The Sirens of Titan

Magnum Opus, Inc., was founded by Constant’s father. Its headquarters lie in a 31-story building in Los Angeles, which contains the offices of a huge number of companies that are subsidiaries of Magnus Opus. The building has 12 glass sides, which according to the architect who designed it are meant to represent the “twelve great religions of the world.” However, Constant isn’t actually able to name these religions.

Constant lands on the helipad at the top of the Magnum Opus building, arriving for his meeting with Ransom K. Fern. None of the furniture in Constant’s office has legs; instead, it hovers in the air, suspended by magnets. The floor is a carpet of real grass. Constant is surprised by the floating furniture, which has been put there by someone else sometime in the previous weeks. Fern enters. He is the highest-paid executive in the country, earning a salary of $1 million per year. He has been working at Magnum Opus since he was 22, and is now 60. Fern admits that he replaced the furniture, purchasing items from the American Levitation, which they own, in order to show “loyalty.”

Fern reads two books per day in attempt to know the entirety of his own culture, in the tradition of Aristotle. He is superior to Malachi and his father, Noel Constant, in every way—except for the fact that he doesn’t have their extraordinary amount of “dumb luck.” Neither Noel nor Malachi know anything about business. When people ask Fern for investment advice, he always replies with the same joke—telling them to invest in a fake company called “United Hotcake.” Constant gently touches his desk, which shakes under his hand. Fern then says that for the past three months, all Constant has done is make bad decisions, eliminating all the wealth created by Noel’s “inspired guessing.”

Fern then announces, “Magnum Opus is no more,” explaining that everyone has been fired. He tells Constant to turn the lights out and lock the door when he leaves. Magnum Opus was founded by Malachi’s father, Noel, a “traveling salesman of copper-bottomed cookware.” Noel’s father had been an anarchist. Years ago, at the age of 39, Noel is a “business failure” who is an ugly, unappealing man in every way. Sitting in a small room in a scummy hotel in Los Angeles, he decides to become a speculator. He retrieves the hotel room’s Gideon Bible from a drawer. Noel inherits $8,212 from his father, which mainly consists of government bonds. 

Noel decides to use the Bible as his investment advisor. His investment strategy is so “idiotically simple” that many cannot understand it, because they can’t bring themselves to believe it isn’t more complicated. Noel chooses which companies to invest in based on their letters of the first sentence of the Old Testament. This strategy works. Within months Noel makes millions of dollars. As the company’s success grows, Noel continues making decisions based on the Bible. For the first two years Noel lives in the Wilburhampton hotel, the only person who comes to visit him is a maid named Florence Whitehill whom he pays to have sex with him once every 10 days.

Then, after two years, another visitor shows up: this one from the Bureau of Internal Revenue. The young man tells Noel that he is a graduate of Harvard Business School. He says that he has reviewed Noel’s income tax reports, and concluded that Noel is “the luckiest man who ever lived.” The young man asks for details about the companies Noel owns, and Noel evades the question, asking if he needs to answer for tax purposes. However, the young man says he is simply curious. He explains that he has actually quit in order to come and start working for Noel. He introduces himself as Ransom K. Fern.

Fern says that one of his professors at Harvard told him that he would become rich one day as long as he found his “boy.” The professor advised him that in order to do this, he should spend a year working at the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Fern eventually came to understand that the professor was indicating that while Fern was intelligent, he didn’t have much “luck,” and thus needed to find someone who would balance that out. Fern explains he can tell Noel doesn’t even vaguely understand corporate law, tax law, or business. He shows Noel a plan for “doing violence to the spirit of thousands of laws” without actually breaking a single one.

Fern proposes to Noel that he become president of Magnum Opus, leaving Noel himself as chairman. Fern warns Noel about how much damage incompetent industrial bureaucrats can do to a company. He also warns Noel that his luck will run out someday, at which point he will need someone smart to help. Noel hires him immediately. Since then, two books have been written about Magnum Opus, one “romantic” and one “harsh.” The first has a better overview of the story of Florence discovering she was pregnant with Noel’s child, Malachi. Noel buys Florence and Malachi a mansion and gives Florence $1 million. He asks her to keep coming to see him once every 10 days, but not to bring Malachi. 

Neither of the books about Magnum Opus contain details about Noel’s investment method. The only person to ever learn about it is Malachi, whom Noel tells on his son’s 21st birthday. This is their first meeting, and thus an emotional occasion for Malachi, who is too distracted to really take in the secret of his father’s method. Noel explains that he will be handing over the business to Malachi, who is to receive a chronological list of the company’s investments from Fern. Malachi is absorbed by a photo of himself at age three, which is hung up on the wall. Awkwardly, Noel repeats the only two pieces of advice his father ever told him, then immediately and abruptly says, “Good-by.” 

Noel then leaves, and he and Malachi never see each other again—five years later, Noel dies. He’d continued investing based on the Bible, and continued to succeed. At the point of his death, he is still in the early part of the Book of Genesis, on the sentence about God making the sun, moon, and stars. Back in the present, in shock, Malachi asks Fern if there’s really “nothing left” of Magnum Opus. Fern explains that he’d ensured that the company would survive both the Depression and Malachi’s bad decisions. However, Fern then learned that Malachi gave away 531 oil wells, made legally binding by a lawyer who was present and drew up documents for Malachi to sign.

Following this came the president’s announcement that Galactic Spacecraft, which Malachi sold, was receiving a $3 billion contract from the government. Then came the information that MoonMist Cigarettes have officially been confirmed as causing infertility. About 10 million people have been made infertile by smoking them, and all of them have the right to sue the company. Fern now says that before Noel died, he wrote a letter to Malachi that Malachi was supposed to read if his luck ever turned bad. The letter is in Noel’s old room in the Wilburhampton, and Fern requests that if it contains even the “vaguest” hint about the meaning of life, to please phone and tell him.

The Wilburhampton Hotel lies right next to the Magnum Opus building. There is a little cocktail lounge called the Hear Ye Room, which currently has three people in it: bartender and two retired teachers from the Midwest, George M. Helmholtz and Roberta Wiley. The two of them stare blankly ahead, and both have shabby appearances. The bartender mentions the New Age of Space, and Helmholtz and Wiley both reply, “Uh, huh.” The one clue suggesting that Helmholtz and Wiley aren’t who they seem is that they both wear watches, suggesting a suspicious interest in time. In reality, they are two male agents from the Army of Mars in disguise, and they are waiting for Malachi.

When Malachi enters the Wilburhampton, Helmholtz and Wiley ignore him. Thus far they have recruited 14,000 people to join the Martian Army, never once using violence. Usually, they offer people a decent salary to work on a “secret Government project” on a three-year contract. Almost all recruits have their memories wiped when they get to Mars; radio antennae are then implanted in their skulls. The only recruits who aren’t brainwashed are those who seem as if they don’t need to be in order to serve as loyal Martian soldiers. These are inducted into the “secret circle” of leaders. The circle includes Helmholtz and Wiley.

Malachi goes to Noel’s room in the Wilburhampton, which has been preserved in Noel’s memory ever since his death. In the letter Noel wrote to Malachi, he admits that he was a bad father and generally a bad person who was “as good as dead” before he truly died. He always searched for a “signal” that would tell him why he was getting so rich, but never found it. Noels writes that if Malachi is broke and someone offers him a “crazy proposition” he should accept it. At this moment, Helmholtz and Wiley knock on the door and enter, having timed their appearance perfectly as planned.

Helmholtz tells Constant that Mars is populated with a “large and efficient and military and industrial society,” and that he is being offered the position of lieutenant-colonel in the Martian Army. Helmholtz assures Constant that he will have a large salary, spectacular benefits, and immunity from legal proceedings on Earth. Malachi accepts, and the next day, according to everyone left on Earth, he disappears.

The following Tuesday, Beatrice watches the ceremony of The Rumfoord’s blastoff on TV. She feels overjoyed at having proven that she is “mistress of her own fate” and that Mr. Rumfoord’s “omniscient bullying” was false. She is accompanied by two representatives of the mortgage-holders on the estate, who are going to help her sell it. However, these representatives are actually Helmholtz and Wiley. They watch The Rumfoord successfully take off, and Helmholtz asks to go outside and see all the buildings on the estate for an “inventory.” Beatrice says she can simply list them, but Helmholtz says he wants to know about a metal building in particular.

Beatrice is confused, but Helmholtz and Wiley tell her that they saw the metal building when they came in. They ask her if they can go outside to look, and Beatrice agrees, bringing a flashlight with her. As they walk outside, Wiley whispers that she thinks it was a “flying saucer.”