Some people might think that thirty years of silence would generate such a harrowing sense of loneliness that the poor man talked to himself the whole time, or that the transition from the simple pallet bed of his sanctuary to the thudding and throbbing cacophony of the scanner had induced a panic attack and BFD was screaming silently in order not to break his vow, but Father Guido, pointing to the beatific smile on the friar’s face as he slid into the inferno of claustrophobic technology, had another explanation, which was definitely the one they were going to put on the Capo Santo version of Happy Helmets, aimed at the Catholic market: ‘It is very simple,’ said the bespectacled Abbot, in his rustic Italian accent, ‘ordinary people speak to each other for five or maybe ten hours a day about a variety of mundane concerns, but Domenico, who has devoted his entire life to prayer, speaks for twenty-four hours a day to God about the most profound questions of the universe. He even prays while he sleeps! Here is the scientific proof of a truly miraculous level of spiritual attainment!’

‘Incredible,’ said Saul, ‘just incredible; that dopamine pathway must be humming. Go, Baby, go! His nucleus accumbens is giving him an Olympic Gold every few seconds. If we could replicate the trans-cranial stimulation loop between these different areas,’ he said, sweeping his excited hand over the entire polychrome image on the screen, and into the woods beyond, ‘we are going to have some very happy customers!’

Saul had also been excited by Hunter’s proposed acquisition of the Oxford virtual reality app. He totally got that it would provide a narrative arc for the next-level Brainwaves consumer, who didn’t just want the bliss, but some spiritual and intellectual entertainment along the way, labouring through the jeering streets wearing the crown of thorns; sitting under the spreading Bodhi Tree in Bodhgaya; joining the throbbing orange mass following the juggernauts that dragged a marigold-strewn statue of the elephant-headed Ganesh; vultures circling above Zoroastrian towers of silence, and all the rest of it, The Varieties of Religious Experience niche within the Happy Helmets range.