✅ Potty Genius [NaNoWriMo 2022]

Ten

¿What did she forget?

"Sorry," Britney called after me before I could reach the door. "She's a genius, believe me. Greatest hypnotist you ever met. But you probably noticed she's also a total airhead. Can rewire your brain to let you smell colours, needs help to make a sandwich."

"Yeah," I nodded. "But I don't think that's a problem. If she can do her job, that's all I need."

"She also seems to have forgotten to discuss the bill. And the liability waiver, in fact. The law requires you to sign a thing acknowledging the appropriate legislations, and that you can't sue us if it doesn't work. And we have to do that before making an appointment."

"Okay, I guess that's a big thing to miss out. I think you two talked about this before?"

"Exactly. One day, maybe she'll remember it. But until then, can I ask you to talk to me before leaving to make sure that your next session is actually recorded on the computer, and that the bill is paid."

I was nervous talking about the bill, but it wasn't as much as I might have feared. Three Mondays would eat all the money I'd saved up towards university expenses, so I would be living on what my parents had provided for me or instant noodles for a year. But to deal with this problem, I was sure it would be worth it. I didn't have to pay yet; there would be a bill after each session. But I needed to agree to the amount. And when Britney had minimised the TV show on her laptop, she brought up a calendar spreadsheet, checked that neither of them was otherwise busy next Monday afternoon, and printed out a little appointment card that said I needed to be there at two.

With everything organised, I walked out a lot more confident than I had come in.

¿Was everything sorted then?

No. But it felt like it was. I did just what the expert had said; playing along but reminding myself that I didn't need to do this. I told myself that it was normal to pee when sitting on the toilet, and that there was no reason anything needed to stop me. I still couldn't actually overcome the suggestions; I couldn't pee without setting the timer. And as I soon found out, I had to set a timer to poop too. That was even more embarrassing for some reason. But I could cope with it. The time I had to wait seemed to be longer; this time I had to wait 5-9 minutes if I wanted to keep the 'success chance' over ninety percent.

I still didn't know what the success chance actually was. Every time I'd tried it so far, it had told me that the timer was set successfully. And my first instinct would have been to try it out, but I'd already been bitten too many times with that. I was sure that sooner or later my luck would run out and I'd discover some new inconvenience; maybe I'd have to wait half an hour before I could try again, or something. But I didn't want to put myself through something like that until I had no option.

The next morning, I didn't have any more problems. I remembered to report when I was going to the bathroom, and I repeated to myself that this was just playing along with a game, and would be over soon. Sometimes the time I had to wait was close to the lower bound I had selected; and sometimes it was closer to the upper bound. I did experiment with the app's features, and found out something else as well. Once I had started a timer, I could look at the minimum and maximum times it was set for, but there was no indication of how many seconds had passed since I set it. So if I set one for several minutes, unless I thought to look at the clock I wouldn't have any estimate of how long remained. It would change to say that the timer would finish soon in the last minute, or when the minimum time was passed, whichever came last. But there was no notification for that, so I only knew when my time was nearly up if I happened to be looking at the screen.

I played an awful lot of Bubble Hunt Magnate and Destiny Ribbons on those days. Having nothing else to do while I was waiting for Potty Genius to let me pee seemed to give me a lot of opportunity to play dumb games, and by the time it got to lunch time, I'd already found myself humming one annoying jingle from the game.