Origin Story

"The reason lies in your education, Max," he said diffidently. "The difficulties facing us now were beginning to show themselves over a generation ago. The government of the time decided to bring up a small number of children according to a new system of education. The idea was to develop people capable of comprehending in detail the massiveness of modern civilization, by means of forced learning in every subject. The experiment failed. All your schoolfellows lost their sanity. You survived, but did not turn into the product we had hoped for. To prevent any later derangement of your mind, a large part of the information which had been pressured into it was removed by hypnotic means. The result is yourself as you are, a super-dilettante, with an intense curiosity and a gift for management. We gave you the post you now hold and forgot about you. Now you are ideal for our purpose."

from Michael Moorcock's short story, Flux