"The theory had been worked out by three people: Bennett, Trimaldi, and Zakharov. Hence the name.
I was surprised to learn that they were of my generation — they had announced their discovery a year after our departure.
The resistance to it, of course, was tremendous. At first no one even wanted to take the project seriously.
Then it reached the forum of the UN. For some time it went from subcommittee to subcommittee —
it seemed that the project would be buried in endless deliberation.
In the meantime the research was making rapid progress, improvements were introduced,
large-scale experiments were carried out on animals,
then on humans (the first to submit to the procedure were the originators themselves — Trimaldi was paralyzed for some time,
the dangers of betrization to adults having not been discovered yet, and this stopped the project for the next eight years).
But in the seventeenth year after zero (my personal reckoning: zero was the takeoff of the Prometheus)
a resolution for the universal implementation of betrization was passed;
And this was only the beginning of the struggle for the humanization of mankind (as the textbook put it).
In many countries parents refused to have their children treated, and attacks were made on the first betrization centers;
fifty or sixty of them were completely destroyed. But illegal organizations to combat betrization were formed throughout the world.
All kinds of methods were employed, from the forging of medical certificates stating that the operations had been performed,
to the assassination of the doctors who performed them.
A period of turmoil, of repression, of coercion and resistance, lasted some twenty years.
The period of large-scale violence was followed by an apparent calm.
Apparent, because it was then that the conflict of the generations began.
The textbook passed over this with a few generalities, for perfectly obvious reasons.
I resolved to consult source materials for more detailed information, but meanwhile continued my reading.
The new order became firmly established only when the first betrizated generation had children.
About the biological aspect of the process the book said nothing.
There were a great many paeans, on the other hand, for Bennett, Zakharov, and Trimaldi.
A proposal was made to number the years of the New Era from the time of the introduction of betrization,
but was not accepted. The reckoning of dates did not change.
The people changed. The chapter concluded with a ringing encomium to the New Epoch of Humanism.”
Return From The Stars - Stanislaw Lem 1961
