"Rusch,_Kristine_Kathryn_-_Millennium_Babies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

"Wonderful," she said. "You're studying children with dysfunctional families."
"Are we?" he asked.
"Well, if you study me, you are," she said and stood. "Now, I'd like it if you'd leave."
"You haven't let me finish."
"Why should I?"
"Because this study might help you, Professor Cross."'
"I'm doing fine without your help."
"But you never talk about your Millennium Baby status."
"And how often do you discuss the day you were born, Professor?"
"My birthday is rather unremarkable," he said. "Unlike yours."
She crossed her arms. "Get out."
"Remember that I study human potential," he said. "And you all have the same beginnings. All of you come from parents who had the same goal -- parents who were driven to achieve something unusual."
"Parents who were greedy," she said.
"Some of them," he said. "And some of them planned to have children anyway, and thought it might be fun to try to join the contest."
"I don't see how our beginnings are relevant."
He smiled, and she cursed under her breath. As long as she talked to him, as long as she asked thinly veiled questions, he had her and they both knew it.
"In the past forty years, studies of identical twins raised apart have shown that at least 50 percent of a person's disposition is apparent at birth. Which means that no matter how you're raised, if you were a happy baby, you have a greater than 50 percent chance of being a happy adult. The remaining factors are probably environmental. Are you familiar with DNA mapping?"
"You're not answering my question," she said.
"I'm trying to," he said. "Listen to me for a few moments, and then kick me out of your office."
She wouldn't get rid of him otherwise. She slowly sat in her chair.
"Are you familiar with DNA mapping?" he repeated.
"A little," she said.
"Good." He leaned back in his chair and templed his fingers. "We haven't located a happiness gene or an unhappiness gene. We're not sure what it is about the physical make-up that makes these things work. But we do know that it has something to do with serotonin levels."
"Get to the part about Millennium Babies," she said.
He smiled. "I am. My last book was partly based on the happiness/unhappiness model, but I believe that's too simplistic. Human beings are complex creatures. And as I grow older, I see a lot of lost potential. Some of us were raised to fail, and some were raised to succeed. Some of those raised to succeed have failed, and some who were raised to fail have succeeded. So clearly it isn't all environment."
"Unless some were reacting against their environment," she said, hearing the sullenness in her tone, a sullenness she hadn't used since she'd last spoken to her mother five years before.
"That's one option," he said, sounding brighter. He must have taken her statement for interest. "But one of the things I learned while working on human potential is that drive is like happiness. Some children are born driven. They walk sooner than others. They learn faster. They adapt faster. They achieve more, from the moment they take their first breath."
"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 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."