The Twilight Zone FAQ by Dave Thompson

Author:Dave Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: television, pop culture
Publisher: Applause
Published: 2016-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

“The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross” (First broadcast: January 17, 1964)

This was a short story by Henry Slesar, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in May 1961 and adapted for The Twilight Zone by Jerry McNeely—delivering his first full script, having previously been credited for the idea behind “A Kind of a Stopwatch.”

It’s an unusual one, too—Salvadore Ross breaks his hand, and discovers that he has developed the remarkable ability to buy and sell time to whomsoever wishes to acquire some. An aging millionaire mourns the passage of time, so Salvadore sells him forty years of his own life, for a cool million bucks and a luxury penthouse. Then, rather than fret about his own decline, he sets about recouping the years by buying them back from various youths—to whom the chance of adding a year or two to their age seems no big deal at all. It brings them closer to the legal smoking and drinking age, if nothing else.

One thing Salvadore doesn’t have, however, is compassion—a serious deficiency in the eyes of his would-be sweetheart, Leah. So he sets about purchasing that for $100,000 from his potential father-in-law.

It’s an idea that most people watching the show must have realized was not one of Salvadore’s best. And so it turns out. Armed with his new sense of compassion, he returns to her father to ask for Leah’s hand in marriage . . . and is shot dead by the bitter, grumpy old man.

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