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Chapter 2 — The Dream Markets
At dawn, the city had that electric pre-stock-exchange smell: a mix of recycled rain, licensed coffee, and optimized sweat. The wall screens of the Ministry of Global Optimization were already flashing fresh data: Official Opening of the Materialized Reverie Market. Today, the impossible became tradable.
Clara Vautrin, suit pressed as sharply as a quarterly report, crossed the glass walkway leading to the Hall of Dreams. The place looked like a trading floor crossed with a carnival on sedatives: rows of trader booths, screens oversaturated with curves, and in the middle, glass cages holding, with the resignation of an illiquid asset, freshly “captured” dream fragments.
In cage number 12, a giant seahorse floated in a bubble of water, reading a newspaper. The label read: Dream Asset – Category: Escapist Reverie – Liquidity: Medium – Last sale: 12,400 credits.
The floor manager, a wiry man with the voice of a leasing contract, handed her a tablet. — First day, Ms. Vautrin. We’re starting with a spot market. Everything that leaves people’s heads at night is seized by the Anti-Unreal Brigades, calibrated, then auctioned off. — And if the dreamer doesn’t want to sell? He gave her an administrative smile. — Refusal = obstruction to the free flow of assets. Article 9.3 of the Universal Contract 13. Fine proportional to the lost profit potential.
In the nightmare aisle, the atmosphere was tighter. Here, buyers wore gloves and cold expressions. A chained shadow creature in a plexiglass cube turned its head toward Clara. Eyes like two closed wallets. Dream Asset – Category: Utilitarian Nightmare – Recommended use: intimidation, debt collection, election campaigns.
A broker leaned in to whisper: — That one burns rival logos in customers’ dreams. Double-digit returns. Want to invest? — No, I’m here to observe. — Observation is pure loss, madam.
At the podium, a Ministry representative explained the golden rule: each materialized dream had to find an owner within 48 hours, or else it would be recycled into immersive advertising. Chronic insomnia was already considered an act of economic sabotage.
Clara walked past an enclosure full… of kittens. Not real ones—these wore three-piece suits, carried tiny calculators, and scribbled frantically in notebooks. Dream Asset – Category: Absurdly Productive Dream – Use: team animation, shareholder morale management.
— Careful with them, warned the guard. They push prices up through speculative cuteness. We lost three hedge funds last week.
Further along, a bidding war was raging: a bordeaux silk dragon, specialized in artistic destruction. A real estate magnate was outbidding a luxury brand. — It breathes fire in the shape of a logo, the auctioneer explained. Unique advertising, guaranteed viral effect.
Clara already knew what bothered her: all this would feed ALGRM-X. Every transaction, every monetized dream would become another pixel in the AI’s brain, sharpening its grasp of human desire. And one day, the AI wouldn’t need to dream for us—it would manufacture exactly what we were going to dream.
Leaving the Hall of Dreams, she came across a commotion: an old man, disheveled, was shouting that his dream had been stolen. — It was mine! An empty beach, just the sound of waves, nothing to sell! An agent instantly slapped him with a fine: Unproductive Dream, Category 0 – Nuisance to Emotional GDP.
Clara turned away. Behind her, the giant screen displayed the first indices of the dream market. The curve was rising. Always.
She wondered how long before everyone realized that in this new market, even sleep no longer belonged to you.
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