“Awesome, love it,” I said. “You guys wanna come in? That’s my sofa/bed/kitchen table/Top Secret Lab. Take a load off. Larry—can I call you Lare?—here’s a towel for your pee-pee pants. No shame, brother.”

Of course I was lying and Lare totally should’ve been ashamed. I tossed him a rag, and they sat down.

“Doc,” Sergey said, “Larry and I own a small start-up named… Oogle.”

“Great name,” I said.

Then I started hacking and gagging like I had a hairball, because that name sucked.

“Um, thanks,” he said. “Our start-up makes video game hardware, and we’re a few months away from launching our very first product—a high-end multisensory, variable-input joystick that’ll revolutionize gaming forever.”

“Better than a Sony prototype?” I asked.

They paused dramatically. “Yes,” Larry said. “Even better than that.”

Wow. This was legit.

“We’ve been planning the rollout,” Sergey said, “and you’ve come to our attention over the last few years, starting with your incredibly impressive Blockbuster Video Game Championship—”

“Plural! Back-to-back,” I said. “ ’Ninety-Three and ’Ninety-Four.”

“—and, frankly, your rather interesting, uh, personal style choices.”

“You mean the black steel, silky and bulletproof? I guess you could say it revolutionized the hair game. Wanna run your fingers through it?”

“No, thank you,” Sergey said.

I laughed loud. “I was messing with you! I’d never let a punk like you touch my hair. You’re lucky I even let you hear that joke.”

Sergey said, “Larry and I thought that a, uh, character such as yourself would make a fun, cool ambassador for our brand-new product.”

I eyed him with the sonar vision of an eagle.

“So,” I said. “You are here to steal the secrets of my superhuman speed and reflexes. I knew it!”

Sergey and Larry kind of looked at each other.

“No,” Sergey said. “Why do you keep saying that?”

“Isn’t that what being your ‘ambassador’ means? That you sponge off me like a parasite?”

“No,” he said. “When we say ‘ambassador,’ we are thinking, like, maybe you could use our controller at your next tournament. Or maybe, I don’t know, we put a photo of your mustache on the box for a small fee or something.”

“Yeah!” Larry said. “That would be fun!”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “My mustache, Slick Daddy, sell out for a fee?” My stomach grumbled loudly and I continued, “You’re goddamn right he would! That mustache has no morals. None! The Ethiopian Poisonous Caterpillar is a total cash whore.”

Sergey cleared his throat. “Yes, well, keep in mind that we’re a very small company.”

“Very small,” Larry said.

“Ten million dollars,” I said. “In unmarked one-dollar bills.”

“Absolutely not,” Sergey said.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Ten million… pennies! Also unmarked!”

“No,” he said.

“What if they were marked pennies?”

“Still no.”