My surprise was easily explained: The Notable Charlotte Goodnight was the only surviving member of ‘The HiberTech Five’, the close-knit team that had been with Don Hector during the development of Morphenox. Goodnight had been a sixteen-year-old chemistry prodigy when she joined the team, and had personally perfected Juvenox for the under-twelves. When Don Hector died, she was the logical choice to lead the company.

‘What did Mother Fallopia say when you told her you were leaving?’ asked Lucy as we hurtled along.

‘She said that I was an ungrateful little shit, I’d be dead less than a week into the Winter, and if I had a known grave, she’d come and dance on it.’

‘She said that?’

‘Words to that effect.’

‘You still did the right thing.’

We drove through a self-opening door which led into another long corridor, but this one open to the elements on one side. I’d seen aerial pictures of the facility and knew it was constructed much like a college around a quadrangle, but here the quad was a twelve-acre area of trees, shrubs and even a stream that, were it not frozen solid, would have risen in one corner, tumbled through rocks and gullies and cascaded down a waterfall before it vanished with a gurgle at the opposite corner.

‘The entire facility was originally designed as a four-thousand-bed sanatorium for those suffering Hibernatory Narcosis,’ said Lucy, following my gaze, ‘but it was handed over to Don Hector and his team as his research bore more and more fruit. By the time they had developed a workable version of Morphenox, the whole site had been given over to hibernatory research: how more citizens might hope to survive it, how we might need less of it, and how to better handle the mental and physical issues surrounding early rising.’

‘It’s very impressive,’ I said.

‘It should be,’ replied Lucy. ‘HiberTech’s mission statement is to forever rid humans of the debilitating social and economic effects of hibernation.’

‘It’s a bold promise.’

‘HiberTech always think big. We’re here.’

The golf cart screeched to a halt outside a door marked ‘Project Lazarus’.

‘Have-a-nice-day-enjoy-your-stay-at-HiberTech,’ said Dave, repeating the words as though he’d learned them phonetically.

Lucy unlocked the door by way of a keypad and after several rights and lefts and another pair of swing doors, we found ourselves in a circular room with desks, chairs and filing cabinets. Radiating out from this circular chamber were eight corridors, and off these were secure cells, perhaps twenty or so to each corridor. I could hear noises – murmurings and bangings – along with the distinctively unpleasant odour of unwashed nightwalker. A little way down the corridor a male nurse with a rubber apron was hosing down a cell, the soiled water running into a central drain.