Chapter 1: The REM Harvest
Elias woke to the rhythmic chime of his optic-nerve alarm, the digital readout flickering against his retinas. Last night's REM cycle had been high-yield, a vivid odyssey through a neon archipelago that the ledger had indexed as 'Premium Surrealism.' He checked his balance and saw the credits had already cleared into his waking account.
The mind never sleeps; it only calculates.
SomnaCorp didn't just track these dreams; they harvested raw emotional resonance for corporate mood-mapping. Elias spent his nights chasing vivid nightmares and lucid flights just to keep his rent paid in a city that never stopped charging. It was a grueling trade, swapping the sanctuary of sleep for the stability of coin.