Caroline/Carol

A gov't-infiltrator working against terrorism returns home to choose between two girlfriends, the one who'll offer him an escape from detention.

A philosophical romance vignette with patriotism-contours, inspired by the thrilling American film True Lies. Thanks for reading, 

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This is the 20th-anniversary of 9/11. On that day (September 11, 2001), anti-Western terrorists crashed two hijacked passenger airplanes into the commerce-symbolic World Trade Center in NYC. The world was forever changed, and not since Pearl Harbor or the Vietnam War or the Cold War did Americans actually feel their nation was in any way 'challenged' by foreign issues. Many considered what such a calamity would mean for the nature of American rhetoric and ideal forever. The United States (of America) had already been through the maelstrom of the Kennedy assassination and the Los Angeles Race Riots, but 9/11 made everyone simply and eerily 'nervous' about macro-homeland securities. World security forces went to work to ensure that modern highways of anti-globalization terrorism would not overshadow a new era optimism regarding Internet-oriented world communications and capitalism.

That's why we're thinking of two very different women today, one Irish-American (Caroline) and the other German-American (Carol). Caroline/Carol are both dating an Interpol-relations blood-diamond infiltration-agent and intelligence-man named Amlan Satan (code-name: Storm-Shadow) who's subverting terrorism-financing disoriented normal talks through Sinn Fein and Parliament regarding Irish Republican Army works and Catholic-Protestant disparities/improvements in Northern Ireland. Caroline/Carol both met Satan (Amlan!) at Dartmouth College (Ivy League), but he parted ways to start intelligence-underground operations, first as a diamond-thief and later as an information-analyst with Interpol-relations in Europe. Caroline and Carol kept in touch with their romantic Ivy League man Amlan Satan ('Storm-Shadow') by email, wondering which woman he'd eventually marry when he returned to America to retire or settle down in a more steady/uncomplicated position in Washington.

CAROLINE: What I give Amlan is a sense of fresh romance and generally optimism.

CAROL: I'm the ego-grounding figure for Amlan, reminding him of the sanity in this insane world!

AMLAN: I don't know who to choose --- right now, Interpol-remissions have cures in Belfast, sending me home finally.

When Satan (Amlan!) returned to the USA, he immediately visited Caroline and Carol, but he visited Caroline first. While spending romantic time with her, he realized what he wanted in this post-infiltration life in America was a sense of socio-cultural freshness and a break from all the political hellmouths of the United Kingdom. He liked what Caroline gave him really --- a sense of imaginative escapism from the harsh realities of engaged political underworlds. Caroline made him feel happy and cheerful about the fortunes of being American (Algerian-American). He then visited Carol, and he spent some romantic time with her too! With Carol, Amlan remembered what made his bond to this other woman so special and vitalizing was the way she made him feel completely sensible and sane after his deep and dark work in Northern Ireland. Whom would Satan choose --- the Irish-American idealist or the German-American pragmatist? Such a decision would reflect Amlan's commitment to something very symbolic in modern civilization --- a fresh-start regarding extra-daylight.

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)

{Caroline/Carol}