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  “I have a restraining order against you,” Brooke said, struggling to keep her voice level. “You are not supposed to be here.”

  “I'm not the one who broke the order.” Her mother's voice was smooth and seductive. Her courtroom voice. She had won a lot of cases with that melodious warmth. It didn't seem too strident. It just seemed sure.

  “I sure as hell didn't want contact with you,” Brooke said.

  “No? Is that why your university contacted me?”

  Brooke's heart was pounding so hard she wondered if her mother could hear it. “Who contacted you?'

  “A Professor Franke, for some study. Something to do with DNA samples. I was to send them through my doctor, but you know I wouldn't do such a thing with anything that delicate.”

  Son of a bitch. Brooke hadn't known they were going to try something like that. She didn't remember any mention of it, nothing in the forms.

  “I have nothing to do with that,” Brooke said.

  “It seems you're in some study. That seems like involvement to me,” her mother said.

  “Not the kind that gets you around a restraining order. Now get the hell off my property.”

  “Brooke, honey,” her mother said, taking a step toward her. “I think you and I should discuss this—”

  “There's nothing to discuss,” Brooke said. “I want you to stay away from me.”

  “That's silly.” Her mother took another step forward. “We should be able to settle this, Brooke. Like adults. I'm your mother—”

  “That's not my fault,” Brooke snapped. She glanced at the screen door again.

  “A restraining order is for people who threaten your life. I've never hurt you, Brooke.”

  “There's judge in Dane County who disagrees, Mother.”

  “Because you were so hysterical,” her mother said. “We've had a good run of it, you and I.”

  Brooke felt the color drain from her face. “How's that, Mother? The family that sues together stays together?”

  “Brooke, we have been denied what's rightfully ours. We—”

  “It never said in any of those contests that a child had to be born by natural means. You misunderstood, Mother. Or you tried to be even more perfect than anyone else. So what if I'm the first vaginal birth of the new millennium. So what? It was thirty years ago. Let it go.”

  “The first baby received enough in endorsements to pay for a college education and to have a trust fund—”

  “And you've racked up enough in legal fees that you could have done the same.” Brooke rubbed her hands over her arms. The day had grown colder.

  “No, honey,” her mother said in that patronizing tone that Brooke hated. “I handled my own case. There were no fees.”

  It was like arguing with a wall. “I have made it really, really clear that I never wanted to see you again,” Brooke said. “So why do you keep hounding me? You don't even like me.”

  “Of course I like you, Brooke. You're my daughter.”

  “I don't like you,” Brooke said.

  “We're flesh and blood,” her mother said softly. “We owe it to each other to be there for each other.”

  “Maybe you should have remembered that when I was growing up. I was a child, Mother, not a trophy. You saw me as a means to an end, an end you now think you got cheated out of. Sometimes you blame me for that—I was too big, I didn't come out fast enough, I was breach—and sometimes you blame the contest people for not discounting all those 'artificial methods' of birth, but you never, ever blame yourself. For anything.”

  “Brooke,” her mother said, and took another step forward.

  Brooke held up her hand. “Did you ever think, Mother, that it's your fault we missed the brass ring? Maybe you should have pushed harder. Maybe you should have had a c-section. Or maybe you shouldn't have gotten pregnant at all.”

  “Brooke!”

  “You weren't fit to be a parent. That's what the judge decided on. You're right. You never hit me. You didn't have to. You told me how worthless I was from the moment I could hear. All that anger you felt about losing you directed at me. Because, until I was born, you never lost anything.”

  Her mother shook her head slightly. “I never meant that. When I would say that, I meant—”

  “See? You're so good at taking credit for anything that goes well, and so bad at taking it when something doesn't.”

  “I still don't see why you're so angry at me,” her mother said.

  This time, it was Brooke's turn to take a step forward. “You don't? You don't remember that last official letter? The one cited in my restraining order?”

  “You have never understood the difference between a legal argument and the real issues.”

  “Apparently the judge is just as stupid about legal arguments as I am, Mother.” Brooke was shaking. “He believed it when you said that I was brought into this world simply to win that contest, and by rights, the state should be responsible for my care, not you.”

  “It was a lawsuit, Brooke. I had an argument to make.”

  “Maybe you can justify it that way, but I can't. I know the truth when I hear it. And so does the rest of the world.” Brooke swallowed. Her throat was so tight it hurt. “Now get out of here.”

  “Brooke, I—”

  “I mean it, Mother. Or I will call the police.”

  “Do you want me at least to do the DNA work?”

  “I don't give a damn what you do, so long as I never see you again.”

  Her mother sighed. “Other children forgive their parents for mistakes they made in raising them.”

  “Was your attitude a mistake, Mother? Have you reformed? Or do you still have lawsuits out there? Are you still trying to collect on a thirty-year-old dream?”

  Her mother shook her head and went back to the car. Brooke knew that posture. It meant that Brooke was being unreasonable. Brooke was impossible to argue with. Brooke was the burden.

  “Some day,” her mother said, “you'll regret how you treated me.”

  “Why?” Brooke asked. “You don't seem to regret how you treated me.”

  “Oh, I regret it, Brooke. If I had known it would have made you so bitter toward me, I never would have talked to you about our problems. I would have handled them alone.”

  Brooke clenched a fist and then unclenched it. She made herself take a deep breath and, instead of pointing out to her mother that she had done it again—she had blamed Brooke—Brooke said, “I'm calling the police now,” and started toward the house.

  “There's no need,” her mother said. “I'm going. I'm just sorry—”

  And the rest of her words got lost in the bang of the screen door.

  An hour later, Brooke found herself outside Professor Franke's office. She ignored the small electronic screen that floated ahead of her, bleating that she didn't have an appointment and she wasn't welcome in the building. It was a dumb little machine; when she had asked if Professor Franke was in, it had told her he was. A good human secretary would have lied.

  Apparently the system had already contacted Franke, for he stood in his door, waiting for her, a smile on his face even though his eyes were wary.

  “Everything all right, Professor Cross?”

  “I never gave you permission to contact my mother,” she said as she came up the stairs.

  “Your mother?”

  “She came to my house today, claiming I'd nullified my restraining order by contacting her. She said you asked her for DNA samples.”

  “Come into my office,” he said.

  Brooke walked past him and heard him close the door. “We did contact her, as we did all the parents, for DNA samples. We were explicit in expressing our needs as part of the study, and that they had every right to refuse if they wanted. In no way did we ask her to come here or tell her that you asked us to contact her.”

  “She says it came from me and she knew I was involved in the study.”

  “Of course,” he said. “One of the waivers you signed gave us pe
rmission to examine your genetic heritage. That includes parents, grandparents, living relatives if necessary. Your attorney didn't object.”

  Her attorney was good, but not that good. He probably hadn't known what that all entailed.

  “I want you to send a letter, through your attorney or the university's counsel, stating that I in no way asked you to contact her and that you did it of your own volition.”

  “Do you want me to apologize?” he asked.

  “To me or to her?” she asked.

  He drew in his breath sharply and she realized for the first time that she had knocked him off balance.

  “I meant to her,” he said, “but I guess I owe you an apology too.”

  Brooke stared at him for a moment. No one had said that to her before.

  “Look,” he said, apparently not understanding her silence. “I should have thought it through when your mother said she didn't allow such confidential information to be sent to people she didn't know. I thought that was a refusal.”

  “For anyone else it would have been,” Brooke said. “But not for my mother.”

  “She's an interesting woman.”

  “From the outside,” Brooke said.

  He nodded as if he understood. “For the record, I didn't mean to cause you trouble. I'm sorry I didn't warn you.”

  “It's all right,” Brooke said. “Just don't let it happen again.”

  Except for receiving a copy of the official letter Franke sent to her mother, Brooke didn't think about the study again until Memorial Day weekend. The semester was over. Most of her students successfully answered the question on her World Wars final: Explain the influence World War I had on World War II.

  One student actually called World War I the mother of World War II. The phrase stopped Brooke as she read, made her shudder, and hoped that not every monstrous mother begot an even more monstrous child.

  Professor Franke sent instructions for Memorial Day weekend with the official letter. He asked her to set aside time from mid-afternoon on Friday to late evening on Monday. She was to report to TheaterPlace, a restaurant and bar on the west side of town.

  She'd been to the restaurant before. It was a novelty spot in what had once been a four-plex movie palace. The restaurant was in the very center, with huge meeting rooms off to the sides. The builders had called it a gathering place for organizations too small to hold conventions. Still, it had everything—the large restaurant, the bar, places for presentations, places for seminars, places for quiet get-togethers. There were three smaller restaurants in what had once been the projection booths—restaurants that barely seated twenty. One of the larger rooms even showed live theater once a month.

  Cars were no longer allowed in this part of town, thanks to a Green referendum three years before. Someone had tried to make exception for electric vehicles but that hadn't worked either, as the traffic cops said it would be too hard to patrol. Instead, the light rail made several stops, and some enterprising entrepreneur had built underground tunnels to connect all of the buildings. Many people Brooke knew preferred to shop here in the winter; it kept them out of the freezing cold. But she found the necessity of taking the light rail annoying. She would have preferred her own car so that she could leave on her own schedule.

  She walked from the light rail stop near the refurbished mall to TheaterPlace. On the outside, it still looked like a four-plex: the raised roof, the warehouse shape. Only up close did it become apparent that TheaterPlace had been completely gutted and remodeled, right down to the smoked glass that had replaced the clear windows.

  A sign on the main entrance notified her that TheaterPlace was closed for a private party. She touched the door anyway—knowing the party was theirs—and a scanner instantly identified her.

  Welcome, Brooke Cross. You may enter.

  She shuddered slightly, knowing that Franke had programmed the scanner to recognize either her fingerprints on the backside of the door or her DNA. She felt like her mother, worried that Franke had too much information.

  The door clicked open and she let herself inside. A short dark-haired woman she had never seen before hurried to her side.

  “Professor Cross,” the woman said. “Welcome.”

  “Thanks,” Brooke said.

  “Just a few rules before we get started,” the woman said. “This is the last time we'll be using names today. We ask you not to tell anyone who you are by name, although you may tell them anything else you wish about yourself. Please identify yourself using this number only.”

  She handed Brooke a stick-on badge with the number 333 printed in bold black numbers.

  “Then what?” Brooke asked.

  “Wait for Professor Franke to make his announcement. You're in the Indiana Jones Room, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” Brooke said. She stuck the label to her white blouse and made her way down the hall. All of the rooms were named after characters from famous movies, and the decor in all of them except the restaurants was the same: movie posters on the wall, soft golden lighting, and a thin light blue carpet. The furniture moved according to the function. She had been in the Jones Room before for a faculty party honoring some distinguished professor from Beijing, but she doubted the room would be the same.

  The double doors were open and inside, she heard the sound of soft conversation. She stopped just outside the door and surveyed the room.

  The lights were up—not soft and golden at all—but full daylight, so that everyone's faces were visible. The Jones Room was one of the largest—the only theater, apparently, whose dimensions had been left intact. It seemed about half full.

  There were tables lining the wall, with various kinds of foods and beverages, small plates to hold everything, and silverware glimmering in the brightness. People stood in various clusters. There were no chairs, no furniture groupings, and Brooke knew that was on purpose. Small floating serving trays hovered near each group. Whenever someone set an empty glass on one, the tray would float through an opening in the wall, and another tray would take its place.

  Something about the groupings made her nervous, and it wasn't the lack of chairs or the fact that she didn't know anyone. She stared for a moment, trying to figure out what had caught her.

  No one looked the same; they were fat and thin, tall and short. They had long hair and beards, no hair, and dyed hair. They were white, black, Asian and Hispanic or they were multiracial, with no features that marked them as part of any particular ethnic group. They were incredibly diverse—but none of them were elderly or underage. None of them had wrinkles, except for a few laugh lines, and none of them seemed younger than twenty.

  They were about the same age. She would guess they were the same age—the exact same age as she was. It was a gathering of Franke's subjects for this study: all of them born January 1, 2000. All of them thirty years and 147 days old.

  She shuddered. No wonder Franke was worried about this second half of the study. Most studies of this nature didn't allow the participants to get to know each other. She wondered what discipline he was dabbling in now, what sort of results he was expecting.

  A man stopped beside her just outside the door. He was wearing a denim shirt, a bolo tie, and tight blue jeans. His long blond hair—naturally sunstreaked—brushed against his collar. He had a tan—something she had rarely seen in her lifetime—and it made his skin a burnished gold. He had letters on his name badge: DKGHY.

  “Hi,” he said. His voice was deep, with a Southern twang. “I guess we just go in, huh?”

  “I've been steeling myself for it,” she said.

  He smiled. “Feels like they took away my armor when they took my name. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to say, 'Hi. I'm DKG—whatever-the-hell the rest of those letters are.' Or if I'm not supposed to say anything at all.”

  “Well, I don't want to be called 333.”

  “Can't say as I blame you.” He grinned. “How about I call you Tre, and you can call me—oh, hell, I don't know—”

  “
De,” she said. 'I'll call you De.”

  “Nice to meet you, Tre,” he said, holding out his hand.

  She took it. His fingers were warm. “Nice to meet you, De.”

  “Where do you hail from?”

  “Right here,” she said.

  “You're kiddin'? No travel expenses, huh?”

  “And no hotel rooms.”

  He grinned. “Sometimes hotel rooms can be nice, especially when you don't get to see the inside of them very often.”

  “I suppose.” She smiled at him. He was making this easier than she expected. “Where're you from?”

  “Originally Galveston. But I've been in L'siana a long time now.”

  “New Orleans?”

  “Just outside.”

  “Some city you got there.”

  “Yeah, but we ain't got a place like this.” He looked around. “Want to go in?”

  “Now I do,” she said.

  They walked side by side as if they were a couple who had been together most of their lives. Neither of them looked at the food, although he snatched two bottles of sparkling water off one of the tables, and handed one to her. She opened it, glad to have something to carry.

  A few more people came in the doors. She and De went farther into the room. Bits of conversation floated by her:

  “…never really got over it…”

  “…worked for the past five years as a dental hygienist…”

  “…my father wanted to take us out of the country, but…”

  Then there was a slight bonging sound, and the conversation halted. Franke stood in the very front of the room, where the theater screen used to be. He was easy to see because the floor slanted downward slightly. He held up his hands, and in a moment there was complete silence.

  “I want to thank you all for coming.” His voice was being amplified. It sounded as he were talking right next to Brooke instead of half a room away. “Your assignment today is easy. We do not want you sharing names, but you can talk about anything else. We will be providing meals later on in various restaurants—your badge ID will be listed on a door—and we will have drinks in the bar after that. We ask that no one leave before midnight, and that you all return at noon tomorrow for the second phase.”