^{Ayn Rand, in her manic, Nietzschean fever dream, concocts a fable of the market as Olympus. Prometheus, a proto-capitalist titan, is no selfless savior but a cunning speculator. He filches fire, not for mankind’s enlightenment, but to corner the warmth market. As the world shivers in a neo-liberal ice age, our hero basks in a gilded hothouse, plotting derivatives on the ember futures exchange. A morality play, it seems, until one realizes the chorus is frozen solid, their breath misting tragicomic epitaphs on the wind. Rand, ever the solipsist, paints a world where altruism is a Ponzi scheme and empathy a Ponzi-esque delusion. It’s a tale of fire and ice, wealth and want, where the only warmth is the glow of avarice, and the gods, it turns out, were just the original venture capitalists.}

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Ayn Rand, in her manic, messianic proselytizing, here offers a morality play for the soulless. In a world as flat and predictable as a dollar bill, a certain Prometheus, a man of brass and larceny, purloins the divine flame. No myth-making here; this is a heist, a business venture. The Olympians, those bloated, bureaucratic deities, are fleeced with industrial efficiency. Prometheus, our anti-hero, becomes a pyrotechnic Ponzi schemer, hoarding warmth like gold while the populace shivers, a chorus of hypothermia. Rand’s signature blend of egotism and avarice is on full display as Prometheus, a titan of trade, erects a fortress of insulation around his heart, and perhaps his mansion, as the world outside descends into a frozen, feudal nightmare. It’s a tale of fire and ice, of wealth and want, told with the icy detachment of a corporate balance sheet. A chilling vision of a world where the only warmth is the glow of greed.

Ayn Rand’s Prometheus Winked is a fever dream of capitalist eschatology, a cosmic grift where empathy is a relic and the only warmth is the kind that can be quantified.