Reliable Source: Cocket to Uranus

At a critical juncture in the Civil War, General Lee was looking for a lieutenant to lead a covert mission deep behind enemy lines. He conferred with his captains and every time they made a recommendation he asked the same question, “But is he lucky?”

Lee’s captains decided that by merit of being the only soldier in his unit not to have at least one limb amputated, Pvt. Applebody was the luckiest soldier. General Lee immediately promoted him to the rank of Lieutenant and presented him with a golden saber and a giant white steed.

The lucky, but ultimately not so bright, Lt. Applebody’s decision to ride his white horse on a covert mission ended abruptly when two Union soldiers saw him coming, literally, a mile away. This gave them ample time to plan their ambush. When the doctor came to amputate his leg it was clear that luck had run out for Applebody.

Like his long dead ancestor, Mark Applebody, a 32 year old flash programmer living in Bakersfield, California, survived only at the whim of lady luck. It seemed that the luckier he was the unluckier he would soon be. He might, at any moment, be struck by a bus only to find out it was driven by Kid Rock who was eager to settle out of court for millions and make him his personal assistant.

When I realized who the man standing in the cornfield wearing a knee length trench coat was, it was hard not to believe in fate, at least on some level. After all, this was the same man who had stranded me deep in the Nevada desert last month. Of course, he didn’t recognize me and tried to sell me a fake Rolex. Since I was long out of cash, all I could offer him was a wine cooler plundered from the fridge of a Hastings, Nebraska law enforcement official.

After being release from jail (I was found innocent of domestic bus terrorism) a friendly sheriff, who had learned that I was a game journalist, invited me to his house. He was in desperate need of help 5-starring some songs on expert in Guitar Hero. Fearing another stint in jail, I made an effort to offer general advice on playing plastic guitar, but after three hours of Sweet Home Alabama, it was time to move on.

As I mentioned previously in Reliable Source, Mark was a flash game developer of some distinction, but how he had ended up in a cornfield outside of Omaha was what interested me.

We sat in the corn field on a pile of corn shucks drinking stolen Boones Strawberry wine coolers while I admired my new watch. I was skeptical for a moment. How did we both wind up here in Nebraska? Was he following me? With minimal prodding, and a few sips of Boones, Mark was more than happy to explain how he had gone from being one of California’s leading flash game designers to selling luxury Swiss timepieces outside of Omaha.

Having problems paying for college, Mark joined the navy in 1995. He was working as a gunner’s mate aboard the U.S.S. Nimitz. The paycheck was barely enough to get by on, however, so he sought out other employment opportunities aboard the ship. He eventually met Petty Officer Brandon Gil, a shady petty officer who offered him a job selling ecstasy to crewmembers.

Things were going well for Mark until Senior Chief Petty Officer Morris found her flight-crew testing the texture of her F/A-18 Hornet with their tongues. Of course, the commander was not thrilled and ordered Applebody to be prosecuted to the fullest extent for “gayifying” his navy.

This was the first time that inexplicable luck saved mark from prison. Much to the chagrin of the captain, Seaman Applebody’s service commitment ended two days before his trial and he was released from his duty in the Navy, no longer subject to military law.

He returned to his home in the swamps of Louisiana. His dad had recently sold their house and used the money to buy a trailer. The problem was, other than the land being completely overpriced, it was sinking at a rate of four inches a day. Mark’s duty was to dig the trailer out of the swamp every week. Feeling like his life was sinking into some sort of mire, he endeavored to get out of the house any way he could.

Luckily for Mark, his father died only a few short months after he returned from the navy and he was able to sell his father’s property to a petrochemical company that wanted a “quiet rural setting to misplace some of their completely harmless rainbow chemical cocktail.” He gave half of the money to his cousin and used the other half to buy himself a really sweet motorcycle. On a dare from ex-Petty Officer Brandon Gil, he drove to California to be part of his old Navy friend’s horribly named budding web design firm, Revolaxion.

The company was staffed by what Brandon called “three of the craziest motherfuckers in California.”

Bear was the firm’s hirsute Czech accountant, with tufts of hair frequently billowing over the collar of his turtleneck sweaters. He was also the smartest meth-head in all of California. Bear had gotten his Masters degree in political science and been a local alderman for the last three years. Bored with politics, he discovered that drugs made the council meetings “tolerable.” When he was high on crystal, he would make giant lists of politicians and then organize them in order of partisan bills passed during their terms and how many sex scandals they had been embroiled in. In his free time, Bear made sure that the firm’s money didn’t all go up its employees noses.

Ben was the firm’s lead (and only) artist. In the follicle department, he was quite the opposite of Bear. Prematurely bald at the age of 22, Ben shaved his head to hide the fact, which just made him look like an emaciated Billy Corgan with a ridiculous highway patrol mustache. His chief hobby was being arrested for things that would get him in local newspapers. He had hijacked a bus of disable elderly persons and then coerced the driver to take him to Disneyland where he and a group of excited seniors had a great time. Later, he did manage to go to jail for a day when he attempted to beach a whale using a plastic kayak and an air horn, but Ben was more upset that stunt was relegated to page two of the Metro section.

Brandon didn’t really have any talent for designing websites per se, but he was good at was bringing people together. After all, what better way to bring people together than their shared drug addictions?

Mark’s arrival at Brandon’s firm was underscored by his unique brand of luck. Only two months after his arrival, Mark discovered a winning formula for making avant-garde independent Flash games. Choppy animation, some solitary piano chords, a monosyllabic name and a gimmick that had something to do with physics and/or time were all the elements a designer needed to make a game that would be widely acclaimed by the games-as-art snobs, regardless of how fun it actually was. Brandon encouraged Mark to ditch the crappy car dealership website he was working on and devote all of his time to making Stick, a game about a stick man trying to rescue his family from a giant eraser.

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A month after its release on the Web, Stick was wildly popular with game bloggers all over the world. Critics called it “compelling” and “meaningful” even though most of the game’s story had been written as part of a late-night weed-smoking session known in the studio as “bong-thirty.”

A month later, Mark got an offer to work on a game for NASA. Rocket to Mars was supposed to be a resource management game set aboard a rocket bound for Mars. Students K-12 would learn how to conserve water, food and even oxygen on the long voyage. But after one bong-thirty (which technically lasted for two bong-thirties), an argument between Ben and Brandon broke out about whether spaceships were just giant phallic symbols. Ben decided to illustrate his point in the game prototype by changing the rocket’s graphic to a giant penis.

The U.S.S. Cockandballs was a hit around the office. Of course, Ben was supposed castrate the penis from the final version before it was posted on NASA’s website.

On National Space Day, October 22, thousands of middle schools across the nation took the day off from classes to visit NASA’s website and play their new space simulator: Cocket to Uranus. Ben’s animations were biologically accurate, much to horror of science teachers all over the country. The imagined looks on the kid’s faces was something that still haunts Mark to this day, he told me in that cornfield.

Predictably, the F.B.I. descended on their small office in Bakersfield, CA, and the entire team was arrested. Luckily, Mark had gone to LA to hobnob with industry insiders who wanted to ask him questions about his intellectually stunning work on Stick.

The rest of the story is well-documented. Brandon was back in prison and Revolaxtion was dissolved. Ben finally got his smiling picture on the front page of the L.A. Times beneath the headline “Nation Horrified As NASA Launches Penis Into Space.” Bear vehemently denied that he had been involved in making the game – he was just an accountant, after all, and was able to escape with a slap on the wrist. After his meth supply dried up, however, he reportedly went berserk at a council meeting, pulling out his chest hairs and screaming about polar bears whenever anyone approached to help him off the chamber floor.

Mark learned about the raid on the office after an interview with Brian Crescente in Los Angeles, and decided to hole up on the beaches near Santa Monica. I’m not sure how he ended up at that party after the Spike Awards, or even why he ditched me on the road to Las Vegas. Apparently, the Feds were still looking for Mark, and he’s been forced to act erratically just to stay below the radar. I certainly know what that’s like.

I felt sorry for Mark and gave him the three remaining wine coolers. I told him to look me up if he was ever in Springfield. We exchanged contacts and shook hands. I watched him walk down that dusty Nebraska highway and disappear into the afternoon sun, wondering if I’d ever hear from him again.

Probably not, seeing as I gave him a fake phone number.

Marion Cox doesn’t know what a Cornhusker is, but wouldn’t take it if was offered to him by a prostitute.

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