Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 55: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE HAPPINESS EFFECT 53 street and shot down three or four strangers. All because we couldn’t control a small mass of neural tissue, the brain.” | “Why don’t you just shut up and do your stuff,” I begged him. “Why, Henry,” he grinned, “don’t you want to learn? Want to be stupid all your life?” The computer was working now— only in reverse. A rubber pad like a helmet covered Arnold’s head. Elec- tronic fingers dug into his brain and measured it. The result raced across the room to the soft clay model of his brain. The automatic stylus above the soft clay traced electronic signals and a duplicate of Arnold’s brain appeared out of the soft clay. “T learned too much already,” I said. “The brain is simply a mass of neural tissue. The neural tissue’s got a pattern of synapses, or jump-across responses to stimuli. If a guy’s got hostilities, they can be traced back to the physical, to bad synapses. So you erase em and carve a few good ones, and the guy’s adjusted from then on. Everybody does what they should and you don’t need no religion, or morals, or psychology, or nothing. Just brainwriting and the world’s work gets done.” Doc shook his head sadly: “‘Henry, you always miss the most important part of all. After I get rid of the illogical synapses, I do one special cut with my stylus. That’s the happiness effect. Then your adjusted man not only does what he ought to do—he’s happy about it.” 3 “Where everything creams up,” I said bitterly. — He shot me a funny look. “Yeah,” he said, looking at me doubtfully. “You could say that. We’ve given the world the happiness effect.” He was at the halfway point now. The soft clay model was finished. It was an exact duplicate of Arnold’s brain. Arnold sat facing us like a corpse. I held my breath. Doc lifted up the clay model from its cradle and picked up his stylus. “Ouite a brain,’ -he. said. He pointed at several jointures in the interlaced mass of neural tubulations. ““Decayed memory spots,” he said. “Artistic imagination—decayed sen- sory impressions, you know. Quite useless in an adjusted society.” His scalpel flicked and molded and the jointures—not actual tissue decay of course, but just incomplete mem- ory bridges— were totally eradi- cated. That slight break in memory connections that allowed for dissoci- ation, for the forming of new patterns, for the invention of things as they weren’t—for art. He did some other writing with his stylus on the clay model, consulting prototype clay brains and some books. He puttered around and fussed for quite a while. An artist on his own, I had to admit. They never snapped back after sitting in that chair. He even went outside a minute to pick up the master brain he uses in the waiting room to impress us poor devils. That was when I picked up his scalpel and made a quick stab on the clay model at one of the places he’d shaved down. Maybe I could save a hostility or two for Arnold. Doc came back, finished and set the rewritten, remolded brain com- plete with its happiness effect back in the cradle. He reversed the power. The big moment had come. The light of power—power over his fellows—danced in Doc’s eyes. He jittered around enjoying himself for a moment. ‘“This is the real moment of birth, Henry,” he told me, exulting. “Most people are born wrong for this world. This is where they get right!” I held my breath. My muscles worked against themselves, but I had Comichooksnco mi