Squirrel Bait and Other Stories
Page 5
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Five years after opening the Institute Hiram gave up his position as director to devote his full attention to his new project, Inventors and Imaginations Unlimited, a cooperative venture of several dozen inventors and tinkerers to research and market their new ideas. It was a project very close to Hiram’s heart and, according to his autobiography, it was his intended enterprise from his mid-teens on.
Beyond his wildest dreams they succeeded in bringing many useful and energy-efficient devices to the service of the people of the world and the inventors and the implementers were all comfortably rich and immensely satisfied in the process.
Shortly before his untimely death Hiram gave an interview in which he observed, “My own life story is the best evidence I can think of that uselessness can be put to good practical use if you really apply yourself. I used the useless but intriguing NiRGiNs to finance both the Institute and I& I Unlimited and many, many people have benefited either directly or indirectly from those projects. I had a whole lot of fun doing it too. What more could anyone ask?”
They buried him in a country graveyard that overlooks an expanse of tangled brush and protruding rocks for which no one can find any more productive use. Above his grave hangs a NiRGiN 1. His epitaph reads, “He was a completely useless man. Amen.”