The Black King shuffled sideways.
The Red King followed....
Uselessly.
"Tie game," Ronald said.
"Tie game," Manet said.
"Let's talk," Ronald said cheerfully. He was always cheerful.
Cheerfulness was a personality trait Manet had thumbed out for him. Cheerful. Submissive. Co-operative. Manet had selected these factors in order to make Ronald as different a person from himself as possible.
"The Korean-American War was the greatest of all wars," Ronald said pontifically.
"Only in the air," Manet corrected him.
Intelligence was one of the factors Manet had punched to suppress. Intelligence. Aggressiveness. Sense of perfection. Ronald couldn't know any more than Manet, but he could (and did) know less. He had seen to that when his own encephalograph matrix had programmed Ronald's feeder.