Dr. Mabel Sassani slathered her glove in lube, first apologizing to her patient and then to her index finger before slipping it with a wince into Ernest Borgnine's rectum. The little pug looked up at her in wide-eyed disbelief, and when she pushed in further, he tried to make a break for it, but to no avail. Dr. Metifunger's technician, Sandy, had him pinned against her chest, so that his little feet could only run in place, clattering on the stainless-steel tabletop like a drumroll for an impending magic trick.

"I'm not sure this is such a good idea," Sandy said. "Dr. Metifunger just wanted you to do an exam."

"This is an exam," Mabel told her. "A rectal exam. I'm gonna see if I can work this foreign body out manually."

The little pug hunched his back and strained against her finger.

"But you have no idea what's in there," Sandy said. "And Dr. Metifunger isn't even in the building."

Mabel squinted at her. "Why are you so worried? Do you think I'm gonna set off some kind of booby trap or something? Like an IED? Or a dirty bomb?" She waited for a reaction. "Get it? A dirty bomb?" Her eyebrows migrated up her forehead. "Nothing? Really? Ugh, whatever." She placed her free hand under Ernest's abdomen and tried to milk the object toward her finger, determined to prove herself to her faithless coworker even if it meant pissing the girl off a little.

"It'll be okay," Sandy whispered, seemingly more to herself than to the dog. "Don't worry. It'll be okay."

Mabel rotated her hand to get a better angle. "This isn't the first time I've done this, you know." Her tongue poked at the inside of her cheek as she worked her digit past the object. "So you don't have to treat me like I'm—"

Something gave way beneath her fingertip, and a mechanical squeal filled the room.

"Pull out!" Sandy shouted. "Pull out now!" Her green eyes dilated with panic. "What are you waiting for? Hurry!"

"Eeeeeeasy," Mabel said in a calming voice. "He probably just swallowed a kid's toy." She shook her head and laughed. "Jeez, you're jumpy. Did you have a bad experience with a rectal exam or something?"

"No," Sandy replied. "But I'm pretty sure you're about to."

The squeal continued to rise in pitch, and when it reached its piercing crescendo, Ernest tensed up, growled and disappeared with a whoosh, leaving Mabel pointing a gloved finger in the pug-less air.

"Well, shit," Sandy said. "That's just freakin' fantastic." She made a stay-put gesture. "I have to call Dr. Metifunger. Don't go anywhere, okay?"

Mabel stared in shock at the empty tabletop, her patient's disappearance playing over and over in her mind like a looping YouTube video. Ernest was there. Then he was gone. Ernest was there. Then he was gone. When considered separately, each of those things made perfect sense. It was the part in between that threatened to unhinge her.

Alien abductees are always going on about "missing time," she reminded herself. Could that be what's happening here?

She glanced at her watch but found no missing time.

Huh. That's . . . disappointing.

Her cell phone vibrated against her thigh, so she peeled off her glove in what felt like slow motion and answered with a half-hearted "Hello?"

"Aloo, Mabel joon," came the familiar Persian greeting.

"Oh, thank God it's you, Mummy. Something weird—"

"Your father bought me a spa day. Isn't that nice?"

"Yeah," Mabel said. "That's great, but—"

"They're giving me a fat wrap right now."

"A fat what?"

"A fat wrap. It dissolves cellulite and pulls it out through your pores."

Mabel pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned under her breath. "That's physiologically impossible, Mummy. Unless they're sticking you in an oven and cooking you."

"Well it must work, because my waist gets smaller every time."

"It probably tightens your skin," Mabel said. "Or dehydrates you. Either way, it's a scam."

Her mother sighed. "You think you know everything, Mabel. But you're not an MD. You're a veterinarian."

"Did an MD prescribe the fat wrap?"

"Don't be a smarty-ass. I'm trying to tell you about something nice. What's your problem?"

My problem, Mabel fumed, is that a dog just vanished into thin air while I was probing its rectum. She coughed out a laugh, aware suddenly that she had been lecturing her mother on the absurdity of fat wraps moments after witnessing a scientific impossibility.

"Why are you laughing?" her mother asked. "You don't sound well. Have you been taking your anxiety medicine?"

A high-pitched whine filled the room, and Ernest the pug reappeared on the exam table.

"Aloo?" her mother called out. "Mabel? Are you still there?"

"I have to go!" Mabel said. "I'll call you later!" She shoved the phone in her pocket and threw her arms around the dog, hugging him tight and kissing him on the head. "I'm so glad you came back. You scared me." Her eyes spilled over with tears. "I'll never stick anything in your butthole again. I promise."

The door behind her opened, and a middle-aged white woman in a slate-gray pantsuit entered the room and fixed her gaze on Ernest. "Oh, good. There you are." She flashed Mabel a toothy smile. "Hello, Dr. Sassani. It's nice to finally meet you. I'm Karen, Benedict Metifunger's partner."

Mabel stared at her in confusion. "I didn't know he had a partner. He never mentioned you."

"That's because I'm more of a behind-the-scenes partner," Karen said as she checked Ernest's tags. "He does the veterinary work, and I run the business." She passed Mabel a curious look. "Have you been crying?"

"Um, yeah," Mabel told her. "A little." She eased her grip on the dog, watching him intently for fear he might disappear on her again. "I-I'm not sure, but I think there might be something wrong with me."

Karen furrowed her brow. "Oh. Well I'm sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"I don't know," Mabel replied. "Can you restore my faith in the laws of physics? 'Cause that would actually help a lot." She wiped her eyes on the cuff of her lab coat and managed a half-smile. "Sorry. I'm not usually this emotional. In four years of vet school, I think I cried in public maybe twice." Ernest licked her on the chin, and her smile widened a little. "Guess I'll have that beat by the end of the week if I stay here, huh?"

"You'd better stay," Karen said with a note of concern in her voice. "I'd hate to think I went to all that trouble for nothing."

"What trouble?" Mabel asked. "Wait. Did you hire me?"

Karen smirked. "Well it certainly wasn't Benedict's idea." She pulled a pin out of her hair and readjusted her bun. "Don't get me wrong. I love that old man, and he's a brilliant veterinarian, but he has all the people skills of a sea anemone. Would you believe that when I first came here, he had a young female associate—about your age—who was using the clinic after hours as a fetish parlor?"

Mabel waited for a punchline, but none came. "I don't understand. Did he know she was doing that?"

"No!" Karen said. "Not a clue. I caught her one night giving cat vaccines to a naked man in a cage. And there was another one tied up in the X-ray suite lapping barium sulfate out of a dog bowl. Can you imagine?" She pulled an exam glove out of a box on the counter. "Anyway, on to business. Do you remember much about GI transit times in dogs?"

Mabel tensed up, fearful her behind-the-scenes boss was about to ask her to perform another rectal exam on the pug. "Why are you asking?"

"Just a friendly quiz for the new employee," Karen told her. "Don't worry. No one’s grading you." She gave Ernest a hesitant pat on the head. "So here's my question. How long do you think it would take a small, metallic object to pass through a dog's digestive tract?"

Mabel thought back to her internal medicine rotation in vet school, glad for the opportunity to focus on something mundane. "Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by 'small,' but a study at UC Davis found that it took an average of thirty-three hours for a wireless motility capsule to pass through a dog’s gut."

"Very good," Karen said. "As for this particular dog, I've pinned the time down to thirty-nine hours and fourteen minutes." She glanced at her wristwatch. "He's been extremely reliable so far."

Ernest barked at her and then at Mabel, after which he squatted and pooped out a gray cylinder a little smaller than a C battery.

"Look at that," Karen said as she slipped on her glove. "Like clockwork. Now if you'll excuse me, Dr. Sassani"—she scooped up the cylinder and rolled it back and forth in her palm—"I've got some disinfecting to do."

Mabel watched the woman leave, and then she rested her chin on Ernest's head and let out a little huff. "This place is really weird, isn't it?"

The pug tensed up, heaved several times and regurgitated a black, flip-top cigarette lighter into her hand.

"Well that's gross," she muttered. "Let me guess. This belongs to Karen too?" She set the object on the shelf and grabbed a paper towel to wipe it off, but before she could pick it up again, a pair of Sandys trotted into the room.

"Oh, look!" one of them said. "Ernest is back."

The other one extended a hand. "You must be Dr. Sassani. It's nice to finally meet you."

Mabel glanced back and forth, desperate to make sense of what she was seeing. "It's . . . nice to meet you too. I didn't know Sandy had a twin."

The second Sandy looked at her double with a nervous expression. "I thought Dr. Metifunger talked to her about this."

"Not yet," the first Sandy replied. "Where is he, anyway? He was right behind me a minute ago."

Just as Mabel was about to ask what they meant by "talked to her about this," a third Sandy entered the room, at which point the first one started yelling for Dr. Metifunger.

"I-I don't understand," Mabel said. "Are you guys triplets?"

"Dr. Metifunger!" the three Sandys shouted in unison.

"I'll be there in a minute!" Metifunger shouted back.

"I think you should come here right now!" the first Sandy told him. "Before Dr. Sassani meets any more of us!"

"More of you?" Mabel repeated. "What does that mean? How many of you can there possibly be?"

"Five," Metifunger said as he entered the room. "At least, that's how many we have on payroll at the moment." He pushed his way past the three Sandys and adjusted his glasses. "So everything's in order? The crisis solved itself?" He gave Mabel an awkward pat on the shoulder, pulling away quickly when he saw the warning looks on his technicians' faces. "Right. I'm given to understand you might be experiencing some emotional trauma." He folded his arms and glanced at the pug. "Though I must say I find your distress a bit gratuitous seeing as how the patient's already back in hand."

"Dr. Metifunger," the first Sandy whispered. "Remember what we discussed? About not aggravating the situation?"

"Well I just don't see the point in tiptoeing around landmines that have already exploded. No one was injured, right? So where's the harm? And besides, you and I both know there are far worse things that could happen to a person around here. Imagine, for example, if she'd flipped the light switch in the employee bathroom."

"Wh-what happens if you flip the light switch?" Mabel asked.

Metifunger's thick, gray eyebrows bunched together, making them appear even thicker. "We discussed it during your orientation. Don't you remember?"

"She hasn't had an orientation," the second Sandy put in. "Don't you remember?"

"Oh, right. Right. Well, word to the wise. Don't use any of the employee bathrooms until we've discussed those light switches."

"Okay," Mabel said with a hint of alarm in her voice. "So can we discuss them now?"

"We could. We could. But wouldn't you rather talk about the disappearing pug?"

Mabel pulled Ernest closer and nodded.

"We're running a little behind in clinic five," the first Sandy told her boss. "And we could really use Dr. Sassani's help today. So please try to keep that in mind before, you know, being you."

Metifunger snorted with indignation. "Your counsel's appreciated, Sandy, but I know what I'm doing." He snatched the dog from Mabel, handed it to one of the other Sandys and shooed them all out of the way. "Now come with me, Dr. Sassani. It's time I showed you how this place works."

Mabel followed him down the hall in a daze, haunted by the image of five Sandys dancing around her like red-headed Oompa-Loompas.

"So," he said, "you're probably wondering why Ernest Borgnine disappeared."

"I'm wondering a lot of things," Mabel replied.

Metifunger led her back through the radiology suite, removing his glasses along the way and inspecting the lenses as if he were about to discuss something commonplace, like the weather. "From what Sandy told me, it sounds like he swallowed a personal wormhole generator." He opened a door at the far end of the suite and ushered Mabel into a derelict X-ray developing room lit by a dim, red bulb. "Best I can figure, you must have hit the switch during your exam, thereby propelling the dog into an alternate dimension. Fortunately, most of these devices are built with an automatic return sequence that activates if the switch remains in the ON position for too long. Hence, his timely reappearance."

A nervous laugh escaped Mabel's lips. "Are you messing with me?"

"I don't mess with people," he said. "And I should have warned you about doing a rectal exam on Ernest. I'm sorry."

"Soooooo it wasn't my fault?" she asked.

"Of course not."

"Because it's your fault."

Metifunger raised his hands. "Now hold on. I think you're missing the—"

"Jesus!" Mabel said. "What if I'd been sucked into that thing with him?"

"Oh, now you're just being absurd."

She clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white. "I'm being absurd? Seriously?"

"Look," he said, "there's no need to get angry. All I meant is that it doesn't work that way. There's no sucking. The generator triggers the temporary expansion of a pre-existing wormhole by infusing it with exotic matter, and it only transports the individual most intimately associated with it at the time of activation. Otherwise, it would have transported you, Sandy, the floor you were both standing on, the earth beneath the floor, the atmosphere all around you—"

"Okay, okay," Mabel interrupted. "No sucking. Got it." She scanned her shadowy surroundings, and as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she began to resolve a bank of file cabinets to her left and some dilapidated processing equipment along the far wall. "Um, why are we in here?"

Metifunger replaced his glasses and eyed her over the frames. "Because I'm about to show you a wormhole generator that'll make the one Ernest swallowed look like the prize from a box of Sugar Jets." He opened what appeared to be a circuit-breaker panel and exposed a hidden keypad. "Any questions before we get started?"

"Yeah," Mabel said. "What the hell are Sugar Jets?" She waved dismissively. "Actually, what I really want to know is, why am I hearing about wormhole generators from a veterinarian?"

Metifunger shifted on his feet. "Well, the answer's a bit complicated."

"Then I'll make it simple. How'd Ernest end up with a wormhole generator in his rectum?"

Her boss paused and scratched his chin. "To be honest, I'm a bit puzzled by that myself. After all, personal wormhole generators are unbelievably expensive, and most of them are owned by government agencies in other dimensions." He glanced over his shoulder. "I should probably talk to my partner about this."

"You mean Karen?" Mabel said. "I just met her."

"You did?"

"Yeah. Right before you got back. She told me some really messed-up stuff about one of your previous employees, and then she took your so-called wormhole generator after Ernest pooped it out."

Metifunger's nostrils flared. "Oh, this crosses a line. Do you know where she went?"

"She didn't say. And why didn't you tell me you had a partner?"

"I did tell you," he said. "During your orientation." He spun on his heel and stormed out of the room.

"But I haven't had an orientation!" Mabel shouted after him. "You're supposed to be doing that now!"