“That’s not going to happen.”

“Humor me. Hypothetically.”

“You’re projecting chronically sick diabetes patients living about ten years longer than they’re going to live. As I said, it’s not going to happen.”

“Let’s say forty percent of your policies are diabetes patients. If we have a curve like mine instead of the curve like yours, I reckon that’s twenty thousand policies you’re stuck with for ten additional years. That’s, um, two hundred and forty million in premiums you weren’t expecting to pay. Kind of cuts into your model, doesn’t it? Perhaps they’re half your policies. I think the curve needs to move a little more. Fifteen years and it’s four hundred and fifty million. Your biggest source of revenue becomes a sinkhole of toxic assets.”

“That’s hypothetical, and it flies in the face of fifty years of actuarial data. Fifty years!”

Edmund was yelling but Gloria was looking at Russell. He looked worried.

“Yes, you have fifty years’ worth of old data. But you’re not looking at the future. Technology can make a monkey out of a table in a minute. If you have any more great ideas, please share them with me, I will be happy to take a position on them too.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Edmund demanded.

“Do you know what an iPS cell is?”

“I’ve heard of them, yes,” said Edmund. “Something to do with stem cells. But I don’t see—”

“Induced pluripotent stem cells,” said Gloria. “If you looked to the future and not to the past, you might know that iPS cells are going to have a huge impact on regenerative medicine.”

“You mean stem cell therapy?” said Edmund. “That bubble burst ten years ago, all those biotechnology start-ups? Penny stocks today.”

“Edmund, you’re still talking about the past.” Gloria had come this far. “You’re ignoring the future.”

“Okay, Gloria, what do you see in your crystal ball?”

“Have you heard of the Nobel laureate Tobias Rothman? Or Junichi Yamamoto? What they’re doing at their research lab up at Columbia Medical Center?”

“No,” Russell said, feeling that the ceiling was pressing in on him.

“Through a contact who follows biotech patents I’ve learned that Rothman has mouse organs, entire organs, that he has grown from iPS cells that he’s transplanted back into the same mice that donated the cells. Any day now he’s going to do it with human iPS cells if he hasn’t already. He’ll be able to grow pancreases. For humans. To make insulin. Pancreases that are custom made for a patient so no rejection. You know what that’s going to do?” Gloria pointed to the graph she had drawn over and dragged her finger from Russell’s bell curve to her red version.

“That.”

Gloria sat back.

Russell had done the real math in his head. Thanks to some particularly aggressive salesmen in Texas and Florida, they were extremely long on diabetics’ policies. Gloria had in fact undershot—they were almost two-thirds of their policies. Meaning they might be on the hook for almost $600 million in additional premiums. Who knew if the science was going to work and when, and not every patient was going to be helped, but still, if she was right, their paradigm would be in tatters. Was there any way they could dump those policies? Could they securitize them anyway? Would anyone invest in the company with this much doubt about the nature of the risk? These questions were occurring to Russell; Edmund just wanted to get the hell out of there.