Millennium Babies Read online

  Millennium Babies

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Hugo Award Winner

  Locus Poll Award Nominee

  Asimov's Reader's Choice Award Nominee

  It is thirty years since the turn of the second millennium, and University of Wisconsin professor Brooke Cross is approached by a colleague in the sociology department to participate in his study of successful—and unsuccessful—Millennium Babies. Brooke was one of the unsuccessful ones. She was born at five minutes past midnight 2000, and the extra four minutes cost her mother the fame and fortune of having the first baby of the new millenium—and has never let her forget it. As Brooke progresses through the unorthodox tests and meetings, she is forced to confront the bitter relationship she has with her mother, and the overpowering sense of failure that has haunted her since childhood.

  Millennium Babies

  by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Two weeks into the second semester, she got the message. It had been sent to her house system, and was coded to her real name, Brooke Delacroix, not Brooke Cross, the name she had used since she was eighteen. At first she didn't want to open it, thinking it might be another legal conundrum from her mother, so she let the house monitor in the kitchen blink while she prepared dinner.

  She made a hearty dinner, and poured herself a glass of rose before settling down in front of the living room fireplace. The fireplace was the reason she'd bought this house. She had fallen in love with the idea that she could sit on cold winter nights under a pile of blankets, a real fire burning nearby, and read the ancient paperbacks she found in Madison's antique stores. She read a lot of current work on her e-book, especially research for the classes she taught at the university, but she loved to read novels in their paper form, careful not to tear the brittle pages, feeling the weight of bound paper in her hands.

  She had added bookshelves to the house's dining room for her paper novels, and she had made a few other improvements as well. But she tried to keep the house's character. It was a hundred and fifty years old, built when this part of Wisconsin had been nothing but family farms. The farmland was gone now, divided into five acre plots, but the privacy remained. She loved being out here, in the country, more than anything else. Even though the university provided her job, the house was her world.

  The novel she held was a thin volume, and a favorite–The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald—but on this night, the book didn't hold her interest. Finally she gave up. If she didn't hear the damn message, she would be haunted by her mother all night.

  Brooke left the glass of wine and the book on the end table, her blankets curled at the edge of the couch, and made her way back to the kitchen. She could have had House play an audio-only version of the message in the living room, but she wanted to see her mother's face, to know how serious it was this time.

  The monitor was on the west wall beside the microwave. The previous owners—a charming elderly couple—had kept a small television in that spot. On nights like this, Brooke thought the monitor was no improvement.

  She stood in front of it, arms crossed, sighed, and said, “House, play message.”

  The blinking icon disappeared from the screen. A digital voice she did not recognize said, “This message is keyed for Brooke Delacroix only. It will not be played without certification that no one else is in the room.”

  She stood. If this was from her mother, her tactics had changed. This sounded official. Brooke made sure she was visible to the built-in camera.

  “I'm Brooke,” she said, “and I'm alone.”

  “You're willing to certify this?” the strange voice asked her.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Stand by for message.”

  The screen turned black. She rubbed her hands together. Goosebumps were crawling across her skin. Who would send her an official message?

  “This is coded for Brooke Delacroix,” a new digital voice said. “Personal identification number…”

  As the voice rattled off the number, she clenched her fist. Maybe something had happened to her mother. Brooke was, after all, the only next of kin.

  “This is Brooke Delacroix,” she said. “How many more security protocols do we have here?”

  “Five,” House said.

  She felt her shoulders relax as she heard the familiar voice.

  “Go around them. I don't have the time.”

  “All right,” House said. “Stand by.”

  She was standing by. Now she wished she had brought her glass of wine into the kitchen. For the first time, she felt as if she needed it.

  “Ms. Delacroix?” A male voice spoke, and as it did, the monitor filled with an image. A middle-aged man with dark hair and dark eyes stared at a point just beyond her. He had the look of an intellectual, an aesthetic, someone who spent too much time in artificial light. He also looked vaguely familiar. “Forgive my rudeness. I know you go by Cross now, but I wanted to make certain that you are the woman I'm searching for. I'm looking for Brook Delacroix, born 12:05 a.m., January first in the year 2000 in Detroit, Michigan.”

  Another safety protocol. What was this?

  “That's me,” Brooke said.

  The screen blinked slightly, apparently as her answer was fed into some sort of program. He must have recorded various messages for various answers. She knew she wasn't speaking to him live.

  “We are actually colleagues, Ms. Cross. I'm Eldon Franke…”

  Of course. That was why he looked familiar. The Human Potential Guru who had gotten all the press. He was a legitimate scientist whose most recent tome became a pop culture bestseller. Franke rehashed the nature versus nurture arguments in personality development, mixed in some sociology and some well documented advice for improving the lot nature/nurture gave people, and somehow the book hit.

  She had read it, and had been impressed with the interdisciplinary methods he had used—and the credit he had given to his colleagues.

  “…have a new grant, quite a large one actually, which startled even me. With that and the proceeds from the last book, I'm able to undertake the kind of study I've always wanted to do.”

  She kept her hands folded and watched him. His eyes were bright, intense. She remembered seeing him at faculty parties, but she had never spoken to him. She didn't speak to many people voluntarily, especially during social occasions. She had learned, from her earliest days, the value of keeping to herself.

  “I will be bringing in subjects from around the country,” he was saying. “I had hoped to go around the world, but that makes this study too large even for me. As it is, I'll be working with over three hundred subjects from all over the United States. I didn't expect to find one in my own backyard.”

  A subject. She felt her breath catch in her throat. She had thought he was approaching her as an equal.

  “I know from published reports that you dislike talking about your status as a Millennium Baby, but—”

  “Off,” she said to House. Franke's image froze on the screen.

  “I'm sorry,” House said. “This message is designed to be played in its entirety.”

  “So go around it,” she said, “and shut the damn thing off.”

  “The message program is too sophisticated for my systems,” House said.

  Brooke cursed. The son of a bitch knew she'd try to shut him down. “How long is it?”

  “You have heard a third of the message.”

  Brooke sighed. “All right. Continue.”

  The image became mobile again. “—I hope you hear me out. My work, as you may or may not know, is with human potential. I plan to build on my earlier research, but I lacked the right kind of study group. Many scientists of all stripes have studied generations, and assumed that beca
use people were born in the same year, they had the same hopes, aspirations, and dreams. I do not believe that is so. The human creature is too diverse—”

  “Get to the point,” Brooke said, sitting on a wooden kitchen chair.

  “—so in my quest for the right group, I stumbled on thirty-year-old articles about Millennium Babies, and I realized that the subset of your generation, born on January 1 of the year 2000, actually have similar beginnings.”

  “No, we don't,” Brooke said.

  “Thus you give me a chance to focus this study. I will use the raw data to continue my overall work, but this study will focus on what it is that makes human beings succeed or fail—”

  “Screw you,” Brooke said and walked out of the kitchen. Behind her, Franke's voice stopped.

  “Do you want me to transfer audio to the living room?” House asked.

  “No,” Brooke said. “Let him ramble on. I'm done listening.”

  The fire crackled in the fireplace, her wine had warmed to room temperature, bringing out a different bouquet, and her blankets looked comfortable. She sank into them. Franke's voice droned on in the kitchen, and she ordered House to play Bach to cover him.

  But her favorite Brandenburg Concerto couldn't wipe Franke's voice from her mind. Studying Millennium Babies. Brooke closed her eyes. She wondered what her mother would think of that.

  Three days later, Brooke was in her office, trying to assemble her lecture for her new survey class. This one was on the two world wars. The University of Wisconsin still believed that a teacher should stand in front of students, even for the large lecture courses, instead of delivering canned lectures that could be downloaded. Most professors saw surveys as too much wasted work, but she actually enjoyed the courses. She liked standing before a large room delivering a lecture.

  But now she was getting past the introductory remarks and into the areas she wasn't that familiar with. She didn't believe in regurgitating the textbooks, so she was boning up on World War I. She had forgotten that its causes were so complex; its results so far reaching, especially in Europe. Sometimes she just found herself reading, lost in the past.

  Her office was small and narrow, with barely enough room for her desk. Because she was new, she was assigned to Bascom Hall at the top of Bascom Hill, a building that had been around for most of the university's history. The Hall's historic walls didn't accommodate new technology, so the university made certain she had a fancy desk with a built-in screen. The problem with that was that when she did extensive research, as she was doing now, she had to look down. She often downloaded information to her palmtop or worked at home. Working in her office, in the thin light provided by the ancient fluorescents and the dirty meshed window, gave her a headache.

  But she was nearly done. Tomorrow, she would take the students from the horrors of trench warfare to the first steps toward US involvement. The bulk of the lecture, though, would focus on isolationism—a potent force in both world wars.

  A knock on her door brought her to the twenty-first century. She rubbed the bridge of her nose impatiently. She wasn't holding office hours. She hated it when students failed to read the signs.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Professor Cross?”

  “Yes?”

  “May I have a moment of your time?”

  The voice was male and didn't sound terribly young, but many of her students were older.

  “A moment,” she said, using her desktop to unlock the door. “I'm not having office hours.”

  The knob turned and a man came inside. He wasn't very tall, and he was thin—a runner's build. It wasn't until he turned toward her, though, that she let out a groan.

  “Professor Franke.”

  He held up a hand. “I'm sorry to disturb you—”

  “You should be,” she said. “I purposely didn't answer your message.”

  “I figured. Please. Just give me a few moments.”

  She shook her head. “I'm not interested in being the subject of any study. I don't have time.”

  “Is it the time? Or is it the fact that the study has to do with Millennium Babies?” His look was sharp.

  “Both.”

  “I can promise you that you'll be well compensated. And if you'll just listen to me for a moment, you might reconsider—”

  “Professor Franke,” she said, “I'm not interested.”

  “But you're a key to the study.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Because of my mother's lawsuits?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She felt the air leave her body. She had to remind herself to breathe. The feeling was familiar. It had always been familiar. Whenever anyone talked about Millennium Babies, she had this feeling in her stomach.

  Millennium Babies. No one had expected the craze, but it had become apparent by March of 1999. Prospective parents were timing the conception of their children as part of a race to see if their child could be the first born in 2000—the New Millennium, as the pundits of the day inaccurately called it. There was a more-or-less informal international contest, but in the United States, the competition was quite heavy. There were other races in every developed country, and in every city. And in most of those places, the winning parent got a lot of money, and a lot of products, and some, those with the cutest babies, or the pushiest parents, got endorsements as well.

  “Oh, goodie,” Brooke said, filling her voice with all the sarcasm she could muster. “My mother was upset that I didn't get exploited enough as a child so you're here to fill the gap.”

  His back straightened. “It's not like that.”

  “Really? How is it then?” She regretted the words the moment she spoke them. She was giving Franke the opening he wanted.

  “We've chosen our candidates with care,” he said. “We are not taking babies born randomly on January 1 of 2000. We're taking children whose birth was planned, whose parents made public statements about the birth, and whose parents hoped to get a piece of the pie.”

  “Wonderful,” she said. “You're studying children with dysfunctional families.”

  “Are we?” he asked.

  “Well, if you study me, you are,” she said and stood. “Now, I'd like it if you'd leave.”

  “You haven't let me finish.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because this study might help you, Professor Cross."'

  “I'm doing fine without your help.”

  “But you never talk about your Millennium Baby status.”

  “And how often do you discuss the day you were born, Professor?”

  “My birthday is rather unremarkable,” he said. “Unlike yours.”

  She crossed her arms. “Get out.”

  “Remember that I study human potential,” he said. “And you all have the same beginnings. All of you come from parents who had the same goal—parents who were driven to achieve something unusual.”

  “Parents who were greedy,” she said.

  “Some of them,” he said. “And some of them planned to have children anyway, and thought it might be fun to try to join the contest.”

  “I don't see how our beginnings are relevant.”

  He smiled, and she cursed under her breath. As long as she talked to him, as long as she asked thinly veiled questions, he had her and they both knew it.

  “In the past forty years, studies of identical twins raised apart have shown that at least 50 percent of a person's disposition is apparent at birth. Which means that no matter how you're raised, if you were a happy baby, you have a greater than 50 percent chance of being a happy adult. The remaining factors are probably environmental. Are you familiar with DNA mapping?”

  “You're not answering my question,” she said.

  “I'm trying to,” he said. “Listen to me for a few moments, and then kick me out of your office.”

  She wouldn't get rid of him otherwise. She slowly sat in her chair.

  “Are you familiar with DNA mapping?” he repeated.

  “
A little,” she said.

  “Good.” He leaned back in his chair and templed his fingers. “We haven't located a happiness gene or an unhappiness gene. We're not sure what it is about the physical make-up that makes these things work. But we do know that it has something to do with serotonin levels.”

  “Get to the part about Millennium Babies,” she said.

  He smiled. “I am. My last book was partly based on the happiness/unhappiness model, but I believe that's too simplistic. Human beings are complex creatures. And as I grow older, I see a lot of lost potential. Some of us were raised to fail, and some were raised to succeed. Some of those raised to succeed have failed, and some who were raised to fail have succeeded. So clearly it isn't all environment.”

  “Unless some were reacting against their environment,” she said, hearing the sullenness in her tone, a sullenness she hadn't used since she'd last spoken to her mother five years before.

  “That's one option,” he said, sounding brighter. He must have taken her statement for interest. “But one of the things I learned while working on human potential is that drive is like happiness. Some children are born driven. They walk sooner than others. They learn faster. They adapt faster. They achieve more, from the moment they take their first breath.”

  “I don't really believe that our entire personalities are formed at birth,” she said. “Or that our destinies are written before we're conceived.”

  “None of us do,” he said. “If we did, we wouldn't have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. But we do acknowledge that we're all given traits and talents that are different from each other. Some of us have blue eyes. Some of us can hit golf balls with a power and accuracy that others only dream of. Some of us have perfect pitch, right?”

  “Of course,” she snapped.

  “So it only stands to reason that some of us are born with more happiness than others, and some are born with more drive than others. If you consider those intangibles to be as real as, say, musical talent.”

  His argument had a certain logic, but she didn't want to agree with him on anything. She wanted him out of her office.