The Child Buyer

Consider the extremes to which colleges go to recruit star young athletes, and to which giant corporations go to raid colleges of their prime talents; then go one step further. Some time in the near future a giant corporation committed to a 50-year defense project for the government comes up with the idea of "buying" child prodigies, wiping out their memories, and then re-educating them electronically in the pure sciences. It's not an altogether bad idea, but the deeper the investigating committee delves, the worse it becomes. The corporation also will atrophy the five senses of the prodigies, so that they will in effect become pure intellects. The town is horrified; but the child-buyer has two advantages: an unlimited amount of purchase money, and the venality of human nature (including the parents' and teachers*). One senator can even rationalize that it might be the boy's patriotic duty to submit. The boy in the end does submit, but only because he has the secret belief that he will beat the system.