‘I’m not sure.’ Oliver runs his fingers over his beard. ‘A blip in the power supply perhaps. We’re checking everything over. Is Anna okay?’

‘She’s upset at being snatched away from Adam without warning and I don’t like the sound of her headache, and that nosebleed was nasty.’

‘I don’t know if the magnets and the processors are too strong in the scanner or if the addition of senses recognition to the VR goggles is just too much. She was checked over by Sofia though. She’s exhausted but fine physically. I mean is she okay… emotionally.’

‘She was… excited.’

‘Excited?’ Oliver thinks it’s an odd choice of word.

‘Excited that she was able to put into place some of the communication strategies we’d discussed.’

‘So that’s a good thing?’

‘It’s… odd.’

‘How so?’

‘This is Adam’s consciousness. Adam’s dream as it were. How can it be that he’s thinking of the exact same thing I’d just discussed with her that morning?’

‘The way they connect must give her a degree of influence and their bond means she is more of a participant than, say, I would be.’

‘Are you positive that’s what’s happening? That this is Adam’s consciousness, not Anna’s imagination?’

‘No, but then that’s the point of a clinical trial. To establish patterns. Facts.’

‘If it’s Adam’s thoughts, how did Anna start off alone in the bath, without him there?’

‘We all have thoughts and dreams featuring other people and we’re not always present. Anna often has a bath. Adam could easily recall that, recreate that. It was sweet the way she was talking to the baby.’

‘Yes, the baby. She’s getting too attached. As we spoke, her hands were over her stomach as if she is really pregnant. She’ll be devastated when her part in the trial is over. It will be like the trauma of miscarriage again.’

Oliver is silent for a moment. ‘I don’t think I understood the implications on an emotional level of allowing Anna to take part in the trial. It seems cruel now to have allowed her to connect to Adam, to be with him again on some level, and then send them both back to the UK without access to the equipment. I like her. I’m not as detached as I should be.’ He runs his hand over his beard. ‘Have I messed up? Caused her irreversible trauma?’

‘I don’t know. This isn’t exactly a scenario we covered in my training but I’m not convinced your invention is doing what it should.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think possibly Anna is imagining how she would like things to be. That she hasn’t really connected to Adam at all. She wants a baby more than anything, and suddenly she’s pregnant again.’