Mansion Tour Part 5

After washing up, and then drying off, Yuri was feeling much better; especially since he finally offloaded all the frustration that had been building up until this day a few moments prior. After going through his attire, he threw on something he remembered was nice, but that was before a modified version of the mansion had appeared in a world that was basically a porn setting. After carefully making his way out of the room’s hidden chamber, thankful no one had found his hiding hole yet, Yuri went over to the intercom and made a few adjustments; he set it to broadcast from all of the units for the top half of the building and said, “Attention all guests, please report to the foot of the stairs on the main level, once everyone has been accounted for we will then resume the tour.” He then made a few more adjustments so the multifloor broadcast system was once again deactivated.”

A few minutes later, all seven women were present and accounted for; it seems they all opted to take the elevator after they had seen Yuri use it, but it did take them a bit to figure out how to operate the thing. After confirming everyone was there, Yuri got ready to tell them where they would be heading next on the tour. He had a few ideas of where the stairs to the lower levels were, and he had only designed about half the elevators, but he was still a little disoriented about the placement of everything.

“What is that room that moves when you press the buttons,” inquired Althana.

“It’s called an ‘elevator,’ but some call it a ‘lift,’ and it’s multifunctional,” said Yuri, “yes, it can be used to move people and the like, but where it really shines is moving goods and products up and down the facility. Think of it as an advancement on the dumbwaiter some businesses and facilities make use of.”

“I see,” said Thelsia; she turned her attention to the gnome, “Trying to figure out how to redesign your facility to have such an innovation?”

“That would take a considerable overhaul,” said Althana, “one that would probably cost as much as it did to put up a considerable portion of the atelier.”

“Anyway,” said Yuri, “our next stop on the tour will be the lower levels. If things keep going as they have,” the ladies all giggled a bit differently in near unison for a moment, “then instead of the two or three lower levels I initially had, we might find ourselves with somewhere between four and six of them.”

“Well,” said Lithira, “this could prove interesting.”

“The reason we’re still standing around,” said Yuri, “is because I had a few different designs on where the stairs and elevators to the lower levels were supposed to be placed. And since I don’t have them on hand, ironically due to them being in a storage closet on one of the lower levels, I have been needing to go through my own recollection to figure out the most appropriate placing for those based on how everything has played out so far.”

“Makes sense,” said Alma.

It was a few moments more of Yuri trying to recall his schematical details before he noticed something of a pattern; he had made most of the plan have the entry to the lower levels near the kitchen. “Follow me,” he said as he made his way back towards the kitchen. A few minutes later, the group was stopped at what looked like an unadorned wall in the distinctive style of the kitchen, with the kitchen proper being further down the hall, a little over fifteen feet from where Yuri was standing. After a moment, Yuri pushed in one of the metallic tiles on his left side, and a section of the floor on his right rotated to reveal a lever that telescoped out about two to three feet from where it was secured. Yuri chuckled to himself as he said, “I didn’t think it would use this design,” then pulled the lever towards him.

A moment later, the wall he was in front of slid out of the way to reveal a black cherry wood door with a handle-style knob, which Yuri gripped and pushed down as he pushed the door open. On the other side of the door was a set of stairs. Yuri descended the stairs, quickly followed by the women as they fell into a sort of line behind him. As they descended the stairs, a set of lights on the ceiling and both walls lit up on Yuri’s approach and faded back into black as the last one in the line passed them by a few feet. After a few minutes of going down the stairs, the group came to a pair of large rooms on the left and right of them, while the platform the stairs cut through was about twenty feet wide from left to right and about half that extending back, the front half was completely cut so as to not obscure the stairs themself.

Yuri made a sharp right shortly after arriving on the platform and made his way into the large room on the right. Inside were a series of strange box-like devices and a shelf on the far back with boxes that were labeled with unfamiliar characters to the women, and the images on the boxes were also a bit odd. “You’re probably wondering what this room is,” said Yuri, “it’s called a ‘laundry washroom,’ it’s basically where all your clothes and sheets go to get washed.” He gestured to one of the strange devices on the right of the room, “This device is called a ‘washing machine’ You put sheets, clothes, and like into it with a special kind of soap called ‘laundry detergent,’ which is in the rounded containers on the shelf at the back of the room.”

The party reoriented their gazes from where Yuri had gestured back to the shelf for a moment; after a few seconds, they did notice some of the containers were more rounded while others were a bit more boxy in design. There were even a few odd jugs with strange caps on them. “I can see it now,” said Althana after a moment, “might I be permitted to examine some of them?”

“I’ll see which of the options can be spared and hand them off to you,” said Yuri before he continued. He then gestured to the left side of the room, “And this device is called a ‘dryer,’ its purpose is to dry the materials that got wet in the wash by blasting them with hot air, but just not enough to make the materials feel hot or very warm after you take them out, while also tumbling them about to make sure the drying is optimized. The washing machines also spin and agitate the materials around, sometimes tumbling them as well, but that’s more a feature of the design than anything else.”

“You sure have a lot of them,” said Althana.

“One for the master bedroom and each of the guest rooms,” said Yuri with a bit of amusement, “when you drop your clothes and the like in the hamper, once a set amount of weight is met or exceeded, the hamper will initiate a timer that will then drop those things down a special shoot. The material will then be dropped on a special basket-like platform with the room’s designation stamped on it, and then,” as if on cue, a section of the floor next to Yuri popped up with said platform in front of the unit he was standing next to, “You get the joy of looking through your attire to make sure anything you didn’t want going in the wash isn’t mixed in.” He demonstrated with his pile, making a show of going through the pockets and the like for some of them. “After that, all you have to do is tap the side of the basket,” he dropped his demonstration attire back in the basket and then tapped its side a few times.

A moment later, the washing machine the basket was in front of opened mechanically, and the basket was emptied into the other device before it lowered back into the floor, and the tile it came up from returned to its prior state. “After that,” continued Yuri as he headed over to the shelf and reached into one of the rounded boxes, and pulled up a two-toned packet of some kind of liquid that he held up for them, “you grab your detergent and toss it in with the wash,” he demonstrated the act by tossing it into the machine after he was about as close to it as the basket had been and pressed button or flipped a switch before turning back to his audience, “and close the door to the washing machine. After that, you can set it to whatever setting on the machine you want, or leave it alone for half an hour, and it will automatically set itself to the last setting it was placed on, and the wash will begin. After it’s been running through the wash for a set amount of time, it will open up, and you can begin a similar ritual with the dryer. Dryers are a great option for washing clothes in cooler places because hanging the laundry on a line of some kind isn’t always an option. Any Questions?”

“What about the other chamber on this floor,” inquired Thelsia.

“Follow me,” said Yuri as he led the party out of the room and around the stairs into the other room, the lights changing from on to off and vice versa as they moved through the floor. A moment later, the group was in a large room with a number of counters, shelves, and baskets. “This,” said Yuri, “is the folding room; you bring your cleaned laundry in here and fold it on the counters; the baskets are for the ease of moving everything after it’s been folded. I like to make sure that all the counters and the like are washed every four days or so to make sure that all that cleaning didn’t go to waste. I have an automated system that cleans the house on a regular basis; the system is set to clean this room a bit more regularly than most of the other rooms. The automatons probably are going to be operating a bit differently than how I had them set prior to arriving in this world, assuming they are still functional. If not, I see no harm in turning a few over to Althana to take a look at. But keep in mind, I’m still trying to regulate overall exposure for everyone so as not to completely upend established cultural norms and the like.”

“And we are most appreciative of that,” said Malza, “your presence here has already had a noticeable impact, but I suspect you calculated most of it to be within the range of what you understood was possible for everyone at the time.”

“That is indeed accurate,” said Yuri.

“When we left the central church,” said Inoshana, “I heard mumblings of establishing a new kind of facility that would be run by the church; I’m guessing they recently got their hands on some of your plans for a bathhouse but decided to keep things out of my sphere of knowledge so I would be surprised by the facility, which I was. But I suspect any attempts at recreation of anything in this facility could completely change a number of dynamics on a global scale.” She gestured to the room with the washers and dryers, “Those devices alone recreated could completely revolutionize the way laundry is handled in this world, especially if they are made openly available to everyone, not just the elite.”

“Perhaps,” said Yuri, “how about we continue the tour.” As he headed back towards the stairs.