Cody Code Code

It was September of 1980, and Cody StandingBear was stoned immaculate.  He had taken peyote a few times, and experimented with different blending of dosages of several hallucinogens before, but this time was different.  This time he had perfected it.

He wrote at a blazing speed, slipping in and out of shorthand, his mind a whir of sensations and thoughts.  Another verse done.  Then another.   Another.   It lasted for about 7 hours, until he passed out of exhaustion.  When he woke up fourteen hours later he would discover in the pages he'd written a code that he couldn't remember how to break.  Nor could he remember the special psychedelic recipe that had put him so perfectly in the zone.

The song was lengthy, but brilliant in its lyrical perfection and the message... Cody felt like his mind would pop.   It was the most excruciating sense of tip-of-the-tongue/deja vu he'd ever felt.  It was worse than right before he'd broken the Enigma code so many years back.  All he knew for sure was that he had to hide this somehow.  He had to make this song seem like it wasn't what it was.

He had an idea, which in his drug-hung-over brain seemed reasonable.  He could subliminally feed the code to Joe, then destroy all physical copies.  "Teach" the song to him when he wasn't aware he was being taught.  But how?

After much brainstorming he decided upon reprogramming Joe's brand spanking new Pacman console with the cipher. He just needed to meet with a little boy named José, who happened to be the state's best player of Pacman-- well, the best player as a video game tester.  Being a game tester in 1980 was probably the most cool and awesome way to get paid money.