Unlike an intervention in a citizen patient, which depends heavily on the psychologist's investigative skills to tailor a tape, this tape is precisely targeted, prepared by the same designers who prepared the azi's psychset. It has an accuracy virtually impossible with a non-azi patient whose life has been shaped by unrecorded experiences in a random world. This azi, cloistered from birth and given his psychset by tape, is a much more known quantity, even after he has served in the armed forces and lived with naturally born citizens.
Everyone who has ever held authority over him has had special training in dealing with azi. No azi Supervisor is permitted to raise his voice with his charges. Reward or the withholding of reward is the rule of discipline; and the trust between this man and any psychologist-supervisor is more profound than that between parent and child. That this is a different Supervisor than last month does not trouble him. He has absolute confidence in her once he is sure that she is licensed.
People who have had their first experience working with unsocialized azi generally comment first that they feel they have to whisper; and then that they find themselves overwhelmed by the emotional attachment the azi are instantly ready to give them.
They trust me too much, is the almost universal complaint.
But this man is a soldier and works regularly with unlicensed citizens. He has developed emotional defenses and interacts freely with his citizen comrades. His commanding officer has had a training course and passed a test that qualifies him to deal with azi, but he holds no license and does not treat this man any differently than the others in his command. The commanding officer is only aware that a request from this man to undergo counseling has to be honored immediately, and if the azi requests the intervention of a Beta-supervisor, he must be sedated and sent to hospital without delay, because while problems in azi are very rare and a socialized azi's emotional defenses are generally as strong as any citizen's, an azi's psychset is not built by experience, but by instruction, and the defenses are not a network of social reliances as they are in a normal human mind. An azi who feels that shield weakened is vulnerable to everyone around him. He has entered something very like a cataphoric-induced learning-state, in which he is less and less capable of rejecting stimuli that impinge on him. The result is very like taking a cataphoric in a crowded room, intensely uncomfortable for the azi and potentially damaging.
The tape this man is enjoying is more than pleasurable for him. It is also reaffirming his values and reinforcing his self-esteem. His trust right now is absolute. He experiences what no citizen will experience in a random world: he is in touch with absolute truth and agrees perfectly with what he is.
This is Reseune, where our soldier was born. This three-year-old azi, much younger than our student, is preparing himself for what is commonly called deep-tape. He is anxious not about the procedure, which he has had before, but about the machine, which he has finally begun to notice as significant in the room. The psychsurgeon hugs him and reassures him, and finally makes a face and gets a laugh from him. He helps the surgeon attach the patches.
The dosage of cataphoric he receives is very heavy. His thresholds are completely flat and his blood chemistry is constantly monitored.
The tape is reinforcing his value-sets in words he is capable of understanding.
It tells him how to win approval. It tells him what his talents are and what his strengths are.
It may remind him that he has tendencies to avoid, much in the same way a parent may tell a child he must mind and not sulk. But the tape dwells continually on positive things and praise, and always ends that way.
As it closes the Supervisor tells him a word he must lock this up with; and he will remember it. The next time the Supervisor will access that set of instructions with that particular key, which is recorded in the azi's file, with his tapes. As he grows, his deep-tape will become more abstract. The verbal keys will be integrated into larger and larger complexes as his psychstructures are merged into complete sets, and he will accept the values he is given with an azi's complete openness to a licensed Supervisor.
Because the child has shown distress at the machine the Supervisor remembers to reassure him about the equipment while he is still receptive to instruction. Any distress the azi may feel with any of these procedures, no matter how minor, is carefully traced for cause and dealt with seriously. At no time does a Supervisor wish one of his charges to fear these procedures.
All the azi tape is designed here, in these ordinary-looking offices, by designers some of whom are azi themselves. Much of it is done with the help of computers, which analyze the extremely meticulous physiological testing done on azi types . . . such things as hand-eye coordination in a particular azi geneset, reaction time, balance, vision, hearing, physical strength, hormonal activity, Rezner scores, reaction to stress. The designer takes all of these things into account in making a tape specifically for that geneset, tailored precisely to that geneset's strengths and weaknesses, and linking into a particular pyschset.
It is a designer who consults Reseune's library to select a geneset which can be given the special skills necessary to a new technology.
It is a designer who attends an azi returned to the labs by his Supervisor for what the report calls severe problems. It is a designer who will order the tests and interview the azi to discover whether the problem lies with the Supervisor or the azi. It is a designer who will prepare a tape to cure the problemor issue a binding order regarding the handling of all azi of that geneset, restricting them from certain duties.
It is a designer who has destined this boy for civilian security duties, a change from the military training his genotype generally gets. Designers are usually conservative in shifting a genotype into new applications, because they, as much as their subjects, want to assure success. At Reseune, where azi test subjects are used, a keyword procedure creates a retrieval tab on the test set so that a psychsurgeon can maintain it separate for a considerable time before integrating it into the psychset. The few azi who run what are called short-term tests are specially trained in isolating and handling the interventions, and are themselves the judges of whether they should accept a particular test. Reseune's rule is to experiment slowly, and to deal with only one change at a time.
Occasionally an azi, like any member of the general public, develops severe psychological problems.
Many of these are sent to Reseune, where designers and psychsurgeons work with them, attempting to devise solutions to the psychological difficulties, solutions which also benefit science and find their way into general psychotherapy.
In some instances the solution has to be retraining, which necessitates mind-wipe and a long period of recovery. In an azi of proven genotype and psychset a problem of this magnitude is always due to extreme trauma, and Reseune will take legal measures on the azi's behalf in the event of negligence or mistreatment.
In other instances the solution is only in the genetics wing; Reseune forbids reproduction of a genotype that has met difficulty until the designers working with the afflicted azi can find a fix for the problem.