Kai vs the Techno-Toilet an incredibly stupid fanfic by Ennien Ashbrook Warning: This story is pure bathroom humour. Do not read if you're offended by mankind's baser needs. thanks to Uncle John's 10th Bathroom Reader for information about the Japanese "Toto" toilets. Somebody's going to die for this, d'ye see? I am enduring the most humiliating half-hour of my life, splayed out on tiles trying to hot-wire Cat-sama's toilet. "Why?" I hear you ask while sniggering into your tea. Bugger off! For the most part, despite being a raving hedonist, Cat-sama is rather practical. Nearly everything s/he owns has a use to it and they all make sense. Even, I am forced to admit grudgingly, this evil monstrosity that has me so baffled right now. Like me with my periods, Cat-sama frequently gets the first word of an impending Change while on the loo: S/he gets bowel cramps and hir urine turns cloudy as hir kidneys gear up for the upheaval. Sometimes, though, these are just manifestations of a cranky body, so such signs are usual followed by a battery of tests. I guess s/he got fed up with going to hir infirmary every time s/he took a leak and got this thing installed. It's a beaut, I'll grant it that: Blood pressure cuff, finger cuff that'll prick hir finger and analyze hir blood chemistry, thermometer (aural - yes I know, not what you'd expect on a toilet) and any number of other gadgets, including the standard "options" built into a typical Utoland snob's WC. What it doesn't have is labels. Well, not what I can read, at any rate. Berg Katze is practically omni-lingual, but hir first - and most comforting - language is Urdu. I suppose it'd be a comfort to someone in distress to read one's loo-labels in one's own language. God knows I'd give anything for a set of good Gaidhlig stickers right now! I can't read effin' Urdu!! I can read Gaidhlig, Gaelige, English, French, and Japanese, but I can't read flippin' Urdu! I'm never nipping in to Cat-sama's taigh-beag again; I'm going to the public lavatories on Level C. The problem with this toilet is, I don't know how to flush it. This would seem to be a joke. "Use the bloody handle, Cirean," I hear you chortling. There isn't one. What there is, is this great blinking panel of lights and buttons, all of 'em labeled in Urdu. I have no idea what button does what. When I nipped in here, I figured as long as I didn't touch any of the bells 'n' whistles, I'd be fine. I'd nip in, do my business and nip back out. The toilets at home all have handles! Or at the very least, a button where the handles normally go. So I've done my thing and changed what needed to be changed, and I realize there's no button. I look at the control panel. I take a deep breath and choose something that I hope meant "flush". Its the radio. At least Cat-sama doesn't have that god-awful "flush" sound effect that Finger has on *his* techno-loo. The radio I can live with. Until it started playing rap. I pushed the button again but it didn't shut off. Great... I tried another button and got whopped on the head as a panel opened in the wall and the blood pressure unit was disgorged. I tried a third button and was dismayed as this little toothbrush-shaped nozzel appeared and sprayed water all over hell's half acre. Bidet attachment. I'd gotten in the habit of carrying a packet of tissues around with me: We have bidets at home, nice separate porcelain bidets that aren't determined to bugger you up the arse like these Utolander perversities. I finally got the thing to shut off and had to mop up the room with towels. More and more buttons yeilded the finger cuff, tuner for the radio - I'm now retching to C&W music - blow dryer, standard powder-puff that I know for a fact Cat-sama NEVER uses, thermometer (I'm 1.5 degrees above normal -- gee I wonder why!) and, of all things, direct-line pager to Sosai X. I'm still trying to decide if that's Cat-sama's paranoia or if X really is that anally retentive as to bother his avatar in the john. The powder-puff is actually a spray thingie that directs a jet of powder at whatever happens to be in its path -- my face, in this case. What I haven't found is the flush. Well now I'm getting mad. This god-damned country music is driving me batty. I start ripping apart the control panel looking for the mother-board. Maybe I can hot-wire this thing, or at the very least, reprogram it.. Thus it was that Cat-sama, wondering whether I'd drowned myself or was in need of the Encyclopedia Utolandica to pass the time, walked in (without knocking, I might add -- that's Cat-sama for you) and found me, wet, perfumed, with stained pants in need of another change, covered in powder with the room similarly covered, surrounded by his dismembered toilet. He doubled over laughing immediately. I whonked him with the mother-board and told him to quit being an asshole. He told me I could have asked. I told him I wouldn't have thought I'd had to. He told me he'd had it marked with a red button, because he knew I couldn't read Urdu. I shoved the control panel in his face and demanded he show me this red button. He did. It's big, its red, its on the side of the tank and its marked in Gaidhlig. Oh. I beat him up and put his toilet back together. Then he took me out to dinner. What he hasn't done is promise not to tell anybody about this. I may have to apply torture.