Numbers' New Year's Newsletter: It Came From 2014

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I thought the journey we have taken together reached its pinnacle in 2011, but no.  It was only just beginning.  Together, we soared to new heights in 2012, only to have it all go wrong in 2013.  For those unwilling to click on hyperlinks and/or read, allow me to briefly explain.

I built an empire out of selling matches to schoolchildren and used my fortune to build a giant robot, with which I valiantly defended the Earth from my arch-nemesis, who had set up bases on Mars' moons.  His Red Planet operation had opened a gateway to another realm, and after defeating him, I discovered the only way to to shut down the slipgate was to jump into it.

Long story short, I literally dove head-first into a world of giant, ten-metre-tall tentacle monsters and indifferent citizens whose minuscule attention spans were occupied by their flash-in-the-pan hipstertech gadgetry.  After several months of trying to open a portal home, I realized that I was not in another dimension but merely modern-day Japan.

I found the ruins of an all-girls' school, destroyed by a rampaging tentacle monster, and hastily converted it into a makeshift mech bay.  (As an aside, gently-used pantsu make excellent shop rags.)  Having not only repaired but upgraded my mech, I set a course for home.  I powered up my jump jets and blasted my way up into the sky, using my mech's drill arm to punch through the clouds.

All except one.

To my surprise, I pierced through the hull of an enormous cloud-shaped battleship, a launching platform for tanks that looked like animatronic humanoid amphibian martial artists.  I heard a lunch bell ring, but it was not yet pizza time.  Not until I had stopped the invaders.

I recognized the emblem painted upon the hull of the walking tanks.  It was the crest of New Arstotzka, a fearsome military force determined to restore its homeland to its former Glory.  But said homeland doesn't exist any more.  Arstotzka fell, and these new, next-generation special forces with their sentient walking tanks will stop at nothing to conquer someone else's country, establish borders, and try to set up the Motherland once more.

I could not allow them to do what they wanted to the world.  So, I took it upon myself to explore their cloud-camouflaged battleship, despite not having the proper papers.  I plunged my drill through the engine casings and laid waste to the Engineering decks.  The ship was going down.

Determined to avoid an international incident, I set my jumpjets to maximum burn and did my best to alter the falling ship's course, lest a New Arstotzkian battleship crashing on another country's soil spark a war.  We made landfall somewhere in the Arctic Ocean.  I made it out.  Scans detected no other survivors.

I got home to find the matchstick empire in embers.  Factories had simultaneously and "accidentally" burned down, and employees' cars shat upon with alarming precision by local pigeons.  I refused to believe these were coincidences.  In the time I was away, someone had been plotting against me.  Someone who was going to pay.

As I write this, I am currently following the trails he left behind, perhaps deliberately.  I do not make a habit of discussing ongoing investigations, and this one shall be no exception.  Rest assured -- by this time next year, I will have found the guilty party and brought it to justice.  With my mech's drill, if I have to.

- Dr. Numbers, Smooth-Talking Ladykilling Space Cowboy, Esq.
Somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico
January 2014

[Other years' letters: 2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / 2019 / 2020 / 2021 ]