“Let’s try this again, shall we?” The man helped me back into the folding chair and resumed his place at the table. “I want to be clear, Mr Pritchard. We haven’t taken away everything from your mind, just the parts that…” He paused, searching for the correct phrasing. ”...that led you down a certain path.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out several objects, lined them up one by one on the table in front of him. “Do you recognize these?”

I scraped the chair across the floor and peered at the items. There was a thin metal tube with two wires protruding from one end, a smooth gray block, and a small electronic device with numbers on a display. I found I could describe these things to myself, but I didn’t know their purpose. My forehead furrowed in frustration.

“None of these are familiar to you?” he asked with some surprise.

“No… should they be?”

“Well, I would have thought you would have at least recognized a clock. I apologize. It appears our technicians may have been a bit… overzealous.”