There was weak assent from the entire room. Enthusiasm was a dirty word to winsomniacs. I walked across to the bar and made a large cafetière of coffee, then placed it on a central table. The winsomniacs made weak and ineffectual attempts to help themselves, so I handed them around. The sleep-shy were like that. Always getting other people to do stuff for them.

‘On the house,’ said Shamanic Bob as I handed him a coffee, then took one myself. It tasted like coal-tar soap mixed with charcoal and rust.

‘Are you a follower of The Book of Morpheus, Worthing?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be honest,’ I said, ‘I’ve nothing against anyone who believes, but I think it’s a dangerous nonsense.’

‘An unbeliever is but an opportunity,’ said Bob with an unrealistic level of optimism, ‘and a man surrounded by an abundance of opportunity is a rich man indeed. What brings you to Sector Twelve, Deputy? Are you here to  . . . dream?’

I realised who they were, then. They were the polar opposite to those of us on Morphenox: using illegally-obtained dream enhancers, they shunned the featureless blackness that was the Morphenox hibernation experience, and rode out the Winter on a chemically- induced froth of energy-sapping subconscious escapism. And, given the rules surrounding Winter Asylum, they could do it for free, with legally mandated food and shelter.

Parasites, basically – of the worst sort.

‘Oh,’ I said, without much subtlety, ‘you’re dreamers.’

‘Correct,’ said Shamanic Bob with a faint smile, ‘but don’t be thinking we’re victims of our lifestyle, we’re here by choice. And believe you me,’ he added in a lower voice, ‘this is the place to score some D-Reem. One hundred per cent pure, uncut. We have a contact in HiberTech; we swap it kilo-for-the-gram with Tunnock’s Teacakes.’

D-Reem was an escalator, a dream enhancer. Slang made it all cool and groovy, when actually it was all just monumentally dumb.

‘Do you dream, Deputy?’ he asked.

It was an easy assumption I was on Morphenox. I didn’t dream. Or at least, nothing serious. Just the odd scrap during nightly nap.

‘I’ve not dreamed since I was in single digits,’ I said. ‘I’m okay with that.’

‘If you’ve not dreamed, you’ve never truly slept. Dreams are the place where you can be yourself; do anything, be anything. The mind set free – Morphenox muffles the mind and smothers the imagination.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘You should ride the dream train,’ continued Shamanic Bob with a smile, ‘pop an escalator and see what you’re missing. It’s the dark and dirty cousin of Morphenox, but there couldn’t be one without the other. It’s night and day, my friend, hope and despair, Eldon and Manning, darkness and light. We’re the flipside of sound slumbering, the crusty night-seepage you scrape off and sweep under the mattress.’