The Will to Battle (Terra Ignota, #3)

by Ada Palmer

But set-set trainers, to protect the inhuman powers that they want to sell, start engineering brain development long before the fetus has even lost its gills, shaping the brain’s growth stimulus by stimulus, light and touch rationed like prescriptions, and the chemicals, some extra glucose here or poison there to make each neural cluster swell or shrivel as the engineer requires. A Cartesian set-set like Eureka Weeksbooth is a 1-5-2-19-19-2-21-1 for life”—he spat the numbers, as one spits names of devils—“and, because the founders of these techniques have read their Brill enough to fear that nature might still triumph, just to make extra-sure the sets stay locked, they train the set-set not to let itself develop close relationships, no cross-stimulation, passion, friendship, nothing outside the script.