Timeline

One woman. One movement. One head. One destiny.

July 27, 1953: After the Factory! debacle, Rand takes the skills she has learned in facing debacles and returns to her original goal of floating-head-hood. She moves back to her San Jose armed compound (known fondly as "The Reality Ranch") and, strangely, she decides to start with projecting images of her head. She reasons that if a picture of her head can survive, she's that much closer to her eventual goal. With no one around who dares to contradict the gun-belt-wearing, kung-fu kicking author, she goes ahead.

After months of constant effort, she has a primitive holographic projector ready to test. She decides to project the image of her head toward a local convenience store in order to ask for cigarettes. Due to freak ionospheric conditions, however, she misses the target completely -- and ends up asking American GIs stationed in Korea for a smoke on the very day that the truce ending the Korean War is signed.

As word spreads, the story is improved: Rand appeared at the exact moment the truce was signed; she healed a wounded soldier, and brought another back from the dead; she brought great quantities of duty-free Marlboros for everyone. It's picked up up by Associated Press, but an irrational American public laughs at the notion of Rand making a Virgin Mary-like appearance. The Leader, who has stayed behind in New York to build A=A into a sleek, rational, spaceship-building fighting machine, swears revenge.

Upon hearing the story, it is turned into an in-house joke by scientists at The RAND Corporation. The institute, set up by the US military to "think the unthinkable" and plan for nuclear war, develops "Saint Rand" fever. Small statuettes of the ersatz saint are seen atop many desks, and are often used during brainstorming sessions as humourous decision-makers, a la the children's game of spin the bottle. Even projected death figures are left to the whim of Saint Rand.

The influence upon the RAND Corporation's predictions of nuclear war -- and therefore on the US military's entire nuclear culture -- is substantial, and will later be chronicled by Noam Chomsky in his seminal work, "What Does Saint Rand Say?": The Floating Head of Ayn Rand, The Cold War, and Nuclear Madness.