Violence. Speed. Momentum.

by Dr DisRespect

  “Uh,” I said.

  “Fine!” he said. “Twelve percent!”

  “Wow,” Sergey said. “You’re busting our balls here, Doc. Brutal negotiation.”

  “Oh,” Larry added. “And that discount only applies to a single purchase. And it’s nontransferable.”

  “So,” Sergey said. “We’ve got a deal?”

  I stared at them with a gaze of raging fire. Cracked my iron knuckles. Clenched my perfectly square jaw. Felt the blood thundering through my veins. I was Dr Disrespect. I was worth so much more than this. But still—I was broke and hungry, and the last thing I wanted to do was admit defeat to my parents. Plus Sergey and Larry really did seem like nice guys…

  Finally, I nodded.

  “Yeah, we got a deal,” I growled. “But watch your tone with the Two-Time.”

  “Excellent!” Sergey said. “Now, if you could just sign this contract—totally standard, just gives us all rights to use your image, likeness, name, and physiological essence throughout the universe in perpetuity—we’ll be all set. Here, I’ve got a pen.”

  Sergey handed me the contract. Nothing major, just a couple hundred pages in Latin. Then the pen, which he handled very carefully. They watched eagerly as I signed my name. I started to put down the pen… when suddenly everything began going dark.

  “Take the knife out of his hand,” I heard Larry say right before I blacked out completely. “We don’t want a damaged specimen…”

  * * *

  When I came to, I was strapped down tight to an exam table in some kind of secret lab. Blinding lights shined down on me, and electronic devices beeped and buzzed from the shadows. Electrodes were attached to my forehead, and all these wires and tubes ran in and out of my hands. It was like when Drago is hooked up to all that evil Soviet science crap in Rocky IV, except I’m a ton more shredded than Dolph Lundgren.

  I strained against my bonds as hard as I could, but they wouldn’t give. Surprising, because I’m a ton stronger than Dolph Lundgren too.

  “I’ve studied you well, Dr Disrespect,” a voice said from behind me. “All your moves, all your maneuvers and tricks—the video of your many tournaments is quite extensive—and those bonds have been engineered to resist even your superior strength.”

  He stepped in front of me. Pale and skinny, with watery gray eyes and a long white lab coat, he looked even geekier than Larry and Sergey. But overall still like a pretty nice guy, except for the kidnapping and medical experiments.

  “Where are Sergey and Larry?” I demanded. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Sergey and Larry are out meeting with venture capitalists,” he said. “They get to do all the fancy glamour-boy stuff. It’s scientists like me who get stuck doing the real work, building the actual products.”

  “You mean…”

  “Yes,” he said. “We’ve been working for years to build the prototype for the ideal video game controller, but we finally realized that something was missing. One critical final ingredient. The ideal video game player.”

  “So,” I said, “you really are stealing the secrets of my superhuman speed and reflexes?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Motherfucker!” I shouted. “I knew it! Larry and Sergey kept giving me all this shit about it. Like, ‘Why do you keep saying blah-blah-blah?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know, seems pretty spot-on to me,’ and they’re like, ‘Blah-blah-lie-lie-lie.’ Fucking pricks!”

  “Yeah, villains lie,” he said. “Between you and me, I’ve been searching for another gig for the last couple months. Not as easy as you’d think to find work as a sadistic scientist these days. I’m Paul, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’d shake hands, but you know—tubes, straps.”

  “Yes, of course,” Paul said as he pressed some buttons on one of his machines.

  “That pen they handed me did something to knock me out, didn’t it?”

  “Indeed,” he said. “I invented a microscopic delivery system that injected a powerful tranquilizer through the pores in your fingers.”

  “Man,” I said. “That’s awesome.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “It’s nice to feel appreciated.”

  “Look, Paul,” I said. “You seem like a nice enough dude. I mean, you could probably stand to do some squats, but whatever, I get it—you’re a science guy. Not everyone is as naturally athletic as I am.

  “But here’s the deal. If you don’t let me out of here in five seconds, I’m gonna have to break out. And if I have to break out, I’m gonna have to hurt you. Now, I don’t wanna hurt you, but I mean, you are experimenting on me against my will, and I am a bloodthirsty battle hawk. So, from one doctor to another—let me go, or shit will get real.”

  Paul laughed. I think he was going for a diabolical, evil villain laugh, but honestly it was pretty lame.

  “You’re an exceptional human being, Doc,” he said. “I not only admit that—it’s the very reason you’re here. But I have an exceptional mind, and there’s no way you’re breaking out.

  “Now, if you’ll just hold still a bit, these tests I’m about to run will help us shape and mold our controller to the precise, Platonically ideal standards of your unusually large hands, while calibrating the response ratio of our AI input-output fields to the precise biometrics of your nervous system. It should only take three or four weeks.”

  I shrugged. “Your funeral, bro.”

  Never taking his eyes off me, Paul the Scientist picked up some kind of control panel and started turning dials and pushing buttons. The machines around me began to buzz and beep even louder, and I could feel waves of electricity coursing through my body.

  My muscles spasmed, my eyelids started fluttering faster and faster, and every hair on my body stood on end. Slick Daddy took on a life of his own, doing this crazy-ass caterpillar dance right under my nose. Pretty cool, actually.

  I was pissed. I knew I shouldn’t be here—I was better than this. Yeah, I was broke. Yeah, my only TV was a black-and-white Sanyo. And yeah, I had been starving since breakfast.

  But to make a deal with two nobodies off the street for nothing but a nontransferable 12 percent discount off a goddamn joystick? That wasn’t me. That wasn’t why I’d left home. I’d left the nest to become a warrior. To be the most dominant gamer in the history of the universe. And I knew it.

  “My God!” Paul said excitedly, glancing at the readout. “I’ve never seen biometrics like this before! We can do so much with this information—so much! Screw joysticks. We can cure cancer… create the perfect sports-energy drink and launch it in Shanghai… clone an entire army of identical supersoldiers…”

  That finally did it.

  I mean, curing cancer would be cool. And who wouldn’t want the perfect sports-energy drink? But create more than one Doc? An entire army of Two-Times? What would that even be? Four Thousand and Thirty-Eight–Times?

  Doesn’t matter, man. There can only be one Dr Disrespect.

  Focusing all my energy, all my rage, I flexed every wildcat muscle in my six-foot-eight frame. The noise from the machines became deafening, lights started flashing, alarms blaring everywhere.

  “Amazing!” Paul shouted. “You’re off the charts! I literally have to create a new chart right now!”

  He turned toward a monitor and I saw my chance. I pulled against my bonds with everything I had, every ounce of strength, every molecule of my being.

  CRACK!

  The straps exploded, and like lightning streaking through the night sky, I jumped off the exam table, drew a hidden blade out of my secret ankle sheath—why do morons never check for a secret ankle sheath?—and whipped it at Paul’s head.

  THWACK!

  The blade point pierced the collar of his lab coat, missing his face by millimeters and pinning him to a wall of instruments with a burst of sparks and smoke.

  Paul the Scientist gulped so loud I could hear it five feet away.

  “Doc,” he said, trembling, “can I
have your autograph?”

  “You got it, Paul.” I laughed and punched him in the face, breaking his nose with a sickening snap, his blood spurting everywhere.

  I used his blood to sign my name on the wall and then I walked out.

  * * *

  The lab exit door opened, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  This top secret lab was right in the middle of Stanford’s campus! I should’ve known—goddamn entitled college kids. Nice campus, though. Lots of trees.

  And walking right out from behind a couple of those trees were my old friends Larry and Sergey.

  “Hey, fellas,” I said as I pulled out my second ankle blade—seriously, why does no one ever check for those?

  They froze.

  “Oh shit,” Sergey said. “I knew we shouldn’t have let Paul handle such a big project.”

  The light of the afternoon sun flashed across my blade. “Sorry, boys,” I said. “But I’m done fucking around.” I took a step toward them, blood in my eyes and violence in my heart. Surprising literally no one, Larry pissed himself again.

  “You really gotta see someone about that, Lare,” I said.

  “Please, Doc,” Sergey said. “Please don’t hurt us. We just wanted to bless the gaming world with a superior controller, that’s all!”

  “We had no intention of being evil!” Larry said. “We swear!”

  I sighed and lowered my weapon. They were lucky that I wasn’t in a killing mood. This time.

  “Here’s what really pisses me off, guys,” I said. “You didn’t even have to drug me with a poisonous pen and lock me up in your lab to steal the secrets of my superhuman speed and reflexes. You could’ve just asked! I mean, it’s kind of flattering, when you think about it. I woulda said yes just for the fun of it, you know?”

  “Well,” Sergey said, “we were thinking of just asking. But then you kept being like, ‘Oh, you’re here to steal my blah blah blah, right?’ So we were like, ‘Huh, stealing—sounds like a good idea blah blah.’ ”

  “And let’s be honest,” Larry said. “Taking people’s data in a sneaky underhanded way is a lot more fun than just, like, asking for it openly and transparently—even if they would give it to you willingly in order to improve service.”

  “And,” Sergey said, “you did sign away the rights to your physiological essence. Even if it was buried in the middle of a long and complicated contract.”

  “That’s fair,” I said. “You got me on that one.”

  “But look,” Sergey said. “No hard feelings, all right? As our apology, we’ll give you a full twenty percent off the controller we’ll base on your own personal biometrics. And a .015 percent ownership stake in Oogle.”

  I threw back my head and laughed long and hard. “Are you kidding me?” I said. “You may have tricked the Doc once—a total ridiculous miracle, by the way—but you won’t get him twice. Your stupid start-up won’t amount to jack. Especially with a dumb-ass name like Oogle.”

  “Well,” Larry said, “we have been thinking of changing it to Google.”

  “Come on!” I shouted. “That’s even worse!”

  “Great talk, Doc,” Larry said. “So if that’s everything, we’ll just be on our way…”

  Slowly they started edging away. In a flash, the serrated blade of my knife was inches from Larry’s throat.

  “I have one more condition,” I whispered menacingly. “And it’s nonnegotiable.”

  They stood there, trembling.

  “I want that ham sandwich we talked about earlier today.”

  “That… that was actually a week ago,” Larry whimpered. “You’ve been out for a while.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “I am so goddamn hungry, it’s crazy. Must have something to do with destroying your lab and breaking Paul’s nose with my bare hands while maintaining a superhuman metabolism.”

  His hands quivering, Larry pulled out his wallet and gave me a twenty-dollar bill. For exactly 1.2 milliseconds I thought about giving him a firm handshake—but I decided he wasn’t worthy and would possibly straight-up poop his pants if I touched him.

  So instead, I got myself a delicious ham sandwich for lunch.

  Of course, like I predicted, their stupid video game controller was a total flop. Never even manufactured a working prototype. It was simply impossible for them to mimic my skill, my timing, or my reflexes with their advanced artificial-intelligence processors. Technology just can’t handle the unique excellence that is Dr Disrespect.

  A few years later Larry and Sergey did end up doing something else, something pathetic like search engine optimization, nothing cool like video games. Apparently my .015 share of the company would’ve netted me something like, I don’t know, $72 million or something?

  But you know what? It was totally worth it. Never again would I forget just how much I was worth. Never again would I let someone push me around in a negotiation. Never again would I lose sight of my one true goal of absolute world domination.

  And best of all, that ham sandwich really hit the fucking spot. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still taste it.

  I. Seriously, no fucking idea what dimension this is anymore. Let’s call it Dimension Δ, just because mood: Greek demigod.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE SECOND TIME I DROVE A LAMBORGHINI (AND HOW YOU CAN DRIVE ONE TOO)

  Why does it always have to be “the first time I did this, the first time I did that”?

  If I want to write in gripping, powerful detail about the second time I drove a Lambo, that’s what I’m gonna do, and you’re gonna like it. Got that, Nigel the Editor?

  So it turns out that the second time I drove a Lamborghini Diablo happened thanks to my second professional sponsor. Yeah, the circle of life is a beautiful thing, people. Soon after I taught the nerd-punks at Oogle a lesson they probably forgot immediately, I was approached by Popeyes with another deal.

  They offered me a lifetime all-you-can-eat supply of Popeyes fried chicken, and all I had to do was go on TV, bite into a drumstick, and say, “My name might be Dr Disrespect, but there’s one thing this Doctor does respect, and that’s Popeyes fried chicken. It makes the minimap in my mouth go craaaaazy!”

  But since I’d learned my lesson, and the Two-Time doesn’t forget, I refused to do a thing for them unless they paid me a cool half million dollars and changed my line to “My name is Dr Disrespect, and I’ll eat this crapola because they’re paying me.”

  Guess what? The morons went for it. All the suits kept babbling about how much they loved my “authenticity” and could I please remove my serrated hunting blade from their jugular, and they signed then and there. Again, that’s on them for not checking my secret ankle sheath.

  So not only am I still able to eat as much Popeyes as I want to this day—and honestly, those sandwiches are like fried heaven—but I also got to replace my black-and-white Sanyo with a color Sanyo, to buy new curtains for my little shithole apartment, and to blow all the rest of my money on my very own brand-new completely blacked-out 1998 Lamborghini Diablo.

  And if I’m being honest, the Lambo was so damn expensive I actually had to borrow an extra twenty bones from Razor Frank just to close the deal.

  Now, look, I know what you’re thinking: “Doc, is it really wise financial planning to spend all your money on a high-performance gas-guzzling exotic sports car when you can barely afford to eat?”

  And for once I’m actually happy for the interruption because:

  1) If you were paying attention, you’d know I’d just earned a lifetime supply of delicious Popeyes chicken, so all I ate was fried chicken morning, noon, and night for every meal of the day until my veins were pumping pure gravy, and feathers were coming out my pores and my nose until I could barely breathe and I thought I was gonna die. So that was awesome.

  2) You clearly—CLEARLY—have never driven a Lambo.

  I know this because the moment I drove a Lamborghini Diablo for the very first time—remember that? Back when I rented one to ge
t to my second Blockbuster Video Game Championship back in 1994?—I knew that I would not stop, would not rest, would not even truly live until I owned my very own Lambo. I’d do anything to get my hands on one, all right? ANYTHING! And no one who’s actually driven a Lamborghini for themselves could possibly feel any different.

  Driving a Lamborghini is like injecting pure violence, pure speed, pure momentum directly into your aorta. Everything you do, the very reality you experience, is transported to a whole new level on the cosmic plane.

  Step into the driver’s seat and you’re in a Chariot of the Gods. Turn the key in the ignition and watch the phoenix be reborn in a burst of flames. The engine rumbles and you feel the vibrations in your loins, the earthquake in your soul. Grip the steering wheel and you’re wrestling with a bloodthirsty panther. Then you put your foot on that pedal and—

  BOOM! The thunder!

  BOOM! The lightning!

  BOOM! The energy!

  Then you drive to the 7-Eleven for Zima and beef jerky and instead arrive at the tippity-top of Mount Olympus for manna and ambrosia.

  Now, don’t come to me being like, “Oh, but, Doc, I’ve driven a Porsche before!” Or a Ferrari! Or a Jaguar or an Aston Martin or any kind of super-duper speedy-speedster you think might be kinda the same thing as a Lamborghini.

  NO! IT’S NOT.

  You can take your Porsche, all right, and you can put it on top of your Ferrari, and you can put that inside your Jaguar and wrap all that in your Aston Martin like some kind of crazy sports-car turducken—and it still wouldn’t be half the automobile the Lamborghini is. They’re just not on the same level of spiritual ecstasy.

  But here’s what I’m gonna do, because I like you—or at least, I pity you.

  I’m gonna help you experience the might, the majesty, the magnificence of driving a Lambo all by yourself for once in your sorry, flabby, pear-shaped life.

  You’re not even gonna have to buy one. You’re just gonna have to pretend to.