The Dreamjumper and The Dreamcatcher

Chapter 8: Breakfast with the dreamjumpers

Reve

As soon as I wake up from Charlie's dream, I get up from my bed and turn off the recording. Then I remove the headset and set it on the nightstand.

I feel electric. The urge to write pulls me to my desk. I take out my dream journal from one of the drawers, which contains notes of the hundreds of dreams I've infiltrated. Soon enough I will need to switch to a new one. Most pages haven been filled with my hurried scribbles of the things I see after I immediately wake up. But scattered between the barely intelligible words are also more delicate annotations that have been squeezed in after rewatching the recordings.

With a wooden pencil—yes, wooden because I'm a purist when it comes to my writing utensils— I describe the cruise ship, the strange men dressed in black with swords, and Charlie and his role in the dream. It's best to write what you see in dreams as soon as you wake up. That's when you best remember them. The OSA doesn't want us to solely rely on the recordings. They want our first-hand experience as we saw it from what we can recollect. And the video recording isn't always reliable. Sometimes it doesn't capture all of the information or it can't translate the electrical signals, resulting in static. The technology is an incredible modern innovation, but it's still not perfect.

Once I finish writing, I have three pages worth of notes. This guitarist might be more interesting than I thought. He wasn't even a real target assigned to me, but maybe the OSA should consider him. He certainly knew how to handle himself against the pirates. I'd need to observe him more to determine whether he truly has more control over his dreams than the average person. And if he has caught my eye, he could potentially attract the enemy as well. I don't know if we will find other dreamjumpers in his dreams. It would probably take several attempts of jumping with Alora to find them if they do invade his dreams. I wouldn't expect to run into them on our first try. What would be the chances that we did?

I decide to text Alora to meet me at the park during the evening. I'm curious to know her impression of the dream. I also need to debrief with her on how we're going to move on together with the plan. Unfortunately, I can't take her with me every night. The OSA demands videos be sent to them every so often, and I can't send them any in which she has jumped with me. I could potentially also create another anathema. Who knows what would happen if I jumped too much with her? I'm probably breaking many of the unknown mystical rules of appropriately using dreamjumping powers. I wish whoever gifted us these abilities would give us a handbook. Maybe then I wouldn't accidentally create curses.

My stomach grumbles as the smell of breakfast wafts into my bedroom. Eggs, bacon, and toast. My favorite. I don't have to think twice before I'm making my way to the kitchen to find Lena busy preparing the meal. She's already fully dressed in her silver bomber jacket, a fuchsia crop top, white jeans and a white beanie over her head. Why she always has to cook fully dressed in nice clothes, I don't know. But she has an uncanny ability to cook for the team without staining her outfit or breaking a sweat in those jackets of hers.

"Oh, good. You're the first out. Set the table," she tells me. Lena never makes requests. She only commands.

"You've got it boss."

Lena is the youngest of us all, but she really is like our mom. The superiors appointed her as team leader, and it's no surprise why. The girl is full of spunk and character. She isn't one to be trifled with if you don't want to get a beating, literally and metaphorically. Lena throws punches with her knuckles and knives with her words. She can be scary as shit when she wants to be. But underneath that 'tough punk girl facade' is really a tender, motherly soul that is just looking out for her 'children'. She keeps our whole operation afloat and the four of us in the team would be nothing without her. It's small things like mandatory team meeting breakfasts on Mondays that really make us feel like more than just a unit. We're a family.