Ben Li needed to come up with $769,254 by tomorrow or he was dead.
As a college student from a middle-class family, he had no legitimate sources of that much money. But now, he had a chance to earn that exact amount——in just one second.
All he had to do was shoot the middle-aged man groveling on his hands and knees on a large sheet of plastic. Peterson——that was the man’s name——was quivering so hard his glasses slipped off. His blue button-down shirt showed big sweat stains around his armpits.
Three other men stood in the cold warehouse. The first was wearing a purple suit whose houndtooth pattern shimmered in the overhead lighting. Arms crossed, he had a stern look on his face. This was Jerry Norton, Ben’s economics professor.
Next to Norton was a guy at a portable table with a laptop computer. He had curly brown hair, a scruffy half-beard, and glasses, and was dressed in a faded button-down shirt and jeans. Ben hadn’t learned his name. Laptop guy looked only a little older than Ben.
The last guy was wearing dark pants and a black sweater under a gray sports coat. He had pock marks across his face like a bad case of acne. His name was Joey, and he was holding a gun.
“As I was saying, I’m giving you a choice,” Norton said. “You only need $769,254. Mr. Peterson’s life is worth $1.2 million to him, according to my LifeValue app, but he doesn’t appear willing to pay that amount to save himself. I will consider you to have raised the necessary amount if you shoot him.”
“Please…I can’t convert my assets into that much,” Peterson said through heaving sighs. “I won’t be able to pay the capital gains taxes…”
“Why are you doing this?” Ben asked. “You’re talking about murder!”
Norton shrugged. “My app needs to be validated in practice, not just in theory.”
Peterson was grabbing Ben’s sneakers. “Please…please don’t kill me…”
“I’m not a hit man,” Ben said.
“Think of it as a Kaldor-Hicks efficient solution.” Norton tsk-tsked. “You do remember Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, don’t you?”
It was a testament to Norton’s teaching effectiveness that, even in this absurd moment, Ben did remember Kaldor-Hicks efficiency——any change that resulted in overall net gain even if some people were worse off.
Norton nodded to Joey, who switched magazines in his handgun and handed it butt-first. “One bullet in the gun,” Joey growled. “Make it count.”
Peterson blubbered, “No no no no…”
Ben took the gun. His first thought was to shoot Joey, but he noticed Joey was standing right behind him.
“How is it Kaldor-Hicks efficient for me to commit murder?”
Norton pointed at Peterson. “The gain for you is greater than the loss for him.”
Ben paused.
Norton put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Mr. Li, this is your opportunity to avoid his fate.”
The gun was lighter than he would have expected. Could he actually do this? Just pull the trigger and he would be relieved of the need to amass $769,254 by tomorrow. And it sounded like Peterson was toast no matter what. If Ben didn’t finish the man off, Joey probably would.
Ben adjusted his grip on the gun. His weapon hand was shaking, so he grabbed it with his left hand to stabilize it.
What if the bullet was a blank, and this was actually a test to see if he was willing to kill to save himself? He would fail if he pulled the trigger.
Ben turned to Norton. The economics professor had his lips pressed together. He was tapping the floor with the toes of his right foot. “Perhaps I need to set a time limit on my offer.”
Ben wanted to live. “Does this have a safety?”
Joey shook his head. “Double action. You have to squeeze hard for the first shot.”
“Please…” Peterson begged.
Ben put his finger in the trigger guard and tested the trigger. It resisted his light pull. He took a deep breath…All he had to do was squeeze harder.
For the past week, Ben had felt hopeless, with no way out. Now, he had a choice. He could kill this man, or he could refuse.
“Just do it…” Norton hissed. Ben thought he saw a bead of sweat at the professor’s temple.
He pointed the gun at the back of Peterson’s head.
A week ago.
$769,254. That was how much Ben valued his own life, according to Norton’s LifeValue app. He would have said that was ridiculous, that his life was priceless. Then Norton had covered the subject of hedonic damages in his microeconomics course.
“Someone is killed in an accident, and their estate sues; how much was the victim’s life worth?” he asked. “Does anyone have any ideas?”
There were about fifty students in the stadium-seating classroom. A student with frizzy blonde hair in the front row raised her hand. When called on, she said in a loud, confident voice, “How about figuring out their lost lifetime earnings?”
Norton pointed at her. “Excellent suggestion, Ms. Carter, simple to apply.” The student bounced in her seat, until Norton followed up: “But should society value the life of a Fortune 500 CEO so much more than a grocery clerk’s? Even for a capitalistic society, that seems rather inequitable.”
Another student, this one a tall and thin South Asian male, took a turn answering. “Let the jury decide based on how likable the victim was.”
“Of course, the jury is there for a reason, isn’t it?” asked Norton. “But is that reason to indulge their own biases and prejudices? Mr. Gupta’s idea would almost certainly result in higher damages for photogenic victims, and lower damages for those seen as losers and dregs of society, based on nothing more than the jury’s feelings.”
Norton was the only one of Ben’s professors who wore a suit when teaching. It made him look more like a businessman than a professor.
“Surely, science——economics——can do better,” Norton said, slapping the lectern. “We should consider how much the victim valued their own life.”
Ben raised his hand. “Isn’t that answer ‘infinity,’ because no one would give up their life for any amount of money?”
Norton broke into a wide smile. He must have been hoping for that exact response.
“Do you in fact value your life infinitely, Mr. Li?” Before Ben could respond, Norton continued: “What did you do this past weekend, say, Saturday night?”
“Uh, I went bar hopping…”
Norton clapped excitedly. “Excellent. I’m sure you didn’t drive afterward.”
Ben shook his head, relieved he’d avoided a trap.
“That shows prudence, and yet…”
Oh no. He had not avoided the trap.
“…you drank alcohol,” Norton said. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Sure.”
“You realize alcohol is a toxin for which there is no safe level of consumption, don’t you?” Norton asked. “It’s addictive and carcinogenic. While there’s no certainty you’ll develop liver cancer from drinking alcohol, it definitely raises your risks. And if you truly valued your life at infinity, you wouldn’t touch alcohol at all.”
“But life would be boring if I didn’t indulge in some fun things!”
Norton chuckled. “I’ll stipulate you derived utils from drinking.”
“Utils” were econ-speak for a measurement unit of enjoyment. Earlier in the semester, Norton had explained it was impossible for any person to know how much any other person enjoyed a particular activity, because people had no shared frame of reference. Utils were a theoretical way to bridge that gap.
“Well, I had cheap beers.” Ben imagined this was how a mouse felt when caught by a cat. “But beer is like pizza. Even bad beer is okay.” Laughter broke out in the classroom.
Norton walked up the aisle toward the back row where Ben was sitting. “But it doesn’t matter how many utils you get from drinking cheap beer. You said you valued your life at infinity. If that were true, why would you engage in an activity that raises your likelihood of getting cancer? Even if alcohol increases your cancer risk by only ten percent, that’s a ten percent increase in losing your life. Ten percent times infinity is still infinity.”
“But Professor, we’re all going to die at some point,” Ben protested, “so shouldn’t we enjoy life while we can?”
Norton shrugged. “You’re the one who said to value life at infinity.”
Having broken the students’ resistance to quantifying life, Norton proceeded to explain hedonic damages. The economist trying to determine the value a person placed on their own life would look at choices they made in which they could have spent more money to decrease their risk of death, and calculate the difference in price between options, and the difference in personal risk.
“For example,” Norton said, “let’s say a person had a choice between buying a cheaper, stylish car with fewer safety features or a more expensive, ugly tank with more safety features. The difference in cost is ten thousand dollars. But if there’s an accident, the driver in the cheap car will get killed one percent of the time. The driver in the ugly tank will get killed zero point zero one percent of the time. The person who buys the ugly car values their life at least at a million dollars, because they are willing to pay ten thousand dollars to decrease their risk of death by one hundred times.”
Students tried pushing back: no one actually made calculations like this when buying things; maybe the person couldn’t afford the safer tank; it would be impossible to quantify the risk of death with enough accuracy to make this calculation work. Like much of microeconomics, the basic idea was straightforward; it was the assumptions that rendered the real-life connection implausible.
Norton responded that the technique did not require the person make conscious choices; rather, it was “revealed preference”——how a person acted showed more accurately what they believed and wanted than anything they said. The analysis could be limited to financially viable choices. And the error margin could be reduced with enough data points.
The next day, everyone in the class received an email invitation to beta-test a hedonic damages app. Participants would be compensated for their time.
These sorts of economics experiments were common on campus, testing to see if people were in fact rational actors when money was at stake. Usually, students could earn some nominal payment based on how they performed.
Ben signed up——not just for beer money——but to see just how crazy this hedonic damages concept was.
About a half dozen students showed up at the economics building for the LifeValue app beta-test. Professor Norton was dressed in a sharkskin-colored suit even though he wasn’t lecturing today. He promised everyone they would be paid twice the minimum wage rate.
“Let’s get started,” Norton said. “You may recall one of the criticisms of hedonic damages was that it’s not realistic. This experiment is aimed at gathering more data. Don’t worry, you don’t have to risk your life today.” He chuckled. “All you have to do is answer questions. You can stop at any time, but the longer you keep answering, the more money you’ll earn. Any questions?”
Ben raised his hand. “How is this going to be useful, Professor? I mean, from the example you started yesterday with, if there’s a lawsuit because someone died in an accident, you’re not going to be able to get them to use an app posthumously.”
Norton nodded. “Very perceptive, Mr. Li. That’s a bridge to be crossed later. For now, this is proof of concept. Any other questions?”
There weren’t any, so Norton invited everyone to scan a posted QR code to download the app.
The first question for Ben was: “A burger and fries combo meal costs $10, while a salad with grilled chicken and vinegar and oil dressing costs $9. Which do you choose for dinner?”
Ben frowned. Presumably, the “I value my life highly” selection would be the healthier option, meaning the salad. But that was also the cheaper one, which seemed inverted from the example Norton had given about how hedonic damages worked.
His phone buzzed, and a message appeared: “Please answer quickly.”
He picked the burger and fries.
The second question was: “You have a job interview. You can get up earlier to take the bus for $5 round trip, or drive yourself for $15 in parking fees, gas, and wear-and-tear. Which do you choose?”
Driving was clearly more dangerous. He was about to pick the bus, but then he wondered about the frequency of assaults, robberies, and other violent crimes on public transportation. Maybe this was a trick question designed to make him value his life less than he really did.
It was cleaner in his own car. He picked driving.
After ten minutes, one student stood up and left the computer lab. Ben kept plowing through questions. Did he prefer pizza or fried chicken? Did he smoke cigarettes? Would he choose the ground level apartment unit or the tenth floor $400 more per month? Did he smoke pot?
Half an hour into the experiment, a Hispanic female student slammed the table. “This is an offensive question, Professor!”
It was probably the one about how many sexual partners one had had.
“You may stop at any time,” Norton said.
The woman pushed her chair back and put her hands on her hips. “What if I stop answering questions and just keep getting paid?”
“The timer on your computer will pause if you take too long,” he replied. “You’re not a prisoner; you can leave if you want, but you can’t skip any questions.”
She picked up her backpack and walked out.
“Thank you for your participation,” he called out.
Students continued to quit, though no one else publicly complained. Several thanked Norton on their way out. After an hour, Ben was the only one left. Norton sat at a desk at the front of the room, working on a laptop computer. Occasionally, he glanced up and nodded without saying anything.
It became a contest: which would run out first, Ben’s patience or the experiment’s list of questions?
There was a light touch on his shoulder. Norton stood there with a small pizza box. “You’ve been at it for three hours, Mr. Li. I thought you might be hungry.”
“Pizza, huh?” Ben grinned. “There were a lot of questions about pizza. Are you using this for consumer preferences?”
Norton made an “X” with his forefingers. “Only aggregate results are shared with me,” he said. “Your privacy is assured.” Ben found his smile oddly reassuring. Norton was a tenured professor. Surely, this was all above-board.
Ben accepted the pizza box. “Thanks, but please, let me know if you need to leave, Prof. I can stop any time you need me to.”
“Oh, I don’t need to be here,” Norton said. “In fact, if my presence bothers you, I can go back to my office. It’s just that your perseverance…inspires me. No one has stayed close to this long.”
“It’s cool,” Ben said. “This is actually kind of interesting, trying to figure out why you’re asking these questions.”
“I’ve been searching for a subject——that is, student——as dedicated as you.”
In the end, Ben outlasted Norton, but not the experiment. He had spent four hours as Professor Norton’s guinea pig.
That evening, he received an email from “results@LifeValue.com”:
Based on your responses, you value your life at $769,254. Because you answered 412 questions, the margin of error for this result is 5%.
$769,254? How weirdly precise, even with the error margin. Like, if someone offered him five percent less than his supposed self-valuation, he would have declined, but if they offered him at least five percent more, he definitely would have accepted——giving up his life?
Who would agree to such a ridiculous deal, unless they were already about to die anyway?
He thought about how Norton’s explanation of hedonic damages did not account for the time value of money, the person’s time horizon, and more. If this bizarre deal were actually being offered——one’s life for a large sum of money——how much time would the person have to enjoy the money? Even infinite dollars would be useless if you were going to be killed immediately. Well, unless you were thinking about your family or something…
Ben sent Norton an email identifying limitations of the hedonic damages theory, though he didn’t expect extra credit or even a response. It was just that this topic had been strangely engaging.
Less than a minute later, even though it was late at night, Norton replied: Very interesting, please come to my office hours tomorrow to discuss further.
Interacting with Norton one-on-one was universally regarded as even more stressful than being questioned by him in class. On the other hand, he was so well-connected that those students he looked upon favorably usually ended up with killer jobs.
The next day, Ben dressed more formally than usual, just in case Norton was looking to hire him as a research assistant.
Norton was wearing a light blue suit that radiated cheerfulness. It complemented the austere cleanliness of his office. The walls were blank except for Norton’s framed diplomas from Yale (B.A.) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D.), and a set of pictures of Norton in a variety of settings: atop a mountain peak, at an archery range, at a judo dojo.
After inviting Ben to sit down, Norton said, “Well, Mr. Li, you’ve identified some weaknesses with using hedonic damages in the real-world. These are, of course, common criticisms that scholars have raised, so I’m afraid you haven’t come up with anything groundbreaking. And yet, I’m impressed by your thinking. Would you have any interest in participating in additional research?”
“Uh, I don’t know about answering more questions, Professor…”
Norton laughed and waved him off. “You spent four hours answering questions. We’re well past the point of diminishing returns. The next step is to validate the result. The questions you posed in your email all relate to the practical question of how we can test whether someone really values their life at the amount that theory predicts. As you’ve noted, no one would accept that amount of money in exchange for being…what did you say? ‘Taken out.’ We need a different way of testing. If you don’t mind taking a short drive with me, I can show you what I have in mind.”
Ben shrugged. Maybe this was an unconventional interview for an RA position. “Sure.”
Jerry Norton had tenure at his institution. Non-academics assumed this meant he had complete job security, but they were wrong. Tenure was no shield against misconduct, such as sexual harassment. More importantly, it was no protection against “financial exigency”——the term a university could invoke to fire tenured professors. With fewer and fewer college-age students every year due to demographic trends, it wasn’t hard to see the writing on the wall.
It had taken Norton two years to develop the LifeValue app with the assistance of a computer science colleague and funding from a private investor. He figured the app would be dual purpose: the various experiments using students and others would generate at least a couple of research papers to build a case for getting an endowed professorship, or at a minimum, avoiding being at the front of line for layoffs due to financial exigency. Also, the app could be a lucrative hedge against any financial disaster hitting the university——even if his academic position were eliminated, if the app took off, he could sell it to major insurance companies, lawyers involved in wrongful death litigation, maybe even health care companies.
The key was to be able to take hedonic damages from the realm of academic theory into practical reality. It wasn’t enough to have the app spit out a plausible life value, like $769,254 for this Ben Li kid. To satisfy potential purchasers of the app’s data, he would have to show the life valuation wasn’t just plausible; it was accurate.
This testing wasn’t something he could do through the usual approach of openly recruiting students. The fools at the campus Human Subjects Research Committee would laugh themselves silly at his application, and then probably report him to the police.
No, he had to take a different approach. It meant validation of the app’s accuracy would be much slower, which his private investor was not pleased about. Academic rules——what could you do about them?
Ben was not surprised that Norton drove a Mazda MX-5 Miata convertible. The typical university professor seemed to drive a Honda or Toyota sedan, but Norton was far from typical.
They rode for about fifteen minutes, arriving at a warehouse in the industrial part of town. There was nothing inside except two men, a portable table, and a laptop computer on the table.
Laptop guy looked at Norton, then Ben. “This kid is the one who’s going to——” he started to say.
“Yes, this is Ben Li,” Norton said. “I believe our benefactor will be satisfied.”
“Uh, there’s going to be more testing here?” Ben asked.
The guy with the bad facial skin moved closer. Ben couldn’t help but look behind at the exit door.
“I’m afraid you’re right that no one would accept the amount hedonics says they value their life at, because of course they can’t spend that money,” Norton said. “And if we gave them some time to spend that money, it wouldn’t be a truly accurate assessment.” He turned to Laptop guy. “Please pull up the hedonics results for Mr. Li, just so we have the correct calculation.”
Laptop guy rotated the computer so Ben could see the screen: $769,254.
“That would buy you a lot of beer, and you wouldn’t have to drink cheap varieties.” Norton chuckled. “But the insight we had is we don’t have to offer you money to see if it’s how much you value your life.”
Ben started to have a bad feeling. He clenched his fists, wondering if he could escape the warehouse. Norton was in his late thirties or early forties but looked fit. Bad facial skin guy was almost certainly some kind of muscle. Even Laptop guy didn’t seem like a scrawny nerd.
“Instead of offering you $769,254, which of course you won’t accept,” Norton said, “we’ll see if that’s how much you value your life by asking you to pay us that amount.”
“You want me to pay you three-quarters of a million dollars?” Ben burst out laughing despite his instinctive respect for faculty members. “I’m a student with loans, Professor. How am I going to come up with that much money? And if I had that much, why would I give it to you?”
Bad facial guy reached inside his sports coat and brought out a handgun, which he kept pointed at the ground.
“I’ll leave it to Joey to incentivize you,” Norton said.
Ben looked around, hoping that any moment now, people would come out from behind the building’s support columns with phones or other recording devices to capture the prank of all pranks.
“This is a sick joke, Professor,” he said finally.
“Science sometimes calls for strict measures,” Norton said.
“Especially when there are pushy backers who want results,” added Laptop guy.
Norton looked down at his phone and frowned. “Yes, pushy backers.” He typed something quickly. “You see,” he continued, “if we asked for $1 million, you would probably think it’s not worth doing what you would have to do to acquire that amount. But if it’s the right amount, you will. Whether you get paid, or you have to pay, doesn’t change the underlying assessment of your life’s value under the Coase Theorem.”
Ben almost blurted he would be going to the police, but stopped himself. Why warn Norton and his goons? They might take drastic measures in response. Better to pretend to agree to this horror show, and then call the police as soon as he got back to campus.
“So…I just Venmo you the money when I have it…?”
Joey released the magazine of his gun, inspected it, re-inserted it, and racked the slide with a loud click.
“I’m sure you’re thinking you’ll go to the police once you’re away from here,” Norton said. “Please don’t. There’s more than the three of us here. And I am well-connected. If you try to get help, we’ll have no choice but to accelerate to the end of the seven days.”
Ben shook his head. “This is insane!”
Norton shrugged. “It’s time to see if you really value your life at $769,254.” He chuckled. “At least you should be glad you don’t value your life infinitely.”
Would they really know if he contacted the police? They could have people watching the nearest police station, but what if he went to a farther location?
Maybe Norton was bluffing. Or maybe he had someone watching Ben. If that were the case, he couldn’t even go to the FBI.
He lowered the shade on his dorm room window, then searched for the non-emergency phone number for the police. He rehearsed what he was going to say. It was going to sound crazy, accusing his economics professor of extorting him for more than three-quarters of a million dollars. Even if the police were willing to humor him and protect him for a week, what would happen after that? If Norton really were serious, he could wait to carry out the threat.
This had to be some kind of deranged mind game. Norton was the kind of professor who would engage in this tactic to spur students into working harder. There was no way a tenured professor at a major university would be part of an extortion-through-threat-of-murder plot, much less its architect.
Ben started laughing. How could he have thought he was actually in danger?
His phone dinged to announce an incoming text. It was from an unknown number, so he checked the preview to avoid any malware: 6:23:12:33…6:23:12:32…6:23:12:31…
It was a countdown.
He forced himself to take slow breaths.
This was real. He needed hard evidence to persuade the police to arrest Norton. The simplest course of action was to confront him and record the conversation secretly. Either Norton would admit his nefarious plan, or he would assure Ben that the murder threat was just a bad joke.
He checked Norton’s office hours: tomorrow afternoon.
Ben skipped classes——it would have been impossible to concentrate——and made half-hearted research attempts at earning $750,000 in a week. Google’s suggestions were spectacularly unhelpful: crypto/Bitcoin speculation, highly leveraged options trading, and social media content creation. And then there was this confidence-killer: “Warning: Any promise of making hundreds of thousands of dollars in a week with little or no risk is likely a scam. The options mentioned above require substantial expertise, market timing, or high upfront capital.”
Finally, he went to Norton’s office. The door was open, because Norton proclaimed in the syllabus that “you students are the most important part of my job.” Ha, he never said what way we’re important to him, Ben thought.
He started the voice recording app on his phone and stepped inside.
Norton was dusting his University of Chicago diploma. When he saw Ben, he sat down and held his left hand toward the guest chair on the other side of the uncluttered desk. He picked up a small rectangular object in his right hand and tapped the table with it.
“Mr. Li, have you completed your assignment already?”
Ben shook his head. “You mean the assignment where I have to come up with $769,254 in a week or you’re going to have me whacked?”
Norton chuckled. “‘Whacked.’ What colorful expressions your generation uses. But to answer your question, I think of it as an assignment that allows you to demonstrate how much you value your life.”
“Backed by a threat to kill me if I fail,” Ben said.
“Incentive is a more pleasant way of putting it.”
Ben pumped his fist. “Thank you!” He turned around.
“Before you go, you might want to listen to your recording.”
“Huh?” But Ben already had a sick feeling in his stomach. He stopped in the doorway, brought his phone out, and played back the recording.
There was nothing but static hissing. Norton grinned and raised the object in his right hand. “Inaudible to the human ear, but this device emits sound waves that disrupt audio recordings.”
Ben’s shoulders dropped.
“Have you considered a private loan?” Norton asked. “You would have to work hard to pay it back, but surely your life is worth that, isn’t it?”
Ben kicked the doorframe. “No bank is going to loan me three-quarters of a million dollars, and even if I knew how to find a loan shark, they’d probably charge crushing interest. I’d end up paying way more, like several million dollars if I could ever pay it off.”
Norton set the recording jammer down. “A perfect illustration of the time value of money. If LifeValue has performed the hedonic damages calculation accurately, you should just barely find it worthwhile to live while paying off the hypothetical loan.”
Ben didn’t think; he just charged forward.
Except Norton stood up, slipped to the side, and forced Ben to the ground. Norton dug a knee into his back and pushed his face against the cold linoleum floor.
Norton hissed in Ben’s ear: “I really do advise you to look into a private loan, Mr. Li.”
It had been entirely predictable that Ben Li would try to record something incriminating. The kid seemed reasonably smart, but posed no threat. Norton thought he had been tougher on Li than he needed to be. Li just needed to be worn down to the point of resigning himself to finding three-quarters of a million dollars through whatever means possible.
The pressure from the Investor was making Norton skittish. It was a mistake to have told her too much about Peterson. Norton had really believed the businessman would agree to pay $1.2 million to save his own life, but the man was dithering about taxes, of all things. The Investor didn’t care why there was a delay. She was demanding updates about whether Peterson was going to be validation of the app, or proof of failure.
At least now Norton could tell her there was another test subject.
Five days had gone by, and Ben still had no idea how he was going to get the money to save himself. In movies and novels, the ordinary person placed in extraordinary circumstances always seemed to know where to find forgers to make fake IDs, arms dealers to get guns, and hackers to crack encryption schemes. He had been so primed by his parents to watch out for scams he didn’t know where to start in finding loan sharks because he was skeptical of every possible lead.
At one point, he had a brief surge of optimism when he heard about a famous blogger who made a series of trades, starting with a red paper clip, and ending with a house. When he looked into it, though, it had taken the blogger a year to get to the last trade, and he clearly had a lot of help along the way from celebrities. Ben had neither that much time nor that kind of online presence.
He even fantasized about borrowing Joey’s gun and robbing stores, but the irony would be if he got “police protection” in the form of a life sentence in prison.
The only other thing he could think of was to write an “in case I die” message scheduled to be sent to his parents, campus officials, and the local police. He could point the finger at Norton and his LifeValue app. Ben would still be dead, but at least there was a chance Norton would be held accountable.
Unless…he could tell Norton the message was ready to go, so Norton wouldn’t dare kill him.
But if Norton knew there was such a message, would he have some means of countering it?
Ben abandoned all hope and decided to go to the police station. What difference did it make if Norton was able to have him killed today versus tomorrow?
Just as he left the dorm, someone grabbed his right arm from behind.
Joey with the bad facial skin.
“Hey, I still have a day, don’t I?” asked Ben.
He tried wrenching his arm free, which just resulted in Joey clamping down even harder. “It’s your lucky day. The Professor has a deal for you.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but the last deal kind of sucked.” But he let Joey lead him to a car. At this point, there weren’t any reasons not to go along with whatever Norton had planned.
Joey took him to the same warehouse in the industrial part of town where Norton first sprang his extortion demand.
Norton and Laptop guy were waiting, with a third man kneeling on a sheet of plastic. Peterson.
Joey’s gun wasn’t heavy, but Ben’s arms trembled. He clutched it tighter and sighted Peterson’s head.
“I can’t do it.” He exhaled, even if making this choice had doomed him.
Joey took the gun and switched back to his original magazine.
“I’m very disappointed, Mr. Li.” Norton shook his head. “I even thought you had promise.”
Peterson looked up at Ben. Tears streamed down his face. “Thank you, thank——”
The gunshot was deafening in the warehouse, reverberating repeatedly. Blood spattered on the plastic sheet, and now Ben understood why it was there.
“Wait, wait, I still have a day!” he cried.
“Yes, I suppose you do,” Norton said with a sigh.
Joey bent down to wrap the bloodstained plastic sheet around Peterson.
“Uh, Prof, the investor wants an update,” said Laptop guy.
Norton spun around. “Right now? We don’t have anything to report! Just say I’ll call back.”
Laptop guy shook his head. “They want to see you right away.”
Norton swore under his breath. He pointed at Ben. “Keep him here until Joey has finished taking care of Mr. Peterson, then give him his remaining day to see if he can come up with the money.”
Jerry Norton parked his Miata in the roundabout of the mansion and tried to project confidence as he walked to the massive front doors. The doorbell triggered a melody of chimes.
A butler/bodyguard opened the double doors. He wore a maroon-colored suit, white shirt, and thin red tie. The suit struggled to contain his muscles. He also wore black leather gloves.
“The Investor will see you now,” he said, leading Norton inside to a private office.
Norton swallowed and entered the room, sitting in the empty easy chair for visitors.
His eyes were drawn immediately to the Investor, a small husk of a human being in a yellow velvet bathrobe. She looked about a hundred years old, of indeterminate racial and ethnic origin, with flowing gray-white hair. Even in the dim lighting, her eyes gleamed.
The Investor lifted her snifter of brandy by its wide bottom and inhaled. “I was very disappointed to receive your news, Professor. You previously said this student was the only one to complete enough of the questionnaire to be a viable test subject, and yet, you failed with him.”
Norton gripped the armrests of the chair. “It’s just a setback, a small setback.”
The Investor grunted, and for the first time, Norton understood how his own students felt in class. “A small setback would be a programming bug, or a problem uploading the app to the dark web for our potential users. What we have here is an absolute failure to validate your app. It is useless to my clientele if I cannot assure them of its accuracy.”
“Of course, validation and replication, that’s the gold standard for academic research,” Norton said, leaning forward. “I have more students I can test. Sometimes there are just bad data points.”
The Investor closed her eyes and sipped her brandy. “If only you had not made such a mess. Kidnapping, trying to coerce a subject into committing murder——there is only so much we can clean up before we draw too much attention from the authorities. I’m afraid this is the end of our arrangement.” She shook her head. “To think that a twenty-year-old boy defeated you because he refused to shoot another person to save himself.”
“He still has a day to come through with the money!” cried Norton.
“Does he know about me?”
Norton shook his head quickly. “No, of course not. But I can have Joey take care of him now if you want.”
The Investor smiled. “No, that’s not called for.” She nodded at the butler/bodyguard. “But when we’re done here with the professor, make sure to tie up the loose ends of his subordinates.”
Norton felt paralyzed by a chilling sensation. “Wait, you’ve invested so much into the LifeValue app already,” he said. “How can you abandon it now?”
The old woman’s laugh sounded like barking. “You must be aware of the concept of sunk cost, Professor.”
He tried to get up, but something was pressing down on his shoulders. The butler/bodyguard.
“It appears you were not worth what I invested in your app, Professor.” The Investor swirled her snifter.
The last thing Norton felt was a cold prick in the back of his neck, then a rush of warmth.
Tung Yin (he/him) lives in the Pacific Northwest with his family, including three feline members. He actually teaches hedonic damages in one of his law school courses, though hopefully he is not deranged like Jerry Norton. His recent short fiction has appeared in the Palatine Hill Review, Helix Magazine, and Pennsylvania Journal of Arts and Sciences. His favorite revenge story is John Wick 4.
