When I Grow Up

The narrative is set at a vast, centuries-old university where two rival schools conduct long-running experiments to settle heredity versus environment. One school raises foundlings under regimented cultural conditioning, while the other selects long-lineage pupils to trace innate tendencies. Professors Possenfeller and Smithlawn, professional rivals and friends, are drawn into a disturbing case when a young foundling named Herbux manifests an inexplicably destructive impulse that resists both pedagogical shaping and genetic prediction. The plot follows their investigations and debates, probing scientific hubris, ethical responsibility, and the limits of deterministic theories about human behavior.