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.But no matter how insightful those ancient seers were, they couldn’t compete with modern computers and trillions of bits of data.”“Fascinating,” Seymour says, finally grasping the concept.“Why do I get the impression you created this system by working backwards?”“Because that’s exactly what I did! To understand the compassionate nature of someone like Mother Teresa, I took her astrological chart and the charts of thousands of other people who had devoted their lives to service.Then I fed their birth data into a computer and searched for qualities in the sky that they all shared.Do you see?”“Gotcha.” Seymour nods.“My goal was to discover the perfect place and time for an infant to be born on earth so they would embody the exact qualities their parents were hoping they would have.I sought for patterns that would create the greatest scientist, statesman, dancer, writer, artist, actor, doctor.With my system, I imagined a day would come when every parent could choose what kind of child they wanted.”“That was a lofty goal,” I say.“It’s amazing, working alone, that you were able to identify all these patterns.”“I worked on the system for years, night and day, without rest.”I pat his arm.“It was the pain of your son’s death that drove you.”Freddy stares at me with tremendous feeling in his eyes.“I’m glad you understand.The system was to be Henry’s memorial.”“What went wrong?” Seymour asks.Freddy drops his head.“Cindy,” he whispers.“You have to tell them,” Mary says gently when a minute goes by without him speaking.He shrugs helplessly.“After we lost Henry, Cindy and I grew apart.We’d go days, even weeks, without speaking.She didn’t tell me that her grief had inspired her to head in a totally different direction.She went back to the professor’s experiments.She gathered together an array that was far more powerful than any of Sharp’s creations.She used every dollar she’d saved from her earlier ventures with the stock market to first identify the kids that were most psychic, then to pay them to work for her at predicting the moods of the market.I should have known what she was up to because suddenly we had money.But I didn’t want to know.My research consumed my every waking moment and frankly I needed her funds to continue with my research.To this day I don’t know if she supported me because she had faith in what I was doing.Or if she simply saw the potential of my idea and planned from the start to steal it.” Freddy pauses.“Of course, that’s exactly what she did.”“How could she steal your system?” Seymour asks.“Every single computer disk, every hard drive, every scrap of paper that dealt with the Cradle.she took it all.Now I know what you’re going to ask.Didn’t I have backups of my work? I did.Unfortunately, she knew where they all were.It’s not as if I tried to hide them from her.After all, she was the one who was supporting me.”“First she stole Professor Sharp’s work,” I say.“Then she stole yours.You don’t need to check her stars.Her pattern is obvious.”Seymour nods.“She’s a user.”Freddy shakes his head.“She’s more than that.She’s a monster.”“What did she do with your astrological system?” I ask.Freddy appears stunned, as if the answer were obvious.“She used it to create more monsters,” he says.“Huh?” Seymour says.“It all goes back to that day I sat before the professor’s array with my mind in turmoil.Cindy spotted an important secret that day that none of us noticed.She realized if you took a person who had exceptional psychic gifts—in this case, me—and connected them to the array, he or she could focus its power so that it caused physical harm.In other words, she saw a way to allow the array to transcend the confines of the mental realms.Make no mistake, I gave Tom a heart attack.My mind struck him down like the hammer of Thor.It’s a miracle he didn’t die, although, as things eventually turned out, it’s a shame he didn’t.”“Tom helped Cindy steal the Cradle from you?” I ask.“He took everything I had.I don’t know exactly when Cindy left me for Tom.I’d ask if she still loved me, and she’d say sure, but she had always been a great liar.All I know is that when they stole my work, I was left with nothing and the world was in terrible danger.”“What did they do with your Cradle?” I ask.“I’m sure you can guess.They began to seek out the qualities that defined a psychic child.Not only that, they sought out the qualities that made a person empathetic.”“They wanted to draft people with empathy?” Seymour asks.Freddy smiles bitterly.“The opposite.They wanted to know which qualities gave rise to love and compassion so they could avoid them at all cost.By this time they probably had so much money and power their reach stretched across the world.I know they set about testing children in the most remote corners of Africa, India, Mongolia, South America.In these places they identified future astrological charts that would produce children more psychic and cold than anything the world had ever seen.Then they made it a point that a child was born in the right place at the right time.”“How?” Seymour asks.“Cesarean section,” I say.“Right,” Freddy says.“It was these children, as they took birth—according to the stars, and according to Cindy’s will—who eventually became the most lethal members of her Cradle.”“How many are there?” Seymour asks.“My best guess is the IIC has twenty thousand kids in their central Array.While another three hundred children make up their Cradle.”“Interesting,” I say.“That they have so many kids?” Freddy asks.“That you know how many they have,” I say.He acts innocent.“It’s an educated guess.”“Freddy, get off it.Mary told us the truth.You know way too much about what Cindy’s been doing since you guys broke up not to still be in touch with her.If I had any doubts on that score, I just have to recall the face of the five-year-old girl I met in Cindy’s house.She looked a hell of a lot like you.”Stunned, Freddy goes to deny my accusation, but then Mary touches his arm.“I told you not to lie to her,” she says.“I didn’t lie,” Freddy says
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