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 because 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.”