The Eternity Conundrum: A Brief Prequel to "The Villain's Sidekick"

By Stephen T. Brophy

Duke "HandCannon" LaRue is a bad guy, an angry nihilist who'll lease his prosthetic gun-arm to the highest bidder. Today it's Dr. Shocktagon, who's just one major player in a nefarious plan to rewrite reality and unleash an ancient nightmare on Earth. But when Duke gets life-changing news, he's got to decide if now is the right time for end of the world and everything in it. Of course, changing sides in the ultimate war between Good and Evil is never as easy as you think.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen T. Brophy
• Release date: Jul 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310711268

Stephen T. Brophy

Stephen T. Brophy is a living human male. He resides in the principality of Los Angeles, California USA. He works in television production and makes his living answering the rhetorical question, "Reality TV has writers?" He loves his wife Danielle, his son Ash, his dogs Griff and Tex, science fiction, funnybooks, movies and sleep in more or less that order. Sleep might be higher on the list these days, but he doesn't want to piss anyone off by bumping them.

Book preview

The Eternity Conundrum

A Brief Prequel to The Villain’s Sidekick

Stephen T. Brophy

Copyright 2014 by Stephen T. Brophy

Smashwords Edition

THE ETERNITY

CONUNDRUM

A brief prequel to

The Villain’s Sidekick

By

Stephen T. Brophy

© 2014 Budget Press

a Monolith InterSystems Corporation

All rights reserved.

This is a work of utter fictitious nonsense. Any resemblance to actual superheroes, supervillains, or henchmen, living, dead, or in-between, is purely intentional and should be considered winking homage.

What are the critics saying about The Villain’s Sidekick?

"It’s like Stan Lee and Walker Percy had a lovechild."

Joel Hodgson,

Mystery Science Theater 3000/Cinematic Titanic

"With a lot of genuine emotion, and characters that you can’t help getting invested in...Villain’s Sidekick owes a huge debt to Donald Westlake or Elmore Leonard."

Charlie Jane Anders,

io9.com

"Fans of film noir and true crime whodunits will relish The Villain’s Sidekick...it’s pure entertainment…"

Claire Palermo

Razorcake

"...a tightly wound adventure filled with great humor, hyper magniloquence, and preposterous characters. Compared to everything else in our tiny genre bubble, Brophy has written the perfect novel."

Eric Searleman

superheronovels.com

"This is one of the very best books I’ve read this year, and I give it my highest recommendation."

Jonathon Brazee,

Science-fiction-reviews.net

For Danielle, the original Dame.

"Open up your engines let ‘em roar

Tearin’ up the highway like a big ol’ dinosaur…"

Bruce Springsteen

Cadillac Ranch

The world is fucked.

In New York City right now, a monster made of sentient garbage, scrap metal and human waste is rising from the Hudson to lay siege to Lower Manhattan. It’ll work its way all the way up to Harlem leaving devastation in its wake, a localized genocide that’ll make 9/11 look like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It won’t stop there, no matter what Cold Soldier and the Liberty Guard try to do about it. Prime Minister Sinister will see to that.

Scenes like that are playing out all over the world, and for all the poor saps who aren’t in the loop on this whole crazy scheme, it must seem a helluva lot like the apocalypse is finally happening, just as wild and loud and dark and bloody as promised by the Book of Revelations, the Church of the Imminent End and every other mad prophet and doomsday cult in history.

In Cairo, where it’s already tomorrow, a cluster of stone and organic matter that strongly resembles the Sphinx has been doing its thing for several hours. No matter how many chunks the Egyptian military blows out of it, the giant beast just keeps coming, leveling buildings that haven’t been retrofitted for this kind of supernatural disaster. I can just picture Abd Al-Aziz, the Islamentalist, hovering above its crumbling head on his flying prayer rug, arms folded, eyes on the prize. Or maybe just Mecca.

For those of us who know what’s really going down, it’s just a coup d’etat, the glorious revolution, subversion through perversion, overthrow of the old world and a fresh start for everyone, whether we want it or not.

In Arizona, with a little help from the Navajo shaman and crime lord Spread Eagle, an army of Apache ghost warriors emerges from a mineshaft that hasn’t seen use in decades, the restless spirits of their long-dead horses breathing wild fire as they ride toward