Just Plain Usman jumped up waving his hand. “Oh! Oh! Can we call it—”
“If you say anything that even sounds like ‘the Brotherhood’…,” I growled.
He sat back down.
“Listen,” I said. “I know exactly what we’re going to call it. We’re gonna be the Champions Club.”
Everyone nodded, like “duh.” Because obviously it was the coolest name for anything anyone had ever heard in their lives.
I had it all planned out, man. I was gonna take my new treasure and build a brand-new secret headquarters for my international club. It would have this sick-ass lounge, a secret lab, lockers for all the guys, and a trophy room that would only hold my trophies and no one else’s, because, I mean, I was paying for everything. Oh! And my secret headquarters would have not one but TWO moats! And there wouldn’t just be genetically enhanced super-piranhas, I’d get mutant alligators and alien sharks and bionic electric eels too, and when I was bored I could watch them fight. Fuck yeah, that would be—
“Doc! Hey, Doc!” Just Plain Usman said.
“Dude,” I said. “I was just having the best daydream about eels and piranhas fighting in my two moats. This thing where you interrupt me is getting really annoying.”
“I was just wondering,” he said. “You think we’ve seen the last of Carl the Hunchback and the Brotherhood?”
“Like, for the purposes of this book?”
“Uh, sure.”
I laughed.
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
Because when does a vicious archenemy criminal mastermind who mysteriously falls to his doom ever make a surprise reappearance? Like, never—that’s when.
CHAPTER 12 THE RIGHT FLIP PHONE FOR YOU
I hear it all the time. Like, constantly.
My millions of devoted fans see me walking down the street—or, I don’t know, maybe I’m buying kielbasas at the grocery store or hunting down one of my mortal enemies, also at the grocery store—and they marvel at all my incredible, expensive, cutting-edge tech.
My prototype Google mirrored scopes with Sony 3D LCD night vision. My black-on-black Hellfire spec ops tactical vest with bulletproof, waterproof high-threat armor. My laceless Reebok Pump high-top combat boots with authentic XP-2000 pump action. My seventy-two-inch experimental AI Samsung LED flat-screen with quantum-computing 5K HD definition, which sometimes I carry around on my back just for fun. Or my portable 7T-43 laser-induced plasma-effect weapon with sonic boosters, which I stole from China and which can instantly target and hyper-vibrate your foe’s spleen, eyeballs, and brain, and which I also sometimes carry around just for fun.
And they ask me, “Doc, what flip phone should I buy, and why?”
Great question. And very, very complicated.
Sure, there’s the technical stuff. The sound quality—that incredible tinny crispness you can get from the single monophonic speaker. The powerful graphics of the three-bit dot-matrix tricolor display. The seamless user interface of your twelve-button push pad: “Bro, do you see how fast I can toggle from J to L on this number 5?! I can send out a text every ten minutes!”
Some flip phones even have these plastic arrows you can use to move the cursor around. It’s pretty fucking cool, but still kind of in beta mode, so not totally functional yet.
But if you’ve learned anything about the Doc so far—and let’s be honest, you probably haven’t, because you’re not the sharpest shooter in the battle royale—you know that I always go beyond the surface. To an even deeper understanding of my own surface.
And the truth is that owning a flip phone is about more than just tech. It’s about more than simple telecommunications. It’s a way of life. It’s a philosophy. It’s making a statement—a statement that’s usually kinda garbled, because you’re talking on a flip phone.
When you’re the greatest gaming champion the world has ever known, you don’t fly with the bird crowds. You don’t follow the herds of sheep as they baaaa and poop.
And what kind of phones do the sheep use? They use smartphones. More like stupid phones, am I right? I’m hilarious.
That’s right. I see all you common people with your high-definition displays and your apps that can do a million helpful, useful, virtually essential things given our society’s reliance on digital communication and high-speed computing.
And I laugh.
Yeah, so maybe you’re able to order paper towels from all over the world at the touch of a screen. Maybe you’re able to schedule a flight or check the latest scores or troll a gullible celeb on Twitter. Maybe you’re able to find true love with a swipe up or down or whatever the hell direction it is. Maybe you’re even able to take world-class photos and video using a wide variety of lenses and creative filters. You know, I’ve actually heard that some of those cameras are, like, professional grade, and TBH I could use something that really brings out the more subtle shades of black in my flowing black-on-black-on-black mullet, because my RED Digital Cinema 710-0322 camera with its Monstro 8K VV kit is fucking awesome but super heavy to lug around all the time, and—wait, where was I? Oh yeah.
But do you know how dumb you look with that “smart” phone?
Holding up this giant brick to your head whenever you want to talk. Carrying them around bulging from your pockets, totally ruining the aerodynamics of your pants. Dealing with all those accessories, your ridiculous PopSockets and screen protectors and rose-gold plastic cases. Staring glassy-eyed at your phone at all times of the day and night, when you’re walking, when you’re eating, when you’re taking a shit or falling asleep—it’s fucking obnoxious as hell! Unless you’re staring at photos of me, in which case—all right, I get it.
But not the Two-Time.
My relationship with my flip phone is something deeper, okay? Something spiritual. Something self-actualizing on a whole new cosmic level.
The right flip phone in my hand is like an extension of my being. I hear it ring. And you know what that customized ringtone sounds like.
Bump-tsshhh.
Bump-tsshhh-tsshhh.
“They call him Doc!”
Oh yeah. I draw that
