“A 22-year-old man has been instantaneously transported to his family’s pizzeria and his local railway station by having his brain zapped.”

The article intro on New Scientist’s website¹ could have been taken from the back of a sci-fi novel. It didn’t seem like a compatible title for a respected science publication, but then again truth is often stranger than fiction. This wasn’t a next generation virtual reality (VR) demo, or a trip on psilocybin. This was real.