✅ Potty Genius [NaNoWriMo 2022]

Eight

¿You wet yourself in the mall? What happened?

I didn't mean to, it just happened. I had my phone in my hand, you know? I told it that I'd washed my hands, and it showed me that little banner, a sad one to say I'm good for trying to use the bathroom, and maybe I'll be able to go properly next time. Like you would for a little kid, really. And then as soon as I was out of the bathroom so I could submit the thing, it came up with a hypnotic command again to make me pee. For a couple of seconds I didn't understand what was going on. I wondered if it was some kind of punishment thing because I tried to cheat. Or maybe just the app being cruel for no reason, a little trick to make it harder if you tried using the bathroom without a timer.

But it only took a few seconds before I was looking at it from a different angle, and I realised that I was seeing malice from the app or its developers, when I really should have been blaming myself.

¿How was it your fault?

I pressed the accident button. It told me I couldn't do that while I'm on the toilet, which makes sense. Because if I pee there, it isn't an accident. But I assumed that because I wasn't in the right place, that meant it cancelled. That's not right. It just didn't give me the trigger until I was in a situation where it's valid.

I understood as soon as it asked me for an accident report. I was standing there on the tiles, pee streaming down my legs and a puddle forming around me. I think I was pretty lucky with the weather that day. I mean, it had been raining on and off all morning. I'd been lucky not to be soaked already; it had been raining for a couple of minutes at a time more than once while I was chatting in Mazzar's, or when I was walking through one arcade or another, or while I was getting lunch. But the general state of the weather meant that there were a lot of people leaving wet footprints through the mall, and a lot of people dripping rainwater off their coats or umbrellas.

The ground was already wet, basically. Unless somebody was looking closely at me, and at the puddle growing around me as I stood there, they wouldn't have realised I was peeing. I had to move quickly, though. If I stood in one place too long, I didn't know if there would be a noticeable smell there. I strode away, looking down at my phone as if nothing had happened.

I still had to look at myself briefly to make an accident report, but it didn't seem too bad. Pee had streamed down my legs to the floor, but I didn't think there were any visible marks. I reported on the app that I was wearing wet panties now, and my boots and socks were pee-soaked. There had been a puddle on the ground as well; I ticked one icon that seemed to be a stylised image of a brick driveway, to mean some kind of hard path.

I sighed as I saw the message saying better luck next time. It had to be sarcastic; as far as the app knew, I must have chosen to have an accident for some reason. I still couldn't imagine why somebody would ever do that. Unless there was a mode that would let you press the buttons for someone else; but I hadn't seen any evidence of that. Still, it seemed a little odd that it was giving me little reassuring messages, as if I were really a little kid struggling with potty training. As if I'd been recording a genuine accident.

Next up it gave me a little advice screen. Potty Pro Tips, like all those sites offering life-hacks or whatever. It advised me to change into a diaper as soon as possible, to guard against future accidents. And it told me that I should always carry spare underwear, and a change of clothes if possible, in case of accidents while I was away from home. It actually said it would be a good idea to have some extra cute clothes in my diaper bag; but I guessed that what it meant was to take extra clothes when going out.

And that brought me back again to thinking about diapers. Would it be a good idea to get some, just to protect against something like this happening again? That didn't even make sense; I'd learned not to press the 'accident' button now, even in the bathroom, so there was no chance of a repeat performance.