The walls radiate an ambient blue while a lilting melody suffuses the air.  In the center of the room, sitting on a brilliant white marble toilet, naked, aside from a softer-than-silk bathrobe, is Leland Merz.  He is silently going over the pills he took an hour ago.  The white and yellow and blue ones the staff had given him, and the little red one in the shape of a triangle his friend Steve assured was a must your first time.

The room itself is perhaps twelve feet on either side and as much high, with every surface a shifting video screen creating a symphony of colors and images.  It gave the impression of floating in a void or being wrapped tightly within the comfort of a womb.  The pills only heightened the euphoria as Leland, who had only just turned nineteen, began the four hour process of moving into adulthood.

It was as if only this morning he had been five years old attending his first anatomy course.  In those classes he would daydream and wonder what it was like for people before the Human Efficiency Standards of 2197.  What was is like using so much time eating three meals a day, sleeping, and excreting bodily wastes?  He would laugh and think how silly and what a loss of functional time that had been for society.  But, like many boys his age, he also held a romantic curiosity and affection for the era.  It had been such a carefree world, unregulated by the genetic factors and constraints that had wrought the chemically-perfected human body known today.

Leland wondered what it would be like to have a bathroom in your home and digest your food on a daily basis. He thought about the bodily mass he was about to pass.  About how the food tablets he’d been ingesting since birth were processed with such rigor that it had taken near twenty years to develop.  About how from this day on he would make the trip to a digestive spa and partake in the joy and relaxation of his constitutionals. How wonderful would it have been for those in the past to have done this every day he thought!

Of course, he knew that it had not been such a joyous occasion then.  An occasion where your first is greeted with celebration and gifts from parents and relatives.  He had been to the museum and seen, and even sat on, a toilet in a model of an old-world bathroom.  They were not heated, nor did they gently massage and invigorate your lower organs into waste production.  There were no pills to extend the voyage and enhance the emotional and physical impact.  It was, sadly, a daily routine and a less dramatic affair.  One that was squandered and who’s pleasure was disregarded as low-brow.  There were even distasteful jokes about the product itself.

How far our genetic modifications have come to let us take delight in this progression into adulthood, he thought to himself as the wall’s visuals changed into a lifelike forest scene.  Lush and tropical, the smell of damp earth and fresh flowers filled the air and he let himself relax.  He let the toilet massage and loosen him for the coming event.

As Leland’s body melted into the seat he closed his eyes and could feel The Passing.  He smiled and thought how foolish the romantic musings of his youth were.  To make waste daily would only dilute the importance of the event.  This, here and now, was far beyond what those in the old-world had experienced.  This was art.  This was civilized and it was beautiful.