The Experiment

"Morality is always spoken of in black and white, as though clear delineations existed.  Surely this can't be true.  Whitest snow bears stains of tar, and blackest night cannot ever remove the existence of stars.  In all acts of good or evil, their opposite can be found.  No man commits evil believing he is evil.  No man pursues good without simultaneously causing evil.  This is the nature of morality.  It is not a Manichean dichotomy.  A man's moral character is a pixellated image, dots of black and white that when viewed together and with the distance of objectivity, form a coherent picture."
                Dr. Mikhail Vartor, The Image of Man: Pixel Theory of Morality, YC 103

Caldari Prime
Kalaakiota Corporate R&D office
Office of the Director of Applied Psychomanipulation

Dr. Silas Tobit was apprehensive.  Today was the day he was to present his research proposal for final approval.  It was unbelievably exciting, but also terrifying.  He was proposing total reformation, not of behavior, but of actual motivation and the interpretive framework of the mind of a human being.  This was an important distinction, as behavior had been manipulated for millenia, largely by accessing and manipulating the basic human drives and desires in subtle ways, usually through cleverly tailored stimuli.  This was entirely the province of advertising and religion, and politics as well, though, to Dr. Tobit, politics was largely the mixture of the other two.

He stepped into the office of the director.  Silas knew that the key to gaining project approval was to emphasize its profitability and the ability to use it to gain advantage over the other megacorporations.  Essentially, he must appeal to both greed and vanity and the drive to power.  What could fit better into this than the ability to radically alter the very core of individuality and free will?  Controlling man's behavior is all well and good, but what if you could control man's essence?
That was a question that Dr. Tobit hoped to answer, or more precisely, to prove possible.

At forty-one years old, Dr. Tobit was a reasonably seasoned scientist.  He was an Achura, raised in Perimeter, schooled at all the best institutions and personally mentored by several key figures in psychomanipulation, which was a somewhat obscure field, largely due to the rather common knowledge nature of the manner in which human desire can be manipulated in order to effect behavior.  Tobit was out to change that by changing the game entirely.  He had already picked the test subject, an ultra-violent mercenary turned capsuleer pirate. 

The director gave Dr. Tobit a nod.  The director's disdain for Dr. Tobit was no secret, and his eyes, gratefully hidden by his dark glasses, were filled with his enmity.  He felt Silas was a waste of ISK, a charlatan, a snake oil merchant.  However, there were some Provists breathing down his neck for this research, and thus, his hands were tied.  As much as he hated this diminuitive little Achura, he must give him what he wished.  "You've been greenlighted.  Do you have a subject in mind?"

Silas could barely contain his excitement.  Finally! His voice, amazingly, came out unwavering, no hint of his vast tumult of emotions. "I have."  He pressed a button on his datapad and a holoemitter came to life, the three dimensional image of a man, a Civire, was displayed. As the model rotated, the input jacks of a capsuleer became visible.

"A capsuleer?  Are you out of your damn mind, Silas?" The director shouted, the vein in his forehead taking on a life of its own and threatening to leap out of his head and strangle Silas of its own accord. 

Silas nodded. "Of course.  The better to prove the viability of my theory.  If I can radically alter the thought patterns of an Empyrean, then my theory will be irrefutable." 

The director smiled inwardly.  This fool would fail, and the Provists would get off his back, and he'd finally be rid of this fruitcake.  "Why this one?"

Silas smiled. "He's a pirate, an orphan, a violent product of a violent childhood.  His parents were war criminals killed by the state.  He distrusts all authority, and is the CEO of a corporation.  He's absolutely perfect for it.  I intend to radically subvert his currently excessively violent drives and replace them with a need for authority, morality, and perhaps, just for fun, religion."

The director's eyebrow raised of its own accord.  Religion? Interesting. "Very well.  What's his name?"

"Ryven Haijikioten, though he calls himself Ryven Krennel."