Read Dr. Identity for Free Online

jetpack. I looked around for Dostoevsky’s piece. No sign of it. He must have taken a worm to work today.
    I strapped the jetpack onto Dr. Identity. We darted back into the hallway just as the Pigs burst through the door. They chased us to the end of the hallway, hurling throwing stars, tessens, kamas, sais and Kozuka blades at our backs.
    We dove through a tall bay window and vanished in an explosion of glass shards.
    We freefell a half mile before Dr. Identity managed to activate the jetpack. Its obsolete, refurbished engine once belonged to a lawnmower and required a pull-string to start it. An apocalyptic scream lit a fire in my throat. Dr. Identity sported a calm, almost bored expression as he turned end over end and fiddled with the jetpack.
    The contraption finally came to life. My ’gänger grabbed me by the armpits. We leveled out and I stopped screaming.
    We ascended into traffic.
    “Where to?” shouted Dr. Identity.
    I tried to respond, but my voice was gone.
    I pointed at the heart of the city.
    Bliptown was an immense junkyard of architectures and geometries, a hulking assemblage of suburbs and strip malls that had been crammed together and stacked on top of each other. But a certain orderliness prevailed despite the swarms of construction beams that always-already swung across the city’s ever expanding periphery. Viewed from high enough in the air, Bliptown seemed to be breathing, inhaling and exhaling like a live thing. Its neoindustrial exterior mainly consisted of flickering neon logos, insignias, business monikers and vidbuildings showcasing the latest fashion statements, newsflashes, commercials and porno fetishes.
    Flyways coursed across the skin of the city like varicose veins. Glinting, fire-breathing machinery flowed and surged in every direction. Dr. Identity and I weaved through the traffic, dodging as many construction beams as aircrafts, and slipped into an indiscrete alaristrian lane. There was no speed limit, but most of the alaristrians weren’t going more than 40 mph except for a few teenagers who darted to and fro like gnats.
    We couldn’t go back to my cubapt. The Pigs would be waiting for us and no doubt destroying or pocketing whatever they could get their hooves on. They had probably given my wife-thing a going over by now. If she was still alive, divorce papers were imminent. I needed to get used to loss. In the wake of Dr. Identity’s act of ultraviolence, my life would never be the same again.
    The Law in Bliptown was an automated speed demon. A few seconds after we dove out of the English department, an en masse APB was surely put out on us. Probably we would sail past a vidbuilding in the next minute or two showcasing our colossal wanted-dead-or-alive images.
    To make matters worse, there was the legality of vigilantism to consider. In addition to the surrogates of the Law, Dr. Identity and I could also expect the families of the student-things, professors and ’gängers it killed to hunt us down—with the full support of Bliptown’s governing powers. If we wanted to survive, we needed more weapons than Dr. Identity’s hands and feet.
    And we had no credit. No means of using credit anyway. The moment I spent a penny, the Law would have us.
    Hunger besieged me.
    High anxiety always had that effect. The more I worried, the more I ate—and needed to eat. Deathlike feelings accompanied boiling points. And they weren’t infrequent. A speedy metabolism helped me maintain a slender figure. Right now I felt like challenging the power of that metabolism. I reached up and tugged on Dr. Identity’s suit.
    Dr. Identity glanced down at me. “What!”
    “Sandwich,” I squeaked.
    “What!”
    I arched back my head so the android could see my mouth. “ Sand-wich .”
    Dr. Identity frowned. “You know I can’t read lips! What’s the matter with you!”
    I pointed at my stomach. I punched myself in the face.
    “Oh.” Dr. Identity’s pupils splashed against its eyeballs like