It was uncertain who first conceived of the operation. All that was known was that initial attempts were not successful, resulting in death or total catatonia. However, after some experimentation, surgeons learned just how much of the brain they could safely excise to leave the patient in a prelapsarian condition of mental diminution that approached Billy's state.

Part of the conversion involved leaving the top half of the skull off, so that the person's newly diminished brain would enjoy the atmosphere just as Billy's did.

Sales of the type of hat Billy wore also skyrocketed. So did the sales of a special antibiotic ointment for anointing the wounds.

At first this phenomenon caused much parental concern. Parents fruitlessly forbade their children to spend their allowance or discretionary income on the operation. Campaigns were started to outlaw it.

Preachers and role models spoke against it. However, all the anti-Billy sentiment could not contend against the real desires of youths to emulate their new hero.

Clinics specializing in the operation opened to accommodate the swelling demand for "Billyization." More and more people--not just the young--signed the consent forms allowing the removal of their gray matter. Recognizing the futility of their fight against the tide of disavowal of sentience, all but the die-hard protestors gave up.

Two years passed. Hundreds of thousands of Billys had been artificially created. Billy himself turned eighteen. The parrot, rat and spider, fat and confident from two years of high living, embarked on the next step of their master plan.

Billy announced that he would run for the House of Representatives to become a voice for his people. He established residency in a district where anencephalics were a majority. He won handily.

In the next few years, Billy, under the direction of his cranial riders, managed to push through much legislation granting special privileges to anencephalics, claiming that they needed extra dispensations due to their unique disability, self-administered though it was.

Many people began to envy the anencephalics their easy lot. However, unlike elites of the past, it was easy to gain entry to this class. Billy's final legislation in the last year of his first term was to establish public clinics where anencephaly was produced free of charge.

Billy did not neglect his parents in this busy time. Like a good son, he brought them to Washington and established them in a luxurious Georgetown house, where they arranged entertainments that served to advance Billy's career.

Billy won re-election to his seat easily.

At the end of his second term, Billy stepped down to campaign for the presidency. He had previously succeeded in lowering the minimum age for that office.

Billy had his own political party now, the Decorticates.

The campaign was very grueling, more so than the three creatures inside Billy had anticipated. The parrot was kept busy making speeches, and found sometimes that he had to talk faster than he could think. The rat had improved his synaptic manipulations to the point where he no longer needed the spider to assist him. This freed the spider to sit in her web and plot the details of the campaign.

It was touch and go in the polls right up until election eve.

But when election day itself was over, Billy had won.

On inauguration day, the celebratory cortege featured a squad of a hundred Billy-boys and Billy-girls, newly decorticated for the occasion, attempting precision marching. They blundered into each other, and the parade had to be stopped while they were untangled.

Billy's career had reached its apex.

One day well into his third term, Billy sat alone in the Oval Office. He had removed his hat, so that the inhabitants of his skull could enjoy light and fresh air.

The parrot was fat as a pigeon and had developed the habit of continually puffing out his chest feathers and preening.

The rat was sleek as a guinea pig, his cheeks always bulging with food.

Only the spider, being something of an ascetic, retained her old proportions, albeit in a self-satisfied manner.

They filled the confines of Billy's skull nearly to bursting.

The parrot said, "We must begin to think about the next election. Perhaps we could just do away with it. I'm getting tired of masterminding these things."

"You're getting tired!" demanded the rat. "What about me? You have no conception of how hard it is to goad this lump properly. I'm the one who really suffers during these campaigns. I think I deserve the lion's share of the credit."

"Come, come," the spider admonished. "Don't argue. Remember, if I hadn't discovered this place and invited you both in, you'd be nowhere today."

"Oh, shut up," said the parrot.

"Yeah," chorused the rat. "Listen to Fathead and go back to your spinning."

"Who are you calling 'Fathead'?"

"You, you second-rate ventriloquist!"

Enraged, the parrot bit the rat's tail.

The rat responded by sinking his teeth into the parrot's wing.

The parrot sought to escape by beating his free wing wildly. He managed to half-flutter, half-fall out of Billy's skull, dragging the rat with him.

They rolled on the floor, clawing and biting.

The spider emerged and walked across the floor. Attempting to act as mediator, she was crushed to death by her co-conspirators.

In a moment, the parrot's beak had sunk through the rat's eye to his brain. At the same instant, the rat managed to bite out the parrot's throat.

The three corpses lay cooling on the rug.

After many hours, the Decorticate advisors summoned up the initiative to enter the chief's office.

They failed to notice the insignificant corpses on the carpet. They went up to Billy and peered curiously into his skull.

"It's empty," said one.

"So it is," agreed another.