Mansion Tour Part: Pause in the Yard

After some deliberation, the group opted to continue the tour and come back to visit the pool later; Althana had been taking notes on what they were seeing regarding the water and pool to use later for the improvements to the bathhouse this experience was giving her ideas for. Yuri pressed a few buttons on his device, and the pool drained a moment before the pool area had all of its raised components slide back into their holding grooves; then the section of the yard it was hidden beneath returned to covering it; there was no visible seams to indicate it had been there. After the pool was covered by the lawn again, Yuri indicated for the group to follow him.

Yuri led them around the left side of the building for a few minutes before stopping under some windows; there was some kind of tiled flooring with a door to the house on the other side of the tiles from the group. “This is one of my patios,” said Yuri; he then held up the remote and punched a new set of buttons into the remote; a moment later, some of the patio tiles lifted up on a mechanical system, and moved those same tiles to the exterior of the patio as table and chairs big enough for five people. Another tile flipped to reveal what looked like some sort of sconce, but it didn’t look like it was meant for a torch, given the lighting the facility seemed to have going for it.

He then punched in a few more numbers, and a pair of long chairs that seemed more for laying down popped up at the edge of the tiled area closest to them. He turned his attention to his companions and said, “I figured you would like to rest for a bit,” he took a quick look at the long chairs for a moment, “You can take those chairs to the pool later if you want. I’ll leave this setup out for later; I have a feeling you ladies will want to take advantage of this furniture.”

“Thank you,” said Thlsia as she took a seat; everyone else found a seat that was comfortable and positioned themselves there as well. “You are clearly well-educated, by our standards anyway; care to explain what your education structure looked like.”

“Well,” said Yuri as he took a seat on one of the sun chairs, “I was part of mandatory education; however, I also liked to do a little independent research. That all said, mandatory education is something all members of the nation grew up had to do; this system had what is known as ‘Primary School,’ also referred to as ‘Elementary School,’ and a secondary school that comes after that, referred to as ‘Middle School,’ these first two schools are followed by a secondary school referred to as ‘High School,’ you then have the option of attending what is referred to ‘College,’ sometimes called ‘University,’ or if you want, you can opt for a trade school. I finished my mandatory education and was considering going into one of those; I was taking a few years to think it over and get things in order for myself.”

“So, everyone has a baseline structured education,” inquired Thelsia.

“For the most part,” said Yuri, “the mandatory education systems are different between nations; I just described a general overview of what it was like in the nation I grew up in.”

“That makes sense,” said Usagi, “different nations have different standards.”

“The same is true with cultures that existed in the past,” said Lithira. “Why does this place seem designed to work with as few staff as possible.”

“Family politics,” said Yuri; this caused all heads to be raised in surprise. “While the modern era of my world has basically done away with the system of Nobility, with a few notable exceptions, my family was basically akin to a highly influential noble family. My family has enough wealth and power to influence things to the point they can stay off any list they want to avoid being associated with; this includes their affiliations and businesses. It’s also encouraged for my family to mess with each other for fun; it’s why the version of this manor I was living in wasn’t quite to this level. Also, if I were to hire staff to maintain and manage the facility and care for me, the bulk would likely be composed of their own agents to spy and/or mess with me. So, I designed the whole place to operate with an automated system. I learned to cook for myself, and the entirety of the grounds and complex are managed with various automated systems. This includes some very special automatons. To make sure my family’s influence on production would be minimalized, I actually bought a company that made cleaning robots and gave them the resources to expand into other automated home technologies before contracting them under an alias to install all the automated systems, including the automatons, for the facility. Since they were working in collaboration with the construction company, I also took the precaution of purchasing the complex during construction and development. The main reason my project couldn’t get to where it is now was that several of my family’s agents were already in the architecture company I used when I bought it and didn’t find out until after the project, basically at the point of no return when it came time to build it. Which means they also basically got copies of the original facility’s design plans before what I had to live with was even finished.” Althana and Thelsia were furiously taking notes on everything Yuri was saying.

“Well,” said Althana, “I didn’t expect that knowledge dump. Any way we can get some refreshments out here?”

Yuri held up the remote and punched in some buttons; a moment later, four kiosks rose out of the ground near where the ladies were situated. “This should do the trick,” said Yuri, “I can’t vouch for any of the written languages being legible for you, seeing as all the script was native to the world I grew up in the last time I checked, but the images near each of the texts should help. Even though I did learn to make my own food, I also have the facility equipped with a series of automatons designed to make a few food items based on some basic instructions; an automaton will bring the items ordered out to the kiosk they were ordered from. All you have to do is lightly tap on the screen with what seems most appealing to you. When you finish your order, the system will display an estimated time of completion, which will not quite include delivery time, and ask for confirmation of the request.”

“What does that word, ‘automaton,’ mean,” Inquired Althana, “I’ve never heard it before, and you used it a lot.”

Yuri took a moment to think about how to word it before saying, “An automaton is an automated machine designed to do a specific task or series of tasks. In a sense, a golem is a multipurpose automaton, and a homunculus could be considered an automaton. The automatons used here are a series of machines called ‘robots,’ their name is derived from the word for a worker in one of the language families of the world I grew up in, that language family being known as ‘Slavic,’ so think of them as little helper machines that are each designed with certain roles in mind. And no, you are not permitted to examine as you would like, at least not the ones that will come out to serve everyone. I have a few non-functional units that should be stored somewhere on the grounds we haven’t seen yet; I’ll permit you to take a small number back to your room after the tour to do what you want with them there; just keep in mind a lot of the components are a bit more advanced than what you are used to seeing in a world with magic.”

“I think I can work with that,” said Althana.

The ladies all got up from where they were sitting and inspected the menus on the kiosks, when they could get close to the screen, for a moment before going through the ordering system. Yuri knew this would seriously mess with the development of the world, but they had crossed that particularly large bridge so far that mitigating things was no longer a foreseeable action for him. With any luck, it would take decades or centuries for most of these influences to have an equivalent in Erotolsia, but he wouldn’t hold his breath on that.