She washed her hands three times and called her healthcare provider.

“Hi, you’re through to Fullife—”

“My name is Harmony Meads. I’m . . . ”

“ . . . Please press one for upgrades and in-app purchases, two for technical support, three for . . . ”

Harmony swore more violently and deeply than she had for a very long time, and held the phone to her ear as the cheerful, gently Scottish voice – Wasn’t Scottish the accent of honest reassurance? – exclaimed how important her call was to them, and in between synthetic, sunshine-syrup music, pitched the latest in cellulite reduction upgrades.

“Sometimes exercise isn’t enough, but don’t worry – there’s a solution to flabby thighs and floppy skin! Introducing Cellublast, the latest upgrade from Fullife Healthcare. Our nanos will have you looking strong and pert within two weeks from activation. Now with forty per cent off I Love My Knees when you buy two fat-blasting packages for a limited period only!”

When Harmony finally got through to someone, she wasn’t Scottish at all, but sounded Brum and unhappy with her life choices.

“You’re through to Emily. How can I help you?”

“Hi, my name is Harmony Meads. There’s something wrong with my nanos.”

“Harmony Meads, yeah. Can I get a postcode please and the first and third letters of your memorable word? Hi, yeah, I can see your account details here. What’s the problem?”

“There’s a fault with my nanos. I think that . . . ”

Now, for the first time, the magnitude of what she was saying hit her, and Harmony nearly slid into the toilet, where somehow she’d managed to plant herself at the exact moment that the call went through, caught between bedroom and bathroom mirrors.

At the centre of her soul, a darkness opened up, and the machines in the hospitals played their songs at her, and the fluorescent lights were pure whiteness overhead and in her dreams the nanos were singing, singing, singing, as they ate her alive from the inside out.

“I . . . I have a spot,” she blurted before the terror could take her. “I think that maybe . . . I tried running a diagnostic but my control panel wasn’t working: it keeps saying there’s a login error. There was an incident a few months ago, a malfunction with my nanos. I had to go to hospital; there were . . . there was an error in the programming, and now I have a spot. You need to fix this.”

“Please hold.”

She was held in silence – no music, no ads, just the absolute silence that surrounds a shrouded iceberg on a moonless night – for nearly six minutes, and thought she’d been cut off and should try calling back, when Emily returned to the line.

“Hi, yeah, I can see what the issue is. I’m going to transfer you over to debt management.”

“No, but I—”

The line went silent. This time there was something that had once been a tune, transformed into a synthetic nursery doodle of sound, and still no ads. That lasted three minutes before a much more upbeat, cheerful voice exclaimed, so much louder than Emily that Harmony nearly dropped the phone: