The manager is the unnamed main antagonist of "Dead Run", the second segment of the 19th episode of the first season of The Twilight Zone's 1985-1989 iteration, the episode airing in 1986. Said episode was based off a short story of the same name, written by Greg Bear in 1985. He is a human serving as the manager of the interdimensional "company" that ferries the damned to Hell, and a religious extremist who damned whoever he wanted to Hell, including the undeserving, if they did not live up to his personal standards.
In the episode, the manager was portrayed by John de Lancie.
Biography[]
In order to prevent the immortal souls of the damned from overrunning Earth, God formed a "company" comprised of mortals and humanoid demons who would ferry and imprison the souls of the damned in Hell, an extradimensional wasteland where the souls were held prisoner. The demons, referred to as employees, would serve as guards, while living humans were hired into the company to provide transportation between Earth and Hell by using secret interdimensional passageways, referred to as the "Low Road." Additionally, some of the humans who served as transporters were eventually promoted to management, in charge of both the employees and making the final decisions of who went to Hell, as God had other matters to attend to and did not supervise them.
By the 20th centuries, transportation to Hell in the United States was handled by long haul truckers. This man was presumably one of the truckers, and was a very religious man, before becoming a manager, working his way up to a senior position, although he disliked the secular views of his superior, believing that there was no room for compromising. As he entered the upper management position, he was placed in charge of deciding who went to Hell, like managers before him. With his new power, he began damning anyone who didn't measure up to his own standards of righteousness, many of which were otherwise undeserving, including atheists, humanists, pagans, homosexuals, prostitutes, draft-dodgers, people who took drugs, and people who supported political or ideological stances he disagreed with. The manager also saw one of the other truckers, named Gary Frick, starting to cause some trouble when he started to protest methods of choosing who went to Hell. In response, he kicked Gary upstairs to a management position, keeping him away from Hell and possibly freeing the damned, until Gary died in a car crash, and was promptly damned to Hell himself, likely by the manager. Despite being damned, Gary continued to cause unrest among the damned, rallying the undeserving in the outer circles of Hell.
A year later, one of the company's truckers, named Pete, hired on a friend of his named Johnny Davis. Johnny, on his first day on the job, drove a shipment of sinners right into a riot in Hell, where he met Gary Frick, who told him about the reason for the unrest. An employee saw Johnny talk to Gary, and thus had Johnny sent to meet the manager. Back on Earth, Johnny and the manager met in an observatory, where the manager first complimented Johnny, noting that he got the reports of Johnny's first day, seeing that he did good work and even tried to help an employee who was being assaulted by many rioting sinners. Johnny then asked about Gary directly, and while the manager claimed to be shocked about Gary being damned, also said that he expected it. Johnny proceeded to tell the manager about how several of the damned souls he met, including Gary, didn't seem to deserve their punishment, which upset the manager, who thought that Johnny was buying into "secular intellectual propaganda," telling Johnny how he believed that keeping the land clean needed strict guidelines. Quoting the book of Psalms, the manager told Johnny about who he thought sinners were, aside from obvious suspects like murderers. Johnny recognized that said "sinners" were just people the manager didn't like, but the manager countered that the standards he used were not his own, but centuries-old standards of God-fearing people, claiming that the "moral realignment" will pass soon. The manager then had to clarify to Johnny that he ran Hell, not "The Boss," musing that humanity had effectively controlled Hell for centuries. Afterwards, the manager said to Johnny that it was important that good men like him stayed on the job, warning him not to leave the job, lest he meet Gary's fate. He then asked if Gary said anything else, but Johnny denied being told anything else, and seemingly agreed with the manager, telling him that he believed he had a responsibility to stay on the job.
However, unbeknownst to the manager, Gary had told Johnny about the location of the "High Road," which led to Heaven. After leaving the manager, on his next run, Johnny stopped his truck on the intersection of the Low Road and High Road, finding which of the souls he was transporting were undeserving, and allowing them to cross to the High Road. The manager remained oblivious to Johnny's actions while he and Gary prepared to start enough trouble, which would get God's attention so that proper management would be restored.
