Ryan Boudinot - Blueprints of the Afterlife

The busboys kept bringing more dirty plates, coffee cups, lipstick-imprinted stemware, napkins smeared with remnants of dessert. The Hobart hissed and trembled, pumping out clean dishes to the point of exhaustion. It struck Woo-jin that this situation might be one of those mathematical “story” problems. The machine could do a pallet of dishes in a minute and a half. But how many pallets’ worth of dishes arrived every minute and a half? If it was any number over one, it would be impossible to ever clean the dishes at a rate that would completely diminish the pile. In fact the pile would keep growing until it engulfed and overwhelmed Woo-jin and the wash station. Then again, there was a finite number of dishes in Il Italian Joint, wasn’t there? But what if there were trucks pulling up to the loading dock, delivering shipments of new clean dishes every minute and a half? Then it would be mathematically impossible to clean all the dishes there were to clean. Well, that would be true if the dishes kept getting dirty and the stream of valued guests remained constant. Maybe there was a line of tour buses outside filled with valued guests, ensuring that dishes would continue to get dirtied. But after a while the food would run out. Unless, of course, there were constant shipments of new produce, pasta, cheese, etc. The dishwasher, Woo-jin came to understand, was the center of the restaurant universe. Without the dishwasher nothing could happen, and yet he knew he was the lowest-paid person working here. On the plus side, that diamond-encrusted steel wool was doing a bang-up job on the soup pots.

Over the course of the evening the pile of dirty dishes did shrink, but too much was troubling Woo-jin for him to take much pleasure in the achievement. Even at the end of the shift when all the dishes were stashed and the wash station sparkled he wasn’t settled and knew he was about due for another ennui attack. Absentmindedly he slipped in his mouth guard in preparation. He looked forward to going home, collapsing in his hammock—oh, that’s right. Where was he going to sleep tonight? He three-pointered his apron into the laundry on the way out and exited through the back door, where he was met by a plainclothes police officer. Tall guy with a mustache, smelled like peanuts. Under a flickering, bug-fouled light he introduced himself as Officer Wiggins.

“You’re Woo-jin, am I correct? Woo-jin Kan?”

“No one says my last name usually. They think ‘jin’ is my last name.”

The officer put his hands on his hips and swiveled a bit, subconsciously stretching. “I understand you came across a body last night just north of Boeing Field.”

“I did. I already talked to some cops about it who gave me a glass of milk.”

“I heard. And I also understand you came across this body again around noon today.”

Three thoughts piled up in Woo-jin’s head, three thoughts too many. It took him a while to get them unjammed. He stood there, drooling around the mouth guard, nodding to himself as he began to understand. There really had been another body that looked like the first. Or—second thought here—maybe the cops dumped the same old body where they’d found it. Third thought: how did they know he’d seen the body again if he hadn’t told anyone?

“You need a ride?” Officer Wiggins said. “I’d like to bring you by the station to see something. Don’t worry, you’re not under arrest or anything. I was just hoping you might be able to help us sort this thing out.”

It was true, Woo-jin did need a ride. Wiggins cocked his head at his police mini-chopper. Soon they were levitating above the Il Italian Joint parking lot, rising above the tree line into the cloudy night. Woo-jin craned to catch sight of New York Alki growing on what had once been Bainbridge Island. A concrete seawall circled the island, keeping the waves from eroding the new contours of the shoreline. Huge, blocks-long banks of halogen lights lit acres of scaffolding as hundreds of cranes swung their loads to re-create the greatest city the world had ever known. The new Chrysler Building stood alone in a five-block radius, waiting for its neighbors. On the north end of the island, crews felled trees and demolished abandoned houses, carving and reshaping the land with bulldozers. Harlem looked to be pretty much empty at this point, except for a tiny Apollo Theater glowing in the woods.

“What do you make of this?” Wiggins said, jerking a thumb toward the construction. It was so rare that Woo-jin was asked for his opinion on matters that didn’t involve dishwashing that he didn’t know what to say, or whether he actually had an opinion. Wiggins continued, “If you ask me, it’s a huge waste. Rebuilding Manhattan when Seattle can’t even get its act together to build a monorail? And the congestion it’s going to bring to the region, don’t get me started.”

The chopper veered east, over the dome of Pioneer Square. This was the kind of night perfect for the appearance of a gigantic, celestial head, though Woo-jin couldn’t imagine coping with the demands of such an apparition. The chopper landed atop the city administration building and they hustled to an elevator. Heading underground, Woo-jin said, “Hey, you fly a helicopter. Do you know anything about when houses, or really trailers, get yanked up and moved to another place by a helicopter?”

“Like what happened to your foster sister,” Wiggins said. “That I can’t talk about. But I can tell you she’s safe and will be taken care of.”

“What about my stuff? My clothes and posters?”

“I’m sure you’ll come across some more clothes and posters before long,” Wiggins said as the elevator doors opened on the morgue. Overhead speakers softly floated the idea of an instrumental version of “Do the Hustle.” The walls, floor, and ceiling were painted a painfully bright white. There was a reception area where a thick woman murmured into a headset. A vase of lilies. Wiggins clipped a visitor’s badge to Woo-jin’s collar and offered him a clipboard filled with legalese. “Just sign here,” he said. Woo-jin did as instructed. Through double doors they entered the stainless steel sanctum of corpses, an echoing hallway the size of an underground bus station, walls of cabinet doors behind which rested bodies in various stages of investigation. A gloved, balding, middle-aged guy with a Muppet Babies tie poking out from under his lab coat met them and nodded a quiet hello.

Wiggins said, “This is Dr. Farmer, our forensics director. Dr. Farmer, I’d like you to meet Woo-jin Kan.”

Dr. Farmer’s hand, covered in latex, squished and squealed as Woo-jin shook it.

“This is the fellow who happened upon the deceased?” Dr. Farmer asked.

“Indeed,” said Wiggins.

Dr. Farmer directed them to a portion of the wall. He took hold of a handle and pulled out the slab. Woo-jin steadied himself against the wall as the coroner lifted the sheet. The young woman’s clothes had been removed and thank God there were no more face bugs. Still Woo-jin reeled. Wiggins steadied him and Dr. Farmer began talking a string of words that Woo-jin knew nothing about. Anterior, posterior, medial, cranial. Woo-jin looked for the cameras to see if he was in fact on a highly rated medical drama. No dice. He was really here, in a morgue.

“Now,” Dr. Farmer said, “here’s where we come to the curious part of the case.” He pulled out another slab and yanked back the sheet. It was the second body, identical to the first. “Our tests indicate these are not twins. Their profiles are 100 percent identical. By all appearances, these two bodies are exactly the same person .”

“They’re not clones?” Wiggins said.

“They don’t bear the watermarks of clones,” Dr. Farmer said. “And their profiles are unregistered. I considered the possibility that they were born off the grid but that wouldn’t explain the precise similarities in scarring. See here above the lip—tiny identical scars. And here on the left ring finger—you can still see the markings of three stitches from a cut she once received. Identical abrasions above the left knee, on the right buttock, and here, just a couple centimeters from the clavicle. Remarkable. In addition, the contents of their stomachs were identical. And the cherry on top, so to speak, are the identical stab wounds to the heart, made with an identical instrument—likely a flat-head screwdriver—to precisely the same depth. I’ve never seen anything like this in thirty years of forensic science.”