"A week after I sort-of dropped dead, too."

"Yeah." She frowns a bit.

"That's my point, if I'm that confused then something I believe must be false. Someone has much greater capabilities than I'd previously expected possible."

"Not really enough evidence to work out what way our beliefs are wrong, though."

"Mmhm, ergo why I kinda wanted to get really sick and see if I couldn't figure it out."

"I mean, difficult to arrange and you don't seem to actually be planning on it, but would it even give you that much info? I mean, if people are keeping quiet about it, I guess you might get some more info, but if they honestly don't know…"

"I could attach a camera to myself! Or pretend I was sleeping! Or something." Shrug.

"I guess?" Shrug. "I suppose they haven't really done it with many people, so perhaps they aren't even checking that kind of thing."

Sip.

"Well, if they are, will they, what, not heal people with cameras?"

She shrugs. "They haven't been healing everyone and they're limited in the hospitals they pick – maybe they'll not heal people with cameras or maybe they'll just remove the cameras."

"Could be wireless, but depending on how good their tech is – apparently ridiculously – they could block it or something."

Nod.

She shrugs. "I'm itching to figure it out, it's so frustrating."

"Yeah, especially if it could be used, like, large-scale."

"Mmhm. Maybe these hospitals are, like... a test drive? Of whatever?"

"Could be," she agrees. "In which case it's sorta sensible – clinical trials are important – but they're not going through the regular channels, which is kinda worrying." Shrug. "I mean, if they have good reason to keep secret then– well, I don't know the reasons, so I can't really judge them, but still."

"Something that can cure literally everything except for cancer is... I mean it sounds something that ought to be a secret by default, depending on what it is, at least at first."

"If you can screw with it and end up with some super not-virus, yeah. Which you probably can, if it's a medical thing."

"And even if you can't, it's... very high leverage? People could charge so much for it, whoever controls it could have a lot of political capital."

"I'm not trying to shame them for not releasing it open-source or whatever, I'm just saying that… they seem to be doing clinical trials on patients without permission, which while it seems to heal them and that's better than the alternative, isn't following the regular standards for this kind of thing. Like, FDA and whatever."

"Right, yeah, and I just mean they might not have governmental backing or lots of resources and this might be the best they can do."

"– Hm, I don't actually know what the government's like, systems in place for that kind of thing. I assume not many people get such a novel development on such a tight income, though?"

"Which makes the supernatural or alien explanations more likely, if the aliens also don't want to crash any markets or reveal themselves."

"At least they're maybe being polite, not destroying our economy?"

Theo laughs a bit.