text: I've been writing this story for a little bit and it's nowhere near done, but I got impatient and decided to post what I've written so far. Enjoy! Alternatively, don't enjoy! &#x200B; &#x200B; It was a Utopia. A true, bona fide Utopia, where everything was perfect because no one had an issue with anything and everything was perfect and you always put the usb drive in the port the right way the first time. Yeah, it was that good. There was sadness, of course, suppression of that would probably involve some dystopian measure, and everyone knew that and everyone accepted that and so there was sadness because everyone knew that it was only human and you didn’t really need constant happiness to have a utopia, anyway. Bad words still existed, but no one was offended by them anymore. Besides, people had almost completely switched to Brandnewspeak, anyway. Brandnewspeak was a brand new language which had been invented just a year ago. It had become the most widely spoken language in the Utopia in under 4 months and its official language a month after that, success which many attributed to its clean, smooth sounding words. Indeed, it was agreed that Brandnewspeak was wholly superior to English. In the center of the Utopia was the flag, depicting a circle of people linking arms with each other around a smaller version of the same image. The Utopia’s motto, “everyone and everyone else” was painted in the Utopia’s official font, Times Brandnew Roman, just above the door to the main hall. Opinions were respected, facts were verified. Everyone had plenty of food, water, shelter, medicine, and the like. This is where our story begins. Sam was a simple lad who led a simple life (a simple, perfect life, mind you. The word “perfect” had been forgotten many years before the introduction of Brandnewspeak. Because everything in the Utopia was perfect, the distinction had no longer been necessary to make, resulting in the word collectively fading from the people’s vocabulary). He enjoyed music, pubs, and long walks on the beach. His job as a plumber didn’t pay much, but it paid enough. In fact, it paid the perfect amount to cover his life style. Yes, Sam led a virtuous life in the Utopia, a satisfying, stimulating, exemplary life. But everything was about to change. But not today. Today was a pretty regular Wednesday. Sam had woken up, eaten breakfast, gotten out of bed, and prepared for the hours of calming problem-finding and problem-fixing that were to come. He departed from his house in his 0-CO2 emittance shoes. He was walking down the sidewalk, as one does, when he came across something awfully peculiar. He picked the thing up and, since he couldn’t discern any possible use for it, put it in his pocket to dispose of at the nearest recycling duct. The recycling ducts were a massive and elaborate structure beneath the Utopia which lead down to the recycling center (itself a massive and elaborate structure beneath the Utopia which was capable of recycling any synthetic material at all). The ducts were truly a work of genius and had been designed by Will Einstein, the greatest plumber to ever live. Ooh that’ll have big ramifications on the story, won’t it? Yeah, probably. I figured I’d give you a freebie since most of the foreshadowing has probably gone over your head up till now, unless of course you’ve had it explained to you by some obsessive, cranky english teacher who reads way too far into things. You know, the kind that could read the first two sentences of our story here and come up with some reason as to why it’s actually a dystopia. Oh, and they’d probably fit Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy in there somewhere, too. But I digress. As Sam continued along the sidewalk, he pulled out his map to make sure he was going the right way. He was. Putting his map away, he saw that he was getting close to the recycling duct. He felt in his pocket for the object and examined it more thoroughly. After all, he may have just missed its purpose, and he’d hate to have something useful recycled. Looking at it now, he noticed nothing new. It was still a hard, smooth, hexagonal prism, with a hole in it. He was now standing in front of the recycling duct. He was about to toss the hexagonal prism away when he noticed a key lying on the ground directly in front of the duct. With a lapse in the logic of probability, he tried to put the key into the keyhole. It didn’t fit. “Ah, well. Down you go, then.” he said to himself, and tossed both the prism and the key into the chute. Sam made his way to the first home he was to work at that morning. It was a small, familiar, quaint house, not unlike his own. Fairly unremarkable, but remarkable enough. It’s not like all the houses were exactly the same because of some dystopian, oppressive government that prevents its citizens from realizing that it has taken away their individuality and slowly makes every aspect of their lives as mundane as possible. He rang the doorbell and, after the perfect amount of time, someone opened the door. “Hello, Ms. Jones,” Sam said. “How are you this morning?.” “Quite alright, Sam, and how are you?” she responded. “I’m just fine, thanks,” Sam said. “Good, good. Then please, come in,” Ms. Jones said, leading Sam to the kitchen. “You see, Sam, the faucet has stopped working,” she said, as she turned the handle and watched the pitiful dripping with a frown. “Now don’t you worry, Ms. Jones. I’ll have your faucet up and running in a jiffy!” He said, and got straight to work. I won’t bore you with the details, because who cares about fixing some clogged pipes? No one. That’s why you call a plumber to do it for you. What I will say is that it involved a wrench, a lump of muck, and some pipes. Yep, a perfectly normal plumbing job.