First Use of a Setteen
Behind Pauline’s oshicko order lay this extensive cultural history. To Pauline the word was simply a command to stand but to the setteen it was a signal to drink. Rin’ichirou heard it as oshikko, the childish word for urine in his native Japanese, while to Clara it was as good as nonsense.
In response to her voice, the setteen did an about-face. Pauline spread her legs and waited; as the setteen approached its neck uncoiled and smoothly stretched out as its head twisted to face upwards… the moment that it was about to touch the thighs of Pauline’s trousers, the setteen’s right hand took hold of Pauline’s left leg while its left grasped her right. When it did this, a large hole appeared between the thighs of the trousers. Its face disappeared inside. Seeing this spectacle for the first time, Clara found it nightmarish the way the neck extended like an accordion. She found the image hard to shake from her mind. At the same time, there was something magical and strange about the way the head disappeared suddenly into the trousers.
When a weak special electric current was passed through this alloy, called “metallic”, it would rapidly expand, and when the current was shut off, it returned to normal. This property was utilised for various applications in EHS’s manufacturing industry, one of which was “hole buttons”. A flat, round piece of metal about 2mm in diameter was inlayed in the fabric in a small hole, no larger than the size of one opened by a needle. When an electric current passed through it, it expanded until it was around 30cm in diameter (for men the hole was located in the front of the underwear and expanded to about 3cm to allow the penis to be withdrawn but this explanation is referring to women’s attire). The fabric was elastic and was therefore able to open instantaneously to accommodate this large hole. This hole button was positioned where the lowest M button had been on men’s trousers back in the old days. Cords ran all throughout the setteen’s bodies which produced a weak electrical current; when the setteen placed both hands anywhere on the trousers of their user, its nail-less fingers acted as electrodes and made the hole button open. Taking its hands away cut the circuit and the hole immediately returned to its usual small size. The restoring force was extremely strong: if the setteen accidentally released its hands while being used, its neck could get caught in the hole and it could be strangled to death – being a kind of furniture, this was referred to as “breakage”. Barring the clothing of the black slaves (as will be mentioned later, they have a combination style), every pair of trousers and underwear had a hole button fitted. This meant that during the act of excretion, the people of EHS had absolutely no need to use their own hands. In much the same way that savages who undid the cords of their underwear one by one would find the elastic underwear of twentieth century people amazing, twentieth century people would find these metallic hole buttons to be like magic. Once used to them, however, they were an indispensable part of clothing. They could, of course, also be opened and closed by oneself.
You, the reader, may have already surmised this, but the phrase that Pauline had said to Clara when she noticed her squirming: “You want to have your legs touched?” was a euphemistic way of speaking which referred to the setteen touching the legs to open the hole button. Much like people from the 20th century used “to wash one’s hands” in place of “to go to the toilet”, the white people of EHS often used “to have one’s legs touched” in place of “to use a setteen”. Other phrases like “to give it soup” or “to give it a meal” or “to let it pray” were more informal ways of saying “oshicko” and “ungko”.
The setteen’s neck, now extended 40cm horizontally, twitched rhythmically as it swallowed. Although not a single sound of urination could be heard, even Clara could easily imagine what was occurring in the section that was concealed from her.
She was shocked. Reflecting on it afterwards, however, she was puzzled to realise that the thing that had most surprised her at the time was that a young woman was urinating while standing up. These other things: exposing the crotch for someone’s face and letting them touch the genitals, or using a human’s body as a toilet; these things that should have shocked her caused no such emotion in her.
That may have been due to Pauline’s calm attitude or the fact that the most human looking part of the setteen, its face, was hidden, while what she could see was horrifically inhuman – particularly the long and narrow neck stretching horizontally from the hollow of the horseshoe hump which was reminiscent of a rubber hose coming out of a pump. The main reason for her lack of shock, though, was that the theory of yapoo essentialism that Pauline had explained to her earlier had begun to influence her subconscious. When Clara had previously opposed Pauline, it had been for her lover’s sake. When she had seen the pygmy acting in the place of a cushion under Pauline’s body; and then when the quadruped human, turned into a human dog, leapt at her, she merely questioned this treatment of human beings in so far as reason had taught them to be human.Her reaction had nothing to do with emotions. Because these things weren’t human, they were yapoo. There was no doubt that she was comforted by Pauline’s argument that they were a type of ape called simius sapiens. The only part she balked at was Pauline concluding that her darling Rin’ichirou was also one of these yapoo; that was a mental leap she was not able to make.
In other words, it was not something she was fully conscious of but she felt no human sympathy for the flesh stool. It was the same for the setteen. She felt no kinship to this deformed dwarf with its rubber hose-like neck. It did not bother her that a human body was being used as a toilet bowl because she did not see this as a human body. What worried her the most was Pauline’s posture because in Pauline she saw someone who was undeniably like herself.
Half-sitting with her legs spread and her feet planted on the ground, Pauline’s stance brought to mind a sani-stand (a device that allowed women to go to the toilet standing) that Clara had seen when she had a chance to travel to the United States. Clara had felt strangely uneasy not being able to sit down and had ultimately left without ever using the sani-stand.
That’s why, when Pauline was done and cheerfully said, “You understand now, don’t you? Go on, try saying ‘oshicko’,” while tipping her head towards the setteen that was praying to her, the hesitation that Clara felt inside herself was mainly about the pose she would have to strike.
This hesitation, however, was dispelled by her urgent need to urinate. It was almost unbearable after having seen someone else relieve themselves. Without knowing what the magic word meant, Clara said,
“Oshicko.”
And planted her feet like Pauline had previously, and lowered her hips slightly. She may not have thought of the setteen as human but the momentary horror and regret she felt as the human-like face suddenly approached, the hole in her trousers opened, and the thick lips circled her exposed genitals was completely reasonable.
Was it human?
Once again she began to doubt. “It couldn’t be human. No human has such a long and thin neck”, “She said the flesh stool had once been a normal human but surely it was just deformed”, “What kind of human would allow itself to be used in this way? Something that would happily put out its neck like that couldn’t be human, it must be one of those so-called yapoo”.
When this moment of self-questioning was over, when she let go of the tension of her bladder, all that occupied her heart was a pleasant sensation. Finishing everything with a completely dry lower half gave her a sense of security the sani-stand hadn’t had. No human could swallow so much liquid in one go. They would have had to have taken a breath halfway through. Perhaps the reason she did not question the setteen’s ability to drink up her whole release easily and without interruption was because she had already reached an understanding from her self-questioning. She had never in her life thought she would be in this situation: the liquids she was excreting from her body were being delivered into this strange animal’s body by way of its mouth pressed in between her thighs. Yet somehow it was beginning to feel more and more natural. It felt like her thighs were being supported from below by its face and not unstable at all; she could relax her legs without worrying and the half-sitting posture didn’t feel as unnatural as she’d thought it would. Up until yesterday, Clara would have shuddered just thinking about someone’s face being close to her sex…
She felt a tickling sensation on her genitals and then a breath of warm air. Then she saw the neck withdraw quickly, folding up until it nestled snugly in the hollow of its shoulders. Her private parts felt as dry as if she had wiped them with paper. The setteen brought the palms of both hands together and paid its respects. Even ignorant as she was of ‘thanksgiving’ manners, Clara could tell that this setteen was overjoyed.
They weren’t human after all. They were living furniture.
It was over sooner than expected. However, this was Clara’s first memorable taste of EHS culture. Never again would the fruits of her body go to waste. The day would soon come when the famous brand of negtar named Kotowicky, taken from her surname v. Kotowitz, would be created.
Not having even left earth 195X, still far from Carew and the earth villa, Clara’s mind was already opening to the possibilities of EHS culture. She might even already be beginning to believe in the theory of yapoo domestication and the existence of simius sapiens… Of course, her feelings for Rin’ichirou had not changed – she would swear this if asked. But subconsciously, would this be true? Just moments ago Pauline had used Japanese words to get her setteen to freeze; Clara felt this exposed an unexpected commonality between the deformed dwarf which she felt no kinship with and her own lover. Was this not because she unconsciously had a hunch that the two of them might be estranged in the near future?
Rin’ichirou was still prostrated in the same pose. The two women disappeared from his line of sight and he could no longer see anything. He could hear them, though, and from that he had an idea that they had changed and also used the toilet. Twice he’d heard the word ‘oshicko’ used. If he had seen the way the setteen worked, there was no doubt that he would have preferred his current paralysed state and to remain on earth. He would have felt the same kind of kindred conscious with this setteen as he had the stool and the dog, and found it painful to see how repulsive its work was.
Even without seeing what was going on around him, Rin’ichirou was beginning to have a bad feeling about this trip to EHS with Clara. Only the faith he had in her love for him, which he had cried tears of joy over earlier, held back the worry that he didn’t know what was going on in her mind currently. =
While Pauline sent the setteen scurrying back to the SC with one short, sharp whistle, she calmly directed Clara’s attention towards the panoramic radar on top of the round table. A long and narrow cylinder had suddenly appeared just above the stereo’s board. Finally the high speed time machine known as Glacier had arrived to rescue them.
N A Feathers 
One thought on “The Domestic Yapoo – Chapter 7.4”