“As dead as dead can be,” answered a man looking down at his monitor.
“Interesting,” he said. “So the device can kill you. Did he have any notion of being inside the dream device? A suspicious thought or doubt perhaps?”
“None that we can find,” answered another technician, further down the row of monitors.
“Excellent,” he said. “Have we extracted what we needed? Do we have his work?”
“We do.”
“Switch them.”
Behind the one-way mirror a few meters ahead of him, he watched a group of scientist push in a slab through the door. A man lay on it, bound and gagged. A group of three removed Eemos’ emaciated and frail body from the pod and carried him over to the slab. A fourth person injected the protesting and bound man and he stopped moving as the groups switched the two bodies, placed Eemos upon the slab where the man had been. They closed the old man’s staring eyes, but did nothing to his face – its gaze locked in terror – and zipped the bag shut.