Life in a Game! by Enemy Crab Productions

By Kent Steichman
Investigative Reporter

These are tough times we live in. In addition to the economic troubles, and unrest at home and abroad, it seems that nearly every week some mad scientist or another is trying to take over the world.

But these ever-present villains, when one thinks of the money troubles facing the average Joe, bring up the question: Just where are these guys getting the money to keep their robot hordes up and running?

There can't be much return on gigantic death machines, especially when they tend to be destroyed by the nearest 10 year old robot in blue spandex, or any passing mutated woodland creature. So how do the likes of Dr. Ivo Robotnik or Albert Wily keep returning to their schemes time and time again?

As I set out to investigate this, it occurred to me that I probably couldn't just head up to their fortresses and ask them. I may be willing to dig deep to find a story, but I'm not willing to fight my way past killer robots, at least not with the blue shield and E Tank shortage going on.

So instead, I turned to the people (or, in this case, robot and animal) who knew them the best. Unfortunately, I couldn't manage to keep Sonic's attention for more than the ten seconds it took me to ask any questions. After I made a note to investigate whether he was on Speed, I paid a visit to Light Labs.

Dr. Thomas Light, one time partner and now nemesis to Wily, was less than enthusiastic about my questions. "Well, if I bloody knew that then he wouldn't be this big of a problem, now would he?" he barked at me.

So, with that turning up a dead end, I had to turn to their other known associates. Shadow, unfortunately, couldn't stop brooding enough to give me any useful information, and aside from nicking my watch Rouge wanted nothing to do with me. I called long distance to Moscow and asked Dr. Mikhail Cossack if he had any ideas. He told me while he had gotten government funds to compete with Dr. Light's robots, he had no idea how Wily kept funding his robot armies.

It seemed I was stuck until one night, when I was returning to my car, I heard a strange whistling sound. Turning around, I saw a kid wearing a trench coat and a scarf. "You're looking in the wrong places," he told me. I asked who he was, but he wouldn't tell me. "Wily's always been better with software and hardware. Viruses, that sort of thing," he continued, before he headed out of sight.

This on its own didn't help me one bit, of course. I don't know much about computer programming, but I had a few contacts that did. One of them stumbled on a line of code pointing to Wily while looking through spam-related viruses, and it dawned on me. Wily was funding his technology through E-mail scams.

The deposed Nigerian prince? Wily. The Lottery agency that's going to send you a check now, and transfer the rest when you give them your bank information? Wily. That hot Asian woman who will run away with you as long as you give her your social security number?

Wily.

It's a horrifying thought. So whatever you do, don't fall for these scams. Not only will you be out thousands of dollars, but you'll be funding evil robots.

By Kent Steichman
Investigative Reporter

So, tell me if this has ever happened to you: You're minding your own business, finishing up those last few TPS reports, when all of a sudden some otherwise well-meaning vigilante, secret agent, or superhero comes running through your office, and you find your surroundings suddenly exploding all around you.

So not only is your office now a wreck, but whatever you were working on went up in a ball of fire when a stray shot hit your work desk, including your desk and chair. But why does everything explode? This is the question I sought to answer, and my inquiries took me all the way to Russia.

First, I checked one of the nation's leading users of exploding furniture, dataDyne industries. CEO Cassandra DeVries, however, was not available to speak, the strange tall, blond man in a trench coat informed me when I tried to schedule a meeting. When I told him I simply wanted to know where they got their supplies, he directed me to one of their sales associates.

The woman I then spoke to told me they got their office supplies cheap by buying surplus goods that nobody else would buy, which surprised me more than it should have. Exploding desks can't really be a premium item, after all. I asked her if she knew why they exploded, but she said she had no idea. During our conversation, she mentioned she was due to get a new desk, which probably explained why she was so careful getting into and out of her chair.

She gave me the name of the supplier, which led me to an old warehouse in Severnaya. While looking around, I met an old Red Army officer who displayed burns on one side of his face from, as he put it, "A goddamn box just went off on me."

We toured the warehouse, and he finally explained just why everything seems to be combustible. Back during the cold war, when supplies were low, one multipurpose factory had, by way of a shipping mix up, received dozens of barrels of nitroglycerin instead of the petroleum they needed to put into plastics.

Since waiting for the appropriate materials to come would have taken too long, they simply used the nitro in place of the petroleum, which proved to be fairly stable unless exactly four bullets hit one of the items made.

The surviving items, ranging from packing boxes to crates to desks, televisions and radios, were sold and shipped throughout the Soviet Union and even to the United States. Sadly, there's no way to tell just which office supplies will explode or not, so unless you're sure, whatever you do, for God's sake never take cover behind a desk. That's just asking for trouble.

Labels: curley, humor, vg reporter