Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom

Chapter 1

There was a time and place when one could reasonable expect not to be executed on video for skipping out on their student loan debt. That time had passed. It had passed at least a decade ago. Jeremy, taped securely to a chair, knew it. He also knew that he would soon be dead.

"You know, Jeremy, they call us cockroaches. Somehow, everywhere on this planet, everybody now uses the same slur for Americans: cockroaches."

The Executioner's comment distracted Jeremy from the focus he was attempting to maintain on his breathing. He tried to concentrate on not panicking. Long deep breath in, long breath out....and repeat.

"But, I can't say I consider it an insult. I mean...I think it's an accurate description. And I'll tell you why," said The Executioner. "A long time ago in Indonesia I saw a fight start when a drunk Australian called a drunk American guy a cockroach. Nothing remarkable about a drunk Australian. Nothing remarkable about a drunk Australian winning a fight against another drunk idiot tourist in Indonesia, but I had never seen that reaction to being called a cockroach. So I decided then and there to put my academic skills to use and do a little investigating. By the way, I also have a master's degree in Terrorism and Homeland Security Studies – just like you. Did you know that?"

Jeremy did not respond.

"So, anyways," continued The Executioner, "I went online and started to search for the origin of cockroach as an anti-American insult. I went to Wikipedia because I copy and pasted a lot from there when I was an undergraduate....and also when I was a grad student. Of course, there was an article on the subject. Do you know what the origin was?"

Jeremy didn't reply to his executioner. He wasn't listening. He was thinking about how online trolls would send the video of his execution to his parents. There were a hundred ways to get someone to accidentally view an unwanted video on their screen. The American ban on anti-advertising software and plug-ins had greatly increased the number of people being subjected to random pop-up images and videos of increasing depravity. Most people had become desensitized to the daily dose of porn and gore, but it was obviously a different matter when a family member showed up in a video. The favorite form of online harassment by far was still, of course, 'Your mom did porn.' Facial recognition software that could search numerous porn video archives going back to the 1990s in under a minute had brought new life to the earlier trend of finding familiar faces in still images.

Jeremy pushed these thoughts aside. He then started to move away from a creeping sense of panic and towards a numb feeling of acceptance. He was going to die, his family would watch. Eventually they would watch whether they wanted to or not. There was nothing he could do.

Jeremy's situation was hopeless. His total student loan debt had grown with interest and fines to over $400,000. Of course, the lender was willing to settle for less than that, but not from Jeremy directly. The Executioner's employer, a small specialist overseas debt collection agency, had, when capture was imminent, secretly purchased Jeremy's debt from the original lender for a small percentage of the total amount due. And the overseas debt collection specialists all charged an extra $200,000 as a collection fee.

So now it was a simple matter: if Jeremy's family wanted to ever see him alive again, they would need to come up with about $600,000. Of course, the practice of kidnapping and demanding ransom payments was still illegal in the United States. Nevertheless, if a debt collector could avoid being caught by a foreign government, then they were free to continue with their business. The US government could barely control things that happen at home, let alone overseas. As a result, no debt collector had ever been charged or punished in America. Plus, nobody knew who they were, exactly.