9m lift plummet inspiration
TURNING a broken back into a positive is Mark Major’s plan for summer.
On January 4 he will release his commissioned iPhone game Plummet, based on his experience of falling 9m down a building shaft in China seven years ago.
He was in Beijing while on an internship as a university student and cannot recall the moments leading up to the fall.
‘‘My last memory is going into a 7-Eleven to get some water, and then I woke up at the bottom of this hole.
‘‘The sole moment I remember was the free-falling plummet and also the impact of hitting a plank of wood about 6m into my 9m fall. That was very much the lifesaver, I believe,’’ he said.
Major, now 28, recalls waking up in the cramped shaft, his unconscious friend beside him.
‘‘[I was] very dazed – it’s like waking up from a very deep sleep. And no clue where I was.
‘‘I had intense pressure in my chest, and I thought I had internal bleeding.’’
The hole was in a busy and noisy restaurant-packed street, so the injured Major and his friend had to yell for an hour before someone heard them. ‘‘Finally we saw a head pop over.’’
Firemen then came to rescue them, lowering down a collapsible stretcher.
‘‘They recruited random people off the street to pull me up – who dropped me as I was going halfway up.’’
He shattered a vertebra in his back, but his spinal cord was intact, meaning he was not at risk of paralysis. But doctors at Beijing Hospital diagnosed him as having only bruising. It was not until he was taken to a private hospital 12 hours later that a doctor realised the extent of his injuries.
The Evans Bay resident was put on bed rest for a month and spent another five months in a back brace.
‘‘I’m very lucky. I didn’t have any nerve damage, which is important but I completely threw off the construction of my back, so I’ve been pretty much in constant pain for about seven years.’’
He said he was ‘‘free-falling again’’ after being made redundant as an IT manager earlier this year. But motivated by others who had drawn inspiration from their darkest times, he decided to turn the experience into a game. ‘‘It puts a different lens over it.’’ The free game, for iPhones with an Android version planned, lets players guide Major’s avatar as he plummets down an endless hole, ‘‘like Flappy Bird’’, by tipping their phones.
‘‘It’s a very surreal feeling, playing a cartoon version of yourself.’’