The boarding school that Preston Whitmore Van der Camp III attended for his secondary education shall remain nameless, not for legal reasons, Preston had long since transcended such petty concerns, but because the school still exists, still charges $78,000 per year in tuition, and still sends a Christmas card to the Van der Camp family every year despite everything that happened.
The school was located in Massachusetts, on a campus that looked like a Harry Potter set if Harry Potter had been funded by Saudi oil money and Swiss banking secrecy. The buildings were made of stone that had been quarried by peasants in the 1800s and then re-quarried by peasants in the 2010s when the original stone proved insufficiently prestigious. The library contained first editions that students were not allowed to touch but were required to insure. The dining hall served food that had been flown in daily from various "food-positive" locations around the world.
Preston was sixteen, worth approximately $200 million (on paper, in reality, in potential, in the quantum superposition of wealth that defined his existence), and he had a problem.
The problem was the SAT.
Not the test itself. Preston had taken practice tests and scored in the 99th percentile without studying, because he had been raised by tutors and had never known a moment of intellectual struggle in his life. The problem was the inconvenience of the SAT. It required showing up. It required sitting for four hours. It required filling in bubbles with a No. 2 pencil, which was beneath him in a very literal sense. He had not held a pencil since age seven, when he discovered that dictation was more efficient and more dignified.
Preston didn't want to take the SAT. He wanted to have taken the SAT. He wanted the score without the process. He wanted the credential without the credentialing. He wanted, in short, to apply his life's philosophy to this particular hurdle: why do something yourself when you can acquire the results?
His first thought was to hire someone to take the test for him. This was common enough, there was an entire underground economy of test-taking surrogates, usually college students or struggling actors who could mimic a teenager's handwriting and general aura of desperation. But Preston rejected this approach as too risky. What if the surrogate got caught? What if they got a lower score than Preston would have gotten himself? What if they demanded more money later, creating a blackmail situation?
No, surrogates were out. Preston needed a more elegant solution. He needed to own the entire process.
He called Mortimer, who was now eighty-two and had begun using a wheelchair not because he needed one but because it allowed him to carry more files.
"Mortimer," Preston said, "I need to acquire the SAT."
"The College Board is a non-profit, Young Master. Difficult to acquire."
"I don't want to buy the College Board. I want to buy the part that touches me. The proctoring. The administration. The scoring. I want to own the pipeline that carries my test from my desk to their database."
Mortimer was silent for a long moment. "That... might be possible. The College Board contracts out proctoring services. The current contractor is Standardized Solutions Inc., a Delaware corporation with... let me check... yes, with significant cash flow problems and a board of directors that is currently engaged in a vicious internal battle over the company's direction."
"How much?"
"To acquire a controlling interest? Approximately $4 million. To acquire outright? $12 million."
Preston laughed. "That's pocket money. Do it."
"Young Master, I must caution you, this is fraud. If discovered..."
"If discovered," Preston interrupted, "we will have the best lawyers in the world. And we will have done nothing that isn't done every day by corporations acquiring other corporations. We will simply be applying market principles to education. It's innovative. It's disruptive. It's... startup culture."
Mortimer sighed. He had been sighing for sixty years, but this one was particularly heavy. "I will begin the acquisition. It will need to be structured carefully. Shell companies. Offshore holdings. We can't have your name appearing anywhere."
"Obviously. Use the usual network. And Mortimer?"
"Yes?"
"I want it done by next month. I have a yacht party in the Caymans, and I don't want to be thinking about bubble sheets while I'm there."
The acquisition took three weeks. Standardized Solutions Inc. became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Educational Excellence Holdings, which was owned by Future Leaders LLC, which was managed by a trust in the Cayman Islands, which was beneficiary to a foundation in Liechtenstein, which was funded by a donation from the Van der Camp Family Philanthropic Initiative, which was tax-deductible and therefore, in a sense, partially funded by the US government.
Preston never signed a document. He never made a phone call that wasn't routed through three encrypted servers. He never touched the money that flowed through seventeen accounts before reaching its destination. He was, legally speaking, completely uninvolved.
On test day, Preston woke up in his suite, the school had given him a private suite after his freshman year, citing "allergies" that were actually just "preference", and looked at the SAT registration materials on his desk. He laughed. He wasn't going to the testing center. He was going to the airport.
His proctor was a man named Dennis. Dennis was a retired tennis instructor who had taken the job with Standardized Solutions because it paid $150 per test and he liked being around young people. Dennis had been specifically assigned to Preston's test site through a "random" selection process that had been carefully non-randomized by someone in the company's new management (someone who had received a very generous bonus for their cooperation).
Dennis arrived at the testing center and found a single student waiting: a young man named Preston Whitmore Van der Camp III, who looked exactly like Preston Whitmore Van der Camp III but was actually a college sophomore named Chad who had been hired to sit in Preston's place, sign in as Preston, and take the test. Chad was an actor, aspiring, struggling, desperate, who had been told that this was "method acting research" for a role in a movie about wealthy teenagers. He was being paid $5,000, which was more than he had made in the previous six months combined.
"ID, please," Dennis said.
Chad produced a fake ID that cost $200 to make and was indistinguishable from the real thing because it had been made by the same company that made the real thing, just on a different shift.
"Looks good," Dennis said, not really looking. "You can start whenever you're ready. Take your time. No rush."
Chad took the test. He was actually quite smart, he wouldn't have gotten the job otherwise, and he scored a 1580, which was excellent but not suspiciously perfect. Preston, watching from his yacht in the Caymans via a live feed that Dennis had been paid to set up (another $10,000), nodded approvingly. A 1580 was good. A 1600 would have raised eyebrows. This was credible. This was deniable. This was perfect.
The scores were released three weeks later. Preston Whitmore Van der Camp III: 1580. College Board's authentication system: verified. High school guidance counselor: impressed. Parents: proud.
Preston used the scores to apply to seven Ivy League schools. He was accepted at all seven, which was actually embarrassing because it meant he had to reject some of them, and Preston hated rejecting things. He preferred to acquire them and then dissolve them.
The scandal, when it came, didn't come from the SAT. It came from Chad, who got drunk at a bar in Los Angeles and told his girlfriend about the "easiest $5,000 I ever made pretending to be some rich kid." The girlfriend told her therapist. The therapist was obligated to report... something... and eventually the story reached a journalist at a small education blog that was funded by a grant from a foundation that was actually a front for a rival family's attempt to damage the Van der Camps.
The blog post went live on a Tuesday: "Billionaire's Son Allegedly Used Impersonator for SATs."
By Tuesday afternoon, Mortimer had filed seventeen lawsuits: defamation, libel, intentional infliction of emotional distress, tortious interference with educational opportunities, and something called "malicious educational disparagement" that Mortimer had just made up but which sounded very serious.
By Wednesday, the blog's hosting provider had received a cease-and-desist letter citing "potential liability for facilitating educational fraud communications" and had taken the site down "for maintenance."
By Thursday, Chad had received a visit from a man in a very expensive suit who suggested that perhaps Chad had been confused, perhaps Chad had taken the test himself and was now experiencing false memories due to stress, and perhaps Chad would like to sign this affidavit stating that he had never met Preston Van der Camp and had never taken any test on his behalf. The man mentioned that Chad's student loans totaled $89,000, and that there were ways to make those loans disappear, or ways to make them compound daily. Chad signed.
By Friday, the story was gone. The blog was gone. Chad was enrolled in a "wellness retreat" in Arizona that specialized in "memory reconsolidation." The journalist had been hired by a PR firm owned by Van der Camp Holdings, at a salary that was triple her previous income, to work on "reputation management" for various clients who didn't exist.
Preston's admission to Yale (his chosen school, for the brand recognition) was never questioned. The College Board conducted an "internal review" that found "no evidence of impropriety." Standardized Solutions Inc. continued to proctor tests, now with even more rigorous security protocols that somehow made it easier, not harder, to manipulate results for clients who could afford the premium service tier.
Preston learned his third lesson: accountability is a choice, and he chose "no." He chose "never." He chose "not in this lifetime, not in any lifetime, not in any parallel universe where money exists."
The tolerance was, again, absolute. When the headmaster of his boarding school heard rumors about the SAT incident, he called Preston into his office. Preston arrived with Mortimer, two paralegals, and a video crew documenting "the harassment of a student by administrative overreach."
"Preston," the headmaster began, "there have been... allegations."
"Unfounded," Mortimer said.
"Concerning your SAT scores."
"Credible," Mortimer said.
"Suggesting that you may not have actually taken the test."
"Actionable," Mortimer said. "If repeated, defamatory. If investigated, harassing. If acted upon, grounds for a lawsuit that would bankrupt this institution and personally ruin you, your family, and anyone you have ever loved."
The headmaster looked at Preston, who was checking his phone. Preston looked up, smiled, and said, "Headmaster, I think we both know that I earned those scores. I earned them the same way I earn everything: by being better than everyone else at understanding how systems work. The SAT is a system. I optimized it. That's not cheating. That's innovation."
"You're saying... you're saying that buying the proctoring company..."
"Is exactly what any rational actor would do given the resources and the incentive. It's what your economics department teaches. It's what the free market demands. I'm not a criminal, Headmaster. I'm a perfect student. I learned your lessons too well."
The headmaster retired that year. His replacement was a woman who had previously worked as a consultant for Van der Camp Holdings. She sent Preston a fruit basket when he graduated.
Preston went to Yale, where he majored in "Ethics, Politics, and Economics" with a minor in "Getting Away With It." He wrote his admissions essay about "The Moral Obligation to Maximize Efficiency," arguing that traditional ethics were outdated in a world where technology and wealth allowed superior individuals to transcend petty rules designed for lesser beings.
The essay was published in the Yale Daily News. It was praised as "thought-provoking" and "bold." A professor wrote that Preston represented "the future of American leadership."
He was nineteen years old, and he had never faced a consequence. He was ready for his next act. The world, unfortunately, was ready for him.