Millennium Babies Read online

  “But,” he said. “Those with the most musical talent aren't always the ones on stage at Carnegie Hall. There are other factors, environmental factors. A child who grows up without hearing music might never know how to make music, right?”

  “I don't know,” she said.

  “Likewise,” he said, “if that musically inclined child had parents to whom music was important, the child might hear music all the time. From the moment that child is born, that child is familiar with music and has an edge on the child who hasn't heard a note.”

  She started tapping her fingers.

  He glanced at them and leaned forward. “As I said in my message, this study focuses on success and failure. To my knowledge, there has never before been a group of children conceived nationwide with the same specific goal in mind.”

  Her mouth was dry. Her fingers had stopped moving.

  “You Millennium Babies share several traits in common. Your parents conceived you at the same time. Your parents had similar goals and desires for you. You came out of the womb and instantly you were branded a success or a failure, at least for this one goal.”

  “So,” she said, keeping her voice cold. “Are you going to deal with all those children who were abandoned by their parents when they discovered they didn't win?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  The quiet sureness of his response startled her. He spread his hands as if in explanation. “Their parents gave up on them,” he said. “Right from the start. Those babies are perhaps the purest subjects of the study. They were clearly conceived only with the race in mind.”

  “And you want me because I'm the most spectacular failure of the group.” Her voice was cold, even though she had to clasp her hands together to keep them from trembling.

  “I don't consider you a failure, Professor Cross,” he said. “You're well respected in your profession. You're on a tenure track at a prestigious university—”

  “I meant as a Millennium Baby. I'm the public failure. When people think of baby contests, the winners never come to mind. I do.”

  He sighed. “That's part of it. Part of it is your mother's attitude. In some ways, she's the most obsessed parent, at least that we can point to.”

  Brooke winced.

  “I'd like to have you in this study,” he said. “The winners will be. It would be nice to have you represented as well.”

  “So that you can get rich off this book, and I'll be disgraced yet again,” she said.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe you'll get validated.”

  Her shoulders were so tight that it hurt to move her head. “'Validated.' Such a nice psychiatrist's word. Making me feel better will salve your conscience while you get rich.”

  “You seem obsessed with money,” he said.

  “Shouldn't I be?” she asked. “With my mother?”

  He stared at her for a long moment.

  Finally, she shook her head. “It's not the money. I just don't want to be exploited any more. For any reason.”

  He nodded. Then he folded his hands across his stomach and squinched up his face, as if he were thinking. Finally, he said, “Look, here's how it is. I'm a scientist. You're a member of a group that interests me and will be useful in my research. If I were researching thirty-year-old history professors who happened to be on a tenure track, I'd probably interview you as well. Or professional women who lived in Wisconsin. Or—”

  “Would you?” she asked. “Would you come to me, really?”

  He nodded. “It's policy to check who's available for study at the university before going outside of it.”

  She sighed. He had a point. “A book on Millennium Babies will sell well. They all do. And you'll get interviews, and you'll become famous.”

  “The study uses Millennium Babies,” he said, “but anything I publish will be about success and failure, not a pop psychology book about people born on January first.”

  “You can swear to that?” she asked.

  “I'll do it in our agreement,” he said.

  She closed her eyes. She couldn't believe he was talking her into this.

  Apparently he didn't think he had, for he continued. “You'll be compensated for your time and your travel expenses. We can't promise a lot, but we do promise that we won't abuse your assistance.”

  She opened her eyes. That intensity was back in his face. It didn't unnerve her. In fact, it reassured her. She would rather have him passionate about the study than anything else.

  “All right,” she said. “What do I have to do?”

  First she signed waivers. She had all of them checked out by her lawyer—the fact that she even had a lawyer was yet another legacy from her mother—and he said that they were fine, even liberal. Then he tried to talk her out of the study, worried more as a friend, he said, even though he had never been her friend before.

  “You've been trying to get away from all of this. Now you're opening it back up. That can't be good for you.”

  But she wasn't sure what was good for her any more. She had tried not thinking about it. Maybe focusing on herself, on what happened to her from the moment she was born, was better.

  She didn't know, and she didn't ask. The final agreement she signed was personalized—it guaranteed her access to her file, a copy of the completed study, and promised that any study her information was used in would concern success and failure only, and would not be marketed as a Millennium Baby product. Her lawyer asked for a few changes, but very few, considering how opposed he was to this project. She was content with the concessions Professor Franke made for her, including the one which allowed her to leave after the first two months.

  But the first two months were grueling, in their own way. She had to carve time out of an already full schedule for a complete physical, which included DNA sampling. This had been a major sticking point for her lawyer—that her DNA and her genetic history would not be made available to anyone else—and he had actually gotten Franke to sign forms that attested to that fact. The sampling, for all its trouble, was relatively painless. A few strands of hair, some skin scrapings, and two vials of blood, and she was done.

  The psychological exams took the longest. Most of them required the presence of the psychiatric research member of the team, a dour woman who barely spoke to Brooke when she came in. The woman watched while Brooke used a computer to take tests: a Rorschach, a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Interview, a Thematic Apperception Test, and a dozen others whose names she just as quickly forgot. One of them was a standard IQ test. Another a specialized test designed by Franke's team for his previous experiment. All of them felt like games to Brooke, and all of them took over an hour each to complete.

  Her most frustrating time, though, was with the sociologist, a well-meaning man named Meyer. He wanted to correlate her experiences with the experiences of others, and put them in the context of the society at the time. He'd ask questions, though, and she'd correct them—feeling that his knowledge of modern history was poor. Finally she complained to Franke, who smiled, and told her that her perceptions and the researchers' didn't have to match. What was important to them wasn't what was true for the society, but what was true for her. She wanted to argue, but it wasn't her study, and she decided she was placing too much energy into all of it.

  Through it all, she had weekly appointments with a psychologist who asked her questions she didn't want to think about. How has being a Millennium Baby influenced your outlook on life? What's your first memory? What do you think of your mother?

  Brooke couldn't answer the first. The second question was easy. Her first memory was of television lights blinding her, creating prisms, and her chubby baby fingers reaching for them, only to be caught and held by her mother's cold hand.

  Brooke declined to answer the third question, but the psychologist asked it at every single meeting. And after every single meeting, Brooke went home and cried.

  She gave a mid-term exam in her World Wars class, the first time she had ever done
so in a survey class. But she decided to see how effective she was being, since her concentration was more on her own past than the one she was supposed to be teaching.

  Her graduate assistants complained about it, especially when they looked at the exam itself. Her assistants had tried to talk her into a simple true/false/multiple choice exam, and she had glared at them. “I don't want to give a test that can be graded by computer,” she said. “I want to see a handwritten exam, and I want to know what these kids have learned.” And because she wanted to know that—not because of her assistants' complaints (as she made very clear)—she took twenty of the exams to grade herself.

  But before she started, she had a meeting in Franke's office. He had called her.

  Franke's office was in a part of the campus she didn't get to very often. A winding road took her past Washburn Observatory on a bluff overlooking Lake Mendota, and into a grove of young trees. The parking area was large and filled with small electric and energy efficient cars. She walked up the brick sidewalk. Unlike the sidewalks around the rest of the city, this one didn't have the melting piles of dirty snow that were reminders of the long hard winter. Instead, tulips and irises poked out of the brown dirt lining the walk.

  The building was an old Victorian style house, rather large for its day. The only visible signs of a remodel (besides the pristine condition of the paint and roof) were the security system outside, and the heatpump near the driveway.

  Clearly this was a faculty-only building; no classes were held here. She turned the authentic glass door knob and stepped into a narrow foyer. A small electronic screen floated in the center of the room. The screen moved toward her.

  “I'm here to see Dr. Franke,” she said.

  “Second floor,” the digital voice responded. “He is expecting you.”

  She sighed softly and mounted the stairs. With the exception of the electronics, everything in the hall reflected the period. Even the stairs weren't covered in carpet, but instead in an old-fashioned runner, tacked on the sides, with a long gold carpet holder pushed against the back of each step.

  The stairs ended in a long narrow hallway, illuminated by electric lights done up to resemble gaslights. Only one door stood open. She knocked on it, then, without waiting for an invitation, went in.

  The office wasn't like hers. This office was a suite, with a main area and a private room to the side. A leather couch was pushed against the window, and two matching leather chairs flanked it. Teak tables provided the accents, with round gold table lamps the only flourish.

  Professor Franke stood in the door to the private area. He looked at her examining his office.

  “Impressive,” she said.

  He shrugged. “The university likes researchers, especially those who add to its prestige.”

  She knew that. She had published her thesis, and it had received some acclaim in academic circles, which was why she was as far ahead as she was. But very few historians became famous for their research. She doubted she would ever achieve this sort of success.

  “Would you like a seat?” Franke asked.

  She sat on one of the leather chairs. It was soft, and molded around her. “I didn't think you'd need to interview every subject to see if they wanted to continue,” she said.

  “Every subject isn't you.” He sat across from her. His hair was slightly mussed, as if he had been running his fingers through it, and he had a coffee stain above the breastpocket of his white shirt. “We had agreements.”

  She nodded.

  “I will tell you some of what we have learned,” he said. “It's preliminary, of course.”

  “Of course.” She sounded calmer than she felt. Her heart was pounding.

  “We've found three interesting things. The first is that all Millennium Babies in this study walked earlier than the norm, and spoke earlier as well. Since most were firstborns, this is unusual. Firstborns usually speak later than the norm because their every need is catered to. They don't need to speak right away, and when they do, they usually speak in full sentences.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I hesitate to say for certain, but it might be indicative of great drive. Stemming, I believe, from the fact that the parents were driven.” His eyes were sparkling. His enthusiasm for his work was catching. She found herself leaning forward like a student in her favorite class. “We're also finding genetic markers in the very areas we were looking for. And some interesting biochemical indications that may help us isolate the biological aspect of this.”

  “You're moving fast,” she said.

  He nodded. “That's what's nice about having a good team.”

  And a lot of subjects, she thought. Not to mention building on earlier research.

  “We've also found that there is direct correlation between a child's winning or losing the millennium race and her perception of herself as a success or failure, independent of external evidence.”

  Her mouth was dry. “Meaning?”

  “No matter how successful they are, the majority of Millennium Babies—at least the ones we chose for this study, the ones whose parents conceived them only as part of the race—perceive themselves as failures.”

  “Including me,” she said.

  He nodded. The movement was slight, and it was gentle.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “That's the thing we can only speculate at. At least at this moment.” He wasn't telling her everything. But then, the study wasn't done. He tilted his head slightly. “Are you willing to go to phase two of the study?”

  “If I say no, will you tell me what else you've discovered?” she asked.

  “That's our agreement.” He paused and then added, “I would really like it if you continued.”

  Brooke smiled. “That much is obvious.”

  He smiled too, and then looked down. “This last part is nothing like the first. You won't have test after test. It's only going to last for a few days. Can you do that?”

  Some of the tension left her shoulders. She could do a few days. But that was it. “All right,” she said.

  “Good.” He smiled at her, and she braced herself. There was more. “I'll put you down for the next segment. It doesn't start until Memorial Day. I have to ask you to stay in town, and set aside that weekend.”

  She had no plans. She usually stayed in town on Memorial Day weekend. Madison emptied out, the students going home, and the city became a small town—one she dearly loved.

  She nodded.

  He waited a moment, his gaze darting downward, and then meeting hers again. “There's one more thing.”

  This was why he had called her here. This was why she needed to see him in person.

  “I was wondering if your mother ever told you who your father is. It would help our study if we knew something about both parents.”

  Brooke threaded her hands together, willing herself to remain calm. This had been a sensitive issue her entire life. “No,” she said. “My mother has no idea who my father is. She went to a sperm bank.”

  Franke frowned. “I just figured, since your mother seemed so meticulous about everything else, she would have researched your father as well.”

  “She did,” Brooke said. “He was a physicist, very well known, apparently. It was one of those sperm banks that specialized in famous or successful people. And my mother did check that out.”

  Your father must not have been as wonderful as they said he was. Look at you. It had to come from somewhere. “Do you know the name of the bank?”

  “No.”

  Franke sighed. “I guess we have all that we can, then.”

  She hated the disapproval in his tone. “Surely others in this study only have one parent.”

  “Yes,” he said. “There's a subset of you. I was just hoping—”

  “Anything to make the study complete,” she said sarcastically.

  “Not anything,” he said. “You can trust me on that.”

  Brooke didn't hear from Professor Franke again for nearl
y a month, and then only in the form of a message, delivered to House, giving her the exact times, dates, and places of the Memorial Day meetings. She forgot about the study except when she saw it on her calendar.

  The semester was winding down. The mid-term in her World Wars class showed her two things: that she had an affinity for the topic that she was sharing with the students; and that at least two of her graduate assistants had a strong aversion to work. She lectured both assistants, spoke to the chair of the department about teaching the survey class next semester, and continued on with the lectures, focusing on them as if she were the graduate student instead of the professor.

  By late April, she had her final exam written—a long cumbersome thing, a mixture of true/false/multiple choice for the assistants, and two essay questions for her. She was thinking of a paper herself—one on the way those wars still echoed through the generations—and she was trying to decide if she wanted the summer to work on it or to teach as she usually did.

  The last Saturday in April was unusually balmy, in the seventies without much humidity, promising a beautiful summer ahead. The lilac bush near her kitchen window had bloomed. The birds had returned, and her azaleas were blossoming as well. She was in the garage, digging for a lawn chair that she was convinced she still had, when she heard the hum of an electric car.

  She came out of the garage, dusty and streaked with grime. A green car pulled into her driveway, next to the ancient pick-up she used for hauling.

  Something warned her right from the start. A glimpse, perhaps, or a movement. Her stomach flipped over, and she had to swallow sudden nausea. She had left her personal phone inside—it was too nice to be connected to the world today—and she had never gotten the garage hooked into House's computer because she hadn't seen the need for the expense.

  Still, as the car shuddered to a stop, she glanced at the screen door, wondering if she could make it in time. But the car's door was already opening, and in this kind of stand-off, fake courage was better than obvious panic.

  Her mother stepped out. She was a slender woman. She wore blue jeans and a pale peach summer sweater that accented her silver and gold hair. The hair was new and had the look of permanence. Apparently her mother had finally decided to settle on a color. She wore gold bangles, and a matching necklace, but her ears were bare.