The New Collectors

After he calmed down, Jay exited the isolation chamber. He found Alejandra with an annoyed look on her face waiting for him.

Jay chuckled a little. If a girl is willing to chase after you, she must be interested he reasoned. In his arms, he was carrying all of the books he took in with him.

"Which did you choose?" she asked.

"It's still a secret, but if you would like to venture a guess, here you go!" He handed the stack of multi-vs to her.

As he did so he smoothly removed his Jekyll and Hyde book from his back pocket and shoved it into the shelf behind him.

Just as smoothly he brought his right arm around Alejandra's right shoulder and took a book from the top.

"Any guesses?" he asked playfully.

Alejandra shrugged his hand off her shoulder and pouted.

"Just tell me, what's with the big mystery?" she couldn't stand the idea of not knowing.

"Would you prefer I lie to you or honestly refuse to tell you?" he asked.

"I would prefer it if you told me what you chose," she said.

"Oh, you choose the lie. Then obviously I chose Gulliver's Travels. Now, there's a man with amazing abilities. A natural capacity for finding wormholes leading to different dimensions?

Imagine the money, power, and knowledge you could amass with such an ability. Instead of coming to the Multi-V Library, you could visit these worlds yourself," he laughed.

His words caught the attention of many people who couldn't make up their minds. It seems he help make up their minds for them.

"Hey buddy, that's a great idea. Do you have the book on you can I use it?" Another student asked.

"Yes, you should definitely pursue that power. If you get it you could wind up on an Earth completely covered by water and filled with giant monsters who will eat you as soon as you appear in their world.

As happened in the book 'Journey from the Stars to the Sea,' where travelers from the stars were eaten by the sentient monsters in the oceans who later wrote about how delicious the off worlders were," Alejandra responded back to the person.

He immediately lost interest in the book.

"You think you're so cute," Alejandra said to him.

"I know I'm cute, but as much as I would like to share my secret with you; I have yet to create my monster I am reanimating from dead corpses." He smiled at her as he held up Frankenstein.

Finally, Alejandra gave up and returned his books for him to the help counter. She caught up with him and they walked outside where other students were waiting.

"There's something strange about you," she said to Jay.

"Strange, about me?" he asked.

"Mmh, everyone always asks me what my first syncing was or how to sync properly, but you haven't asked and don't seem to want my advice. It's strange, are you really that confident?" She asked him.

"It's that I'm that prepared, as far as not wanting your advice. I know you had the benefit of extra-curricular tutoring and guidance from experts. It probably helped you pick a really good book to sync with.

At the same time, it left you with a big weakness."

"I have a big weakness?" she asked as she examined him. He seemed to be telling the truth as best she could tell.

"The first syncing is the most important and no one wants to mess it up. If you rely on someone other than yourself to find your first sync, what will you do for your second or third?

You'll always need someone else's advice, but the more syncs you accomplish the fewer people will be able to help you.

Eventually, you won't have enough money to hire someone to help you.

You will have to make decisions all by yourself; which will be unfortunate because you have relied on others to get to where you are.

You're making things harder on yourself," he said.

"My dad already thought of this problem and that's why I'm only getting less and less help from this point on.

I'll start making my own decisions from the seventh sync on," Alejandra gave what she thought was a very reasonable response.

"The fear only gets stronger the further along you get in the process. You will hesitate to make choices on your own because you will always be worried you will make a mistake." He said with a sad smile.

"How do you know that?" She asked.

"My dad works for the Syncing Services," he answered.

"Did he share cases with you? That's illegal!" She said in surprise.

"No, he didn't share particular cases with me; he shared his assessment based on the cases he's seen over his career.

He's met a lot of young people like you who come from wealthy families who try to 'cheat,' the system."

"We never did anything illegal," Alejandra began to defend her actions.

"I'm not saying you did, but you have spent your money to get ahead of the others in your class and hired experts to help you make your first choice, correct?" Jay knew he was right by the look on Alejandra's face.

"Well, yeah, I guess but what's wrong with being careful?" she asked.

"Nothing, the problem is you aren't being careful. You are letting someone else do your thinking for you. Even if I could have synced at fourteen I wouldn't have.

I would have spent one more year preparing my choice. Preparation is the key to making a right choice and not hiring out your thinking," he said.

Alejandra was getting offended. "I didn't hire out my thinking! I was involved in every step of the process and I chose what I was going to do and what I would research."

"No one ever questioned your decisions or tried to convince you that you were being too naive or something?" he asked.

Alejandra was stunned for a moment as she thought back to how she was constantly given things to "think" about before they moved forward.

Usually, whatever her first decision was, they didn't move on until she wisely came up with a decision everyone (including her father) agreed with.

As she was realizing Jay might be right; his three friends came out of the library hooting and hollering and drawing everyone's attention.

"We did it, bro, just like you said!" Danny yelled.

"So much for not letting someone do your thinking for you," Alejandra said with a wry smile.