Mae covered her eyes and wept, and then cast off the water from her cheeks. She was led out through all the Disney World people, all spanking new and polished. Do you know they keep prisoners here? she asked their pristine smiles. She was led to the desk. Time, she told herself, to learn.

The desk began by showing her the inside of an eye. Early efforts at interface had beamed coded light signals onto the retina and recorded differences in pathways. Residual patterns of neural activity appeared that were nothing to do with the light. Other information appeared to be passed.

The brain was responding to low levels of electrical charges from outside the body.

Animals were given sudden peak charges that stimulated all areas of their brain. Every neural pathway was stimulated at once. The mystery was that, once stimulated, the charge continued. The brain entered a new state, always charged, always open. The charge continued to exist without any further source of energy.

How could this be? There could be no perpetual motion, no undying source of unreplenished energy.

Unless the brain existed in a realm with no time. Once imprinted, it stayed charged. It was like a radio switched on forever, but not in our world.

There was another world, of seven other dimensions beyond time, and Air existed in those. Air had no spatial dimension. In Air, one mind occupied the same space as another. Stimulation of one imprinted brain correlated to increased activity in another.

But attempts at shared thinking resulted in disorder and discomfort. One brain works in a way very different from another.

What was needed to make Air work was a uniform Format for information.

In theory at least, this Format would simply be information, too. It could be added to the imprints, providing a shared mechanism for making messages compatible and so able to be shared.

The first Formats were crude mathematical formulae that made only the simplest kinds of neural impulses to be communicated.

The first successfully shared Air message was '2 plus 2 equals 4.' It took the form of nervous jolts: two jolts, two jolts, and then four in succession.

If Air were to be used for any commercial purpose, it would have to do more than that.

Synaesthesia was a phenomenon long known and little understood. Some people saw sound, tasted colour, felt words in their fingertips. The brain, so delicate, so responsive, was responding to minute charge differences caused by other phenomena. Infants experienced them – then learned how to block them.

From synaesthesia, a means of stimulating images, sounds, and even tastes was developed. A means of translating this system into first protocols, and then encoding for those protocols, was some years in development.

End of lesson.

Lunch came. Again it was the silent guard who brought it. And Mae knew then, that despite all his smiles, Hikmet Tunch was frightened of her.

Lunch moved. It was delicious new organisms that could talk.

Bits of lunch piped up, in merry little voices: 'We are designed to provide full vitamin and other protein content undiminished by death or cooking. Think of us as the perfect form of happy nutrition.'

Then they sang a happy little song waiting to be eaten. They looked like limbless prawns without shells, with little carbon crystals perched on top like jewels.

'Take that foulness away. Tell Mr Tunch that I will starve myself rather than eat anything other than normal food.'

The silent giant nodded once and left the room, with the lunch still pointedly on the table, still singing like little intelligent bells. He came back with a bowl of ordinary soup. He sat and watched Mae eat it, as if making sure she did. He looked at his watch.

It was only after several mouthfuls that Mae realized the soup had an aftertaste. 'Is there something in this?' she asked. The giant left.

Colours began to sharpen. Mae felt her unease with a new razor-sharpness.

The door opened, and Mr Pakan came in with a dog.

The dog's head was shaved, and a neat little metal cap was bolted to its skull. The cap had a speaker in it.

'Mae, hello, Mae,' the dog slobbered in affection. 'I have a job. People trust me with a job. They have made me much smarter, and taught me how to talk. There may be a future for dogs, if we can tell jokes and love our masters.'

It came toward Mae, backing her into a corner.

'Please let me lick your hand. I only want to lick your hand.'

Mae's head was beginning to buzz, and there was a kind of gathering tension, as if a bubble had swollen and was about to burst.

'You bastards,' she managed to say. They were doing this deliberately, to bring Mrs Tung back.

'Don't you like me? Please like me,' the dog was pleading, wanting to whimper, but the whimper was given a voice. 'Who will feed me if I am not loved?'

Where are we, dear?

Mae heard oxygen rustle in her ear, and she understood so clearly everything that Mrs Tung was feeling. The floor was shifting underfoot, the room was melting.

Let's go home. Do you know the way?

Mae settled onto the floor. Mr Pakan nipped forward and began to wrap Velcro around Mae's arm.

The last thing Mae saw before losing her body was the dog, eating the singing food. 'Gosh, this is good,' said the dog.

Mae was buzzed all the way to the back of her body.

Mrs Tung stood up and sat in a chair, and asked Mr Pakan, 'Would you be good enough to find a blanket for me, dear?'

Who is that man? Mae tried to ask her. You don't know who he is, do you?

The colours chuckled and Mae fell silent.

But oh, Mrs Tung thought, it's so good to have joints free from pain! And to see so clearly! My books! I shall be able to read my books again. Mrs Tung hooted with pleasure.

Now, she thought, if only Mae were here.

Mae awoke feeling limp, as if every bone were broken.

She was in bed in a room that was like a hospital, but it was a room for one. sick bay rules, said a notice on a bulletin board. She was still being held.

A kind of ringing went off.

A young male nurse put his head through the door. His eyes skittered over machines.

'How do you feel?' he asked in a high, quiet voice. He might have been Hikmet Tunch's brother.

How do you think I feel? Mae thought. 'Not too good,' she replied. 'Do I still have my baby?'

He paused for a beat. 'I think so.' He wasn't sure. 'Someone will see you soon.' He turned and left.

Somewhere music was playing. The buzzing strings, the slight wheedling flatness of the flute, marked it as Karzistani. The melody was in a European scale, sad and measured. With its wavering Muerain singing and electronic sounds, the music was perched exactly between Asia and Europe, the old and the new. Like us, thought Mae. How like us it is. It was yet another song of lost love.

I am missing the harvest, thought Mae. The valley floor will be cleared and Mr Wing will hire the green machines and the rice will be separated from the stalks. The rice will be piled high in mounds. Someone's car will be running with the radio on to make music. This song perhaps. Mae saw them in her mind, the yellow-blue-green of the old ladies' aprons over their blue trousers, all faded with washing, age, and dust.

Fatimah was back in the room.

'You did this to me,' Mae said. She knew. They had deliberately provoked Old Mrs Tung to return.

Fatimah blinked. 'I'm sorry.'

'Do I still have my baby? Have you taken my baby?

Fatimah was getting weary of this. 'No, we haven't.' she said quietly.

'Did you learn what you had to?'

Fatimah sat on the bed. 'We now know what happens when the other imprinted personality takes over. It requires emotional synergy, when both personalities feel the same thing. For example, when you both feel fear…'