‘It was shelved by the ethics committee. I’m sure it would have been revisited eventually. But then Martin Elstree and I found a loophole in the IP agreement between Bernard Zborowski and the study he worked on. The study was done through Excelsior-Barking, that bastion of higher learning.’

‘Don’t make fun of my alma mater.’

Her mouth twitches, almost a smile. ‘The work was funded by a BigSky grant but not included under their corporate envelope in terms of disclosure and IP. The loophole allowed Bernard to take his developing ideas elsewhere after the study was closed.’

‘And that’s where you picked him up.’

She nods. ‘The failure of the original project didn’t stop BigSky from continuing to work on other aspects of the sleep interface. They are keen to further develop Sweet Dreams and they will. But they’ve backed off from the use of a chemical delivery system; it’s just too fraught with litigious risk. That’s why, with the help of Martin as a negotiator, we now hold the patent on the anti-dementia agent. That is to say, Meera and I hold it.’

‘And where is Meera in all this?’

‘Her intervention is why your dreamhacking has been improving. I kept all your recorded sessions – Meera studied them and used them to make corrections. She could send instructions straight to you using the interface. Some of this was delivered directly via the dream content and some of it came through ingrowing machinery introduced directly.’

‘What do you mean, “introduced directly”?’

She clears her throat.

‘We er . . . we spiked your tea.’

‘You what?’

‘Spiked your tea, darling. It was easy. You make it so strong and you often let the milk go sour, so your taste buds can’t have much sensitivity.’

‘I . . . You drugged me with tiny machines and now you’re blaming my taste buds?’

‘It was a terrible thing to do. I am a terrible person, you know. I keep telling you, and you think I’m joking. I wasn’t joking. I’m not joking now. In fact, I rarely joke. It’s why I seldom attend parties. Laughter is tedious.’

‘So . . . this is why my ability has been evolving? Bernard said it was because the original treatment is a nanomachine.’

‘Yes, and Meera has been communicating with the machinery that now lives in your brain. Like what’s happening right now. The Dream City. This is all a construct created by the machinery burrowing into your skull and operating on your brain tissue. The sideways tower is your brain’s effort to translate all the building that’s going on neurally. In fact, we could argue that the alterations the dreaming process has made in your neural architecture are much more radical than anything I could put in your tea. But maybe the chemical side of things feels more violating to you.’