Plot summary

Carl Naardlinger has spent most of his life answering questions. When your computer doesn't work - he is the man you call. Patient, intelligent and kind he is a voice in the interconnected ether - touching the lives of thousands of people he will never see, or meet. When he discovers on his birthday, that a man with the same name as his has gone missing and is presumed dead - Carl instinctively feels related to the stranger that bears his own name. Pam, his wife, is unnerved by a shocking coincidence of her own, when their annoying neighbour dies after she wishes it. It seems the Universe is playing a cruel joke on them both. Things get stranger when instead of finding the missing Carl Naardlinger, Carl finds his identical twin brother Don who happens to be in town for a conference.