Just Wanted to Play
Part 1. A Special Business Trip.
“Are going to be 3 long weeks”.
“I will miss you too”, and she kiss him goodbye, before getting into the plane. She looked at him one more time, and boarder the Airbus that will take her to Madrid. It was a Friday morning at the beginning of July 2005.
The plane arrived to Madrid on time, she was walking to the airport just after 11am. She never liked flying, she always arrived tired. Today she still had take this second plane, 12 hours across the Atlantic and the Northern part of South America, to arrive Lima, her destination. After that, 2 weeks of long working days, business trips are not fun at all. She was going to miss him a lot.
Her name is Helena, a dear friend of mine, she was going to be 31 in just a few weeks, she is 5′10″ tall and slender. Her beautiful brown eyes are almost the same color of her long curly hair about, which extended up to 6 inches pass her shoulders. She is beautiful and very smart.
She is from Brazil, too bad she cannot stop there to see her family, but at least she will have a week to visit her sister Regina in Madrid on her way back to London. Helena works in an investment bank , in London. She got the job 3 years ago, just after finishing her MBA in Harvard. Her family is from Florianopolis, they own a company there. She has lived a happy live, but with not too much luck in love, until a month ago, when she met him. Now she was really in Love.
The plane arrived to Lima on time at 5:30pm it was still Friday. She was entering her room just after 7pm. He recommended the hotel, he was right, it was a great place. She was tired, in London it was already 1am, and she had been awake since 5am. She went for a walk, just to relax before dinner. It was a nice city, after looking some stores, she entered in an ‘Herboristeria’ (natural medicine store). The place was nice and small. She looked at some pills made from plants with names that she had never heard. Then she took a small can of ointment. ‘Maybe something for the skin’ she thought. Breaking the seal, she open the can and when she was going to smell the contents, saleswoman said in a nice tone:
“No lo huela, le va a dar sueño”.
“What?” asked Helena.
“Sueño. Sleep”.
Portuguese is similar to Spanish, so speaking slowly a saleswoman from Lima and an with an investment banker from Florianopolis can understand each other. The ointment was made from a mixture of herbs from the amazon. If smelled can put a person to sleep. Helena took got 3 small cans and went back to the hotel, she expended $12. The saleswoman also told her that she will need a $1 CD to use the ointment, but since she got 3 cans, 1 CD was free.
It was 9:30 when ate something at one of the hotel’s restaurants, and by 10:30 she was back at her room. She looked at the ointment. “I am so tired I won’t any help to sleep today, so you guys wait until tomorrow”. 5 minutes later she was sleeping.
Helena woke up around 11am. She was lucky, it was a wonderful sunny day, so she had great look of the Pacific Ocean (it is winter in Lima in July, and it is normally foggy down there). She took a shower, got some clothes. About noon she was going to leave the room to get something to eat when the phone rang. She answered immediately, it was him. The talked for 1 hour, she was very happy when she took some lunch at a nearby restaurant in a shopping mall. She was back at the hotel by 2pm, she was still tired from the trip, so she decided to stay in the hotel for the afternoon. She will do some exercise and maybe return to the mall for some time later.
Helena was lying in her bed when she remembered the ointment and the CD. She didn’t wanted to get a virus on her computer, so she went to the business center at the hotel to check the CD. There was a folder in English and one in Spanish. She printed the instructions. It was in fact a sleeping ointment. Just a little bit in the tip of one finger could put an adult to sleep after inhaling it 1 to 3 times. The person will remain sleeping for 15 to 90 minutes, depending mainly on the dosage and the weight. The first 3 to 5 will be of total unconsciousness, to pass then to a state of ‘hypnotic dream’. There was the chance that upon waking up the subject might not remember how she/he fell sleep. There were also 3 MP3 file with an hypnotic induction audio, to make the person sleep 4, 6 or 8 extra hours. She listened to the first one, the first 5 minutes, were silent, and the, for 5 minutes, a voice repeating over and over: “You will wake up in 4 hours, feeling great”.
Helena returned to her room intrigued. She did not believed that this ointment could work. But since she wanted to take a nap anyway, she decide to try. She thought that she may wakeup not remembering what happened (even with a normal nap she may wake up disoriented), so she wrote in a paper what she was doing and what time it was (2:50pm). She placed the paper on the pillow right next to her, took just a little bit on her little finger, put it on her nose and took two deep breaths. It had a light citric smell. In 5 seconds she started to feel sleepy, her hand fell, all her muscles relaxed. Without even noticing it, she was sleeping like a baby in less than a minute. She woke up 50 minutes later. She was disoriented, but not dizzy or sleepy. She was just feeling well. Then she noticed a piece of paper on the bed. She was afraid. “Somebody went into my room? Maybe he or she is still here”.
Slowly she took the piece of paper. It was her letter. But she did not remembered leaving it there. When she finished reading, she started to remember that she had in fact written it, she did not remember what happened after she wrote it thought, but the note had the answer. She was amazed. “This thing really knocked me out for almost 1 hour”.
Now she remembered the CDs, and the ‘hypnotic dream’ part. For sure that meant that after 3 to 5 minutes of being totally out, she might had been hypnotized. So far the sleep part had worked, and she needed to test the hypnotic part. But she decided to wait, after she changed clothes, she went to the hotel’s gym to exercise.
It was 5:15 when Helena was taking a shower at her room, she was surprised. The ointment had worked, and showed no side effects that she could identify. She did not woke up sleepy, and she had not felt anything unusual so far. Not even while exercising, it was an intense routine, and she did it just right, as any other day. She turned on her notebook to put the CD for the MP3s, then she remembered the viruses. “Damn, had to go to the business center... but I can make my own”. She took the microphone, and said “You will wake up in three hours, feeling great”. She payed it back. It was OK, so she got a sound edition software and cut-and-pasted the phrase over and over, until she could fill 5 minutes. She put a 5 minutes silent part ant the beginning, and she was ready to play again.
It was almost 6pm when she was ready, a hand written piece of paper was already on the bed, just as before. There was also a cam coder already running, to get the whole thing on tape this time. She started the MP3 file, got the ointment in her little finger, and took a couple of breaths. It was almost 10pm when she woke up, the lights were on. Again not remembering anything about the the paper and the cam coder she was afraid until she read her own note. The ointment was working quite fine so far. She had been knocked out twice, and programmed to sleep once. She went to the mall where she had breakfast earlier. At night the place was great, next to the ocean with a great view, just as he told her that will be. Saturday night, lots of people coming to have fun. She went to one café and asked for an espresso, a sandwich and a muffin, and spent some time just watching people. She had lots of things to think about.
At 11:30pm she was back recording her voice at the computer. “Sleep until 7am. You will wake up remembering everything, but unable to move. You will rise your left arm about 12 inches and count from one to ten. At the count of ten your arm will drop and you will go back to sleep for 5 minutes. Then you will wakeup again normal and refresh, and remembering everything again.”. She did the trick with the sound editing software again. The cam coder was programmed to start at 6am, and the piece of paper was on the bed, she smelled the ointment for third time in the day. She was sleeping by midnight.
Helena woke up about 7:10am on Sunday. This time she remembered everything, she was trilled as she was lying immobilized in the bed. She tried to sit, but was for no avail. Then she saw her arm rising just as it was supposed to do, and she started counting, she tried to fight, could not move her body, could not stop counting. She made a last effort to prepare herself to stay awake after ten, she was not sleepy at all when she said “ten”. She was disappointed because she had been able to defeat one of the posthypnotic triggers, when her arm touched the bed. She was out in a second. She woke up again at 7:20, this time she was fascinated. She could remember everything, she looked at herself in the tape recorder. She had been helpless to fight posthypnotic suggestions, even when she had knowledge of what was happening, her body and mind was trapped by her own words. How much powerful would that be to someone unaware of what was happening? Someone who would be hit by the suggestion without knowing it was coming.
It was early in the morning, she took a shower, went to the gym, shower again, and was eating her breakfast by 10. She decided to stop using the ointment for 2 or 3 days. Still needed to be sure that there were no side effect, and she had to prepare some documents for an important presentation the in 2 days. She took a long walk, stopping in a few stores. The city was nice so far, she liked it. She arrived to a cute looking park, lots of people just enjoying the weekend. At 2pm she was having lunch on a restaurant in front of that park. By 3:30 she was back at her room, working with her notebook. Thirty minutes later, the phone rang. He started to talk.
“Hello there”
“Hello, is good to hear your voice”
“I called you yesterday, but had no answer”
“Maybe I was sleeping, or at the gym”
“My poor girl. Still tired after the flight”
Emails and chat are nice, and they would do a lot of them in the following weeks, but phone calls were better. They talked for more than an hour. Then she continued working, she had dinner, and went to bed.
The next few days were uneventful, just regular work meetings with the local offices of the bank and a big customer. Everything went as planned. On Thursday she was ready for some more testing, she need more details on what this ointment was capable of. She did a couple of tests that weekend, and another one the following Tuesday. The next day she finished her assignment in Lima. Ten days had past since she arrived here and a lot of things had happened. She wanted to get a couple of free days to think, and she thought that staying where nobody could contact her. She postponed the flight until Saturday. She moved to another hotel, where she emailed her sister and him about the change of plans.