This slide was marble busts of Caesar, Moses, Lincoln, Genghis Khan, and Captain Kirk.
“Machiavelli refined his political philosophy playing Sorry at KEFVGAAIR. Napoleon played Risk and was never the same afterward. Alexander Hamilton invented hip-hop doing ‘rhymes with’ in a game of charades.
“And then in 1943,” the hunchback said, “a revolution! The world’s first computer, ENIAC. And with it, the world’s first computer game.”
A slide popped up of a computer the size of a four-bedroom house.
Next to it, on a field of black—a single green dot.
“The game was called Dot. Pretty much all you did was, like, move that dot around the screen. It was really slow, and it only moved, like, two or three inches, and it blinked sometimes. Every now and then it would just disappear for ten or twelve minutes, and we’d think it was broken, then it would pop up again and everyone would yell, ‘DOT!’ Come to think of it, I’m not even sure it was a game. But it was a massive hit!”
“Cool,” I said. I was lying—it sucked.
“Dot begat Pong Pong begat Pole Position Pole Position begat Donkey Kong. Or maybe it was Donkey Kong that begat Pole—”
“I GET IT,” I said.
“The second revolution came in 1988, with the premiere of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s seminal martial arts and motion picture event, Bloodsport. Finally, after all those centuries, we had a backronym that fit KEFVGAAIR: Kumite Except for Video Games and Also It’s Real. As I’m sure you know, because you’re a grown man and you have the internet, the Kumite in Bloodsport was complete and total bullshit.”
“Look,” I said, “I know what it says on Wikipedia, but I still don’t believe the Kumite is fake. I mean, Frank Dux, Chong Li, Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds—they’re all personal friends of mine, or totally could be!”
The hunchback stood up as straight and tall as he could. That was still pretty crooked. Seriously, he was maybe four foot eleven, unless you count the extra four inches from his hump.
“All of this history has led to this moment,” he said. “Here. Now. With you, Doc.
“All those centuries of gaming champions—of warriors!—formed the powerful international criminal organization that is the Brotherhood. And now the Brotherhood is inviting you, the Two-Time, to compete at the highest level of gaming the world has to offer. To travel to Hong Kong to face off against the greatest, most elite competitors on the Earth, playing the newest, greatest innovation in video games: Halo.
“The winner gets a large chest full of ancient riches, gems, and gold doubloons that will instantly make him one of the wealthiest men alive. But more important than that, he will receive eternal honor, everlasting glory, and lifetime membership in the Brotherhood.”
“And the losers?” I asked.
“They will all be killed,” he said. “You must decide now, Doc.”
“So let me get this straight,” I said, scratching my perfectly square chin. “You want me to drop everything, leave behind my entire life, and go with you to Hong Kong on a moment’s notice? You haven’t even told me your name yet!”
“It’s Carl.”
I laughed long and hard. It was an evil, diabolical laugh. The laugh of a champion who has finally encountered a challenge worthy of his skill. It felt good.
“Well then, Carl,” I said, “sign me the fuck up.”
So yeah, I went with the guy. Twenty hours later, I was in the Brotherhood’s AH-64 Apache attack chopper, staring out the window at the Hong Kong skyline.
“Down there,” Carl the Hunchback said, pointing. “That is the location of KEFVGAAIR.”
It was the middle of the night, but luckily I was wearing my advanced prototype Sony XL-9000 scopes with 3D night vision, so I could make out the entire complex in perfect detail.
“It just looks like some random-ass abandoned warehouse.”
“Exactly!” he said. “Just as I promised—a top secret, maximum-security facility that lies at the heart of the Brotherhood’s vast criminal enterprise, entirely invisible to the outside world!”
“Wait, that was serious?” I said. “I thought you were kidding! Why wouldn’t I want the whole world to watch when I kick everyone’s ass and look great doing it?”
“Well, um—”
“I figured you meant ‘top secret maximum-security facility’ in a cool way. Like—and this is just off the top of my head, I haven’t even given this much thought—giant black steel walls and blood-red towers with mysterious sweeping klieg lights and maybe like an iron drawbridge with a giant eagle skull or something.
“And then around the perimeter you’d have armored ninjas and tanks and Robocop ED-209s patrolling everywhere, and then like a moat that’s filled with acid and mutant crocodiles and genetically engineered super-piranhas where if they bite you, you don’t just die, you also get all these little baby super-piranhas growing in your spleen, and when they hatch you start screaming in total agony as these killer fish with vicious teeth are just eating their way out of your spleen.
“And then near the moat and the drawbridge you’ve got these big poisonous iron stakes and at the ends of the stakes are a bunch of ragged, bloody, gory decapitated heads, and a huge flashing neon sign that says ‘WARNING! ALL WHO ATTEMPT TO ENTER THE TOP SECRET KEFVGAAIR WILL DIE. Media, please see Will Call for your official commemorative press passes.’ You know, something awesome like that.”
Carl the Hunchback looked at me for a minute.
“Uh-huh.”
“Listen, Carl the Hunchback—do you mind if I call you that?”
“Yes.”
“Sweet. So, Carl the Hunchback, once I win this thing—and I will win this thing—I’m gonna be making a lot of changes around here. I don’t know what those changes will be, and I don’t even know why I’ll make them. Honestly, I don’t know much about this place at all right now, because we haven’t even landed yet. But I can tell you one thing. One of those changes will involve klieg
