Millennium Babies

“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.

“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 Mille

“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 Mille

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 wi

“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 Mille

“The study uses Mille

“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 u

“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 Mille

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 Mi

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.