Odds Against Tomorrow

by Nathaniel Rich

  Once everyone was seated, Sandy Sherman, standing at the end of the massive oval table, asked a question that had haunted him for years: “If the Empire State Building fell, how much would it cost Fitzsimmons? Could we avoid paying as much as our friends in Seattle?”

  Fitzsimmons’s friends in Seattle had paid dearly. The loss of life, though regrettable, they could overcome. It was the loss of capital that brought the chief executives to their knees. Even before the ground stopped trembling, the families of the earthquake victims had enacted that uniquely American mourning ritual: they filed class action lawsuits. The lawsuits alleged that the corporations that held offices in downtown Seattle had needlessly endangered their employees’ lives. The companies, in other words, were asked to pay for their dead.

  The business leaders of Seattle were outraged. How could they have foreseen the horrors that had engulfed their city? How could they have known that the Emerald City Tower would compress like an accordion or that the black windows that sheathed the seventy-six-story Columbia Center would shatter like a mirror? Sure, they understood the general threat. A significant earthquake struck northwestern Washington every twenty years, and a megathrust earthquake—greater than 9.0 on the Richter scale—every three or four centuries. The Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, located just fifty miles off the coast, was the site of the largest earthquake ever to have struck North America, the Cascadia megathrust earthquake of January 26, 1700. But what were the odds that Seattle would be hit by another Big One anytime soon? In the first decade of the millennium Seattle had relaxed restrictions on building heights in order to encourage downtown growth. If the city’s Department of Planning and Development had approved plans to build skyscrapers, how could the CEOs be expected to know better? They were in the businesses of Internet commerce and banking, after all. They knew nothing about seismology. They were masters of industry, not masters of the universe.

  The juries saw images of the bonfires that engulfed the Seattle Art Museum and the white geyser of glass that shot into the clouds when the Central Library imploded. A dozen times they were forced to watch the famous video of the Space Needle falling, its tip piercing the dome of the planetarium, popping it like a blister. They learned that seismologists had given Seattle an eighty percent chance of being hit by a megathrust earthquake before 2060; that the high-rises were known to be vulnerable; that aftershocks, some of them large earthquakes in themselves, would continue for years, perhaps even a decade. They listened to 911 tapes, recorded statements by people who had watched their husbands and wives plunge into Elliott Bay, and heartbreaking testimonies from the children of the deceased. Yes, someone needed to pay for this.

  And so the business leaders of Seattle, having already suffered immeasurable financial losses, were ordered to pay settlements to their employees’ families. Blood would be converted into treasure.

  The exchange rate was brutal. That’s because the insurance industry, after the terrorist attacks at the turn of the century, had discontinued major catastrophe coverage. The corporations’ insurance plans were worthless. This was a catastrophe in itself. “My God, what did we do to deserve this?” said one business leader to The Seattle Times shortly before his firm sent him to a weeklong sensitivity retreat on Fidalgo Island.

  Sandy Sherman therefore found himself in a difficult position. Fitzsimmons’s insurance plans, because of the prohibition on catastrophe coverage, would not protect them. But fleeing New York City, or even the building, was inconceivable. The firm would be perceived as craven, weak, fearful. Or worse: un-American. Shares would cannonball. No, they had to stay put.

  “Fitzsimmons is on its own,” bellowed Sherman. “So what now, boys?” he added, despite the fact that in the room there were seated two female executives and five female secretaries, all of whom were now busily investigating the carpet.

  Sherman’s underlings mimicked expressions of perplexity. They knew better than to speak up, so it is impossible to imagine how long the room might have remained silent were it not for the interjection of a junior account associate from the Department of Equity, Assets, and Derivatives who was in attendance only because he had been asked to serve as proxy for his vacationing boss.

  “I don’t mean to sound morbid,” said this junior associate, but his voice caught. He was distracted by something outside the window. The fog had cleared, and a pleasure yacht could be seen gliding just off the coast. The lights in the cabin were out, and nobody was on deck. It seemed, in fact, that nobody was on the boat—that it had been cut loose from its mooring and was drifting toward the ocean. Was it possible that there was nobody on the boat?

  Thick necks chafed against starched collars as the pink faces turned to regard the young man.

  “Excuse me,” said the junior associate, his fingers shaking under the table. “I just mean to say that, if our building collapsed, then…” He trailed off, his cheeks flaring with panic.

  “Speak up,” Sherman yelled.

  “Sorry. I was saying, if the building collapsed—”

  “Yes?”

  “—if the Empire State Building was destroyed, wouldn’t we all be dead?”

  Nobody stirred. The junior associate was extraordinarily conscious of the fact that he was being observed, for the first time in his career, by the distinguished executive board of Fitzsimmons Sherman. He pictured in his mind an amoeba squirming under a glass slide.

  “I mean,” he said wildly, “there wouldn’t be anyone left to pay out damages to the victims’ families. So perhaps the whole question is moot.”

  Sherman looked down at his papers as if he had suddenly noticed a typo. The older men chuckled silently. The young associate, having never ventured higher than the seventy-fifth floor, was evidently unaware that no executives actually worked in the Empire State. They maintained offices there, of course—with chocolate leather couches unbroken by sitting and dim mahogany lamps that emitted insufficient light for reading and tufted, untrammeled carpets, soft as sea moss—but only the department managers and their staffs reported to the building.

  A senior executive remarked upon the escalating price of insurance premiums and the men took that as a cue to resume their breakfast. They made loud smacking noises as they chewed, and gulped their coffee with great thirst. Sherman required coffee to be served at room temperature so that it could be imbibed quickly, like water.

  The only thing resolved that day was that Mitchell Zukor, the outspoken junior associate from the Department of Equities, Assets, and Derivatives, would be given a new assignment. He would estimate the company’s financial losses in the case of a catastrophe. It seemed a logical first step. The kid was said to be a mathematical wizard—a quant, in the old terminology. This would be a good test for him, a job that demanded statistical expertise and attention to detail. It would also teach him a lesson.

  2.

  “What will it cost me?” shouted Mitchell.

  He was alone in his office on the seventy-fifth floor, 940 feet above the sidewalk. It was not a large office: four feet wide by six feet long. Mitchell had read that solitary cells in U.S. federal prisons had to measure at least six by nine. It was impossible to think coherently in a room so small and plain, and so insanely bright—for the fluorescent ceiling lights never turned off. Sandy Sherman had seen to that.

  Mitchell had spent every night since the Sagaponack meeting—thirty-four long, debilitating nights—in this fluorescent cell. He was taking the project to heart. After two months in the Basement (as the seventy-fifth floor was known at Fitzsimmons), this was a chance to show Sherman that he was better than the Department of Equity, Assets, and Derivatives. A little luck, and he might even be promoted to the Penthouse (the seventy-sixth floor), to Risk Analysis. Risk was all that interested him; it was all he wanted to do. Really it was all he could do. Event trees, optimism bias, binomial distribution, base rate fallacy—these were his long-lost friends; he missed them like old stuffed animals. But there were no entry-level positions in Risk. You
had to make it elsewhere first. And finally he had his opportunity. Risk, he hoped, would be his reward.

  Sherman’s secretaries sent Mitchell records that listed his colleagues’ age, gender, salary, and aggregate profit earned for Fitzsimmons. The names had been replaced by fourteen-digit identification codes, but they were not difficult to crack. After ranking them by salary, Mitchell found himself. He was second from the bottom. Of course he was. It was his own fault. He’d had inquiries from other firms—including the colossus itself, Brumley Sansome—but Fitzsimmons had pursued Mitchell most aggressively, and he hadn’t wanted to leave anything to chance. During spring break of his senior year Fitzsimmons flew him business class from Kansas City to New York, fed him venison before the interview and oysters afterward, and in a paroxysm of gratitude Mitchell had accepted the recruiter’s first offer. Others, evidently, had bargained.

  Mitchell’s assignment, it soon became clear, was simple: he was to calculate the price of each Fitzsimmons employee’s life, in dollars. As Sherman began to grow restless for results, Mitchell’s calculations became increasingly gnarled and complex. He created indices of medical records, expense reports, and personal days used; graphs showing expected future earnings, incentive pricing, value added per quarter. The numbers kept coming at him, growing like vines out of his computer, wrapping around his ankles, binding him to his swivel chair. His job was not to predict longevity—though longevity was one consideration. For the purposes of this assignment, a person’s value meant the value of his life to Fitzsimmons Sherman.

  The work often required him to type the word “future” into his search engine—as in “future holdings” or “future cost of” or “future mass destruction”—and a peculiar advertisement began to pop up. “FIND OUT WHAT THE FUTURE WILL COST YOU,” it said in austere small caps. If you clicked on it, you were taken to the website of a company called FutureWorld that offered consulting services in “future prediction.” The site was a single page, linking nowhere. It listed only a phone number and e-mail address beneath the firm’s logo: an elegant pencil sketch of an open window. Mitchell often found himself, especially late at night, staring at this page in a trance. If he jumped out of the open window, where would he land?

  The advertisement flickered across the screen enough times that it began to feel like a taunt.

  “What will it cost me?”

  The sound of his own voice disturbed him—hysterical, hoarse, echoing down the hall. He paused to see whether someone would come to his door. No one did. It was unwritten office protocol at Fitzsimmons to ignore stray agonized screams.

  Mitchell continued in a whisper. “I work in the tallest building in the biggest city in the richest country in the world. So what’s my future? Annihilation?”

  He closed his eyes and tried to clear his head. But it was no good. He could feel his old pursuers, the cockroaches, feasting on him. In moments like this he imagined thousands of them, tiny hairy-legged critters climbing the walls of his stomach. Their food was fear, and they ate ravenously, lip-smackingly. No, there was nothing to do but keep working. He was getting close. The numbers were beginning to tell a story.

  Shortly after three in the morning Mitchell typed “future value calculator compound interest” and the FutureWorld logo popped up. Without thinking, he composed an e-mail to the address listed. “What will the future cost me?” he wrote. “Can I afford it? Will I pay with my life?”

  On his desk he noticed a can of ginger ale he’d opened several hours earlier, and he took a sip. As soon as he put it down, his e-mail icon brightened—a new message. It came from FutureWorld:

  Dear Mr. Zukor,

  Thank you for contacting FutureWorld. I’m so glad you did.

  FutureWorld is a private consulting firm—in a manner of speaking—based in New York. We specialize in minimizing losses that may result from unforeseen or worst-case-imaginable scenarios. We will study your company’s holdings, predict all possible future outcomes, highlight the most grievous, and explain what options might be available to you. Most important, we can indemnify you against liability claims brought against you in the wake of a catastrophe.

  I hope we can discuss the details of a potential partnership in person.

  Since you work in the Empire State Building, you are ideally suited for our services.

  Thanks,

  Alec Charnoble

  Director and Founder

  FutureWorld

  Mitchell suspected from the speed of the reply that the note was automatically generated. But what was this business about being “ideally suited” for catastrophe insurance? And how did the computer know that he was in the Empire State Building? He would call this man’s bluff—this “Alec Charnoble.”

  Dear Mr. Charnoble,

  It appears that you are awake at this late hour. If so, might you be available for a meeting? You can come to my office in the Empire State Building. Let me know if I should expect you.

  Thanks,

  Mitchell Zukor

  He clicked back to his spreadsheet. In two adjacent columns he’d listed every Fitzsimmons employee number and the annuity owed to them should they be killed on the job. To calculate this figure, he had written a formula that took into account age, marital status, health rating, number of dependents, professional standing, salary level, and vacation day usage. It looked like this:

  Mitchell scrolled down to his own listing. He had no dependents or spouse and one of the lowest salaries on staff. So despite his young age, the value of his life to Fitzsimmons Sherman ($266,213) was significantly lower than the lives of most of his colleagues. He even came in below Lucy Fleishaker ($271,533), the assistant manager’s chubby, doe-eyed secretary, owing to the fact that she was the sole caretaker of her epileptic older sister and therefore listed a dependent on her tax form. He thought of how few people depended on him—of his slumlord father and his mother, a matriarchal tornado tearing across the midwestern plains—and he started to wonder whether $266,213 was much too high.

  The e-mail icon illuminated.

  Dear Mr. Zukor,

  I agree. There is no time to lose.

  Thanks,

  Alec

  Mitchell reread the note, the ginger ale going flat on his tongue. The intercom rang. It was the night guard at the desk downstairs. Mr. Zukor had a visitor.

  3.

  “Mitchell,” said Alec Charnoble, extending a long, bony arm. “If I may.”

  It was not a bright idea, he realized now, inviting a maniac to his office at four in the morning. Even his most masochistic colleagues had gone home—even the tactical research analyst across the hall, who every night wandered the corridors repeating phrases that he seemed to find soothing, such as “Gaussian processes are stochastic processes, stochastic processes are Markov processes, and Markov processes are Gaussian processes.” The international market analysts—the BSE Bears, the Bolsa Bulls, the Hang Seng Sheep, the Micex Mice—they were on the clock all night, but they worked upstairs in the Penthouse. It had occurred to Mitchell, just before the elevator chimed, that he had blundered into a new type of worst-case scenario. The worst scenarios were always the ones you didn’t anticipate, at least not until too late, but now it was so plainly obvious that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it coming: the madman would be very strong, he would have tools, large, dull steel tools, and a metal glint in his eye.

  But when the elevator doors parted, Mitchell was surprised to see a man who seemed nothing like a killer, at least not the kind who committed the act in cold blood. Alec Charnoble more closely resembled the type of businessman who, with the press of a button, detonates mortgages or pension funds in some suburban hamlet on the other side of the country. He was tall but thin, with a weak, hollow chest, wheaten hair, and gray oval eyes. His navy pin-striped suit and yellow tie were cleanly pressed; despite the hour he seemed as alert as a bright bronze bell.

  “Alec Charnoble,” said the man, his face creasing in a tight grin.

  With
out asking permission, Charnoble carried a chair into Mitchell’s cubicle, so that the two men had to share the space. Their knees grazed.

  “I never listen to preambles,” said Charnoble, “so I won’t bore you with one.”

  Mitchell shifted in his chair and his leg pressed against Charnoble’s. A tepid queasiness passed over him like a blush.

  “Imagine something terrible happens,” said Charnoble.

  “I do. Often.”

  “Really.” Charnoble frowned, impressed. “It should not be difficult for you then. Well, say this building is destroyed. So-and-so many people die—”

  “So-and-so?”

  Charnoble pushed back his shirtsleeves as if he were preparing to conduct some serious bit of manual labor—to dig a grave, for instance. Mitchell noticed that Charnoble wore two watches, one on each slender wrist.

  “You need an example? Take Seattle. You’ve seen what happens. It’s really not fair, is it. The victims’ families take out their anger on the corporations. The company’s investors, tallying their massive financial losses, are equally enraged. Why didn’t you move the office out of danger? Why didn’t you plan for this? The investors, like the families of the dead, also want money.”

  Charnoble tapped his forefinger into his palm in somber emphasis of his point.

  “Money,” he repeated. “Money. Money. Money—”