“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 finaclass="underline" 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.”