Dichotomy pt

Dawn opened her mouth to tell Eve she was wrong, but about then her brain kicked in and looked through all her memories. Her mouth hung open for a few minutes and then closed shut. "I don’t believe it," she said. "Talk about missing the forest." She began to laugh as the sheer level of cluelessness.

"It’s not fu...," Eve started to say, but Dawn’s sincere laughter was getting the best of her and began to giggle in synch. "Hee..stop it you’re haahaa making me heehee..." Eve gave up and the two girls enjoyed a shared hearty laugh.

"You’re welcome." Dawn didn’t need to ask what for. She knew Eve wasn’t ready for a sexual relationship to exist between the two of them, but she could wait. "Now, what was the question again?"

Dawn brought their right hand up to take their left; Eve squeezed it. "It may sound stupid but you’ve made me a better person. Before you I was on my way to becoming another loser interested in drugs and sex and nothing else. No one respected me and I’d convinced myself that it was their problem and not mine. You taught me how stupid that attitude really is, and I’ll always be grateful."

"You’ve taught me how to be strong," Eve returned. "I used to believe that all people needed was to be shown the ‘right’ way to live and they would. I now know there are those out there who are unpleasant because they can be and if you don’t stand up to them they’ll just keep on being unpleasant."

"It was something I needed to learn," Eve assured her. "It may not be nice, but that’s the way people are. And you haven’t answered my question."

For a long moment they just laid in the dark holding each other’s hand enjoying the feel of their heartbeat. Davn was the first to break the silence. " I think we still have a few things to take care of," she said. "Your dad and my mom kept referring to us like the other one wasn’t even there when we were at the surprise party."

Eve sighed. "I suppose if we hit them over the head with it hard enough they’ll come around. Actually, I think there’s a bigger problem we need to consider." She said a name, and Dawn nodded emphatically.

Evening had fallen outside and Carl continued to fight with his computer. "Stupid machine," he growled. "Can’t give a straight answer even when you’re told what the answer is." Papers were piled up on either side of the finished-oak desk written in programming code. It was a tongue that had caused insanity in people before; Carl wondered if a computer could go crazy. Its monitor face glared back in reproach as if to say I already gave you one miracle, now you want another one? He repressed a sudden urge to put a sneaker through it.

His buzzer complained; Carl ignored it and went back to studying a ream of printouts. He almost managed to lose himself in them when he noticed the buzzer hadn’t stopped complaining, like someone was leaning on it Curious despite the apathy, Carl meandered over to the door to peer out the keyhole.

Instantly his whole manner changed; his slouching posture straightened, his eyes brightened -- he was even smiling as he yanked the door open to reveal a man in a police uniform. "Officer Bechilde -- Mike," Carl smiled, "you don’t know how happy I am to see you."

The man looked briefly startled at Carl’s eagerness, but recovered quickly. "That depends on the evidence. Detectives say there’s no probable cause, but I got them to reopen the case. I just want your story before I start."

Carl giggled hysterically. "You don’t know how long....why don’t you come into my office; all the evidence you’ll need is in there." He made his happy way to the room in question, never noticing that Mike had left the door open. Nor did he notice the strange shadow being cast in the hall. He dug through his records to find the damning section of code and brandished it.

Carl nodded. "And then some. But I’m getting ahead of myself; why don’t you sit down? I’ve told this story already but the other policemen wouldn’t listen to me."

Mike just nodded and glanced at the papers. Behind him, in the main room, the strange shadow crept up on its owners’ soft-shoed feet to listen.

"I met Eve and Dawn literally on the same day," Carl began. "Eve when I started work at the homeless shelter and Dawn at one of my regular Goth haunts."

In answer, Carl fished a pair of overlarge shades with glitter paint covering its frame out of his dresser drawer. He held it up for inspection. "The Shadesman, at your service."

Two very faint noises came from the shadow; one was the start of a surprised squawk and the other the sound of aforementioned squawk being abruptly stifled.

"Oh, on the surface they appear to be as opposite as two people get," Carl conceded, "But past that, they are very similar. Consider that both girls are the same age, within two months of each other. Both are good students and hard workers, putting in fifty-hour days to go to school on scholarship and putting away spending money. Eve’s mother left her father when she was fourteen and likewise for Dawn’s father. They both blamed the parent they remained with and set out to remake themselves into an image that was the opposite of what they saw that parent as being like."

Carl beamed at him. "Exactly! Which leads me to their biggest problem; each was making the same mistake in different ways. Both girls thought that their behavior would entice their prospective absentee parents back. When that didn’t work, they started to upscale it. Eve began to turn into a judgmental zealot and Dawn started to gravitate to the Goth drug scene. It was just starting, so I had to move fast."

"First of all," Carl said, "that wasn’t the intention; second of all, I don't know -- I’m not a biologist. Intention or not, though, I was the cause. Have you heard of machine telepathy?" Mike shook his head. "No surprise there. It’s cutting edge computer design that uses the operator’s brainwaves to control the system. Currently, they’ve managed to get it to the point where you grab a ‘sending device’ and think at a word processor program and it will type -- slowly, mind you, but it will. I’m involved in the projects geared towards developing it further. In the course of my research, I stumbled onto a breakthrough; thought-sharing between two people, using the computer as a medium."

"Sort of," Carl nodded. "My plan was to show Eve and Dawn someone else in their situation, so different and yet so like them, in the hope they’d reevaluate their life choices and change before it was too late. So, I modified my car with a computer and a ‘sender’ in the ignition, and Dawn’s car with another sender."

"Babel has a policy about drunk customers driving; they don’t let them. One evening as Dawn was getting escorted home I stayed after hours to do my tinkering. Eve’s father believes in home security, so I couldn’t get near it for the amount of time I needed."

Mike frowned. "Still sounds dubious. I mean, it was sheer chance that Eve’s car was in the shop when Dawn broke down..." he paused, seeing Carl’s too-innocent expression. "Not chance, I take it?"

"Nope," Carl said. "Fake recall notice was all it took to put Eve’s car in the shop. A locator in Dawn’s car told me when and where it was moving. The rest as they say, is history."

Mike rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "So I see. Well, the cars in question were thoroughly destroyed so there’s no evidence, can’t get you there. Boys in the crime lab passed your notes around the staff of where you’re working, and they couldn’t verify your device does what you say it’s supposed to. Even if it does, there’s no way that it could conjoin two people, right?"

"Look," Carl insisted. "I don’t know why that happened. Maybe because they were such a contrast of opposites, and yet connected by their similarities. If you shoot a poisonous spider about the bite someone and hit the person, it’s still attempted murder!" He began to pace the office frantically. "It was my fault! Don’t you see?"

A quick whispered consultation and the shadow stepped into Carl’s office. "We see a lot of things differently these days," Eve said.
Carl jerked in the direction of the unexpected voice, a puppet on strings of grief. Framed in the doorway, wearing a blue strapless tube dress was Eve and Dawn.

Full circle, Carl thought and began to giggle. How appropriate; Mike had brought Carl’s victims to their maimer for their pound of flesh. He knew the man wouldn’t let him down. "Did you hear?" He giggled again, like he couldn’t stop.

"Good," he smiled, a trembling sickly thing. "I’m glad. You....you two deserved to know." The mask of raw guilt on Carl’s face eliminated any ill feeling that the girls had towards him. He seemed to be unaware of the change in their faces from indifference to pity. "This farce has gone on long enough. The police don’t believe me, everyone thinks I’m crazy. You two know different."

They spoke no other words; rushing forward, the two girls gathered him up in a hug as tightly as they could manage. Carl wept and cursed himself with passion while Eve and Dawn murmured forgiveness.
"It’s okay, Shadesman," Dawn soothed in one ear.

Eve and Dawn held that hug for a long time; Mike slipped from the room and closed the door to give them privacy. It took a long time, but Carl learned an important lesson; it’s hard to punish yourself when your victims refuse to withold absolution. It was the only lesson they could give him, so Eve and Dawn taught it as hard as they could.