True Feeling

They had learned to wire the human brain, so that by the point of birth any individual could be artificially predisposed in almost any direction the Director of Cerebral Resources might choose. Once birth was accomplished, the implanted predispositions could be nurtured and encouraged; at first by carefully regulated stimulation of the reward centres, then by more subtle and individually tailored programmes of induced curiosity, aesthetic satisfaction and mystical ecstasy.

The Director of Cerebral Resources preferred instead to manufacture square pegs for round holes, and then to socialise his predestined misfits with arbitrary doses of fear, perplexity and grief. Through this little hobby, the brain of the Director of Cerebral Resources found a greater sense of fulfilment than any artificial stimulation could provide; for the Director of Cerebral Resources had been born in the old-fashioned way, and his brain had been wired by God.