✅ Potty Genius [NaNoWriMo 2022]

Seventeen

¿What was the hypnotist's dark secret?

"Adrica?" Britney asked, apparently realising that I was distracted before her boss did. "Are you okay?"

"I... uhh..." I mumbled, not sure what I was supposed to say then. There were enough hints around the place that this office doubled as someone's bedroom, possibly the hypnotist herself. So it almost felt like I was prying into someone's private life if I commented on that bag. But once I'd seen it, it was the only thing on my mind. I knew I had to say something, so I reached out with one hand. Almost pointing, but too shy to extend a finger. I felt like a real jerk then, not knowing how they would respond to this intrusion into one of their private lives.

"What?" said Theo; back to being completely oblivious. Britney looked in the direction I was pointing, and her face was also blank for a couple of seconds. And then she must have seen what I had seen, just a stray piece of wrapping peeking out of a shopping bag where a package had been pulled open. "Oh... Don't worry, there's not anything weird about it. It's just, Dr Abbott wanted to make sure you get the best possible resolution to your problem. And sometimes it's not possible to properly understand a client's problems without some kind of..." This time it was her turn to run out of words and end the sentence in an awkward silence. She was bluffing, I could tell, trying to come up with an explanation that was less embarrassing. And I couldn't blame her.

"What are you talking about?" Theo asked, and then turned to follow my gaze again. "Oh, the Allnights? Yeah, I wanted to make notes on the script that this app used to hypnotise you, so I could work out how to best remove it. But I might have played along with the questions a little too much. I mean... it was a bit silly of me, I guess. But I did have a screen recorder running, so I've got a full transcript of the session so I can properly analyse all the language it uses. And I have to admit, whoever wrote that really knows what they were doing. It's even more sophisticated than Maxime's infamous files. I mean..."

"Who?" I mumbled; this time it was my turn to be lost at sea. I knew it was a dumb question, because I didn't know anything about hypnosis, so it was only natural that I'd never heard of someone who was presumably connected to it. And I didn't really need to know.

"Not actually a hypnotist," Britney asked with a little laugh. "Lady Maxime was a dominatrix who recorded some hypnosis CDs back when they were actually a thing. Some mp3s got spread online by people using them as a prank, and a there were a couple of people who didn't believe in hypnosis ending up in a situation something like yours."

"What they've got in common," Theo said, after thinking for a couple of seconds, "is that both hypnotists have pretty unconventional techniques. They've found a way to get your attention with a kind of story wrapped around the suggestions. In the case of Potty Genius, it's the example of a couple of fictional characters used as an example in the terms and conditions. It manages to get you thinking about these people, and then sneaks the trance in while you're distracted. That was a big quality of Maxime's recordings as well; that you wouldn't realise you're being hypnotised until you're already deep enough to not be taking in individual words. From a technical point of view, I'd say it's genius. I mean, I was actually watching out for stuff like that, and I still didn't realise it had happened until I went to summarise my notes and found that I'd stopped writing after about five minutes."

"I'm sorry," I said, as it finally hit me that somebody else had ended up in this situation because of me. "I didn't think it would–"

"Not your fault," she said. "I didn't see it coming either, and knowing when this stuff is possible is kind of my job. Besides, it's not such a big deal. I use the app for a couple of weeks, complete the 'training', and then I'm back to normal. All in all, it's an odd thing to experience, but I don't think it should be a big deal."