.“The Day Dreams Became Currency”

The Day Dreams Became Currency

No one remembers exactly when the dreams began to disappear. Some say it was the night the skies turned violet; others swear it started when the banks collapsed for good. But everyone agrees on one thing: overnight, the economy changed.

Dreams became the new money.

At first it was a novelty. The Dream Exchange opened in every city, a sleek glass building humming like a hive. People lined up with their stories, hopes, nightmares, and fantasies. They would plug into silver helmets, drift into sleep, and wake to find their dream recorded as a gleaming orb — their “unit of value.” The more vivid and emotional the dream, the higher its worth. Vague dreams earned a few credits. Rich, cinematic dreams could buy a car. Prophetic dreams were priceless.

Soon, everything ran on dreams: bread, rent, school tuition, a seat on the commuter train. Forget cash or cards — at the checkout counter, people inserted their orb into a slot, and their dream was gone forever, owned by someone else. The government called it the “Dream Economy.” Artists called it the “Harvest.” Children called it “being robbed in your sleep.”

And then there was Lila.

Lila had been an insomniac most of her life. The only dreams she could remember were brief flickers — a child’s drawing of the ocean, a flash of color behind her eyelids. But when the Dream Economy arrived, something strange happened: her dreams solidified, grew lush and impossible, filled with flying whales, glass cities, and songs no one had ever heard.

People told her she could be rich beyond measure. “You’re a natural,” her friend Jonah said. “One of your dreams could buy a penthouse.” But Lila refused. “They’re mine,” she said. “If I give them away, I’m just another empty shell.”

She lived modestly, working at a small bakery where customers paid in glimmering dream orbs. She still accepted old coins and barter, though few could offer either. Every night, she slipped into her own kaleidoscope of a mind and woke richer in visions but poorer in the world.

One morning, Lila found a line stretching outside her apartment door. A man in a charcoal suit stood at the front, flanked by guards. His lapel bore the insignia of the National Dream Bank.

“You’re Lila Morgan?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re on our registry. Your dream indexes are extraordinary. We’re here to make an offer.”

He presented a contract on a silver tablet. “One dream — just one — and we’ll clear your debts, give you a lifetime supply of food, and a house in the new city on the coast.”

Lila shook her head. “I’m not interested.”

The man’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Do you know how many people would kill for your dreams? You’re hoarding national resources.”

“I’m not hoarding,” she said. “I’m living.”

Rumors swirled. Some whispered that Lila’s dreams could power entire data grids. Others claimed she dreamed of the future, and the Bank wanted to control it.

She noticed changes in the streets. People who had sold all their dreams moved like shadows, their eyes dull, their laughter thin. Without dreams, they no longer planned, created, or hoped. They were efficient but empty.

Jonah, once her closest friend, became one of them. “You’re selfish,” he told her flatly. “We’re all making sacrifices to keep society running. What makes you so special?”

She wanted to tell him about the library of oceans she built every night, the birds with human voices, the secret music. She wanted to say that without dreams, life was just a transaction. But his expression — grey, fixed — told her he wouldn’t understand.

One night, as she slept, she felt something tugging at the edges of her mind. She opened her eyes inside the dream and saw figures in suits walking across her dreamscape, scooping pieces into briefcases. Her flying whales were already gone.

She woke gasping. The Bank had found a way to siphon her dreams remotely.

Furious, she marched to the Dream Exchange at dawn. “You’re stealing from me,” she said to the attendant.

He looked at her with practiced sympathy. “Your dreams belong to the nation,” he recited. “You’re simply a steward.”

“No,” she said, “they belong to me.”

He shrugged. “Then stop dreaming.”

That night, she tried to stay awake, but exhaustion claimed her. She dove into sleep and built a fortress out of glass and light around her mind. She filled it with guardians she conjured from her own memories, creatures stitched from hope and memory. When the Bank’s agents arrived again, her dream-fortress lit up like a sun, repelling them.

Morning came, and she woke with a single gleaming orb in her hand. Not one she had traded, but one she had made — voluntarily. Inside it swirled the fortress, the guardians, the whales. It pulsed with power.

She understood then: a dream willingly offered was not the same as a dream harvested.

She took the orb to the town square and placed it on the fountain’s edge. “Free,” she wrote on a scrap of paper.

People gathered. The moment someone touched the orb, their eyes filled with color. A child laughed like bells. An old woman began sketching again for the first time in years. The orb split itself, multiplying, dissolving into the crowd.

Word spread faster than currency ever had. The next night, dozens of people tried creating their own orbs, not to sell, but to share. In time, the Dream Exchange’s lines shortened, its vaults emptied. Dreams trickled back into bedrooms, into stories, into lives.

Months later, Lila still worked at the bakery. She was no richer in material terms, but she watched people’s faces as they returned to their own inner worlds — and she felt a quiet wealth that no bank could measure.

In a society where everyone else had traded their night skies for bread, she had kept hers, and found a way to give without losing.

The world didn’t change overnight. But it started to remember something it had almost forgotten:

You can sell your dreams, but you can also share them.