Sheila watches her husband, Ben Richards, study a TV (called a “Free-Vee”) program called Treadmill to Bucks, in which people with severe health conditions try to earn money. For each additional minute spent on a treadmill, they are paid. Since their daughter, Cathy, grew sick, Ben has been watching the big money giveaway shows for weeks. Every apartment features a Free-Vee, but people are allowed to power them off.

Ben makes Sheila promise that she’ll take the money that he’ll win as a TV show contestant. After Ben leaves, a neighbor named Mrs. Jenner knocks and offers Sheila black market penicillin. Sheila screams for her to get away, and Mrs. Jenner leaves just as the contestant on the treadmill has a heart attack. In her apartment, Mrs. Jenner writes Sheila’s name in a notebook. Black market medicine is big business for unscrupulous people like her.

Ben walks toward the uptown neighborhood through decaying streets, which are now mostly run by biker gangs. He has already used his weekly stipend of unemployment money, so he can’t buy medicine for Cathy. He eventually reaches the Games Building and joins a long line of desperate men leading to the qualifying examinations.