The narrator welcomes his wife and daughter back from America, and is briefly upset to learn his wife wants a divorce - but his feelings about it are quickly regulated by his Brain, an AI implant designed to smooth all strong emotions out into kindness and happiness. People with this implant are referred to as Enhanced and viewed as a more enlightened stage of humanity. Most people are Enhanced, including the narrator's whole family. His wife is marrying Sollazzo, an author, and the two men become friends. The narrator's extremely negative real feelings briefly peek through as he signs the divorce papers but the Brain forces them under control, and does so again and again over the time he spends with Sollazzo and his ex-wife and daughter. When his daughter experiences issues with her own implant that cause her to run into traffic, the narrator's Brain makes him forget most of the associated trauma. The daughter is rushed to hospital and saved, and she and the ex-wife return to America with Sollazo. Sollazo and the narrator debate over whether there is any reason for fiction to exist now that all emotions are regulated. Eventually, Sollazo kills himself. When the non-Enhanced nurse who takes care of the narrator's mother and who admired Sollazo shows her grief, the narrator loses control of his AI, which causes him to laugh hysterically, expressing some kind of powerful but unidentifiable emotion he feels regarding Sollazo. The nurse is so unnerved she quits and never returns, and the narrator, now almost incapable of understanding human emotion, cannot understand why.