Mansion Tour Part 2

After everyone finished their drinks, Yuri came to a sudden realization, “I just noticed something,” said Yuri as he showed them the waste receptacles and directed all the girls to which bin was for what, “this mansion is double its original size. I didn’t realize it until now because I was so surprised seeing the structure that I didn’t notice it had actually gotten bigger than the last time I was here. And before anyone asks, no, that is not how structures in my world even come close to working. I guess it really got rammed home after the walk to the garage was twice as long as it usually took me from the entrance to get there, and having a bit of a breather after all of this helped to bring everything into focus.”

“So,” said Thelsia, “does that mean you don’t know where everything is now?”

“I think it would be more accurate to say my knowledge about everything is the general area of the structure now,” said Yuri. “Anyway, the second floor should be the office, drawing room, and a small set of rooms dedicated to games. Then the rooms for resting and sleeping should all be on the floor above that. But I think this new layout will have all that was on just the second floor, plus a few other things, on the second and third floor with all the floors above that be where the bedrooms are. My initial design for this place was for it to be this big, but then I decided to scale it down to half because larger buildings mean longer construction times, and I really wanted to get out of the same house as the rest of my family as quick as possible, and they would have raised up the annoying factor if I had opted to just go with something else to living in while waiting on the project.”

“They sound…interesting,” said Malza, “but I can sympathize with wanting to leave the nest as soon as possible. It’s one of the main reasons I left to follow the path I am on now.”

“So,” said Alma, “you’ll have a few surprises as well.”

“Yes,” said Yuri, “likely based on some of my prior plans for the house in addition to how I already had things arranged around here.” Going up the steps to the second floor with everyone, revealing the whole floor to be more Fantasy styled aesthetic; Yuri took a few looks around before heading to the left this time before saying, “Most of this seems familiar, but the room with the large double doors at the end of the hall seems a bit unfamiliar to me.” As the group drew closer to that side of the stairs, they were able to see each of the doors had different symbols emblazoned on them; Yuri explained the first door on their right was the drawing room, which was followed by a game room emblazoned with some kind of turtle shell and the number one, then a roome with plate of some kind with a pane of glass proclaiming it to be a computer room with the number one in the middle of the plate of glass. Then they came to the door at the end of the hall; it was emblazoned with some kind of arena with no words or letters on it, which indicated it was the only one of its kind in the complex.

Yuri pushed open the doors, which flew open with ease, to reveal a collection of weighted poles, around the two sides of the room, a variety of other items, including what appeared to be some weighted bags in the corners, and the advertised arena in the center of the room. The whole thing was surprisingly big, seeming to be fifty feet across on all sides, with the arena taking up a little over twenty feet in the center of the room.

“What is this place,” inquired Althana with confusion.

“A personal gymnasium,” said Yuri, “it’s one of the things I dropped in my redesign of the mansion to free up space, but it’s a bit bigger than I had written up in my plans for the facility.”

“What is a ‘gymnasium’ for,” inquired Theslia, “I have never heard of such a facility.”

“A gymnasium, often abbreviated as just ‘Gym,’ is a facility you can go to practice working up your body however you want, and maybe have some private fights with other members of the facility, in a place where it should be safe to do so without putting yourself in serious danger. It’s basically where people go to hit things when they don’t have a feasible thing to hit.” He pointed to one of the large weighted bags and said, “That item over there is called a ‘punching bag,’ they’re filled with a material that is designed to weigh them down but also offer considerable resistance when they’re hit, you hit them however you like, but most people just punch them, hence the name; the material they are usually filled with is sand.”

“A difficult commodity to work with,” said Thelsia, “and acquire in some places.”

“It’s actually pretty easy to get sand when you know the trick to it,” said Yuri, “the sand in those bags is literally made from crushing the native rocks in the area I chose for the facility into a course powder, which is better known as coarse sand,” he took a moment to think about it for a moment, “at least that one is, I know another one has some fine sand made the same general way.”

“So,” said Alma, “you’re saying if you apply enough pressure to a rock, you can get sand?”

“Yes,” said Yuri, “but most naturally occurring sands are actually pieces of stone smaller than the smallest pebble you have ever seen, all collected in one massive piece. At least, I think I heard that’s how the deserts and the seafloor are basically formatted. But wind can also chip away tiny pieces of stone to produce pieces of sand over an extended period of time.”

“Huh,” said Theslsia, “interesting.”

“I think I might spend a good deal of my time here,” said Alma, “it looks like I can actually challenge my muscles without a serious threat of harm.”

“Oh,” said Yuri, “you can seriously still hurt yourself if you push your limits too far too fast, regardless of the environment. Anyway, on to the rest of the facility.”

As they were on their way out, Althana finally noticed the Computer room and thought she caught another discrepancy when she said, “I find it interesting you have a room for people to do computations and calculations, but I don’t understand the symbol’s significance.”

“The word ‘computer,’ in this case,” said Yuri as he led everyone to the other side of the hall, “refers to a machine that does a number of computations and can assist in various tasks, many of which could be considered academic. They’re very complex; even if you were to disassemble one to investigate, which I advise against for the time being, you would find a number of components that are unfamiliar to you and likely be lost on how all those components could do what they were doing; the image on the door is modeled on a computer monitor, the part of the interface that allows you to see things the computer is doing and the like. Granted, this is all and drastic oversimplification, but I think it’s enough to explain some things for the time being.” When they reached the other side of the hall, the first room was emblazoned with the image of a fairy ring and the word ‘toilet’ on it. “And this is one of the restrooms on the second floor; it has a mirrored version on the opposite end of the house.” After that was another game room and drawing room.

Afterward, Yuri led the party up the stairs to the next floor, “Any more questions before we go to the next floor,” inquired Yuri with his foot on the step to the next level.”

“I think we’re good for now,” said Lithira as she followed along.