This time, we follow Jake Corelli (Abe Vigoda), a wealthy, ruthless and terminally ill mob boss. Faced with his imminent death, Corelli is not interested in traditional legacies or spiritual peace. Instead, he pays a massive sum to a high-end facility that offers a specialized form of cryogenic suspension.

The facility promises more than just a frozen body; they provide a dream program, which is a customized, computer-driven virtual reality that the patient’s brain will experience in a continuous loop while in stasis.

The facility’s director gives Corelli a choice: the peaceful path is a serene, idyllic dream world where he can live in comfort and tranquility forever; the Corelli path is a dream filled with power, women, expensive food and the thrill of the underworld.

Corelli passes away and is placed into the suspension tank. Initially, the dream begins exactly as he requested. He is in a luxury suite, surrounded by his favorite things. However, a glitch occurs or perhaps a manifestation of his own guilt-ridden subconscious. The dream begins to degrade as the NPCs in his dream start to transform into the victims he murdered or stepped on to get to the top. 

The most terrifying aspect of the episode is the technicality of the contract. Because Corelli is technically dead and his brain is in a closed-loop system, the facility cannot wake him or change the program once it has started. The episode ends with Corelli trapped in a perpetual nightmare. Because the computer is designed to keep its brain active for centuries, it is doomed to experience the same horrific, agonizing visions of its victims’ revenge over and over again, with no possibility of escape or true death.

This episode was directed by Gerald Cotts, who was the cinematographer for Dynamite Chicken and Putney Swope; he directed episodes of this show, Saturday Night Live and Monsters. It was written by James Houghton, who wrote thousands of episodes of The Young and the Restless and appeared in movies like Purple People Eater and Superstition.