The Perfect Life (1)

Mr. Joad read the online guide of admission for the top-tier elementary school. He wanted to cry but the tears would not come. His son, Ian, was going to be five years old after summer. At just at five years old, he would embrace the cruel competition.

In the era that people were fighting for scarce jobs left by robots and AI, only those having best education could get them. The criteria for the admission of top-tier schools became rediculous. They include presentation skills, international etiquette, music knowledge, leadership skills, craft design, sports (for sure), the third language, virtues, and so on. The admission committes claims the criteria were for recruting "leaders of the future, in every field". Every family he and his wife knew invested overwhelming amount of time and money in kids’ extracurricular courses for admission of these schools. Some rich families even hired Nobel Prize laureates and NCAA division I coaches to train their kids. When he heard that from the news, he nearly collapsed.

He was a faculty in university, and his wife was a senior staff in city government. They have nice double incomes. However, after paying mortgages, food, different kinds of insurances, and Ian's tuition fees, they could not possibly afford those expensive tutoring courses. However, he thought, I cannot let Ian down. I will try every way.

One day he came home whistling a funny tune. His wife was surprised, "You look happy! Do you get a promotion?"

Before dropping his briefcase, Mr. Joad turned on the wide screen on wall to show the information from his smart phone: "Have you heard of two-step dendritic connection reprogramming, DCR?"

She had her eyes wide open, "No. What's that?"

"Fifty years ago, a MIT professor applied a magnetic field to the right temporo-parietal junction of volunteers' brains, and that changed their moral judgments! The results stunned many people at that time. There was rumor that DoD was interested in using the technology for interrogation of war captives, but she refused. Since then the researches faded away time, and no one know where the professor ended up with." 

He continued, "Recently, Dr. Xue of the Neuroscience Center in my university resumed studies in this field. He developed an approach to modify neuronal connections in brain. Step 1 is to treat neurons with neurotrophic factor to induce their plasticity, followed by modification of specific connections using ultra-strong magnetic field as Step 2. He use functional imaging to track the change of neuronal connection. The results guided him to optimize the method to modify particular functions in the brain."   

"He tested this method on mice. These little guys passed through the maze ten fold faster than regular mice!"

His wife was quiet for a few more seconds, and then asked, "You mean they became smarter?"

Mr. Joad smiled, "Yes! Dr. Xue further tested DCR on cats and dogs, which enhanced their learning ability dramatically. He even tried it on monkeys..." He played a video, "they became able to comunicate with human by typing on computer! Isn't that amazing?"

He kep going, "Now Dr. Xue is recruting volunteers for clinical trials..."

"Are you going to let Ian try this? No way!" His wife was aghast.