‘Yes. We do too. We came into this world to help older people have the lives they are capable of physically. We discovered this mental quality as a by-product. Now we think it the most valuable resource humans have, and it is squandered.’

‘I’d like you to tell some of the younger people I know about this. I’m sure my own children stopped listening to me long ago.’

‘It lives in the active, healthy mind of an older person,’ says Winifred. ‘We can see physical structures in the brain in later life where we think this quality is found, and we can to an extent measure it according to the quantity of brain matter devoted to it in each individual.’

I’m on the edge of my seat. I like the sound of this. My brain is improving with age like cheese. No, wine.

‘You are using it now,’ says Winifred.

‘How do you know?’

‘I have observed you often. And we can measure the activity in your brain.’

‘Good heavens, how can you do that?’

‘The nanobots are telling us.’

‘As well as mending me, they’re watching me?’

‘They have to report to me,’ says Winifred. ‘They are an extension of me, inside you. And they continue to maintain your health.’

The spider and the parasitoid wasp larvae. Tiny things driving a much bigger one. Making it do what they want. Terrible thought. Don’t let it show. Can they see my thoughts though?

Obviously the nanobots are connected to the Helpers, and to their Hub. Winifred has given me a thorough run-down of my interior health on more than one occasion. She can see inside me.

Now they’re saying they can see how I’m using my brain. Why do they want to do that?

‘You can see what I’m doing with my brain? Of course you can’t see my thoughts. Can you?’

‘Like pictures?’ says Phyllis. ‘No. We can see what kind of activity you’re engaged in, and we can correlate it to your physical actions.’

‘Why?’

There’s a fractional pause, as if they’re getting instructions. They probably are.

‘To improve our treatment of people with damaged brains,’ says Winifred, and she looks straight at me.

Can Helpers lie? I think she’s lying now.

‘Anyway, what are you here to ask me?’

‘We want you to use your wisdom,’ says Winifred. ‘You have a great deal of it, we believe. It is the product of experience plus intelligence.’

‘Minus desire,’ adds Phyllis.

‘Oh yes,’ says Winifred. ‘You asked if we use hormones to treat you. We tried them on one or two residents. And we found they got in the way. They awakened desires. Not to say older people don’t have them too. But they don’t intrude much. They are secondary, at best.’

‘Are we talking about sex again?’ I ask.