✅ Potty Genius [NaNoWriMo 2022]

Forty-Nine

¿Did you break the hypnosis?

"I'm not sure if it's necessary," I mumbled, looking down at my hands. "I mean, you've already helped me so much, and I think I'm going to win this time. That was my issue, wasn't it? Needing to complete the challenge, rather than cheating and getting around it. And now..."

"You're close to finishing?" Britney asked.

"Yeah. I got the potty chart quota, and the gold star count. I need to finish one more daily challenge, and all I have to do to complete today's is to wait..." I glanced at my phone to check the time, and continued: "About another twenty minutes. If I don't change my badge, I won. Unless I'm reading it wrong. And the last week..."

"Six dry days?" Theo must have been able to guess the answer, but she still asked.

"Yeah. Ages since I... You know," but because I wanted to be honest, I added: "Until today."

"Got the dancing badge on?"

"Yeah. Twenty minutes more. It got me twice already, and both times I was sure I was going to make it, right up until..."

"Yeah, same," Dr Theo said with a laugh. "I was curious enough to give it a try. It says that it'll make you confident, but even when you know that, you can't get over this kind of intuition that the next time will be different. It should be easy to accept that it's going to happen, but you end up thinking you'll beat it anyway."

I mumbled something under my breath, and nodded. I was just glad that my time with this app was over. I didn't really care if it made me wet myself one more time as a kind of symbolic finale, but I didn't think it would be able to now."

"I don't even need to go," I said with a shrug. "Can't make me pee if my bladder's empty. After everything, I think the game is over."

I wasn't really here for a hypnosis session today. I just wanted to be sure that the app's power over me ended when it was supposed to. When the challenge was over, I would let it give me the new badge, and then test my ability to pee without setting a timer. If there was still a problem, then I might need Dr Theo's help. But because the app had been so powerful in the way it controlled me, I didn't really doubt that its removal scripts would be just as well written. So while we waited for the challenge to be over, we just started talking about all kinds of random things. Somehow, the conversation drifted over to Shadow Covenant, and my unexpected infatuation with the unspoken romance subplot that was clearly being telegraphed between two of the AIs.

"It's like... I thought this was going to be a boys' game, right? You're some fancy AI guiding a team of space marines as they board an enemy ship. So how can there be romance? And they never say it, but how can you have chemistry between characters who are just computer programs?"

"Exactly," Britney laughed. "I've heard the same thing from friends who were really into the console games. There's a meme about it, says that if you think there's a romance story it means you got a crush on Book."

"Book?" I answered, and then my brain jumped into the right gear a second later. "Oh, the Admiral? Yeah... the characters in the mobile game call her Sir, so took me a second to think of the name. I've seen her in the TV ads, Ithink. But I'm not... I mean, I never thought of her like that. She's just this crazy dominatrix character with the kind of impossible figure that's only possible because she's computer generated."

"She really looks like that," Theo answered promptly. "I mean... the character's model and mannerisms are based on Lady Maxime, who does the voice. Yes, the bust is real. And she really does all the dominance stuff that the stern costume hints at."

"And she's a hypnotist too," Britney added, just when I thought my jaw couldn't drop any further.

"Not really," Theo corrected. "She's a voice professional. Reading a hypnosis session from a script doesn't make her a hypnotist. But she's got the right tone for it, if you like nurturing but authoritarian."