…Minus 087 and COUNTING… The inner office looked big enough t

Ben Richards enters Dan Killian’s large office, overlooking Harding and the lake in the rain. Killian introduces himself as the executive producer of The Running Man and tells Richards that his records and test scores have made him a contestant on the Network’s biggest, most dangerous show.

Killian reviews Richards’s dossier, emphasizing Richards’s history of defiance: school trouble, refusal to accept union and wage-control oaths, repeated firings, insults to authority, and hostile psychological-test responses. Killian frames Richards as antisocial and dangerous, while Richards answers with sarcasm and open contempt.

Killian explains that Richards’s wife and daughter make him useful to the Network because they give him a reason to sign. He then describes The Running Man as both entertainment and a way to eliminate potential troublemakers. Killian stresses that no contestant has ever survived, that the public will help hunt Richards rather than support him, and that Evan McCone and the Hunters never lose.

Killian lays out the rules: Richards will appear live Tuesday night, receive a twelve-hour head start, and earn one hundred New Dollars for every hour he remains free. The Network stakes him forty-eight hundred dollars for running money, and if Richards lasts thirty days, Richards wins one billion New Dollars. Richards laughs at the impossibility, then asks Killian how Killian would like being the one hunted; Killian finds the question absurdly funny.

After Richards asks no further questions, Killian offers him sex before the show, but Richards refuses because he is married. Richards requests bourbon and a telephone call to Sheila, but Killian denies contact once the consent form is signed. Richards signs anyway, asks for two bottles of bourbon, ignores Killian’s handshake, and leaves Killian staring after him without a smile.