Running With The Analysts

By David A. Mallach

Renowned money manager Johnny Long is back, and this time the stakes are leveraged like never before. This third offering in David Mallach’s critically-acclaimed series of “financial thrillers” takes us into the cut-throat world of options trading and clandestine hedge funds to expose the men behind the curtains who are changing our world faster than we know. In this novel, Johnny Long finds himself in the middle of two worlds colliding as he tiptoes along the fault line of human nature where money meets morality. Caught up in a high-stakes investing contest among the world’s most powerful investors, Johnny Long must come precariously close to the breaking point where the majestic façades decorating “progress,” “knowledge,” “wealth,” and “philanthropy” crumble to reveal the true modes of power and resistance are lurking behind.

When one of Johnny’s clients -- a brilliant but socially-inept genetic scientist -- announces that he has discovered a direct link between doing good and living longer, he unwittingly allies himself with a sinister group seeking to acquire the doctor’s research by any means necessary. Their ultimate goal is to develop a genetically-engineered end to moral decision making and the choice for free will that defines what is most quintessentially human. And they will stop at nothing.

How far is Johnny willing to go to preserve individual freedom and free will? Can he redesign his options strategy to compete with the most successful, most sophisticated investors in the world? Pushing wealth to its moral limits, Johnny Long works against the clock to endow his client with both money and freedom – the money to continue his ground-breaking research unfettered and the freedom from the global underground network that seems to have its tentacles around everything.

Running With The Analysts is an overview of option investing at its finest wrapped within a fictional tale of what is... and what can be life’s richest ambiguity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David A. Mallach
• Release date: Jun 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310599071

David A. Mallach

David A. Mallach resides in the Philadelphia area, where he has devoted his entire professional career since 1973 to helping investors develop strategies for income growth and capital appreciation. David has lectured to investors and professional investment advisors in the U.S.A., Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.

Book preview

Running With The Analysts

A Wall Street Novel

Copyright 2011 David A. Mallach

Published by David A. Mallach at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

From the Author

This book is a work of fiction. Therefore, it should not be assumed by any reader that any specific investment or investment strategy made reference to in this book will be either profitable or equal historical or anticipated performance levels. It should also likewise not be assumed that the performance of any specific investment style or sector will be either profitable or equal its corresponding historical index benchmark. Finally, different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that any specific investment or investment strategy made reference to in this book will be suitable or otherwise appropriate for an individual’s investment portfolio. To the extent that a reader has any questions regarding the suitability of any specific investment or investment strategy made reference to in this book for their individual investment(s) or financial situation, they are encouraged to consult with the investment professional of their choosing.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Appendix

About David A. Mallach

Other books by David A. Mallach

Connect with David A. Mallach

Acknowledgements

Back when I first started writing Dancing with the Analysts, I had an idea for a series but no driving theme with which to weave them together. As I began sketching out the first book, it became clear that I had been for many years preoccupied with two dominant themes in human behavior. First, I believed that all people – no matter how history passed judgment upon them – had a fundamental need to believe in their own goodness and the goodness of their endeavors. Second, despite the growing disillusionment of the past decades (and still echoing today), I was convinced that money in and of itself is neutral and was not, as many would have us believe, inherently evil or corrupting.

Now, thinking back through this third work, I recognize a third theme, perhaps more important than any other, a theme that for me eclipses everything. We do what we do, we have done what we have done, in need of self-affirmation and self-fulfillment. Yes, even books like mine that focus on great gestures of philanthropy have at their heart the fundamental need for people to feel good about themselves. We act accordingly. And yet, this inevitably results in deep contradictions, conflicts of interest, competing desires, and raging passions. It is here in this intricate web of alliances and rivalries that people come to life.

This third work, Running with the Analysts, brings it all together in the context of human choice… human opportunity and choice. That is the crux for me. Indeed, writing these three books has been a process of intellectual maturation for me culminating in this third work which itself dramatizes both a coming-of-age for Austin Montgomery as well as the realization of self-fulfillment for Johnny Long. Nevertheless, there is in this third work as in the previous two the dark backdrop of disappointment. Failure looms always one miscue away, and the repercussions are costly. My characters, like people in general, always have something at stake even to the point of death as is the case in all three books. And so money and investing makes the perfect trope.

Running with the Analysts marks the convergence of all these themes in a way that was not possible in my two earlier works. The characters, the opportunities they have before them, and the vision they bring to confronting their world reaches it’s highest pitch here in this book. Moreover, I have developed the style of my prose in hopes of catching lightening in a bottle, catching a timeless struggle with translucent language.

This is no mean task to say the least. Once again orchestrating my variations of form and theme is Todd E. Napolitano. As an author, I am indebted to Todd for the way he breathes life into paper and animates my ideas. His gift for dialogue – so real and ironic the reader can’t help but be disgusted and enthralled at the same time – combines contemporary relevance with philosophical tradition in a way that is absolutely quintessential to the success of this story. He shapes my ideas into something concrete, something tangible, engaging, and often enraging. And for that I value our partnership greatly. Alas, I never really know when or where Todd will emerge. But when he does, it means one thing – write! So I sit and wait for him to return again.

I am also deeply indebted to the following people:

Jeanette Freudiger, once again I owe special thanks to Jeanette for her long-term work so closely related to this novel. She was always ready with her wit, help, and advice to insure that this novel was designed in the most thorough and entertaining fashion;

Scott Blanche, my Resident Director for his optimistic outlook and continuing support;

Joe Bass, for his help in getting this novel from the word processor to the book shelf;

Sharon Cromwell, my editor who made this manuscript a readable novel;

Alan Wolf, my compliance officer who made sure I presented the facts and figures in proper order;

John Sasso, a friend and neighbor. I appreciate his editing skills;

Stephanie Heckman, for her tireless editing of this novel;

Leona Sachrison, for her worldly view of finance and for support during difficult times;

Joseph Lundy, my friend for over twenty years and a senior advisor for people in need of investment advice.

Lastly, I thank all the wonderful investors I have known, who in their quest for growth chose to honor me with their trust.

Prologue

There was once a pit trader working the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. They called the guy Trader Vic both because he was a trader named Vic and because he was often seen downing copious Mai Tais at the famous Trader Vic’s in the Palmer House Hotel. Trader Vic was a mega-wealthy super trader who traded his desk to work on the floor because he wanted more. The advent of computerized trading made people like Vic a dying breed, but he was nonetheless driven to be right there in the heart of the beast. Trader Vic swore by the exhilaration of the pit, over the remote, high-tech air assault, as he used to say, of the quant trader working away on his computer. He loved the trenches, not the cockpit. His attraction to self-destruction made Vic the perfect metaphor.

Sooner or later, the bell tolled for every trader, the big players included. As Trader Vic found out most unceremoniously January 31, when he heard the bells himself. It was the last trading day of the month, always high-volume, volatile and just this side of chaos. That day was no exception. Being a natural-born killer, Vic decided to make one last assault to close out the month. Here it was only the end of January, and Vic was up almost a hundred grand. Trader Vic was the master, man. He wanted more, though. He only made $1,500 that morning, a modest take by anyone’s standards. He needed more. Despite his amazing performance in January, he had his reputation to protect. He lived for the prestige as much as the money. If Trader Vic didn’t make a killing on a given day, someone else could ascend to fame in his place.

So after lunch, Trader Vic went hunting. This was not considered greed; on the contrary, it was considered perfectly normal behavior for a trader. Like a stalking lion approaching a watering hole, he quickly spied his prey alongside the pit. A trader from one of the big wire houses was selling a smallish lot of 100 S&P contracts at 850.

Options traders like Vic were only concerned with trading the contracts, not owning the underlying investment for any prolonged period of time. Again, they bought and sold; they didn’t hold. He was looking to flip his contracts when the time was right. Soon after Vic’s initial buy, the trader from the wire house began offering 500 contracts at 848, thus pushing the market down two points. This created the opportunity Vic was looking for as he moved to piggy-back the downdraft that would result when the guy from the big wire house kept selling. Vic changed his mind and started selling 500-lot orders at 847. To quicken the pace, Vic also instructed one of the floor traders in the pit to start selling small lots for him as well, ten contracts at a clip. Both Vic and the floor trader he was using kept on selling so long as the guy from the big wire house kept selling too.

Things were going great for Trader Vic. He was, after all…Trader Vic. What looked that morning like a meager couple of grand for the day was quickly turning into a big, big profit. When the broker from the large wire house dumped another thousand contracts, Vic felt like a pig in mud and ordered his floor broker to sell short another 100 contracts at 845. It was a thing of beauty how he was making money out of thin air from just numbers. There was only one problem… Vic’s floor broker accidentally sold 300 contracts at 845. Actually, there was another problem… 845 ticked the low, of course. That figured, right? But things got worse. There was actually a third problem… per usual, Vic had been selling short the whole time. That is to say, Vic didn’t actually own the contracts he was selling so aggressively. Remember that a trader is in the business of buying and selling, not owning. Vic sold all those contracts without ever owning them – he was selling contracts he didn’t own. He presumed that when it came time to close things out, he would simply buy them back at a lower price, thereby making a profit in the difference between the higher price (where he sold them short) and the lower price (where he would buy them back).

All this was no big deal because at that moment, the market had come down about five points, so Vic was printing money as he sold into the downdraft. In those few minutes, Trader Vic sold enough contracts to be up about $100,000. Not a bad afternoon. That was the power of leveraging-up on margin. In no time at all, Vic made his real- estate taxes on the new place in the Hamptons. It was a classic piggy back. But the old adage should never be forgotten – Bulls and Bears make money, pigs get slaughtered. Nobody gave a crap about Vic or his new house in the Hamptons. They had their own pains to worry about. And in the freaking blink of an eye, the hunter became the hunted. Before he knew it, our boy Trader Vic was a dead man. For no sooner did Vic’s floor trader accidentally sell his 300 contracts at the low tick of 845 than the trader from the wire house turned from prey to predator and set his sights clearly on Vic and the rest of the herd who had been mindlessly following him into the selling.

No one in the herd saw it coming; the herd never does. The guy from the wire house set them all up. He had his own houses to build and watches to buy. The trap was set, and now the slaughter began. As soon as the offer ticked 845, the trader from the large wire house turned around and, having sucked in all those dumb-ass sheep, started buying back at a furious pace, driving up the price of the contracts while Trader Vic and many of the others were stuck short with their heads hanging and their asses flapping in the wind. What does that mean? It means that while Vic was selling without ever owning anything, he kept making money because the price of the S&P contracts was going down. But he got squeezed when the price turned around on him and began going up. This meant that Vic and the others would have to buy back to close out their short positions. And of course, the more the traders tried to close their short positions by buying, the more the contracts appreciated in price. In fact, it was very likely that by the time their orders to buy were filled, the price would be above where they sold it short initially, thereby turning a paper profit into a very real, potentially very large loss. In essence, they were forced to buy at the market price or else risk further and further losses the higher the price climbed. Like something out of Fischer-Spassky, the classic piggy back, a chess move, was countered with a classic short squeeze executed flawlessly by that ruthless low-life from the large wire house. Find the weakness. Squeeze the life out of it. Move on.

This was the kind of stuff retail investors never see when they check their mutual funds on Friday afternoon. Yet it happened a thousand times a day just as it unfolded that moment for Trader Vic and countless others. As the price continued climbing, orders to buy came pouring in from traders who were caught short and getting their heads squeezed mercilessly. Up went the contract price… higher and higher. For a brief moment, Vic froze with the realization that he was about to get raped and his seat on the exchange could very well be gone in a split second. His guy in the pit was screaming at him… Do you want me to buy? Hey, do you want me to buy back the S&P? Hey, Vic! Hey, you’re short! Do you want me to buy back the S&P, you’re short?

Realizing he had absolutely no other choice, Vic ordered his trader to begin buying to close out his shorts. As the price of the contracts leapt higher and higher, Vic was forced to buy above where he sold initially. His $100,000 profit began to evaporate and did so with a speed and ferocity that would have incapacitated most people. Want to know where the rage came from? Want to know why super traders flaunt their wealth so audaciously? It is the same reason drug dealers wear so much bling. Because they live on the edge of life and death and have to call attention to themselves today because they could be gone tomorrow. Look at Vic… in just seconds, his 100 grand in profit turned into a $150,000 loss. Would a regular person have survived, or would he have become a vegetable and died right there? Most people didn’t understand, wouldn’t understand and couldn’t understand what it felt like to go through this day after day. Sooner or later, it had to bubble over in the form of seething rage.

And so it was with Trader Vic. He just up and walked away, left the floor without so much as checking where he finally got out. Some quick calculations in his head told him more than he needed to know… a $100,000 profit turned into $150,000 in losses within seconds. Moreover, he had to come up with the cash in minutes. Once upstairs in his office on the eighteenth floor, Vic picked up his entire desk and tried to throw it through the window onto the hundreds of unwitting pedestrians on the sidewalk below. Of course, the windows at the Exchange were shatter proof. Did anyone think Vic was the first trader attempting to kill innocent bystanders?

Like his potential victims on the sidewalk below, Vic survived to trade another day. That’s the really important thing for a trader. Live to play again. Indeed, only a few months later, Vic stood his post while most everyone else evacuated the exchange building because of an anthrax scare at a nearby post office. News of the scare dropped the bottom out of the S&P’s, and Vic was one of the only traders around to capitalize. Naturally, he shorted 30 contracts and turned a buck-and-a-quarter profit in seconds. Live to trade another day. That was the hard part because the job emptied people, carved out most of their humanity and refilled the void with white-hot rage at the heart of which is a complete disregard for who or what they are doing so long as they make money.

Hell of a way to make a living. For men like this, the ends justified the means. What was good anyway if not subjective? Men like Vic missed the crucial point time and time again; namely, if money was, in fact, a means to an end, that end could be virtuous, that end could be the pursuit of goodness, kindness and philanthropy. We had to endow it with human intent. Everything else was ersatz.

Chapter One

It’s embarrassing actually. Embarrassing but no less true. When it comes to understanding ourselves, we human beings are pretty simple. What holds our attention? What keeps us captive? It pretty much boils down to our morbid fascination with the bizarre. Perhaps it’s even innate, a need deep within, a base drive down at our core. The bizarre is philosophical. It offers us a base look at the dark side of ourselves, at the seedy underside of humanity. Admit it, we’ve all watched COPS once or twice to catch a glimpse of some toothless, wiry dude running down the street bare-assed, high on PCP, and carrying a Volkswagen Beetle over his head. Let’s face it, we wouldn’t care less about the learned and refined Dr. Jekyll if he didn’t get totally high and unleash the sinister Mr. Hyde. The point being, our civilized selves need a shady doppelganger to remind us of what we as a species are capable of, both good and bad.

Who better exemplifies this curious relationship to our own selves than our mass media. They serve it up, and we gobble it down. We adore the perverse transformation stories that come down the pipeline courtesy of our mass media. Sometimes, though, there’s more to the story than meets the eye. Every so often, we’re treated to a monumental announcement that radically changes who we are or, perhaps better put, who we think we are. Civilization is just chugging along as we go about the business of mowing lawns, feeding the kids, and merging banks when the news hits with the unmistakable crack of lightning splitting a tree. It’s something big… something really big that totally changes everything. When the dust settles, we’ve had a paradigm shift and everything we once believed about ourselves is different. Every so often, this happens.

Dr. Eric Abramson, along with his long-time assistant, Brooke Ballentine, was about to make such an announcement. What he had to say would stop the presses and shake the world by the shirt collar. Because of the culmination of his life’s work thus far, the world as we knew it was about to change. Where once he was unknown outside of the scientific community, Eric Abramson was about to step onto the world stage as the herald of a new scientific discovery that would redefine everything, everything we believed about who we were and what we did. Things would change all right. New possibilities would be glimpsed in a scintillating lightning flash. It went straight on back to God and the will of mankind. Dr. Eric Abramson was about to usher in new genetic knowledge that would shake the very underpinnings of mankind. With this new truth would come new aspirations, new politics and new fears that would challenge everyone’s beliefs in ways he never anticipated.

For as long as he could remember, Eric Abramson saw science as a medium through which truth spoke. But really, so few people ever find themselves sitting at the heart of monumental change. In matters such as these – matters in which human nature is redefined – Abramson was as inexperienced as the next guy. Still, part of him knew, the scientist in him knew that a man did not choose the truth; rather, the truth chose him. It was simple really. The world’s genetic truths lay hidden out there somewhere. It was the job of the geneticist to uncover them and present them in all their objective glory to the public. And so, like an archeologist, the doctor went about his work methodically, looking for nothing in particular, nothing predetermined. It made perfect sense to him. Like fossils of our true selves, the genetic facts were already there. You didn’t create those facts; those facts created you. You didn’t choose the facts; the facts chose you. To Eric Abramson, that was genetics at its most fundamental.

In Abramson’s mind, great discoveries were out there somewhere just waiting to be uncovered. Thus, it was only a matter of time after scientists mapped the human genome that monumental discoveries would follow naturally, calling into question everything we assumed about ourselves. Specifically, doing good deeds was directly related to living longer. There was an air of destiny surrounding the whole thing, for Eric Abramson held in his hands the genetic link between doing good and living longer. There was no question that this latest discovery by Abramson and his team marked a new era in human genetics. But the discovery would also occupy a special place in history; the implications extended well beyond the lab, impacting the timeless struggle between good and evil, fate and free will.

When Galileo first postulated a heliocentric universe, the powers that be promptly declared him a heretic. Galileo’s crime? Unveiling radical new information about what it meant to be human. Unfortunately for Galileo, the Pope was not amused with the astronomer’s upheaval of established dogma in the Universal Order of Things. And although a few sessions on the rack are said to have done wonders for Galileo’s herniated disk, the astronomer was certainly worse off in many ways for having made his discovery. Nevertheless, we can draw two important lessons from Galileo’s ordeal, lessons that Eric Abramson was about to learn the hard way.

First, it’s pretty certain Galileo didn’t relish the red-hot poker that was so artfully installed in his nether regions. But think about the bigger picture. The important part of the story is that Galileo made a conscious decision to stand behind what he believed to be right. Second – and to the contrary – although Galileo stood up for what he believed to be just and good, he was kind of asking for it. One does not simply subvert the prevailing concept of human nature without suffering repercussions. Human beings just don’t function that way. People need stability in order to survive, and we will always attack those who threaten upheaval. In the end, we need absolute truths, or at least we need to believe in them. And when these truths are assailed, people attack out of self-defense. Maybe Nietzsche got it right. The will to power is perhaps best understood as the will to truth.

Not exactly one to lose himself in the grips of existential angst, Eric Abramson became a scientist precisely because he held such idle philosophizing in great disdain. Frankly, Abramson cared nothing for great efforts of thought that did not produce something concrete and applicable to the real world. Philosophers… aside from providing an endless demand for black turtlenecks and Depeche Mode albums, what good were they? Instead, he lived in a world of material facts. Take this latest discovery for example… years of hard work culminated in a discovery that was about to change the world. There existed a tangible truth in genetics – maybe even science as a whole - that everyone could use and understand. It couldn’t be further from the idealistic world of philosophy. Abramson cared only for science. He delighted in the beauty of objective truth. Where any sort of gray area was involved, he assumed the simple truth behind all human action – whether good or bad, we all choose to do what we do and will be held accountable in the court of history. His discovery that choosing to do good actually made people live longer only reinforced his belief that life was a collection of simple truths.

Most people who declare themselves progressives and intellectuals go apoplectic over any explanation of human nature that cites human genetics. They simply refuse to acknowledge that one person may be born better or worse than another or that the very concepts of better and worse, good and bad exist as anything other than subjective prejudice (their own opinions excluded of course). By some ironic stroke of evolutionary caprice, these folks all seem to teach or work in the media. Thus, when news of Abramson’s discovery hit, it threw the media into something of a tizzy. Without question, he should have let his long-time and trusted assistant, Brooke Ballentine, handle the public speaking (she did, after all earn both her doctorate in genetics at The University of Pennsylvania and her MBA from Wharton). Brooke worked by Abramson’s side for years, but he simply wouldn’t listen when she tried to convince him to let her handle the press conference. As a result, all hell broke loose.

Headline: Scientist discovers gene for living longer directly linked to doing good deeds.

There was no way they could lay off this one. The Philadelphia Inquirer called it the Frankengene. There was plenty for the media to chew on. Abramson’s discovery of genetic longevity, as the Times called it, was certainly newsworthy, especially considering the doctor’s assertion that there exists a direct link between doing good and living longer. On the face of it, this seemed like the perfect marriage between social construction and genetic predisposition – what we do in our daily lives interacts dynamically with our genetic coding. To achieve the requisite level of carnivalesque curiosity, however, the media would have to massage Abramson’s discovery into an endless stream of stories probing his implicit biases, prejudices and other assorted social injustices perpetrated by the middle-aged white guy in the lab coat. One way or another, they would get what they needed to give the thing legs. Let the games begin! Brooke Ballentine would have been better suited to address the press. As an esteemed peer who had been by Abramson’s side from the start, she certainly understood the work. Heck, she was responsible for a big chunk of it. But holding an MBA, she also understood the business side of things. She would have foreseen where the media would construct its controversies and, in the process, avoided stepping on too many land mines.

What made Abramson’s discovery really controversial, though, was his claim that doing good deeds actually helped you live longer. Do good, and you will live longer. In typical Abramson fashion, the formula couldn’t be any simpler. Also in typical Abramson fashion, he completely overlooked the media’s insatiable thirst for controversy. An element of the bizarre had to be drawn out. The drama would unfold in terms of free will, in terms of making conscious choices. Who determined what actions were good? By what measure, by what agenda, by what need was someone’s actions deemed good and, therefore, life expanding? Didn’t Abramson’s discovery assume some sort of universal definition of good and bad? The media could never, would never, stand for this. Huzzah! Let the games begin!

As it turned out, the issue would be far more convoluted than Abramson preferred. To Abramson, there was no such thing as predetermined good or bad behavior. Nature didn’t work this way, or if it did, his research didn’t support it. Where his discovery of a longevity gene was concerned, what people believe about their own actions was all that mattered. In other words, if you thought you were doing something good, it stimulated your longevity gene and prolonged your life. Abramson never anticipated the controversy that was about to ignite. Quite the contrary, he thought his announcement would be received by the media with sheer exaltation. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t recognize how TREK-4 was fraught with complexity. For example, what of the doctor who euthanizes a patient to relieve his suffering and believes in his heart that he is doing good. Certainly, the Church would have a very different opinion. Conversely, what about the doctor who believes it immoral and refuses to euthanize his patient? Didn’t he also believe he was doing good? Now there’s a conundrum. Two people acting antithetically and both being equally right?

The implications for morality and ethics were immense. Like Galileo, Abramson threatened to displace two thousand years of philosophy, social theory and religious teaching in one fell swoop. In doing so, he could redefine human nature by positing radical subjectivity – what we think about our own actions – over universal right and wrong. Embodied in Abramson’s TREK-4 breakthrough was a groundbreaking discovery that revealed a genetic source for how long we lived. That in itself was significant. But when we add to the conversation the idea that Stalin may have actually extended his life by doing horrific things he believed were right and necessary (eggs have to be broken to make an omelet after all)…well, that was quite another matter. In essence, Abramson was saying that it didn’t matter one bit what you did so long as you believed you were doing good. What’s more, you would actually live longer the more good you did even if other people found your actions terrible. Think of the people who would love this. Think of the people who would hate this. This, the press could run with.

Scientists make the ideal fodder for writers looking to make a story. Abramson took the podium completely ill-prepared for dealing with the media. No longer was he in the shelter of artificial controls and empirical results. His was a world of windowless labs, lecture halls and admiring students. He was a man who wore black dress socks with off-brand sneakers and jeans that were way too blue. If he had a pair of glasses in his medicine cabinet, they were surely held together with scotch tape. He was adept at the art of depositing food stains in the most evident places. His attire bespoke a man buried in his work rather than in the pages of GQ. His elocution was similarly ragged. Where some people were born to speak in public and others born to speak in tongues, Dr. Abramson seemed born to speak to himself. Huzzah! Huzzah! Let the games begin!

He gave it his best, struggled diligently to get through the press conference detailing how he and Brooke had cracked another secret of human genetics. He recognized and acknowledged that the issues at hand went far beyond simple gene mapping. In a way, he actually discovered the fountain of youth, and a person could make it runneth over by doing good deeds throughout his life. He hadn’t really given much thought to the fact that one person’s good