Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. It is a draft; there are mistakes, many misspellings and sometimes long periods of no updates. copyright: ion fyr 2025
Pool had bathed in the rivers of Nuland, squats, his own apartment flats, and in the charming bath of Etelka’s villa by the sea, but here he had spent five minutes of rough experimentation before he could figure out the hot from the cold. All the while his skin itched and burned still, from his time in the river.
It was a shower stall was half a meter on a side with two buttons. There was no means of adjusting the rate of flow, or the ratio of cold to hot. Pressing the one on the right produced a weak mist of tepid water that lasted for roughly a minute and left a slick residue on is body; the left produced a sudden downpour that was very hot, but seemed to burn away the sludge clinging to his body.
The hot deluge lasted for even less time than the mist of the first.
Pool pressed the left button again several times, until the water resumed, but each time, the duration was less than it was before.
By the fifth pounding on the button, the shower stall began chiming, then, to his profound surprise, a disembodied voice shouted from above that “any further resource use would be charged to your account”.
Pool did not want to draw attention to Nila or himself, or create a debt to her account for water use! so he relented and accepted that his bathing was done. Less than five minutes in total. He was sure of it.
Looking at the swirls of muddy spirals remaining in the basin, he realized that he was much more filthy than he had ever been before. Leaves, and benighted flakes of rust, gathered at the drain-shield.
On what we could call a sink there was a small teacup jar, but more cylindrical, of metal objects. Pool looked closely at them without touching them. They looked like tiny bars and spikes. It was only in the middle of his shower that he realized they were the metal bits that the men and women of the 23rd embedded under their skins and punctured the cartilage of their bodies for masochistic fun. Nila had many such piercings, going beyond the lobes of the ears that some civilized women of his time would consider risqué. They were savages in this place, this time, falling victim to their own base desires and pursuits.
There was a slight inrush of air. Someone had opened the outer door. Philoctetes.
The fabric he pulled from the rod on the wall was–Pool was now considering–the most important invention of the last three hundred thousand years.
A gnarly fabric–some call it terry–it was so absorbent.
Pool stumbled out of the shower wrapped in a length of terrycloth, scrubbing the pebbles of water droplets from his mustache and girding himself as a man with proper 19th century principles should.
It was three and a half minutes that Pool laid their, on Nila’s folded up couch-futon, until he realized that Philoctetes was in the room with him.
Anthromorphs produce very little sound of their own, especially the old ones and the young ones. Philoctetes had returned with a bundle of fabric-like materials, more rolled than folded.
Pool, sitting there with a plush towel wrapped around his waist was grateful to the artificial beast. It was certainly more helpful than the brass and tin beasts of the submersible (that was itself an interesting development–he wished he had had the opportunity to find out more about it.)
The latter automatons had mostly just monitored him like prison guards (though without the cruelty), keeping to themselves, probably checking to see if he was alive as they filled him with soporifics. Perhaps what that sick-feeling of craving and nausea was that was now eating at him. Was he addicted to whatever those things fed him?
Ion Fyr 