MC—Squared.
The twins were named Don and Dawn, by parents who for some reason had not yet realized that such things were kitschy. The mammograms and scans had revealed two adorable little fetuses in the womb, positioned in such a way that at almost all times they were hugging. Susan and Patrick McCallister, the parents of the duo, were absolutely taken with their children from the moment they first saw them on the monitors. Patrick McCallister read Tolstoy and Shakespeare to his wife’s stomach, and Susan McCallister went to bed every night with Mozart playing through hi-fi headphones on her gravid center.
The McCallisters would no doubt have been surprised to find that the fraternal twins, Don and Dawn, were already quite aware of Tolstoy and Shakespeare and Mozart and much else besides. By six months, they were knew everything their parents and their close associations knew, were able to comprehend English, French, Spanish, German, and (thanks to the maid) Portuguese, and spent a great deal of time speaking between themselves.
The McCallister twins were telepathic, you see.
They also had some small ability to control the minds of others, or at least to present ideas into other’s minds that they mistook for thoughts of their own. Mostly this was used to ensure that their mother took absolute care of them, perhaps making her change position when they were uncomfortable inside of her or consume more sweets than she was inclined to. They also convinced their father that the kids could stand to learn as much hearing Vonnegut as Tolstoy.
Inside the womb, therefore, the two telepathic tots spent days of simple, zen-like joy.
Then came the contractions.
At first they nearly went mad sensing their mother’s agony. Unable to sever telepathic contact, they writhed and screamed. Don nearly died before coming out. But all that was nothing compared to entering the real world. Without the protection of their mother’s womb, the twins found themselves bombarded by the unguarded thoughts of everybody in the hospital and several blocks radius besides. Had they not already firmly established their own personalities, in no small part owing to the fact that they were twins and had used each other to foster their own identities, they no doubt would have died.
As it was, they withdrew into cataleptic shock. The McCallisters were presented with twin infants sharing twin comas.
It took the twins over a decade before they were able to get a grasp on their powers outside the womb, due not only to the quantity of people but because their powers kept growing exponentially.
Finally, though, at the age of thirteen, Don and Dawn McCallister rose from their bed and looked around, for the first time viewing and comprehending the world around them.
Unfortunately, about five minutes later, before any nurses or doctors could see it and come check on them, puberty kicked in. The twins suddenly felt a rush of hormones set into them that began the long process of completely altering their minds and bodies.
These hormones also boosted their powers beyond conception, and drove them right back into their coma for another five years.
At eighteen, though, the twins, working together, finally managed to get themselves and their powers under control. Using their mental talents to convince doctors to release them early, their parents to let them go, and everybody to forget their past existence, the duo disappeared into the world.
The first day of high school saw four years worth of students depressed, drudging onto the bus and into their classrooms. Don and Dawn McCallister, however, were quite pleased at the prospect of experiencing this real life they’d overheard so much about from the minds of others.
Having acquired free room, lodging, and easy work via their talents, the two had begun a new life on the west coast, trying to make up for lost time.
Immediately, it was made clear that things were going to be interesting.
Able to see beneath the layers of false faces people wore, the McCallister twins saw high school in its stark nakedness. Like everything and everywhere else in the world, everything centered around sex and power. Here, however, this was blatantly obvious, and this the twins found exceedingly peculiar.
“Do you think anybody’s aware of how silly they’re acting?” Dawn asked.
“You know they aren’t,” Don replied. “Or rather, they are, but they think that it’s the way they’re supposed to act, and so they don’t mind.”
“And everybody acts this silly way because that’s how everybody else acts, when in fact nobody wants to act this way.”
“It boggles the mind.”
“It certainly does,” Dawn agreed. “The question is, should we override it or indulge in it?”
“Well, we did come here to fit in. So I suppose we should go along with this foolish pecking order for now.”
“But we will be on top of it, won’t we?”
“Oh, yes, sister,” Don smiled. “Oh yes we will.”
Miss Kitelinger had the class introduce themselves and speak a little bit about themselves, using a classic teaching technique called “wasting time.” The McCallister twins, seated in the very back, were some of the last to go.
What they discovered was interesting. Everybody there sought to stand out while still remaining hidden. Everybody sought to be both imperial and invisible, to lead and to keep from making waves.
So, in order to simplify the process and insure their position of power quickly, the twins used their mind control.
This talent had progressed immensely since their days of controlling their mother. They could now completely override anybody’s mind and control their actions, so much so that those being controlled didn’t even realize it.
Dawn stood up. “We are Dawn and Don McCallister. We are the coolest, most awe-inspiring individuals you will ever meet. There is no question in your mind that we are as gods unto you all.”
The entire classroom, including Miss Kitelinger, felt their eyes widen and their jaws drop as they realized the truth of Dawn’s statement. Miss Kitelinger fell to the floor on bended knee, worshipping the duo, praising god that she was fortunate enough to have the chance to be in their presence. The students around followed her example, leaping from their desks to kneel at their feet. Those nearest the McCallisters kissed their hands and their feet.
Don glanced at Dawn with a perturbed look. “I think, sister, that you went a little overboard.”
The twins left the class to speak in the halls. They tried to get the class back into some semblance of order; when they left, Miss Kitelinger was asking students to write a 1500 word essay on how they could better serve their masters, Don and Dawn.
Dawn was annoyed at her brother’s bickering. “What are you so upset about? You said we were going to be at the top here.”
“Yes, but I didn’t intend to turn us into deities. Do we want to fit in or don’t we?”
“Fit in with this rabble of sheep? Don, surely you see that they’re beneath us.”
Don scanned Dawn’s mind, surprised to find that there were areas he could no longer access. “What are you keeping from me?”
“I’m not keeping anything.”
“Yes, you are. Scan me scanning you. You’re hiding something.”
Dawn puzzled, but complied, and pulled back, perturbed. “You’re right. I...I didn’t even realize I was blocking you.” She hugged him, frightened. “What’s happening?”
Don comforted her, slowly used his powers to unravel her mind. Now that she was willing, the layers came away easily, and he chuckled dejectedly. “You’ve been picking up their background thoughts,” he explained. “This whole school’s focus on power and social status wormed its way into your subconscious and made you obsess over it, to the point that you made the classroom believe us the highest beings imaginable.”
Dawn cried. “How could I have been so stupid?”
“Not you’re fault. Just keep an eye on your own behavior. Just because we can influence them doesn’t mean they can’t influence us.”
Sex and power are what high school is really all about. The matter became more obvious the more time they spent at school.
By lunch the McCallister twins had not only realized the futility of trying to deny the dualistic interplay, but were actually beginning to enjoy it. There was really no problem as long as they kept a firm grasp on their own minds, kept outside thoughts from sneaking in and their own subconscious desires from sneaking out and infecting the highly suggestible adolescents around them.
They were having fun playing with peers and controlling interactions when Don spotted Laura Lanesborrough. Laura, although she looked like it with a beautiful figure and long blonde hair, was not a cheerleader, although that was probably the only thing she didn’t do. Track team, glee club, band, FNL president, stage manager of the theatre club, secretary of the student government, and school saledictorian, she was a fine catch in anybody’s book. Don was taken immediately.
Dawn noted her brother’s wandering eye. “See something you like, or just browsing the merchandise, dear brother?”
“She’s beautiful.”
Don appraised the girl, both through her own eyes and her brother’s. “Yes, she is. I can see why you like her.”
“Think I should talk to her?”
“No, dear brother,” Dawn chuckled. “I think you should just take her.”
Earlier Don might have scanned his sister and seen that the drive for power was once more asserting itself. However, had he been inclined to scan himself, he would have found that the drive for sex was asserting itself pretty strongly in him, too. Whether he might have acted differently in other circumstances or no, at the moment the influence of several hundred overactive libidos surrounding him dulled his analytical reasoning and led him to take his sister’s suggestion.
Don placed a suggestion in Laura’s mind to come to the music room (generally deserted, he’d scanned, during lunch hour) and went there himself.
Laura, on her way to make a call from the payphones to see if her mom would let her go out with friends tonight, realized with a thought that didn’t feel quite like her own that she could dial out on the phone in the music room without wasting her quarters.
As she ducked into the room, she saw Don.
Or rather, she saw the amalgam of everything wonderful and masculine and powerful and attractive in Don, as the telepath altered her perceptions and her desires to make her love him. Laura found herself utterly in love and uncontrollably attracted to the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen. Any thought of morality or sense, any thought at all, really, were crushed beneath raging oceans of irrepressible hormones. Releasing herself in wild abandon, Laura raced forward, her lips seeking his as though magnetically attracted.
For a moment, the girl wondered if she were doing something foolish, but then she felt herself wrapped in his gloriously strong arms, and she gave in completely to desire.
Don and Dawn were the world’s first telepaths. Lying in their comas, they had hypothesized that this was because they were twins, that previous telepaths born alone did not have the support to fall back on during the trauma of birth and the agony of feeling their mind opened to the world.
This was, thus, the first time a telepath had had sex.
To start with, Don was incapable of keeping himself from picking up his lover’s thoughts. Her pleasure, her desires, he felt in their totality, and they affected him, boosting his own erotic pleasure. This, in turn, found its way into Laura, and the two kept enhancing one another’s enjoyment.
Then there was Dawn. Having always been at least partially open to her brother at all times, she felt a surge of pleasure like none she’d ever known. Far away from the fact, in the middle of the cafeteria, Dawn felt all the growing joy that her brother and her lover did.
No one noticed, however, because they were themselves occupied. Between Don’s erotic drives and Dawn’s vestigial experience, the two telepaths were forcing lust down the throats of everybody at the school. People found themselves first horny, then insatiable, then downright ravenous with desire. Students grabbed whoever was nearest, their desire so strong that they began to fornicate with whoever was closest at hand.
And this unanimous background of lust in turn re-affected the two telepaths, driving them even wilder, hotter, hornier than before. And they radiated this out, further and further, getting more and more affected by the whole process, until the cycle had spread out not only to the school, the city, the county, the country, but worldwide, the entire planet finding itself at the mercy of its own lust!
When Don finally exploded into Laura, not only she but the entire planet came with him.
In the aftermath, Dawn quickly found her brother. It wasn’t as though she had to search at random, after all.
She grabbed him, told him telepathically to get dressed, and they left.
“Where are we going?”
“We have to get away from here. I’m getting too power-hungry and we’ve all just felt what’s happening to you. If we keep this up I’ll turn into Napoleon and you into Caligula. We can’t afford to stay.”
Don grimaced. “You’re right. It’s too dangerous. For us and for them.”
“Let’s go pack our bags and go. We’ll move someplace without anybody else around. Up in Canada, or out into the Southwest desert, or onto an island or something. Someplace where other people won’t pervert us with their own minds. Just you and me, dear brother.”
“Good idea, sister. Let’s go.”
No one stopped them on their way out of school. Most everybody was still trying to recover from the unexpected worldwide orgy they had just found themselves part of. More than a few were still going at it.
Don looked back nostalgically. “Still, I will miss them.”
“Yes, but it’s better off just being the two of us. We balance each other. We protect each other. We love each other.”
“Yes, we do. But it’ll be a shame not to feel all that again.”
Dawn took her brother’s hand and looked significantly into his eyes. “I’ve already felt you, dear brother, and it was good. I think we’ll be happy alone together.”
Don was startled, but as he scanned his sister he saw the truth of her statement. “Together then, dear sister.”
And the twins set about to leave.