THE SLEEP TAX

The first thing Leena bought with her promotion was a pair of blackout curtains. The second was a better lock for the door where her brother Ivo slept in the afternoon. They lived in a city where citizens paid a tax on dreams, and where the poor stayed awake to remain solvent.

At the Ministry of Rest, Leena audited sleep declarations. Every mattress had a government meter. Every dream was classified as useful, frivolous, or potentially subversive. The Ministry claimed the captured dream-energy powered hospitals and streetlights; Leena had always believed it because the lights were, in fact, on.

One morning her ledger showed that Ivo had paid thirteen years of sleep tax in a single night. He was twenty-one. She found a second entry that did not belong in an ordinary account: his childhood, from age four to seventeen, had been transferred to the State Reserve.

She could investigate through the Ministry's legal appeals office, or enter the restricted dream refinery after shift change. Either route risked losing the curtains, the apartment, and the only person who remembered their mother singing.