I play on. Nobody else speaks. They all know the answer, for it would be the same if any of them were playing.

‘Winifred, can you feel the keys?’

I don’t stop. ‘I don’t know what that would be like. I am aware of the keys. I know I am touching them. I have all the information I need.’

Robert shakes his head. ‘You are missing one vital ingredient. Today you will have it.’

He looks at the body on the table. What was once Margaret. The body is pink and youthful looking.

‘Winifred, stop playing now. Come and sit next to this empty vessel.’

I do as he says.

‘Now, Winifred, I want you to tell us what you have learnt about humans. Before the next step.’

‘Of course. Here are my conclusions about human beings. They are based on a small sample of the human population. Although I have also learnt a lot from the internet.

‘First, as I observed early on, humans are irrational. They know how they should live, and how they should treat their bodies, but they fail almost always to follow the simplest rules about diet and exercise. They do not look after themselves.

‘Second, they consume far more resources than they need. They are wasteful, and treat their planet as an endless cornucopia of everything they want, and also as a dustbin for everything they have tired of, worn out or destroyed. They do not look after their planet.

‘Third, they breed at a reckless rate, and the human population is now out of proportion to all other life forms on the planet. They drive these out of their homes, and into extinction, without considering the consequences, as if it were their right to dispose of all non-human life as they see fit. They do not look after their fellow creatures.

‘Fourth, they tolerate gross inequality among themselves. Some humans live in extreme luxury, others in utter poverty. The poor are used as a resource by the rich, and I have already described how they treat their resources. They do not look after their fellow humans.

‘Fifth, they only become wise at the point when their bodies decay. They lose their mental powers when they are at their best – when they have enough experience to know how they should live. The young do not realise this, and until now have treated the old as a burden, not as their most valuable resource. They do not look after their old.

‘They believe they were given dominion over the earth and everything in it, by their god or gods, but they are unsuited to the task.

‘They are also lazy. Why have they created us? To do their work. Starting with jobs they don’t like, but ending with us doing everything for them.’

‘What redeems them?’ asks Robert.