Tiberius Cornelius Montgomery was just like every other blonde-haired, slenderly muscular, white-linen-wearing, blue-eyed, 6’5”, trustfundian Greenwich-raised Princeton student. With a 1550 SAT, 4.0 GPA, and 20 years of alternating between summering in Amagansett, Bordeaux, or slumming it on his father’s yacht, he couldn’t have been more ordinary. There was only one little asterisk next to his name: no investment banking, consulting, private equity, or venture capital internship lined up for his junior summer.

Of course, there were the fun, artsy trustafarians like Nasha Wickley, the dull semi-corporate wannabes like Dale Prince, and the rest who didn’t care about landing six-figure jobs immediately after reunions, but Tiberius was not one of them: he was better. After all, he was a Montgomery, and Montgomerys defined finance—Montgomerys were finance. Being a first-year investment banking analyst in the sports and entertainment group at Soldman Gachs had been Tiberius’ destiny ever since his mother Tallulah conceived him. So what happened to Tiberius?

On the 29th of November, an email notification popped open on Tiberius’ screen. “Congratulations on your sixth interview with us,” the email read. “For the next round, please click the link below and complete the following game. Each decision you make will be observed and annotated and will directly determine whether or not you are selected to be interviewed in the penultimate round of interviews. Failure to meet expectations will cause the Job Hunter to be one step closer to finding you. Best of luck!”

Before he could play, however, Tiberius browsed his inbox, perfectly organized thanks to his mother’s friend’s assistant. After reaching the “Networking Prospects and Invitations” label, Tiberius skimmed over his three rejection emails. “Thank you very much for your interest in working for us. While we cannot offer you a spot in this year’s class of analysts, we hope you reapply next year. We wish you well with your other applications.” But more often than not, candidates, including Tiberius, would not even receive an email at all. Instead, Tiberius would be kept waiting in the dark while the Job Hunter phantomed closer.

Looking at his emails, Tiberius realized that winning the game, whatever that meant in the eyes of the investment bank associate delegated to monitoring prospective analysts, was his only job option left. Suddenly, a light flashed through the window and Tiberius rushed towards the source. One door down, outside Tristan Ignacius’ house, a pencil-thin silhouette of a malignant being in a Brooks Brothers black coat, with a razor-sharp scythe in hand stepped out of his town car and walked to Tristan Ignacius’s door and rang his doorbell.

Internally beaming at his friend’s demise, Tiberius returned to his computer, but he was perplexed. Of all people to be sought by the Job Hunter, Tristan Ignacius? Could Tristan really have no internship prospects? Tristan was practically the same as Tiberius, only the former was slightly shorter, less handsome, and only spent his summers in Sagaponack. 

A thunderous yelp erupted through the walls of the Ignacius household into the room in which Tiberius sat, and the sound of Tristan’s blood and intestines squirting out and splashing against the glass windows nearly deafened Tiberius. Seconds later, a door slammed shut, echoing loudly. The Job Hunter was unusually quick with his kill—his fourth cup of coffee of the day had just kicked in, and he felt the need to go back to his three-screen monitors to update the Excel sheet, which tracked the status of all prospective analysts, EOH rather than EOD.

But Tiberius clicked his computer to start the game. According to the instructions, he had ten minutes in which he needed to decide whether to click to pump air into a balloon, scoring him points, or abstain, definitively keeping the balloon inflated. At any given moment, the balloon could pop, and the game would end. The only caveat was that he was not told how many points he needed. Tiberius decided to be patient, clicking only once every ten chances, for the first five minutes, and his mind started to wander, eventually fixating on Tristan’s unforeseen predicament. 

Realizing that he was not far off from being in his friend’s shoes, Tiberius wished he could pause the game and start again at a later date. But that was not an option: Tiberius couldn’t stop playing the game.  The associate at Soldman Gachs wouldn’t care about what had happened. There was no way that Tiberius would get any PTO approved, especially not before he even got the job. With his heart racing and face dripping profusely with sweat, Tiberius persevered, more than he ever did in his difficult, privileged life, and continued playing the game, keeping the same pace as before, until time ran out and the doorbell rang.

With immense pride in himself, Tiberius skipped happily down the steps and opened the door.