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The Plumber was published in my high school literary magazine, Lodestar, and received the following high praise, “I normally wouldn’t read science fiction at all, but I really liked this.”

THE PLUMBER

by Ranjit Singh Mathoda
created and copyright March 13, 1991

The office is within a sky-piercing pillar of emerald hue. It is equipped with the usual tools of an affluent surgeon or plumber, although the interior gives a sense of solid comfort, not technology. The sim-wood floor, optic sculptures, carefully cultivated bonsai and the squares of raked stones convey discipline and order.

It was to this place that the old men came, unannounced, unaware of one another. Their age was apparent in their style of clothing, although their features were stamped with youth. The shorter man wore a jump suit, like a sailor on leave; the taller was swathed in confining robes. They waited in the murky gloom of the hall, until the door to the office slithered open. Each hesitated to allow the other passage.

One of them, his visage hidden in darkness, half smiled before some deeper sorrow wiped the reaction away. The other laughed in the vacant hall, then fell silent, aware of his awkwardness. In the obscuring shadows they gathered courage, deciding whether their goals might be achieved when a witness was present.

Within the residence a pleasing odor lay heavy in the air. The plumber reviewed the results of the sensor scan, then seated himself in a lotus position upon the sim-wood floor. A column of speckled light bathed him in soft glory. As an afterthought, the plumber made a small motion with his hand, causing a defensive grid of unseen energies to establish itself.

When the men entered it was the robed man who spoke first. “I am called Yasil, and have need of your services. However, being old and wearied, I desire to rest a moment and gather my thoughts. Perhaps you may hear this other client?”

The plumber nodded, so Yasil withdrew, seating himself besides one of the perfectly patterned squares of stones. The other man came forwards boldly, stepping close to the beam of illumination which cloaked the plumber.

The face that lay revealed was covered with crevices and lines of defeat. Thin lips parted below a hawkish nose and deadened eyes. He looked away for a long moment, in the direction of Yasil. Their was a bitter aspect to his voice. “Which of them has done this to me? You are Yasil, of the Ieto. Long have I been your enemy, and the enemy of your people. I know you well; I see your purpose in coming here. I am wretched and long vanquished, you can not bring me further humiliation. Drink what you will of my agony, but know that there is no flesh left on my bones.”

“Lagard, it is you,” moaned Yasil, a startling sound. “I am not … He who acted against you and yours is gone, devoured. I have nothing. No kin, no son. My conscience, my sanity, my faith, all are slain. They used my hate of you, Lagard. My sons used it to slay their brother. How is it possible? Do the gods not watch? You have caused me pain, Lagard, but the time for revenge is past. I am broken.”

“You deserve more than that,” Lagard whispered with spite in his voice. “You deserve much worse. You stole my pride, Yasil of the Ieto. You tainted my children, after I had given them their inheritance. You taught them how to whisper rich and deceitful words.

“I could not withstand them, did not desire to. I loved them blindly, Yasil, I loved them too well. You know this, you saw this and used your sight to corrupt my dreams. How could I cast them out? I could not. Instead I betrayed those who were true to me, despising them for their advice. I shattered lives and ruined souls for my daughters, because of you, Ieto. How can you claim to know My grief? You are wicked beyond respite and past repair, your desire to see what you have done brings you here now. Look at my pain if you must. I will not seek to prevent you.”

The plumber cleared his throat, somewhat frightened by the power and stature of these men. The Ieto controlled sizable governments and affected world encompassing corporations. The family Lagard controlled the Lagardian Reparations Agency, a massive intersystem law-enforcement corporation. If the plumber had been weaker willed, or more foolish, he might have sought to sell these words in the market.

“Sers, what is it that you want of me? I am a plumber, not a judge, not a counselor. Plumbing is science, good only at clearing the waste from the conduits of the human brain. I can increase cognitive capacity and recall ability. I can train an unplumbed mind to utilize more of itself. But plumbing does not provide relief from what you desire.”

“Is it true, as I have heard, that feelings originate within the unconscious?”, questioned Yasil as he carefully watched Lagard.

“Yes, of course.”, the plumber replied. A sense of security could be discovered in something so well indoctrinated.

“Will plumbing increase the affinity of the conscious and the unconscious, allowing self recognition and greater intuitive ability? Does it allow reliving the events of the past, is it permanent?” Lagard queried, in turn.

“Yes, yes. Plumbing is permanent as long as excessive quantities of particular drugs are not taken. Surely such great lords as you have had your minds plumbed.”

“Well then,” stated Lagard, “I would have you reverse the process.”

In the shocked silence Yasil stated quietly, “As would I. My son is dead.”

“But this technology is different,” stammered the plumber. “It is meant to increase intelligence and quality of life. If I were to reverse the process, the havoc unleashed upon your minds would be terrible. It would make a human into a monkey. You would lose your acuity for events, your ability to grasp ideas. No, it is further than that. You would become susceptible only to immediate moods.”

“That,” replied Lagard, his eyes staring into those of the plumber, “Is exactly what I want. Drugs are temporary, ineffective. No, I need to act with steadfast purpose, if I am to defeat that which makes me wretched. I want to forget. I want to lose the memory of the anger and resentment with which I tossed aside my faithful. You have the capability to eliminate my suffering.”

Yasil walked slowly forward to stand with Lagard. “Yes. That is what I wish for as well. My son is gone from the Ieto due to my failures. I did not heed the truth of his words. There is too much pain, too much that can not be forgiven.”

“You both are mad!”, the plumber replied frantically. “What you speak of is suicide, ser Lagard, ser Yasil, for you will kill the mind which is you. Have you learned nothing from your mistakes? Responsibility to those who loved you remains. Would they want you to die?”

“What crime would that be?” questioned Lagard. “You know nothing of our grief, nor even do they. Yes, I could seek relief. I could lose my self despair and live on, but I do not wish to belittle what has been done. I have made mistakes and desire to pay for them. Nothing you say can dull my desire. You have not lived my life, have not learned to despise your hands, skin, eyes. If it were possible I would return to ancient ages where death was the reward of failure, and its ending. This long held suffering and constant life I can not abide with.”

“I feel as you, friend Lagard, yet the plumber will not listen. He fears for his own respectability, for how can he explain such an action to those who will hound him,” Yasil said. Then he spoke clearly with a compelling voice. “What form of world is this which does not allow release to death? Am I so crude a being that I can not choose to exist or exist not? I have mastered my foes, I have dwelled on far-flung worlds, I have seen dark mysteries laid bare, yet comprehension gains me nothing. There are faults placed deep in this poor flesh which knowledge will not exorcise.”

“Did you not understand what I said?” asked the plumber as he made a slight signal with his left hand. “Your grief is in your mind. Destroying yourself is too easy an escape for great men such as you.”

“Do you hear him, friend Lagard? He seeks to praise and belittle us in the same stretch of words. We shall not fall in the same trap twice. This man would deny us our escape. To seek death, he claims, is evil. To me it is the brightest good. If I do not suffer, then I have escaped my pain. If I am consigned to agony then I will pay for what I have done.”

“You are right,” stated Lagard to his newly discovered friend. “I had not seen the beauty of death, perhaps because I feared it. Let us leave this world of mistakes behind.”

Yasil scrutinized the room as if it was a cage, decisiveness making his aged features young. “Lagard,” he stated calmly, “Around this plumber there must be a security system. He would not risk our presence otherwise. If we approach him and strangle his life from his corpse either he will die, or we will.”

The two men approached the frightened plumber, paused as they struck the defense grid, and suddenly were bathed in their own blood. They fell, like empty vases, to the paneled floor. The plumber sobbed as the authorities arrived moments later.

It should be noted that the two bodies were rushed to the Certes Reclamation Clinic, where the patients were successfully revived.

~ The End ~

Thanks for reading!

In case you were wondering, the inspiration for this story came from William Shakespeare’s play King Lear and Akira Kurosawa’s film Ran.

I did have the idea of applying the concept of The Plumber to a romance where the main characters have wiped their minds of each other, but before I got around to it, Charlie Kaufman, Pierre Bismuth and Michel Gondry worked out the screenplay for the 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. They won an Oscar for that screenplay and it’s one of my favorite movies.

You can find more of my stories and some of my poems at http://mathoda.com/stories.

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