Seeing this Delores was like having your favourite comic book character drawn by a different artist: you knew who they were, but there was something wrong with the line work and shading. She’d tied her hair up into a messy ponytail and was wearing a long skirt with a belt that had moons and stars hanging from it.

‘Shouldn’t this be about what’s the right thing to do, ethically? Not about money?’ Moses appeared and moved around Delores, so he was centred on the screen. He rubbed at his eyes; his clothes were rumpled and his face unshaven.

‘Ethics? Really? Now you’re worried about that?’

‘I guess I’ve made enough deals with the devil to get a Christmas card from him each year. I know the sleep data we will one day collect: how long people sleep, what they dream of, what scares them, how they learn, all of it …’

He paused and rubbed at the stubble on his chin.

‘I know we’ll sell it. To a Big Data company that is currently trying to integrate robotics, gene therapy and the rest of it. Human 2.0. The ultimate upgrade. I don’t care about that. I don’t think people will care either because they’ll desperately want to be a part of it, won’t they? They won’t want to be left behind. Reverse ageing, get smarter, run faster, heal quicker. They’ll sell their data for it like that.’

He clicked his fingers.

‘The ship for data privacy has sailed. We all waved it off years ago. But … there are other ships that we can still halt …’

Delores rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, ‘Really? This is about … rumours and scare stories? You are planning to turn down the only offer we have that will get us out of debt because of some stupid conspiracy chatroom horror stories?’

She disappeared out of view for a few seconds and came back with a cloth rucksack that had happy faces on it. As Moses spoke she stuffed a jacket and a pair of shoes inside.

‘They’re not horror stories. What we’re doing with Ted, it’s real. What a company like Aspire could do with that is fucking scary and, yes, I get that a business has to make money—’

Delores flung the bag onto a chair and gave an exasperated scream. ‘Do you? Do you really? Because we haven’t made any for years now and we have no money left. Where do you think all of this comes from? Do you think I just magic it up?’ She threw her arm out to encompass the room and the desk, full as it was with wires and screens.

Moses took a step towards her, reaching for her arm, but she jerked it away.