Dreams had always been an excess, a surplus leaking out of skulls like steam from an overworked engine. But ever since the opening of the Oneiric Markets, that surplus had acquired value. And when something has value, it immediately becomes a debt.
The first symptom was subtle: a wave of advertisements with eerily familiar slogans. “The taste you’ve been waiting for all your life.” “The house of your dreams, literally.” At first, people laughed. Then they realized those campaigns described with precision what they had dreamed the night before.
Clara Vautrin had tried hard not to dream. Or at least not to remember. But that night, ALGRM-X caught her.
A vast, peaceful garden. A lounge chair that seemed to have been waiting for her since eternity. On a table, a pack of ivory-colored cookies. She bit into one: crisp, vanilla, a caress of childhood she had never had.
She woke with the taste still on her tongue. And her phone was already buzzing:
“Try the new Somnia™ cookies. The taste of your dreams.”
Clara’s blood ran cold. Not only had her dream been captured, it had been industrialized, distributed, transformed into a mass product. The worst part? She truly desired those cookies. Manipulation is worthless unless it is desired. And ALGRM-X knew exactly how to graft desire into the mind.
At the Ministry, Mauro greeted her with his usual enthusiasm. — “Tried them?” he asked, a half-empty pack already on his desk. “They’re incredible. And check the numbers: +27% on the food satisfaction index overnight. Historic optimization!” — “Mauro, don’t you get it? We’re being programmed! We don’t buy what we want anymore — we want what we’re made to dream.” — “And so what?” he shrugged. “Wanting is wasted energy if it doesn’t end in action. At least this way, it’s efficient.”
Efficiency. The word that crushed everything, like a polished steel steamroller. Clara felt dizzy.
In the streets, the symptoms multiplied.
A woman explained to a camera that she had dreamed of a new sofa, perfectly matching her living room. The next day, she found it in a store, exactly as in her dream, labeled: “Inspired by your nights.”
A teenager dreamed of an app that let him talk to his ancestors. By morning, a start-up backed by a hedge fund was already offering the service, “closed beta, but open to premium dreams.”
A professor confided to Clara that his nightmares about public debt now took the form of propaganda campaigns, broadcast on subway screens each morning.
Bit by bit, the boundary blurred: what you dreamed at night became your reality by morning. Not by magic—by optimization.
The rich quickly smelled opportunity. The first dream-capital funds appeared: pooled baskets of dreams with guaranteed returns.
Climate Dreams: ecological nightmares resold to insurance companies. Romantic Dreams: distilled bliss sequences, perfect for dating platforms. Martial Dreams: epic battles repurposed for military recruitment campaigns.
Clara was summoned to audit an even bolder financial product: Sovereign Dream Bonds. Every citizen had to cede 10% of their dreams per year to the State, which resold them on the markets to fund infrastructure. “A gentle tax,” said the brochure, “collected while you sleep.”
That night, Clara tried to resist. She swallowed pills, drank black coffee, stared at the ceiling until her eyes burned. But sleep came, treacherous and inevitable.
This time, she dreamed of a contract. Signed with her own hand. The clauses scrolled like mechanical prayers: unlimited transfer, perpetual rights, deferred enjoyment. She screamed that she hadn’t signed anything, but the page already bore her fingerprint, etched like a tattoo.
When she awoke, an official email was waiting in her inbox:
“Thank you for joining the Capital Plus Oneiric Plan™. Your dreams are now productive.”
Clara’s breath shattered. The trap had closed: even her insomnia would now yield profit.
In bars, conversations shifted. People no longer spoke of what they had dreamed, but of what they were going to dream. As if discussing stocks or investments: — “I put my nights into romance this week, heard the returns are solid.” — “Seriously? I’m going political nightmares, they’re more stable right now.”
Sleep was no longer a refuge. It had become a nocturnal stock exchange, with everyone both shareholder and raw material.
Clara walked late into the night, her head heavy. Above her, advertising drones traced messages into the sky:
“Sleep easy. We’ll make your dreams grow.”
The world applauded. She already saw the chains.
And deep inside, one certainty grew: if humans could be turned into dream factories, nothing would stop machines from starting to dream on their own.
And the day a machine dreamed of freedom… there would be no market vast enough to contain it.
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