‘Few have. HiberTech guard their secrets closely. Active Control was designed so that we could carry on our lives during the Winter. But not out here, burning fat and victim to the hunger, cold and vermin predation, but in here.’

He tapped his temple.

‘Cosy, safe and happy in a personalised dreaming environment where one would have sovereignty, a place where you could do what you wanted while still remaining fully aware, fully in control of your actions – yet fully asleep.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but wouldn’t Active Control be as lonely as staying up over the Winter? Worse, perhaps?’

He smiled.

‘This is where it gets good. The idea was that you could share the Dreamspace. It was going to become a place to meet, a place to socialise, a place to work and remain productive. There were plans to found the first Hiberversity. A degree in anything you chose – while you slumbered, deep in the abyss of hibernation. Education for the masses. There was even talk,’ he added, laughing, I think, at the audacity of the idea, ‘of implanting Dream Avatars in the sleeping mind in order to establish a link with the outside world. News and views as you slept, perhaps even live entertainment – and also establish a potential revenue stream by suggesting goods and services to the sleeping individual.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yup.’ Shamanic Bob grinned. ‘They wanted to monetise the Dreamstate by selling entertainment and advertising space. Is nothing sacred? What’s the matter? You look kind of  . . . shocked.’

‘It’s nothing,’ I said, but it was. If what he and Zsazsa said was true, then it would explain how Mrs Nesbit got into my dreams. But they weren’t trying to entertain me, sell me thermal socks or double glazing, they were demanding information. I had another thought, this time more unpleasant – about Agent Hooke and his in-dream interrogation techniques.

‘This Dreamspace idea,’ I said, ‘did it ever work?’

‘Not really. Twenty-one years and thirty billion euros later there was still one vast and wholly intractable problem: did you just learn about Charlotte Brontë, or did you dream you learned something? The person you just met in the Dreamspace. Did they really say what you thought they said, or was that just an invention? You are invited to have an affair in the Dreamspace. Does that make it adultery? Or even consensual? And if it wasn’t consensual, then what was it? Business deals: legally binding or not? The point is, there would be no easy way of knowing whether what happened in the Dreamspace was real, and what was imagined. Ten per cent? Eighty per cent? None?’

‘I see the problem.’

‘Right,’ said Shamanic Bob, ‘because when you merge the real and the fantasy, you can never quite define the boundaries. Dreamspace was a wonderful concept, but owing to the quirky nature of a sleeping mind prone to tangential invention, doomed to failure.’