‘No. But I did use Martin Elstree to patent the technology that gives you your abilities. BigSky tried to take it back from us, so I removed everything from their reach. They’ve only been able to create software that performs minor functions. They don’t have the biotech, and they can’t even make a proper dreamhacking bot.’

‘Yeah, about that. This thing that’s growing. In my head, O. You’ve patented it. You are the silent partner in Little Bird. You worked with Bernard and Meera. You’ve been using your own sister. And you’ve been using me.’ My voice catches and I swallow hard on a tightness that wants to become a sob.

She nods once. Matter-of-fact.

‘It started out for medical reasons. My sister. I was looking for a therapy that could slow down the progress of the disease, let her die of something else to spare her the cognitive deterioration. And of course, to spare myself if I ended up with the same affliction in time. I started Little Bird and convinced Meera Bhango to come in with me as a partner. I provided the funding and gave her free rein.

‘She had some techniques involving in vivo machinery that were promising in animal trials. The problem was the inability to control the machines she had built once they were in situ. We needed an interface. Now, with animals you can image their brains and you can give them cognitive tests, but you can’t ask them directly about changes in their consciousness. We needed to do trials on people, but there are a lot of ethical issues there.’

‘No kidding.’

She ignores my snide comment and continues.

‘So the only other option was to deploy the agent in a simulated human brain to see if we could build a case for human trials. The problem is cost. Rightly or wrongly, simulated people are actually a lot more expensive than real people. Time was of the essence, so I started looking around for VR studies we could piggyback on, and that’s when Bernard’s team came to my attention.’

‘My study.’

‘Yes. Your study. We could see that the techniques being used by the team would be very helpful to us, if modified properly, because as you know, you ingested a substance with a time-dependent effect that could be controlled via the BigSky interface, using your headware. They already had their hooks into you, so to speak. I had a unique view of the proceedings, for of course there’s very little that goes on in BigSky that I can’t access.’

‘Shandy was right. You’ve been all up in BigSky this whole time.’

‘In a covert way, yes, of course. I was very careful, though. Anyway, when the anomalous results started to become apparent, BigSky pulled the plug on the whole thing. And that would have been the end of it.’

‘They really dropped it?’