Chapter 1
The year 2050
The Running Man was a game show where if you live for 30 days and survive the Hunters, you get a billion New Dollars. Anyone could enter as a participant. They relaxed the rules so that even junkies could enter. My name is Dean Williams. I decided to give it a shot. I went to the studios and went through the grueling selection process and wound up being chosen as a contestant. I met another contestant there called Jake Simmons who was a soft spoken friendly intellectual.
On stage, the Master of Ceremonies asked, "Are you ready?" The words contained a slight chill. Immediately after leaving the studios, Dean Williams made a quick trip to visit a local who was well known. This character lived on a farm and was known as "The Man" and could get you anything that you wanted including any kind of drugs, tattoos, and also, high quality fake I.D..
This person extended an invitation to Dean Williams to stay on his farm, saying, "I don't care how many blacklists you are wanted on. Here, you will always have a place to stay." Dean Williams decided against this, knowing that to accept such an invitation would leave his friend in danger.
chapter 2
Thailand. The land of Smiles. Getting off the plane, I felt as if I were stepping into a convection oven. Some locals immediately were giving me strange looks. They knew that I was a Running Man.
Dean Williams felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Jake Simmons. He recognized him from back at the Running Man studios. Jake Simmons got the same idea and coincidentally was on the same flight. They went around Bangkok, passing places like Anu SawaRichai or else the Victory monument.
Jake Simmons said that he was going to visit Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok to get an operation to disguise himself including surgically smoothing down his fingertips and getting a colagen injection to make his lips look fatter. He also planned to get padded cheeks to disguise himself.
Every day, twice a day, they had to make a digital video recording on a digital video recorder that the network issued to them and enter them into a computer at a local internet shop. The show gave their word that the computer's IP address would not be tracked...
The recordings would typically be done indoors as to obscure any atmospherics that might give them away. When they recorded in the forests, fans of the show emailed in and identified the trees in the background.
Jake was nodding out all the time as he was scoring heroin in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai.
What the show did not disclose was that during the contestants sleep at plush luxurious quarters in the skyscraper where the games were produced, technicians had snuck into their rooms and shot a dart into the sleeping bodies with a powerful, very fast acting barbiturate. They then surgically implanted a GPS microchip. This is a lesson about greed. Anything that sounds too good to be true, probably is.
The next day at a restaurant, we saw on TV that the Hunters were at the Bangkok Airport. The Hunters said that they were going to Chiang Mai. That is where we were!
Sukhumvit was the richest part of Bangkok. Jake Simmons asked for and got, cocaine.
Dean watched, shocked and disgusted as Jake snorted, smoked, and shot up cocaine always with that sleazy, animal hinging and unhinging of the jaw. The next day, after a visit to the hospital, Jake found out that he was dying of terminal cancer.
Dean Williams said that he was going onto Cambodia. Jake said that he was going to stay in Bangkok and wait for the Hunters.
Jake was ready when the Hunters arrived. They kicked down the door along with members of the local Police force. Jake had a syringe in his hand, one of the big syringes they use to inject horses with. As the Police moved near, Jake depressed the syringe. The Hunters and the Police then realized that it would be redundant to fire their guns now as Jake twittered and gasped with such a tremendous force, it seemed the whole hotel was shaking. The Police searched the hotel Dean Williams was nowhere to be seen.
Dean Williams was enjoying life in Cambodia. He tried the local happy pizza and then asked to spend the night with 3 girls at the same time. Williams had heard of Buri Ram and how the legend goes that the Priest there teleported to Cambodia through a secret vortexual portal.
This was the last day, and if he lived through today, he would win the 1 billion New Dollars. Just then, he heard the soft crunching of leaves and then a group of men with guns and reporters too had emerged from a clearing and was nearly on top of him. To his side was a shallow ravine.
The Hunters emerged, like a recognized nightmare figure emerging from a dream. The Chief Hunter said, "So this is where it ends," and, "We never lose."
Dean decided to run. He slipped and fell into the ravine. Gunshots, hundreds of them echoed resoundingly through the jungle. Then, as the guns fell silent, the click of dozens of flashbulbs could be heard.
Dean Williams was nowhere to be seen.
He woke up in a jungle. He must have dreamed this. Although the jungle he was in now no longer looked quite like the jungle he was in before. He tried to look for identifying marks. The first person he saw was a Thai Theravadan Buddhist Priest.
Dean walked down the highway. He saw the familiar sloping roof of a Thai Wat in the distance. He was in Thailand. An hour later, he heard the slight rumbling of a convoy of trucks coming in the distance. It was the Hunters. He felt a hand grasp his arm. It was a Hunter who held out a piece of paper to Dean. It was a cheque with a high quality embossed Network icon on the upper corner of the cheque. It was made to "Dean Williams" in the amount of 1 billion New Dollars. Dean Williams had teleported from Cambodia through Thailand through a secret interdimensional portal.
The End
No cocaine was used or possessed during the making of this film. I used special effects techniques. For the yellow colour of the liquid in the needle, I mixed some yellow acrylic paint with water for medical realism, to give it that realistic off colour tinge that water, nearly saturated with cocaine, would look. For the cocaine, I used flour.
Soundtrack
Jennifer Warnes - Right Time Of The Night
Paul McCartney - My Love
Red Carabao - Welcome To Thailand
Ros Sereysothea - Various songs
Anita Ward - Ring My Bell
