"Hardly. You'd do the same with any of them." "So what is it? Am I going to be exported to Eden, Tau Ceti as an incorrigible?" Scholar Ross was silent. * * * * * Mr. Hanford said, "Certainly there must be another way?" Mrs. Hanford said, "Must I lose my daughter?" Scholar Ross said regretfully, "There is another way, of course, but either way is essentially a loss of your daughter, Mrs. Hanford." Mr. Hanford said, "And what is this other course, Scholar Ross?" "It's called re-orientation." "Brain-washing!" exclaimed Gloria. "That's a harsh, colloquial term." Mrs. Hanford said, "How does this re-orientation work?" Coldly, as if he were discussing the repair of some inanimate engine, Scholar Ross said, "It starts with corrective surgery on the pituitary and thyroid glands. Next comes some very complicated neuro-cerebral surgery, somewhat resembling the crude, primitive process once called 'Prefrontal Lobotomy'. Nowadays it produces the desired effect without all of the deleterious side-effects. Then, once the patient is completely disoriented, the process of re-education takes place. The patient is extremely docile and highly impressionable. All decisions carry the same weight--" "How do you mean that?" asked Mr. Hanford. "Why, the decision to use blue or black ink in your fountain pen becomes as important as the decision of whether to cling or jump from a damaged aircar." "Oh. And then?" "Why, since the patient is docile and impressionable, we can mold the patient's appreciation of people, places, and events into conformity. Events of the former life are not erased, but they are viewed as if the patient had seen a trivideo drama instead of having been that person. The entire list of friends and acquaintances is changed because the patient's personality is so different that the former friends no longer have anything in common with the patient. It will be," said Scholar Ross, "exactly as if your daughter left you, never to return, and then next year you are introduced to a strange woman who bears a complete resemblance to your daughter. To whom," he added, "you eventually become emotionally attached because of your daughter's memory." "It sounds pretty drastic." "I shall not fool you. It is drastic, indeed." "I don't like it," Gloria snapped. "Yes," pleaded Mrs. Hanford. "What is the alternative?" "Eden, Tau Ceti. I'll arrange transportation under the migration act, and she'll be permitted two hundred pounds of gross." Scholar Ross smiled thinly. "You can diet a few pounds off and thus increase the net weight of your allowable possessions," he said. "But, on the other hand, if you diet down to rail-skinny no one will take a chance on you." Gloria demanded belligerently, "What am I, a raffle prize?" "Why, that's no better than white slavery!" cried her mother.