The Running Man
by Stephen King
Contents
…Minus 098 and COUNTING… It was after four when Ben Richards
Overview
Ben Richards makes it through the first stage of Network Games registration, answering a dehumanizing series of questions about his identity, family, education, and drug history. The process reveals how brutally the system filters desperate applicants, rejecting the weak or disqualified without compassion.
Richards receives an identification card with a mysterious punched corner, marking him for an unexplained next step. His progress raises the stakes: he has entered the machinery that may save his family financially, but it is already treating him as expendable material.
Summary
After waiting in the Network Games Building, Ben Richards reaches the main desk after four o’clock and is sent to Desk 9 for applicants whose names fall under Q-R. The clerk there is exhausted, cruel, and mechanical, treating Richards as data rather than as a person.
The clerk records Richards’s identity, age, height, weight, schooling, and reason for leaving school. Richards answers plainly: he is twenty-eight, underweight for his height, attended Manual Trades for two years, left at sixteen because he got married, and now has a wife, Sheila, and an eighteen-month-old daughter, Cathy.
Around Richards, the lobby is chaotic and harsh. Other applicants are questioned, rejected, led away crying, or thrown out, making the Games application process feel like an impersonal sorting machine. The clerk warns Richards not to lie about drug use because the physical examination will expose him; Richards says he has never used heroin or San Francisco Push.
The clerk gives Richards a plastic identification card, then unexpectedly takes it back and punches off its upper right corner. When Richards asks why, the clerk refuses to explain and sends him toward the elevators with the other applicants.
As Richards moves on, he sees police stop and reject a trembling San Francisco Push addict, who breaks down but leaves. The encounter confirms the cruelty and selectiveness of the Network’s process as Richards advances one step deeper into the Games system.
Who Appears
- Ben RichardsDesperate applicant who completes initial Network Games registration and receives a marked identification card.
- Desk 9 clerkImpersonal registration worker who records Richards’s data and punches his card without explanation.
- San Francisco Push addictRejected applicant stopped by police and removed after failing the Games screening.
- Sheila RichardsRichards’s wife, named during registration as part of his family record.
- Catherine Sarah RichardsRichards’s infant daughter, listed during registration and motivating his need for money.