Neural Programming

After you are first born, you have three inoculations. The first two are for diseases of the body, the last for diseases of the mind.

In the dark ages, people who violated the law were sent to vast buildings, where their movement was restricted and monitored, at great cost and expense to society. It was for our protection. Thousands upon thousands of people were trained to walk in the streets and spot people with dark motives, and were taught how to restrain them and take them into isolation. Many more thousands still were kept in these buildings.

Soon, medicine advanced and we began to know which sections of the brain were linked to behaviour, and we manipulated these parts of the brain so that we could feel safe releasing dangerous people from the vast buildings where they were held. At first, these were very crude devices, implanted sub-dermally, issuing electrical stimulation directly to the brain. They didn’t always work accurately. Some people experienced severe pain. Some people lost control of their impulses entirely and committed worse atrocities than we imagined possible.

Through study, diligence, and human sacrifice, we learned more and more about how to guide a person’s sense of moral responsibility. We trialled surgery, pills, injections, viruses, all with varying degrees of success.

Eventually we realised we could inoculate against criminal intent. We found a way to entirely repress the impulse to harm others.

From childhood, all malice, all ill-will, all selfishness is completely eradicated.

To begin with, there were protesters. They said that the inoculation would let us grow complacent and leave us vulnerable. They said it wasn’t ethical to alter minds and change personalities. As the numbers of the incarcerated dwindled and even the most densely populated of areas became safe and welcoming to all, the outcry silenced.

Left toothless, society was finally content.