The Model Universe And Other Stories

by Christopher Bunn

  And found himself standing before a desk in a dusty room. Sunlight shone down from somewhere, from a window he could not see. The model universe sat on the desk. His fifth grade teacher, Mr. Flynn, sat behind the desk. But Tommy could only stare at the model. Tiny stars. They spun in their orbits. Shining in every color he knew and every color he did not know. A quadrillion quadrillion stars suspended on fishing line or invisible wire, and all around them was sunlight and the smell of chalk. Mr. Flynn took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief.

  “It gets a bit dusty in here,” said Mr. Flynn.

  “What?” said Tommy, blinking again. “Where are we? I mean, when…?”

  “None of those, actually. None of those words apply in this place.” Mr. Flynn smiled and put his glasses back on. “Words were created to describe the universe, or perhaps it's the other way around? We aren't there anymore, so be careful with what you say. I knew you’d make a good scientist. Even at the age of ten, you were wondering. Wondering about the stars. Someone had to. It was high time people started thinking of things other than their little Earth. Figure out a way to the stars. Well done, Thomas.”

  Tommy stepped closer to the desk. “Is this the same model?”

  “From your fifth grade class? Yes. I take it with me wherever I go. You came out right here.” Mr. Flynn touched a spot on the side of the whirling mass, his fingertip almost grazing a star. He smiled. “I did a good job with this, I must admit. Stars, galaxies, the universe. It is good, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t need me to tell you.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “So there’s more than – than just that?” Tommy indicated the model.

  “Of course,” said the teacher. He touched the model again, gently, very carefully. “This is here, and only here. But if you go through that door, then this is not there.”

  Tommy turned and noticed a door in the wall of the room. The handle was worn with age.

  “What’s on the other side?”

  “Everything that isn’t in here.” Mr. Flynn placed his worn leather briefcase on the table and opened it. He glanced up at Tommy, his face still and waiting.

  “Can I go back there?” Tommy asked, looking at the model.

  “If you want.”

  “It’s home. My home. But I would always wonder, and that’s not the way I want to live, is it? It’s not the way I live. I’ve been asking questions all my life, wondering, and I can’t stop now. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  Mr. Flynn didn’t answer, but only smiled and carefully folded the model up. He placed it in the briefcase. He shut it and looked at Tommy, his face expressionless. He waited, and the room waited with him, full of silence and the dusty sunlight.

  Tommy opened the door and walked through.

  NOTHING DISAPPEARS

  The cell phone rang in Flavin’s pocket. He ignored it. Rain drummed on his umbrella and dripped off the edge. He stared down at the gravestone, not really seeing it. Instead, he saw his wife’s face. Lynn. He knew her face as a little girl, when they had met in the first grade, all the way through its maturations and refinements until the age of thirty-three.

  Thirty-three, he thought dully. You would have been thirty-four today, Lynnie. I figured we’d have another forty years at least. Happy birthday.

  Flavin placed the flowers on the gravestone. He walked away, his boots squelching in the mud. The cell phone rang again, right after he shut the door of his truck. The noise was loud in the confines of the cab. He recognized the number on the screen and turned off the phone.

  There was no one in the bar when Flavin walked in except for an old man huddled over a scotch at the end of the counter. The after-work crowd wouldn’t be in for another hour. He sat down.

  “Beer,” he said to the bartender. The bartender came back with a beer and a bowl of pretzels. He was on his third beer when someone sat on the stool next to him.

  “Flavin.”

  He ignored the voice and concentrated on the taste of beer. He didn’t like the taste of beer. He never had. People always said the taste will grow on you. It didn’t. It still tasted like soap. But it helped. It helped make things disappear.

  “Flavin.”

  “Go away,” he said, not bothering to look up from his beer. He knew the voice. Vernon. His old boss at the firm.

  “You never answer your phone,” said Vernon.

  “No one ever calls,” said Flavin.

  “I’ve got a job,” said Vernon. “It’s a small one. Something I want kept quiet and off the books. A favor for an old client. It might take a couple days at most.”

  “No.”

  Vernon sighed. “Look, I know you haven’t paid your rent in months. Your utilities were shut off in December. You’re gonna be out on the streets before you know it. Tell you what, you do this job for me and I’ll take care of your rent, pay off your utilities, plus you’ll have some money in the bank. Lynn would've wanted it for you.”

  Flavin looked at him for the first time.

  “You don’t know what Lynn would’ve wanted for me.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” snapped the older man, “but I know she wouldn’t want you like this!”

  Flavin glared at him. When he spoke, his voice was rough.

  “What do you want?”

  “It’s for an old client of mine, a man I no longer do work for because, well, let’s just say our interests diverged. I owe him a favor, and it’s time to pay it back. I need it off my books, though, and away from my staff, due to some of his, uh, business activities.”

  “I don’t care about that. Just tell me what the job is.”

  The bar was still empty except for the old man in the far corner. The bartender brought Flavin another beer. He drank, feeling the iciness slide down his throat, willing that it would numb everything else.

  “I need you to investigate a medical clinic in the city,” said Vernon. He looked uncomfortable. “The place specializes in maternity issues. Prevention, and that sort of thing. There’s a certain amount of by-product generated by the clinic. Pretty valuable stuff, or so I've been told. It’s sold on contract to a company in Sweden. A lot of the material’s been going missing lately. Since ten months ago. The buyer’s unhappy and my old client’s unhappy. The loss is affecting his income.”

  “What’s the by-product?”

  Vernon wouldn’t meet his eye. “Fetal tissue.”

  Flavin knew what the words meant, but they drifted through his mind without disturbing the numbness inside. He could feel the wetness of the glass in his hand. That was more real. That was more important than what Vernon had just said.

  “So,” said the old man nervously. “Will you take the job?”

  Flavin looked at him, shrugged, and then nodded.

  The apartment was cold and dark when Flavin got home. He flicked a switch without thinking, but the electricity was dead. He kicked his shoes off, pulled a blanket over him, and fell asleep on the couch.

  He drove into the city the next morning. The case file Vernon had given him sat on the seat next to him. It was raining again, and the streets blurred into grey punctuated by blooming spots of green and yellow and red traffic lights. He parked his truck against the curb across the street and halfway down the block from the clinic. Dimly, through the rain, he could see the building. It was a large stucco affair with manicured landscaping. The place exuded respectability and decorum. A sign over the front doors read Westover Family Medical Group. Flavin watched as a few cars pulled into the parking lot beside the clinic and a couple figures hurried through the rain to the front door. After several minutes, he drove away.

  The case file was not thick. Records of the seven employees, a stack of surveillance photos, printouts of patient statistics for the past year, and a copy of the contract with Nord-Biovica, based in Stockholm. The file also contained a letter from a Mr. Henrik Amdahl, the CEO of Nord-Biovica. It was written in stilted and precise English, and pointed out that the We
stover Group had failed to send product for the months of August through November. Did the Westover Group desire Nord-Bovica to file a breach of contract suit? Nord-Biovica seemed to be some sort of research firm.

  Flavin read through the file in his apartment. Read through it again for the sixth time. He flipped through the employee photos, examining the different faces for any hints. There was something about the photos that made him uneasy, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Each employee file had a faceshot attached to it, presumably taken at the time of employment. All the other photos were surveillance photos taken during the last six months.

  The electricity and heat were back on, but he did not think much of that. He concentrated on the file. It was proving to be a welcome diversion. His mind did not have to think about anything else.

  Flavin called Vernon’s office. The front desk immediately put him through.

  “I need a few things,” he said.

  “Anything,” said Vernon.

  He told him, listing the items in his quiet monotone.

  “Got it,” said Vernon, when Flavin subsided into silence. “The document boys’ll work on this through the night. I’ll messenger a package over to you no later than tomorrow afternoon. Put in a down payment on your fee too. Anything else?”

  “No,” said Flavin, and he hung up before Vernon could say anything else.

  The package arrived the next day, right before lunch. He checked the contents carefully. A convincingly tarnished Internal Revenue Service badge for Thomas J. Avery. Business and identification cards for the same Avery. A driver’s license with Flavin’s face staring from the photo. A briefcase full of government forms, various notes and papers related to past audits of businesses in the area. A thousand dollars in twenty dollar bills. A battered license plate with government numbers. And a Glock with three spare magazines.

  Flavin took a shower, shaved, and put on a dark grey suit. The man in the mirror stared back at him. The face was gaunt and expressionless. There was nothing behind the eyes except a weary sort of boredom. Perfect for a government bureaucrat.

  “May I help you?” The woman at the front desk of Westover Family Medical Group took the card he offered her. “You’ll want to speak with Ms. Reilly. One moment, please.” She picked up the phone and dialed. “Ms. Reilly? A Mr. Avery from the IRS to see you…thank you…if you could take a seat, sir, she’ll be out shortly.”

  Flavin sat down. The front office was tastefully decorated in soothing pastels. It didn’t soothe him, but maybe it worked on unhappily expectant mothers. A door opened across the room. A woman approached him. She had black hair pulled back severely from her face in a bun, but that did nothing to obscure the fact that she was remarkably pretty.

  “Mr. Avery,” she said. “My name is Julia Reilly. I’m the clinic administrator. Please come this way.”

  Her voice was placid. It had a faint musical tinge in it, a foreign touch that he could not place. He followed her down a hall and into an office. She shut the door.

  “Have a seat,” she said, sitting down behind her desk. “How may I help you?”

  “This business has been flagged for audit,” he said.

  “And why is that?” she asked.

  “It’s usually nothing serious, but I’m not at liberty to say. ”

  Ms. Reilly gave him a small, unused office next door to hers. The computer had access to the business records of the clinic. At one end of the hall was a storage room full of filing cabinets. Flavin spent the afternoon shuttling between the computer and the filing cabinets, dutifully making notes on expenditures, income and liabilities. He acquired a comprehensive understanding of the clinic – its cash flow, the personalities and duties of the seven employees, the history of the place seen through the tersely written patient reports.

  The clinic was owned by Century Investments LLC. Neither the computer or the filing cabinets contained any information about Century, other than the fact that the LLC had a business account at a Miami bank. Vernon had not told him who the client was, but it was obviously Century. Or perhaps Century was just a front for something else. He did not care.

  At the other end of the hall was a green door inset with opaque glass. A security camera high on the wall looked down on it. According to the architectural plans he found in the storage room, the green door led to the wing of the clinic where the procedural rooms were.

  Flavin wrote up an initial report and sent it to Vernon. It detailed the facts of the situation, as he saw them. Just a list of the facts. He wrote a second list but it was only for himself. A list of questions that refused to be answered in a logical fashion. At least, not a logic he cared to follow.

  By noon of the fourth day, neither the computer or the filing cabinets held anything new for him. Vernon’s office had supplied financial records going back three years for all seven employees. Nothing in the office records or the individual financial records seemed suspicious. There were only two strange things that he could find. First, the clinic was definitely generating by-product due to the sheer volume of procedures it conducted.

  “By-product,” whispered Flavin to himself.

  And the by-product was not showing up in Sweden. It wasn’t showing up anywhere. It wasn’t being shipped anywhere. It wasn’t being dumped in the garbage. He had checked with the sanitation company that serviced the clinic. He had considered the possibility of on-site destruction, but that was not logical. Incineration, acid, or any other method, would be detectable. The by-product, the fetal tissue, was simply disappearing. But things didn’t simply disappear. Nothing just disappears.

  The second strange thing was the amount of electricity the clinic used. He had gone through the records of payments. The utility bills were staggering. Enough kilowatts to run a Detroit auto factory. And the increase coincided exactly with the time the by-product started disappearing. Ten months ago.

  Flavin leaned back in his chair and stared at the wall in the office. It was blank. Each of the four walls in the office was blank. Blank, like his mind.

  If any of the clinic employees were in on it, Julia Reilly and Dr. Harris were the top suspects. They had to be. Reilly managed all expenditure and income, insurance, hiring and firing. She was the clinic’s central nervous system. If anything odd was going on, she would know about it. Dr. Harris was the senior physician. She oversaw the work schedules of the other doctor and the three nurses. Dr. Harris was responsible for everything that went on in procedure rooms.

  He opened the case file and flipped through the employee records. He stopped at Julia Reilly’s records and read through them again. Highly educated. Unmarried. Financially frugal. He studied the faceshot. She looked back at him from the photo. Shuttered eyes, an uncompromising face. He leafed through her surveillance photos. It was the same face, yet, it wasn’t. There was something different. Something so minor that he couldn’t identify what it was. He compared the faceshots of the other six employees to their accompanying surveillance photos. They were all the same people, yet… He sat back, frowning.

  Flavin packed up his briefcase, tidied his desk and went to lunch. He ordered a sandwich and ate, not tasting a bite. As he ate, he stared out the window of the diner, part of his mind idly listening to the conversations around him, and part of his mind thinking about the job.

  He went back to the clinic and found Julia Reilly in her office.

  “I’m finished here,” he said. “Thank you for your cooperation. You should receive a copy of our audit in about two months.”

  “Did you find anything that we should be concerned about?” Her face was as calm as ever.

  “No. Nothing at all.”

  Flavin drove home in the rain, his mind blank again. It was easier not to think. Simply put the body on autopilot, let instinct take over. There was nothing he really wanted to think about. The case had proven more than interesting, something to think about other than Lynn and the numbness in his mind, but, when he was tired, he wanted only emptiness and silence.
>
  When he got home, he set the alarm for one in the morning and promptly fell asleep. He awoke with the alarm beeping beside the bed. While coffee brewed in the kitchen, he dressed in all black and methodically checked the contents of a small black knapsack. He drank two cups of coffee, black as well, and then left the apartment.

  It had stopped raining, but not a single star was visible through the cloud cover. The dashboard lights glimmered on his face in faint red. The roads were almost deserted. He parked the truck several blocks away from the clinic and walked the rest of the way. The air smelled of rain and concrete. He walked past the clinic. There were no lights in the windows, but he continued down the street, turned right at the corner and then cut through the parking lot of an office building. He climbed the fence in the back and dropped down into an alley. Something stirred in the shadows. A cat. Its eyes caught a stray bit of moonlight and gleamed green at him from beside a garbage can. The alley turned and he was behind the clinic.

  He picked the lock of the basement door. It was down a short flight of concrete steps. He had memorized the security system plans. This door had an alarm on it, but the plans had specified the maker. He knew how to beat it, could beat it easily, as opposed to the front doors with their time lock. The door clicked open and he slipped inside. The panel on the wall beeped quietly, flashing red, and then went dead. He closed the panel and stood for a moment without moving. The building was silent around him at first, but then small, quiet sounds began to assert themselves. The faint ticking of a clock. The sighing of the wind behind a window. The deep, almost imperceptible rumble of the building’s furnace down in the basement. His mind sorted through the sounds and did not find any danger in them. The air was still around him. The building was empty. He was certain of it.