  When I was even younger, like six, I’d begged them for a Commodore 64. Begged.

  “Mama! Papa!” I squeaked. “We’re talking high-impact Commodore prototype technology here. We’re talking eight bits of processing, a full sixty-four kilobytes of RAM with a VIC-II graphics chip. We’re talking Arkanoid and Pitfall! and Contra and more intensity than your minivan-driving, fanny-pack-wearing adult minds can possibly comprehend! I know I could be great at this! I know! Please please pleeeeeeeeeease let me have one!”

  That’s right. Even as an emotionally repressed child, I had a flair for communication.

  But shockingly, my parents refused. They wanted me to eat my breakfast and do my homework and read books. And not cool books, like this one, which might actually be the only cool book ever, and which obviously wasn’t even written yet. But instead lame sissy books like Little Women and various dictionaries and almanacs, and other crap my editor, Nigel, probably read when he was growing up.

  Most important of all, they taught me to always, always run from danger. I was too precious to them. They wanted to keep me safe, but instead of toughening me up, they taught me to hide. They taught me to run. They taught me to be afraid.

  So my mind grew weak and my muscles became atrophied. I’d lie in my bed at night in my little book-themed pajamas, scared of the boogeyman, scared of the darkness that dwelled outside my safe little house, whimpering for my mama and papa, doing everything I could to live up to their expectations and follow their silly little rules.

  So yeah. By the time I reached ten, I was getting my ass kicked pretty much nonstop.

  Wild packs of eleven-year-old street punks would hunt me down after school, preying on my subpar reflexes and total lack of athleticism. They had rough-and-tumble names like Ramrod and One-Eyed John and Razor Frank and Steve, and they were armed with steel-plated Trapper Keepers and frozen Fruit Roll-Ups sharpened into shivs. Fifth graders can be tough little assholes in the East Bay.

  I always ran. Always! Just like Mama and Papa said. But the punks would catch me in all my cuteness and innocence, and they’d hold me down and beat me to a quivering pulp. And I’d be crying and sobbing, this helpless, defenseless little ten-year-old boy, and—

  —shit, hold on, I have to clear my masculine gravelly throat—

  AHEM. AHHHHHHHEM-HEM.

  —sorry, these are some hard-hitting First Dimensional memories. I’m getting fucking emotional here. Don’t want any of my massive, superior tears to short-circuit this advanced experimental Dell Inspiron with twelfth-generation Intel® Core™ processor and WordPerfect 5.1 emulator I do all my word processing on—

  AHEM!

  —okay, cool—

  And so then I’d whisper, “I don’t understand… Why are you doing this to me?”

  Then they’d laugh.

  “Because you exist,” they’d say. “And your body is puny and your voice is squeaky and your jaw is soft. And okay, we’ll be honest, we’re also totally jealous of the waterfall of glorious hair cascading down your shoulders. We wish we had hair like that, so we beat you.”

  Even at that age, my mullet was astonishing, and the Pert Plus 2-in-1 shampoo-and-conditioner I’d just started using left it supple and gleaming like black steel, so I couldn’t really fault them on that one.

  They’d finish bludgeoning me, and I’d scrape myself off the pavement and limp home. My mom and dad would find me battered and bruised
and bloody.

  “Well,” Mama and Papa would say, “just be satisfied knowing that you’re the better person.”

  What…

  A load…

  Of BULLSHIT.

  These punks were kicking my ass! Like, literally, this kid, I think it was Steve, he was always the meanest—he kicked me in the ass so hard this one time that his foot actually got wedged between my butt cheeks. Like it got stuck there for a solid three seconds. I thought I was gonna need the Jaws of Life to get this tool’s Reebok out of my butt.

  Shit still pisses me off. Even now.

  Then one day, the pack of hoodlums came after me again. Again I ran.

  But this time, as they were chasing me down the street, I saw an alleyway I’d never seen before. I ducked into it at the last second.

  It was long, dark, and winding. So long, dark, and winding it felt like it would never, ever end, its shadows black and dripping and thick like tainted blood.

  I could hear the gang of punks behind me, shouting, screaming, jeering. Getting closer and closer. So I kept running as fast as I could, till the air felt like fire in my little-boy lungs.

  Then suddenly I tripped. I fell hard onto the pavement, the rough concrete cutting my palms and tearing a hole in my lame corduroy slacks.

  I groaned and looked to see what I had tripped over.

  It was an original Commodore 64, still unopened in its dusty old box. Somehow, for mystical reasons I couldn’t yet fathom, the computer I’d always begged my parents for was lying here, in this random alley, among scraps of trash and rat turds.

  Then, in my pain and delirium, I heard something in the distance. It wasn’t the footsteps of my preadolescent tormentors. It was the sound of an eagle screaming its rage.

  An eagle? What the heck?

  (I was so damn innocent, “heck” was my go-to profanity.)

  I looked up from the grime and filth. There in that dark, winding, endless Oakland alleyway, I saw the massive heights of Mount Olympus looming over me. A giant eagle circled the tippy-top of the snow-covered peak, flames in his eyes and danger in his heart. Just below him, a vicious, muscular lion clawed his way over the ice, roaring in anger and dominance. Just below him, a powerful green python slithered and squirmed, hot black venom dripping from his razor-sharp fangs. And just below him, an ancient Celtic warrior held the beating heart of his enemy up to the blazing sun right before he took a big, juicy bite, with blood and guts and veins spurting all over him and the pure, white, freshly fallen snow.