Our body fat melts at about 17°C, so that the body can store it in liquid form. Cold-blooded creatures such as fish, and cold parts of warmer animals (such as the feet of cows), contain even lower-melting fats, so as not to risk their freezing in storage. People in cold climates slowly manage to shift the composition of their fat towards lower-melting mixtures, for the same reason. The process is slow, because fat tends to be stored direct from the diet, with whatever melting point it happens to have. Only gradually can it be optimized for the thermal conditions.

Daedalus is now exploiting these facts. He points out that many pure fats melt at well above the 37°C of our body. Our fat melts at 17°C only because it is a mixture, with a melting point lower than its components. So he is adding yet another complication to the current obsession with fats in our diet. As well as saturated, unsaturated, polyunsaturated, cis or trans, omega-3 or omega-6 fats, the dieter can now choose DREADCO's ‘oligomolecular’ fatty diet. It will contain only one or two specific fats (perhaps tristearin and tripalmitin), and will melt just below core body temperature.

The user's body fat will soon acquire this melting point, with remarkable thermal consequences. Our fat serves us as a heat insulator — which is why it is stored just under the skin. But oligomolecular high-melting fat will also act as thermal ballast. If its owner is exposed to cold, it will start to solidify. It will stay at its high melting point until it has given up all its latent heat of solidification — equivalent to maybe eight hours of the body's entire metabolic output. For all that time, even in the coldest environment, its owner will feel warm as toast. Then the cold will begin to bite seriously, and he will have to warm up again. A hot bath, or better, a bath with sustained heating, could quickly pump back into him the latent heat needed to remelt his frozen fat.

DREADCO's oligomolecular fat diet will transform our thermal resilience. No longer will we need to wrap up warm for short trips outdoors, even in the coldest weather. Traditional icy British bedrooms will lose their terrors; colds and 'flu, often triggered by sudden exposure to freezing conditions, will plummet. And snow clearers, refrigeration engineers, polar-bear hunters and pornographic film stars will be able to enjoy perfect immunity to cold for a whole working shift.