"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Millennium Babies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

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