SL/fiction 10.05.09 | THE MOLDS
THE MOLDS
1549 words by Stanley Lieber
The man from downstairs would appear every evening at 7:00 p.m., ready to collect the wax sculpts. He would take them down to the manufacturing floor where they would be cast as first shot test molds, and be then put through several short production runs. Gently, the man would scoop up each figure and place it onto his tray. He would then push his cart along to the next desk. This cycle iterated, every evening of every season, without fail. By autumn, the company's lead design team would complete a fresh collection of figurines.
Jonathan's team had never failed the company.
Motioning to the man with the cart, then towards an array of already assembled parts that were spread out on the table before him, Jonathan presented the work that had most recently occupied his attention. The wheels of the man's cart emitted a cantankerous noise and shortly began to roll again, this time in the direction of Jonathan's work area.
From out of nowhere, Plinth Mold tramped into the room. He shook the dust from his boots, shouldered past the man with the cart, and locked his one good eye, somehow simultaneously, onto both men at once. Plinth held onto this intimate, personal contact for as long as he possibly could before proceeding to the next phase of the interaction.
Jonathan batted a curtain of dirty hair from his face and began to scratch his yellow beard. There was no use trying to stop the boss now.
Plinth removed his eye patch, revealing the smooth, concave surface where an eye socket should have been situated, had Plinth been born of a mere human woman. Squinting, he proceeded to inspect Jonathan's most recent achievements. The first sculpt seemed to captivate, singularly, and he hoisted it up into the light, the better to examine its particulars. His weight shifted forward and his mouth produced a vaguely appreciative grunt. His one good eye rapidly alternated its focus for several seconds, comparing his favorite figure to the other wax artworks arranged haphazardly across Jonathan's table. It was clear from these physical perturbations that, in Plinth's opinion, none of the other figures measured up to the one he held clenched in his leather-gloved hand.
Suddenly sweeping away his velvet knapsack, Plinth winked at Jonathan and pulled the drawstring closed.
"Our style of working will seem less threatening, in retrospect," he remarked.
"Who's threatened?" Jonathan tended to humor the aging businessman his eccentricities, but he sensed that he was being mocked.
Plinth (indicating the sculpt that had captured his interest): "I shall require more figures in this vein. Yes. Similar, I think, if not identical, to this one."
Jonathan: "But I've completed a whole series of designs. Here, just take a look at these other models --"
"I will require only the Asiatics," insisted Plinth, expertly maneuvering past Jonathan's pointlessly extended hand.
"You aim to pick and choose between the Lord's handiwork?" demanded Jonathan, a surprising wave of anger suddenly breaching the surface of his pink face.
"A man must content himself with the time that he has been allotted," quoted Plinth, "...and so divide his attentions accordingly."
Plinth paused, waiting for Jonathan's mind to catch up with his ears.
"It should also be pointed out that you have come perilously close to conflating yourself with the Lord our God. A most unusual lapse, for a young man of your background."
This led to silence. Plinth knew quite well which switches he was throwing within the young lad's mind.
Jonathan considered himself to be the reincarnation of a famous Green religious leader, highly revered by the people of his home country. This quirk had been jealously concealed by Jonathan's family, as wide dissemination of his delusions was likely to result in ridicule, or, even worse, excommunication from the country's dominant religious order. Since no one believed his claims, there could be no defense.
As time continued to elapse, Plinth wondered if perhaps he had flipped Jonathan's switches with an excess of vigor.
Eventually, the young man let out his breath. Plinth winced visibly as Jonathan opened his mouth and slowly began to speak.
"I suppose you are better qualified to discern the relative, mundane qualities of my work than I can ever hope to be," Jonathan said easily, his ears slowly fading from red to pink. "I do not begrudge you your preferences. They are the very basis of our relationship, after all. Please, take what you will."
With this, Plinth relaxed and settled back into his shoes. He could see now that Jonathan had regained conscious control of his limbs, and so, in this more equanimous humor, would not attempt to strike him with any of the tools laid out on his workbench. Plinth hastened to remind himself that there was never a guaranteed outcome when one ventured to upset the Divine equilibrium of the religiously inclined. He was only glad that he had not come to terminate the boy's employment.
Behind Plinth's back, situated at the base of a far wall, a half-sized door rose up from the floor. Presently, it opened, and a half-sized man crossed over its threshold into the open air of Jonathan's workshop. Plinth had not come equipped to deal with multiple assailants, and so he spun around quite awkwardly to confront this lately arriving interloper.
Somewhat unexpectedly, Plinth's plastic cloak had gathered itself around his ankles, on the floor, and he nearly tripped over it as he assumed the appropriate defensive posture.
The man in the closet had declined to join Plinth and Jonathan in the lounge. He claimed not to have been aware of Plinth's arrival in the workshop, which seemed ordinary enough on its face, but no sane man (in Plinth's estimation) refused a free drink and a chance to gnaw the ear of his employer. He would know the reason behind this man's stubborn abstinence. He demanded that the fellow explain himself, and fixed his posture to wait for an answer. The half-sized man had prepared no rebuttal, and so finally he agreed to break from his chores, to drink with his employer, to act like a human being. In spite of this surrender, Plinth observed that a measure of wariness still showed plainly on his face.
"I have busied myself in that closet, without emerging, for a handful of months, and would continue in my toil without complaint if you could but leave me alone to get on with my work," lamented the half-sized man.
"Is it comfortable in that closet?" Plinth asked. His genuine curiosity was evident to all who were present at the table.
"I have to admit that it's not. But my closet is still serviced by the building's pneumatic tube system, through which I am able to procure my materials."
"May I ask then why it is you are willing to tolerate such working conditions?"
Plinth knew that he was traversing the boundaries of etiquette. Had he opened himself to recriminations? The half-sized man matched his tone.
"Oh, and I suppose you find every aspect of your job to be ideal? I work from the time I wake up, straight through to the time when I fall asleep. What could be the purpose of maintaining separate quarters? There's nothing about where I sleep in my orders."
"I don't mean to rhyme..." he added.
Jonathan was again fumbling with the bristles of his beard, eyes focused upon some distant apocalypse. Reginald (for that, Plinth had learned, was the half-sized man's name) had performed the series of keypad exertions necessary to extend his rolling platform to roughly chair height, and so he began the process of conveying his legless body into the booth alongside his companions. For his part, Plinth was generous enough not to remark upon Reginald's ornate personal mobility carrier. Though gape at it he did.
"What?" demanded Reginald.
"I take it you are the man who operates the molds," whispered Plinth, eyes fairly glazing over as he avoided focusing on Reginald's... stroller.
"The man who designed them. Now operates them. No one else seems to be able to get the hang of the interface."
Here Jonathan interjected, reciting the well-worn narrative. "The backups of Reginald's original designs for the molds were lost in a catastrophic fire that cleaned out the department's central data center back in '71."
"The company opted to rescue what was left of my code instead of what was left of my legs. And how did that work out for them?"
"Reginald was caught in the fire," Jonathan explained.
"Falling machinery bisected me. Cut me into hemispheres. With the loss of my templates, I've no way of growing a new interface. None of the department's people have ever been able to figure out how to run the things without me."
"But we get by," Jonathan insisted, realizing that Reginald was making him sound useless.
"Yes, recognizing that losing me meant throwing off their budget, the department chipped in on this mobility rig, and built a special room for me here so that I might be close enough to the molds to lend my expertise when complex adjustments were required. Eventually, I just made the space over into an office. The molds are too expensive to replace, so this is the state of affairs until we discover how to map the controls onto other users' minds."
"I had no idea," said Plinth, now sincerely embarrassed.
Reginald inclined his head toward Jonathan and took another sip of his water.
"I tell the kid here it's all God's fault."
To be continued...
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