The city that dreamed too loud

 


Experimental Short Story Series #57
Title: The City That Dreamed Too Loud
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

There once was a city that ran on dreams.
Not oil. Not sunlight. Not nuclear sparks or hydropower.
But dreams—bottled, filtered, amplified.

Every night, millions lay down in their sleep-capsules, and their subconscious visions were harvested—siphoned into the city’s DreamCore. The laughter of a child flying through space powered the trains. A poet’s melancholic memory of lost love lit up the skyline. Even nightmares were useful: they powered the emergency systems and defense drones.

It was beautiful.
Until people stopped sleeping.

Phase One: The Fray

It began subtly. First with the rich, who replaced dreams with stimulants—“more hours to conquer the stock spirals,” they said. Then the artists, who feared their dreams were being stolen, refused to sleep at all. Eventually, the city’s working class caught on. Sleeping was weakness. Vigilance was success.

Soon, the DreamCore flickered.
Elevators stalled mid-air. Lights dimmed during concerts. The sky lost its shimmering hue of collective imagination.

And then came the sirens.
Not outside. Inside.
In people’s heads.

Phase Two: The Descent

A lone rebel—Nayel, son of a night-shift janitor and a daydreaming seamstress—still slept. Not just napped. He dreamed. Vividly. Wildly. Recklessly. He was what old scholars called a lucid constructor—a person whose subconscious created coherent worlds.

The Council of Wakefulness branded him a danger. He was caught sleepwalking into restricted zones, mumbling blueprints of cities that hadn’t been built. But before they could erase his REM cortex, a blackout struck the core.

The DreamCore was dying. Nayel was their only hope.

Phase Three: The Dive

They strapped him in, injected him with deep-sleep serum, and lowered him into the DreamCore’s central chamber—known only as the REM Spindle. What he saw was beyond the science of it all.

He met a being—a great shimmering lion stitched from the dreams of all children under five. It wept.
“They’ve forgotten how to wander,” it said.
“Without dreams, the city will wake into madness.”

Nayel begged the dream-beast for a way.
It opened its mouth and offered him a seed.
“Plant this in your waking mind. And let your fear sleep.”

He woke up screaming.
But when he opened his eyes—the sky was pink again.

Phase Four: The Afterdream

The city imposed the first curfew in a decade—not for control, but for healing.
All citizens were required to dream at least 3 hours a night.
Dream-cafés replaced productivity lounges. REM therapy became a national right.
And Nayel?

He became known as The Last Dreamer.
The only man who remembered what the city had forgotten: that dreams are not a waste of time. They are the blueprint of all futures.

Why We Tell These Stories
This is Entry #57 in our Experimental Short Story Series, crafted for the dreamers, rebels, and the sleepless souls who still believe in the impossible.

Faraz Parvez—pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA—welcomes you to the most surreal corners of fiction, where every tale is a portal, every line a leap.

Keep reading. Keep dreaming.
And remember, even when the world runs on data, it's dreams that keep it alive.

Visit: farazparvez1.blogspot.com
Read, Reflect, Return. Another door opens tomorrow

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