May Hawaii and the Dreamhunters

May Hawaii always dreamed of being like Indiana Jones.

Ever since she discovered the Key Method, she set out to explore Oniria with the eyes of an adventurer. Little by little she learned that gold and money are worthless in the world of dreams. It is aerena, the stuff dreams are made of, that everyone wants. And that aerena, when compressed and sealed, is capable of creating relics of legendary value.

In the main hall of the Seekers’ Guild there is a board listing the ten most wanted relics in Oniria. May was pointing to the most wanted of them all: The Patron Trident.

Like every night, as she went to sleep after a hard day in the refugee camps in Madrid, May immersed herself in her most ardent desires. Thanks to her trained mind, she quickly gained lucidity as soon as she entered the REM phase and “landed” in the Palace of Desires, the capital of the human sphere within Oniria.

When she opened her eyes inside the collective dream, she found herself in the foyer of the Seekers’ Guild. The large colonial-style hall was practically empty. On one side there was a long bar that looked like a hotel reception, where the administration handled the requests and questions of the associates, but today there was only a yawning girl.

The bulletin board where petitions were posted and lists were updated was deserted, and the room echoed with the quickened footsteps of someone approaching May. It was Perez, one of her associates. A diminutive young woman with large glasses. She looked visibly overwhelmed.

-He’s not coming.

She was referring to Marcus Blake, the experienced archaeologist, also an Indiana Jones fan, with whom May had ended up partnering after a period of initial rivalry.

May and Marcus had made the worn leather jacket and hat outfit fashionable in the guild. After several successful missions recovering minor relics, other explorers had begun to imitate them, so that quite a few now dressed like the famous fictional character.

Minerva Perez, however, was quite the opposite. She did not like to be noticed and dressed “like an office worker” according to her companions. A long-sleeved white shirt buttoned up to the collar and dark gray peg pants.

But such formal attire for an onironaut was contrasted by the fact that Perez always carried an array of highly advanced technological devices. Her glasses had cameras and headphones. He wore two smartwatches on the same wrist with two different operating systems, and he carried a tablet from which a fold-out keyboard could be removed.

She had joined “the Joneses” by force of habit. Newly landed each night at guild headquarters, the first thing she would do was go to the coffe room to read the news in the Oniria Times. A breakfast in the dream world, sometimes, was all it took to make lucid dreaming worthwhile. It was like breakfast in a luxury hotel, but without getting fat.

There you would always find Hawaii and Blake arguing about anything. Sometimes it was a map, sometimes an object, sometimes a translation. It seemed as if they couldn’t stand each other because they never agreed on anything. They were so annoying that they wouldn’t let her concentrate, so she would end up approaching the table to offer data to help them settle their differences.

She didn’t usually succeed, but eventually the Joneses offered her a share in their partnership, recognizing that many of those breakfasts culminated in successful exploration thanks to her input. From then on, the trio called themselves “The Dreamhunters,” and gradually gained prestige within the guild.

The Dreamhunters were not a perfectly cohesive group, but rather a way of contrasting and pooling ideas. Although the hunt for great treasures required collaboration, the three members maintained their independence and went on their own personal hunts when they had no leads to go after a relic.

Blake’s latest discovery had led him to a half-buried ziggurat in Sombraverde, a jungle where the gloom had a characteristic emerald color, creating an absolutely unreal atmosphere.

-Don’t count on me for next week,” Blake had said a few days ago, interrupting Hawaii and Perez’s organizational plans. I’m leaving tomorrow for the ziggurat of Sombraverde.

-What? Come on! -They both said in unison.

-We’ve been preparing for the Purāna Sikhara raid for a month! -May laughed.

-Don’t be like that. We can go to the Caldera later, this is a priority.

-There’s no recent news about Sombraverde,” said Perez as she looked at one of his watches. Can you tell me what you’re up to? The Trident clue points to the Caldera of Purāna Sikhara. -He said this in a very low voice so that the waiters in the coffe room could not hear them.

-I can’t tell you, it’s a hunch.

-Obviously it is, since you don’t have any new information.

-What do you expect to find there?” asked May. The last time we were there we copied all the nirmāna hieroglyphs. Are you going to chop sealed aerena?” she said in a mocking tone.

The conversation had taken place eight nights ago and there had been no way to get a clue about his intentions out of Blake. But Hawaii knew him well and knew better than to underestimate the experienced archaeologist’s hunches. After he had left, when Hawaii returned to his room at the Guild, Blake had left him a note under the door.

Blake had said he would be back after a week.

-We have to go get him,” said May. Call Valdés and Don Gregorio. Meet me in Sotopeña at the sixth hour.

-What are you going to do?

-I’m going out now. I have a bad feeling. I’ll wait for you there.

May hurried up the stairs. As a leading member of the Seekers’ Guild, she had a room of her own in which to keep her things. There she pulled on her boots. She put on her leather jacket. He loaded his Smith & Wesson. She hung the whip on his belt, on the other side of the revolver. She tied back his hair and put on his hat.

In addition, in a small backpack she threw some energy bars, a towel, a rope, a flashlight, a couple of changes of clothes, a water bottle, a cup, a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, nail clippers and a file.

The Swiss Army knife was always in one pocket. In the other, his cell phone. In the inside pockets of his jacket he carried his wallet and his small notebook with a pencil. He opened it to take out the note Marcus had left him.

“If I haven’t been back in a week, don’t come looking for me.”

“As if I’m going to do what you want,” May thought as she unfolded a map of the region.

In the center, was Palace of Desires, the capital of the Sphere. Dream mapping is very different from waking cartography, for one cannot establish where north is. The point of reference is the great moon which is always fixed at the same point on the horizon. No matter how far you walk, you will never see it in its entirety, no matter how far you turn the Sphere. It completely defied the laws of physics, but it served as a reference point. Yet at the same time it was so confusing that it made travel especially difficult. The large moon was referenced at the top of the map.

May had already been to the town of Sotopeña, so she just needed to refresh her memory to calculate the jump.

She put on her backpack and, taking a deep breath to calm herself, sat down on the cushion she had in her meditation room. It was situated in the center of a beautiful circular rug. She closed his eyes and prepared to embark on the strangest of journeys.