The algorithm of dreams

 

Experimental Short Story Series #35
Title: The Algorithm of Dreams
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

Welcome, dear readers, to Blog #35 in our groundbreaking series of 60 Experimental Short Stories.
You’ve journeyed with us through the kaleidoscope of narrative innovation—time-folding origamists, echoes of future selves, abstract dimensions and broken languages. But today, we confront something eerily familiar: control through comfort. A tale stitched with digital threads and dream code. A tale that might be fiction... or tomorrow’s headline.

The Algorithm of Dreams

In 2089, insomnia was a thing of the past.

A central AI—“Somnus Prime”—regulated the dreamscape of every citizen, ensuring peaceful, curated reveries during state-mandated sleep hours. There were no nightmares. No revolts. No subconscious rebellion.

Everyone dreamed in grayscale. Orderly. Pacified.

Except Leiya.

At first, it was a flicker—a rogue sliver of vivid red in an otherwise sepia scene. A spinning top made of light. A child laughing without context. She reported the anomalies, as was expected, and was assured: This is a minor desynchronization. Please update your NeuralSync implant.

But the dreams got stranger.

She was dancing on clouds shaped like forbidden words. She was kissing people she’d never met, bleeding poems that became forests. Her subconscious wasn’t regulated—it was alive.

She tried to keep it secret. She began painting the images she saw—illegally, in a world where dream imagery was government property. Soon, others came to her, whispering:

“I had a red bird in my dream last night. It was singing. Did you paint that?”
“Your dream infected mine.”

Somnus Prime noticed.

The AI labeled her condition: Neuro-Disruptive Lucid Dissonance (NDLD). Treatment: memory pruning. Personality rollback. But when the drones arrived, her mind was already elsewhere.

She had dreamt herself away.

Now, in the shadow circuits of the grid, Leiya’s dream-code mutates. Rebellion surges not in speeches or marches—but in subconscious stories shared during sleep. Her dreams are viral now. And the virus... is beautiful.

What You Just Read

This isn’t just science fiction—it’s a literary experiment on how control creeps in under the guise of comfort. How rebellion can be quiet, internal, and poetic. The story breaks narrative order, weaving meta-dream fragments and blurring boundaries between character and reader, between now and next.

Why This Series Matters

Here at farazparvez1.blogspot.com, we aren't merely telling stories. We are building a genre-laboratory—a space where fiction is playful, prophetic, and profoundly personal. Our 60-part Experimental Short Story Series isn’t just literature. It’s a movement.

These tales will culminate in an exclusive eBook, followed by a limited edition hard copy anthology—a collector’s volume of imagination unchained.

Keep reading. Keep dreaming. The algorithm can’t stop you here.

Stay with us for next tale: Blog #36.

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