Odds Against Tomorrow Read Online Free

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