“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.