Gaines took her by the arm. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘It’s OK, really.’ They stood looking at one another, while Case and his team stared at them. Rig gave her one of his wryest smiles and while he was still smiling at her said to someone nearby:

‘We could probably get some coffee here?’

The guy said sure. He could fetch that if they liked. They could get regular with milk or they could get regular without.

‘You don’t need to stay with us,’ Gaines told the assistant when the coffee arrived. ‘Have a look around. Have a look at everything.’ After that she was left alone with herself to an unfamiliar degree.

The room was as big as a travel terminal, dark but with islands of activity. Vehicles drove about, some quite heavy. Over near the middle of the space they had something isolated under powerful lights. It was moving in a sporadic way, like something natural, but she couldn’t see what it was. She found a place to sit, sprawled her legs wide and smiled at some of Case’s people until they looked away. She thought of names for herself: Bruna, Kyshtym, Korelev R-7 and ‘The Angel of the Parking Orbit’. She looked down at her forearm: it was registering No Data. Meanwhile, Case’s people brought up new equipment, which they organised inside the circle of light. Whatever it was, it meant nothing to the assistant.

Outside the lighted area they had some basic chopshop fitments – a brand new proteome tank enamelled the colour of white goods in 1953, a cutting table and some surgical instruments. She was comfortable with all that. When she had finished her coffee, Gaines led her over there and said, ‘While we’re waiting, why don’t we have a look at this seizure activity of yours? Hop up on the table.’ She hopped up on the table and let him get a couple of probes into her at neurotypical sites. One of them slipped into her chest cavity, high up. She felt it rest momentarily against the collarbone as it pressed past. A sensation difficult to interpret: not painful so much as certain and invasive. Soon she experienced pleasantly warm and lethargic feelings, with everything retreating to a distance as if it had nothing to do with her. ‘That’s great,’ Gaines told her, ‘just relax. Fuck,’ he said, to someone else. ‘These guys, whoever they were! Look at this. And this.’ He touched something and colours flew about in her head like small birds. She heard herself laugh. ‘Oops,’ Gaines said. ‘Wrong switch. Did you like that?’ She tasted metal, then two or three workshop spaces seemed to open inside her. Gaines began working in one of them. Later Case arrived to have a look.

‘I don’t want him here,’ she said.

‘It’s fine,’ Gaines said. ‘It’ll be fine.’

‘I want you to wake me up now,’ the assistant said.