Naked in School
Emma Comes in from the Cold
Chapter 11
At the end of our third week at the resort, there was an invasion. Really. It started when these four blokes came to our entry gate and demanded to be admitted, claiming they were federal officers. Over the gate intercom, the office manager asked for proof of their identity and the purpose of the visit, but they wouldn’t say, so the manager told them they’d need a search warrant to enter the grounds. That’s when the fuss started ‘cause the berks climbed over the resort’s fence and came onto the grounds. I was in the pool when I saw some clothed blokes come running past the pool shower block whilst asking people they passed for me! Asking where I was!
As those blokes ran past outside the pool fence, going towards the sports pitch, I saw that they had Tasers on their belts like the enforcers had back in Fairbanks, so I assumed that must be who these berks were—Program enforcers, and what the bloody hell were they doing here? I watched as they ran toward the volleyball court where a whole gang of teens were playing. They stopped the game and were questioning the kids, especially the girls. Andrew was with me, so I told him that those arseholes were Program people looking to kidnap me and that he had told me he’d protect me when I agreed to come here (I was only half kidding; my seeing them appear so suddenly scared me).
“Please get help now!” I whisper-shouted at him.
Whilst I huddled in the pool with a few other teens, hiding as best we could against a deep-end wall, Andrew jumped out and got some help—and some resort members, who had already been alerted about the intruders, quickly sprang into action. The enforcers had finished at the volleyball court and were now just coming onto the pool deck when the cavalry arrived: Stuart, a guy named Jason, whom I knew was a sheriff’s deputy, a sergeant actually, Randy the fullback, and several other big blokes, whom I recognized as part of the resort’s unofficial security team. They were all nude, facing these clots with Tasers. What happened next was epic. We all watched, peeking over the pool’s coping.
Jason identified himself as a sheriff’s deputy, “I’m off duty but you’re trespassing and if you don’t move to get off the grounds in sixty seconds, you’re gonna be arrested.”
Clot: “We’re federal agents and we’re looking for a teen named Emma Clarke. We know she’s here.”
Jason: “Where’s your warrant?”
Clot: “We don’t need warrants. We’re federal Program enforcers and have the authority to take minors into custody.”
Jason: “Not in Maryland, you don’t. You need a warrant. The sixty seconds starts now.”
Clot, pulling his Taser: “You don’t have much protection from this. If I shoot, it’ll hurt.”
That’s when three of the good guys yanked the sun-shade umbrellas out of their stands and, using them as shields, advanced on the enforcers, two of whom let fly their darts, which the umbrellas blocked handily. Being surrounded, the enforcers were subdued very quickly. Stuart was awesome; he did some fancy wicked kung-fu thing with his legs and took two of the clots down. Yay, Royal Marines! Randy did a nasty football tackle on another clot (Andrew assured me that it was an extremely illegal tackle) and gave him a spot of pounding in the process. No bones were broken. Probably. Jason took the spokesman clot down in a move too quick for the eyes, putting him face down on the pool deck with an arm in a hammerlock.
Oh, those Tasers were never gonna be used again. One of the resort blokes pulled the wires out of the unfired ones, then clobbered all of the ugly things into pulp using a leg of a table as a hammer. Jeez, that crunching sound they made was ace. So sorry if you clots have to pay for them.
After the enforcer clots were trussed up with the Taser wires—that must have hurt—Jason started questioning them. The Office of Social Awareness had sent them, the spokesman clot said. His mouth was running so fast the words were tripping over each other. Maybe because he was face down on the concrete deck with Jason kneeling on his kidney and still applying his enthusiastic hammerlock.
“The national office got phone calls from some high school Program coordinators. We were told that somebody’s been agitating against the Program. The coordinators told National that a bunch of parents were given instructions about how their kids could refuse to participate. Doing that’s against the rules. Some of those parents phoned their kids’ schools and others wrote letters, telling the school officials that they know that their child can’t be forced to participate in the Program. A few of the parents told the high schools that they heard about how the Program had gotten stopped in a school in Alaska and that all the students had refused to cooperate there, so National checked Alaska school Program records and found that an Emma Clarke was named as an instigator for the resistance—plus she’s also in the database as a non-compliant participant. Our tech people checked with cell phone companies and located her phone; we tracked it here.”
They can do that? Shit.
“We were sent to pick her up. We have federal authority to do that. You gotta release us; you can’t hold us,” he finished.
Jason let out a nasty laugh. “Release? In your dreams. That’s not happening. I’m also thinking that this looks very much like an attempted kidnapping. You people have zero law enforcement authority in this state and any authority you possess to ‘pick up’ a child is restricted to a school while the school is in session. If you claim something happened in another state, my state requires an arrest warrant for a felony in order to begin extradition procedures. So your attempt here is actually a kidnapping. But we’ll go easy on you... Me, I won’t arrest and charge you. I think that we’ll do something better. You guys like making kids get naked? We’ll show you all exactly what that feels like.”
They hauled the four up onto their feet—and then noticed that they all had handcuff pouches on their belts, so they replaced the makeshift Taser wire restraints with the cuffs. Then they were frog-marched away. I found out what happened to them later from Jason.
~~~~
Jason rang up his post, he told me later, and got two of his detective friends from there to come to the park. He got dressed and took a couple of other resort blokes—one of them was a Marine gunnery sergeant from Annapolis Naval Academy, a personal combat instructor—with him, and the detectives, and the handcuffed enforcers. Together, they all went in a caravan of vehicles—two panel lorries, two SUVs, and the enforcers’ two vehicles—to a Wal-Mart just outside Annapolis, and stopped at a light pole near one of the car park entrances. Here they circled the vehicles around the light pole to block the view of what they were going to do; no other cars were parked nearby.
Two of the enforcers had tried to put up a struggle when they were dragged out of the lorry that they had been stuffed into, so the Marine had used a combat move on each of them, something Jason told me was called a suprascapular strike, stunning them long enough that they presented no further difficulty; seeing that, the other two berks were much more cooperative. They stripped the enforcers out of their clothes and handcuffed them together in a daisy chain around the light pole, facing outward. Jason told me that it only took less than a minute to get them cuffed together around the pole like that. Then they filled the keyholes in the cuffs with fast-setting superglue. Using some short lengths of rope, they secured the handcuffs to the pole high enough so the berks had to remain standing. They stuffed the enforcers’ clothing into the boots of their own cars, piled back into the vehicles, and took off.
They hid the enforcers’ cars by parking them amongst all the other cars in the Wal-Mart car park, and dropped the keys in the boots with the clothes. Then Jason called the local police to tell them about the naked men at the Wal-Mart and not to hurry in releasing the four. He explained how they had trespassed at the park in an abortive attempt to pick up a teen for their “protective custody” but in reality it was technically an attempted kidnapping.
I asked Jason if anybody could get into trouble over this.
He told me, “Well, Emma, look at what happened. First, they were trespassing. Even if they were sworn law-enforcement officers, which they’re not, they couldn’t legally enter a private gated property without a warrant. Officers can’t enter private premises without permission or a warrant unless we have a reasonable knowledge of a crime in progress or that someone’s life is in danger. We can’t just go in somewhere private and hunt for someone like that. Next, they’d need to admit that they were taken out by a few nude guys, with them being armed.”
I giggled.
“Yeah. Next, except maybe for me, they don’t know who anyone else was. Topping it off, there’s the kidnapping. Enforcers don’t have arrest powers but they can, under the doctrine that the school is the in loco parentis guardian of a child while at school, do what they call ‘protective custody’ but technically that’s only for children who are causing a disturbance and while in school. I’ve heard that they claim that a kid refusing to participate is ‘causing a disturbance’ but I seriously doubt a judge would agree with that reasoning. Besides all that, you’re not enrolled in any school in Maryland and there’s no Program running anywhere in the summer, so they totally lack any jurisdiction over you. And you heard what I told them about their claim involving another state. No, my dear, no one will get in trouble over this—except perhaps them.”
What was totally brill about the incident’s outcome was the spectacle of those berks cuffed together naked around the light pole in the Wal-Mart car park. The four were shown on the evening TV news and as well, their pictures got in the papers. The local cops took their time finding someone to cut those handcuffs off, too. Also brill was that when the county prosecutor heard what had happened, he began an attempted kidnapping investigation and the press went to town with that story. They did have to face trial for attempted kidnapping—that came a year later, and during the trial they plea-bargained the charges down to conspiracy for false imprisonment and they all wound up with a one-year sentence.
I guess I’m batting a thousand on Emma versus the enforcers. Jeez, another baseball metaphor committed...
What wasn’t brill was when, during the following week, in I suppose what was another retaliation, a Maryland Child Protective Services investigator turned up at the park, asking for admittance. She too was asked for a warrant. She said she was simply investigating a complaint involving me, but was told that she’d need a court-issued warrant to enter the grounds and was sent away. Looks like those damn Program arseholes won’t give up harassing me.
~~~~
Whilst I was staying at the park, I had kept up a correspondence with my Johns Hopkins contact, Dr Larry Wilson. I would be offered some space in their Applied Physics Lab, he told me, and access to the facilities I needed and an appointment as a “visiting assistant professor.” I had previously told him that I could fund my own work, at least the theoretical parts, but eventually there would be some lab work needed for some fabricating to test my ideas. As well, I had asked him about teaching opportunities, so he was still working on that. He said they wanted me to teach at the advanced level, like graduate seminar. I told him that I would do that, but I wanted to hold out for a more basic course first.
I also was in touch with my engineering school boffins at UAF and learnt that my idea of etching tiny channels in the sandwiched silicon wafer, which would hold captive my substrate recipe, worked and that method could be used in fabricating superconducting microchips which could run small devices on a tiny power source for, well, forever. They had a paper in preparation with me named as senior author and would send the first draft to me by email soon.
~~~~
The end of the month arrived and it was back to textile life. When Stuart and family (and I) got back to their home, after just an hour of being back, it felt like I had never been away. But when it was time to go to bed, that’s when reality truly hit. This was bloody awful... I was so lonesome. After about a half hour of tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable with no success, I heard the pad of feet as someone tiptoed into the room.
“Emma? You awake?” Abi whispered.
“Yeah. Can’t sleep.”
She giggled. “Me too. Want company?”
“Yep.” I moved over and she climbed in. She was nude.
“Why you wearin’ clothes?” she mumbled.
“Erm... habit? Not at the park, so...”
“Emma, just ditch ‘em.”
This cuddling was feeling much better naked when...
“You guys? I’m bloody lonesome...” Sam was stood at my bedside, tugging my blanket.
“Climb in, Sam, it’s good to have you here too.” I giggled.
About two minutes later, ohmygod... I heard, “Is there any room in there for me?” Andrew asked uncertainly. “I frikkin’ can’t sleep.”
Fortunately my bed is queen-sized. Guest room, you know.
“Sure. Pile on in, sweetheart.” I made some room.
He wiggled next to me and, “You’re nude...”
I giggled. “You told me that ‘naked’ is appropriate in this situation.”
“So I did, sweetheart. Let me join you in nakedness.”
Oh heavens, this cuddling is so brilliant...
That’s how Gerry found us in the morning, a bunch of naked bodies all mooshed together like a litter of kittens.
“Okay kids, what’s up here?” she demanded.
“Ooofff... wha?”
“Lonesome...”
“Couldn’t sleep...”
“Needed my sis...”
Don’t know who said what, though.
“Alright. I know that you all were super-close for the last month but...”
Four pairs of sad puppy-dog eyes looked pleadingly back at her.
“Okay, okay, I give up. But if you do sleep like this, there need to be some ground rules.”
She enumerated them. “You must make absolutely sure that no one finds out what you do here and that any sexual escapades are strictly forbidden. And sleeping together is only for when you don’t have school the following day unless you get advance permission.”
Wow, not bad. We could deal with those rules.
“All right, now Gramps and Grandmum are coming over for lunch. We still have lots of things to put away, so everyone up now and let’s get going. Breakfast is ready so don’t be a dilly-dally.”
It took way longer to get everything put away than when we got it together in packing for the month’s stay at the resort. Is this a kind of undiscovered form of time expansion that needs some new physics to describe? No, this isn’t relativity; it’s maths. Packing time as compared to unpacking time must simply be a non-commutative relationship, just as a÷b doesn’t give the same result as b÷a. Hmm... how can I express this using maths? Let’s designate the number of pre-trip particles... erm... items to be packed as “a” and those to be unpacked as “b.” Now assuming that there haven’t been any acquisition trips to obtain items “c” (that is, by shopping), we can safely assert that “a” equals “b.” Since the transit distance needed to carry each item in packing the car and unpacking it is the same in both cases, we can safely ignore that variable. If the time to pack “a” items is expressed as “ta,” and unpack “b” items as “tb,” we would expect that a ∙ ta should equal b ∙ tb. That would be sort of a commutative relationship, but since they are unequal, it’s non-commutative. But wait, this method doesn’t account for food items which were packed and subsequently consumed...
Jeez. There I go again; I’m still doin’ it. Must mean that I’m gaggin’ to get back to my research if I keep seeing mathematics in whatever I’m friggin’ doing.
~~~~
The Marshalls senior arrived just before noon and got an enthusiastic welcome from everyone. They remarked at how nice and rested—and tanned—we all were. Uncle George wanted to talk to Stuart for a while about some embassy business, so Isabella and Gerry invited me to chat with them about my plans.
Isabella asked, “Emma, have you given any thought to where you’ll be in a year and in five years?”
“Yes, ma’am, quite a bit. I have several projects going on in Alaska where I’m kinda the lead investigator and I’m managing that project remotely, and I’m being appointed as a visiting assistant professor at Johns Hopkins in a week and will have a lab at their APL. I’ll need to manage both of those operations to see how to bring them under the same roof. That’s for the first year and...”
Isabella laughed. “Goodness gracious. That wasn’t what I meant at all, dear.”
I was confused and looked at her uncertainly.
Gerry chuckled. “Mom, that’s Emma. She operates on a whole different plane from us ordinary mortals. I knew what you were asking. Let me paraphrase it. Emma, you’re living with us now and we totally and absolutely love your being here, and the kids are over the moon with you living with us. So don’t take this as a suggestion that you’re not wanted here. Mom was asking how you view your short and long-range personal situation, including your living plans. For example, do you want to live with Scott... and Mary... instead?”
“Oh. Ohhh... erm, well, no, I don’t, actually.” I felt a tear form. “You blokes are much more of a family than Scott ever was or could be.”
Gerry drew me into a hug. “Well, you do feel like a third daughter to me... in a way, but your maturity makes me feel like you’re more like a little sister to me than a daughter.”
Isabella was looking a bit damp about the eyes herself now.
So I went over to her and hugged her. “Are you my honorary sis-mum-in-law, then? Is that even a relation?”
She laughed and hugged me back. “How is it when I look at you, you’re a beautiful, sweet teenager girl, but when I close my eyes and talk to you, you become at least twice as old?” she asked wonderingly.
I blushed. There just aren’t any answers for those rhetorical questions. But I could answer the one still on the table.
“So my personal plans are kinda in flux. Short-term? Andrew and I have been talking about his future school plans, actually. He’s just about a maths whiz, almost at my level in what he knows, up to college level, that is—maybe college junior maths, I’m guessing. So I’ve been coaching him. Also I’m showing him how knowledge of maths really helps in physics and chem, too. And of course in engineering. He’s a junior now. He needs to organize for those college placement tests first before he decides on a major in uni. So I was assuming I could stay here... I suppose that was rather presumptuous of me...”
Gerry interrupted, “Never think that. You’re part of the family and that’s final.”
“Thanks,” I blushed. “So I was thinking that I could help Andrew—I discovered that I’m excellent in coaching kids. I don’t really tutor; that implies drilling them in a subject so they can pass tests. I prefer coaching which brings out kids’ strengths and makes them self-confident in their abilities. To be self-reliant in study habits.”
Both women were looking at me with a strange expression now. No, it couldn’t be awe. Could it?
Isabella sighed. “Gerry, I apologize. I thought you were exaggerating about Emma. Emma, I’m in awe at your... grasp of ... goodness ... it seems everything you do.”
Gerry smiled at me. “Andrew’s talked to me about how you make him feel after one of your erm... ‘coaching’ sessions. He said he feels like the most important person in the world, even after seeing everything he works on—you’ve insisted that you even want to review his mistakes. You told him that looking at those was useful to do, as well.”
I nodded. “Yes, absolutely, even the errors have value. In science, the errors sometimes tell you more about the system you’re trying to solve than the things that do work. So I tell my students not to be afraid of them but to work out why they made them. That way they learn how to think critically to avoid making similar errors in the future. Anything a student says, if it’s on point, has value, and teachers frequently learn from their students too. It’s why I love teaching. I get fresh, untainted viewpoints.”
They both wanted hugs again. I could get addicted to this display of love.
I went on. “More short term ideas. As well, I’d love to help Sam and Abi. Sam’s not interested in maths or science but she has a quick mind. She’s observant and analytical. She’d be good taking a general program in college that could lead to any non-science field; she has skills that could make her successful in many areas. I’d like to coach her in developing her innate skills by showing how she can use them in her school learning.”
They both nodded.
“And Abi is the opposite; she’s good in maths like Andrew but I’m sure she must skive off her other subjects, judging how she talks about school. I could help her too. So if I live with you, at least for a year or so, I could work with ... with... my adopted siblings.”
I was getting teary again. More hugs reassured me.
“For a longer term picture, I don’t know. Even when I turn sixteen, I wouldn’t want to live in an apartment or house on my tod. And I don’t know how long Stuart can remain posted here.”
Gerry smiled. “We’ll be here for a while; this begins the second year of a five-year posting and I’m sure that Stuart will be separating from the Marines after that and there are plans for him to remain on as a deputy chief of mission here when he does retire. He’s got some special skills in applying military thinking to diplomatic problems. That’s what the men are discussing now, actually.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. “And... erm... another thing. I need to tell you... erm... that I think that I’m falling in love with Andrew. I know what one kind of love is... I feel it from everyone here, but I feel something different with Andrew. Softer but more intense somehow. More focused. Comfortable. I’m still very young, much too young for commitments, but I’d like to give our relationship a chance to see where it goes.”
“What an incredibly mature way of putting that, Emma. I think Gerry would agree.”
Gerry nodded, “Totally. And I’m sure Andrew feels the same way. I see how he looks at you, Emma.”
What could we do but hug each other again?
We continued chatting for perhaps ten minutes longer and then the men joined us.
“You all look very comfortable,” Uncle George commented. “I trust your discussion was satisfactory?” he asked Isabella.
Oh god, it was a setup. I hope I passed.
“It was perfect, dear,” she answered with a very self-satisfied look. “All questions answered.”
Uncle George went on. “Emma, I have good news for you now. You’re an emancipated teen as of ... well, two and a half weeks ago, actually.”
I was gobsmacked. “Whaaat? How did that happen? You said there’d be a hearing, I’d have to go before a judge, and...”
He laughed. “Details, details. Just arranged it a bit differently. Highly unorthodox, yes, very much so. But fully legal. You did go before a judge. Mr Carruthers, the judge, actually, is a family court judge in this county. You remember speaking to him, I’m guessing?”
“Oh. Yes. Beginning of August, around then. He was terribly curious about me, it seemed, and I had thought his questioning might be a bit rude, actually. Andrew said nudists were private but he was quite prying. But he was so nice, thoughtful, and reassuring, and I knew he was a judge, so I didn’t mind.”
Uncle George nodded. “That was your hearing, then. Since there was no adversary, no court appearance was necessary, was it. Your guardian concurred. You meet all the criteria for independent support, have stable housing, et cetera. The judge simply wanted to confirm your maturity and ability to be independent. You totally impressed him, actually. So instead of being conducted in chambers, he did it at the resort, and he recorded the session too. And you may ask how we knew him? He’s the father of one of Stuart’s friends at the resort and goes there sometimes when he can get away. So that made it easy to have him see you. Otherwise we could have simply gotten onto a judge’s calendar and had a regular hearing, with the same result.”
“Oh... oh my... so I don’t need to do anything else? It’s done?”
I was trying to adjust to this new reality. I still felt the same, after all.
“All done. I have copies of your official declaration of emancipation right here, and the effective date is 15th August.”
I sat down on the chair—no, dropped onto the chair. This was... well, I don’t know what I expected. Funny, for a normal kid, they become adults gradually. Well, they reach their majority in a day-by-day progression. Me, I did it in one single blow. No buildup, no easing into it. No wonder I felt so weird about it.
“Are you all right?” Gerry asked, crouching beside me.
“Yeah, I am. Just a lot all at once.”
I got up and hugged Uncle George. “Thanks for everything.”
He smiled and hugged me back.
~~~~
I went to visit Uncle Scott on the Sunday; we had spoken by phone during my month at the resort but it was ace to see him again. His surgery was healing well and the swelling in the area was almost gone. He had good sensory responses throughout his body and his motor responses were progressing well. I could tell he was feeling better ‘cause his ornery personality was making a reappearance. How did Mary take this new Scott? Damn, she thought it was cute, and could always make him back down and laugh at himself if he got too intense. It was a good match, those two. They were getting him ready to move to a rehab facility right on the hospital grounds so I guess the medical staff felt his recovery was going smoothly.
I told him about the emancipation going through; he had already been told about that and in some way he appeared to be relieved about it.
“And Uncle Scott... your £50,000 stipend? It’s permanent. I arranged that with the trust so you’ll have that for life, with inflationary increases.”
He got tears in his eyes.
“You’re a great gal, Emma. Your mum and dad would be so proud of you. Look at all your accomplishments.”
We hugged, then I hugged Mary and told her to keep taking good care of Scott.
~~~~
Well, damned if that CPS woman didn’t track me down at the Marshalls’ home, and this time she had a warrant. Gerry answered the door but made her wait outside until she checked with the embassy, a legal officer there, who said she should let the woman in; that would prevent any additional official problems with the authorities.
She demanded to see me but I was out with the girls doing Competitive Shopping, Act 2, School Shopping: Clothes. Even nudists need clothes under certain situations—like Real Life, and the girls’ clothes have to be stylish! And crikey, if they didn’t school me in proper clothes selection techniques. Up to now, my clothes selection was, well, meh; if it fit and wasn’t naff, I bought it. Okay, now I actually do need some decent go-to-work clothes to go along with the nice suit I had worn for my seminars.
Meanwhile, back at home, the CPS woman told Gerry that since I was not in school—she had checked all the area schools—that I was in violation of the state’s truancy laws. I had to stay in school until I was 16 years old. She wanted to talk to my legal guardian; the county had no record of one, so probably she would have to remove me from their home since I wasn’t being properly supervised. That’s when Gerry produced my emancipation document for her and pointed out that CPS had no jurisdiction over a legal adult. So the woman called her office and there was some discussion over how it couldn’t be real since I was younger than 16 years old.
I arrived home right about at the point where Gerry was getting ready to throw her out.
“Who’s this, then?” I asked Gerry as I came in with the girls.
We had taken a Uber back from the local mall.
“From Maryland CPS,” Gerry gritted. “She’s just leaving.”
“Wait,” the woman said. “Is that Emma?”
“I’m Emma. Are you here to check on my living conditions, that guardian rot, and all?”
I noticed Gerry waving the declaration doc behind the woman.
“Yes and I need to talk to you now.”
“No you don’t and I certainly will not talk to you. I think your being here is a put-up job with those Office of Social Awareness berks to harass me. I’ve graduated both high school and college and have a court decree that I’m a legal adult and you have no authority here; you saw the paper. Even if you have a warrant, it’s invalid. If you don’t leave here this very instant, I’ll call the police and have you charged with trespassing. There’s the door. Now get out!”
She stomped out but sat in her car and I saw her making a call. Next thing we knew, a police officer was knocking on the door. I told Gerry I’d handle it. I did not ask him in—I went outside. This was between me and him; if I let him in, I assumed that would involve the Marshall family and I didn’t want that to happen.
“Okay sir, can I help you?” I asked.
“Why didn’t you let me in? There’s a complaint of refusing to honor a CPS warrant.”
“Us being outside? The CPS issue is solely about me and the people in this home have nothing to do with my status. That warrant is invalid since I’m a legal adult. Here’s a copy of the emancipation declaration.”
I displayed the document.
“That CPS woman sat in her car over there doesn’t think this document is real, despite the official seals. I assure you it is real. If she, or you, want to check its validity, then contact Judge Carruthers at this courthouse—oh, it’s the county courthouse. He’ll confirm it.”
He wanted the copy but this was the original—no way was I giving that up—so I told him to get one of his own at the courthouse. Then I turned around and went back inside. The officer shook his head and went to the woman’s car, spoke to her, and soon they both drove away.
The girls were goggle-eyed at what they saw whilst Gerry was stifling a laugh.
“Emma, if that’s what you’re like when you go into action, now I can see how you handled the problems you had at your high school.”
“I’ve had practice dealing with prats like that woman. And if you act strong and decisive, it works on police too if they think that they’re in a mess they’d rather skive off. I could tell he really didn’t want to deal with this one, so it was easy putting him off.”
“As I said, Emma. Impressive.”
Hey, for once I had made the girls speechless. That was truly a first. But I had to make up to them ‘cause they looked like they were gonna give me the evil eye, like I had become an ogre or something. So I turned it into another lesson and explained how standing up for oneself was a very important ability in life—never let anyone push you around.
Speaking of standing up for oneself, Sam was 14 now and a freshman; Andrew was a junior. And the Program had indeed started in their school. And finally and probably unbelievably, she was selected for the Program when it began at the special school assembly on the Monday of their second school week. Coincidences like that only happen in stories, I know, their being included as devices to further the plot. Not here, however; she was undoubtedly chosen in retaliation because she had been widely seen during the school’s first week telling everyone in sight that they could refuse to strip if they got selected.
When her name was called as the first one of the freshman participants, she wasn’t surprised, well, just a little, because she thought her exemption as a British citizen would be honored. The school had been notified of that fact; a letter from the U.S. State Department had been sent which clearly stated that under the diplomatic agreements between the U.K. and the U.S., her being exempt was required. Also, Gerry had sent the school several documents which detailed Sam’s and Andrew’s diplomatic family status. She had also sent in the Program exemption forms for Sam and Andrew, but, at least in Sam’s case, the State Department letter, both her exemption form, with her diplomatic identification and a copy of her A-2 (diplomatic) visa, obviously had been ignored. But Sam had remembered our discussions about being self-reliant and stood up for herself.
Sam stood up. She stood up in the auditorium when her name was called; she walked to the stage steps; and then stood up, right there next to the steps going up to the stage, where she told each selected kid as they passed by her of their right to refuse to strip and that they couldn’t be forced. That forcing them to strip was a felony. I heard the whole story from her later that day.
I was home that morning, organizing to ring up my team at UAF when they would get in for the day, to discuss the draft of the paper that they had emailed to me, when the house phone rang. I looked at the caller ID; it was Andrew’s school calling. I let it go to voice mail and then texted Andrew and Sam.
“School rang here. All ok?”
Got responses, first from Andrew about two minutes later.
“All ok. Sam picked. Refused. Whole school saw. She’s brill. I’m in class, can’t talk more. Cya”
Five minutes later, from Sam.
“Pgm picked me, lol, a blast. Froze em out like u.”
When Gerry got home and I told her that Sam had been put in the Program, she was livid.
“Grrr. Gonna tear them a strip off their arses...”
“Wait. She refused and she’s okay. She sent me a text and it looks like she’s enjoying herself. Oh, there’s a message from the school in voice mail, probably about what she must have done.”
She played it on speaker.
“Mr or Mrs Marshall, this is Principal Jessup. Your daughter Samantha was terribly disruptive in school today. Please call me so that we can arrange a meeting to discuss her behavior and the punishment I will propose. Thank you.”
Gerry rang Stuart and told his voice mail that he should be home when Sam got home, that Sam had been picked for the Program but all was under control.
Then, when Sam and Andrew got home later, she told us what had happened.
“I did everything you told us to do, Emma,” she said proudly, doing little hops in her excitement. “I even told all the kids going onto the stage that they could ignore any demand to get starkers.”
Stuart had come in just then.
“You didn’t tell them not to do it, right?” Stuart asked. “Damn. They ignored the exemption and her diplomatic status,” he remarked to Gerry. “I’m going to have Dad do a protest letter to the State Department.”
“I didn’t, Dad, Emma told me never to say that they should refuse. I just told them that it was their right to refuse.”
“Good,” Stuart replied. “How did that go over?”
“Well, in today’s Program assembly, my name was called as a freshman to participate and we were all told to come up to the stage. The principal was on the stage with two women. One was the counselor and the other was a Program official, they call it coordinator or something. Oh, there were two teacher blokes on the stage too. From what Emma told me, she said to watch for that, ‘cause they’d be the ones to do the forcing.
“I got up from my seat and went to the stage steps, but before we all went up onto the stage, I told the other kids about their right not to strip, and then I followed them up. I wasn’t afraid of getting starkers myself, of course. But I wasn’t about to be forced.”
“Bully for you, Sam!” I cheered.
“When I got on the stage, I told the principal when I passed by him about my Brit exemption and he got confused and asked what I meant. I said I was a U.K. citizen; Mum had done the exemption, and the school was sent a letter from the State Department that neither Andrew nor I were to be selected. That caused a lot of glaring looks between the adults—I’ll bet the Program person had ignored my exemption and the principal didn’t know about it—so the principal told the kids in the assembly to wait for a minute while he resolved a question and then he had a rushed, whispered conversation with the Program person.
“Meanwhile, I whispered to the kids I was stood with to tell them again that they could refuse and leave the stage anytime they wanted—I was staying because I wanted to make my case for the whole school to see. Then the principal came over to me where I was stood with the others and he told me something like, ‘Regardless of any letter from the State Department, since they have no authority to interfere, you still must participate since you were selected. We’ll ask the district’s lawyer to deal with the government issue when she has the chance.’ I was planning that if something like that happened, I’d use it to help me convince everyone else that they could resist too. Emma’s always told us that seeing concrete examples are much more memorable than just talking about them.”
“Crikey, that was perfect, Sam,” I told her. “You made the situation into a setup for you.”
“I guess so. The principal went back to the podium and talked some about our responsibilities, then he went over the Program instructions and the rules in the Program booklet that everyone had gotten, and then turned to us and told everyone to get starkers. That’s when I thought of a cool idea—I’d agree to participate in the Program but insist on keeping all my clothes on!”
We all laughed at that audacious idea.
I chuckled, “Sam, how you came up with that idea is a perfect example of the counterintuitive nature of quantum superpositions but you did it in a real-life situation. You may not appreciate it but Andrew would. I’ll explain it to you blokes later. Pardon my interrupting; please continue.”
Sam gave me “that look” and eye roll that teen girls have mastered so well. Then she went on.
“Okay. So I said in a very loud voice, trying to make sure lots of kids could hear, ‘I will agree to do this stupid Program, but I absolutely refuse to take off any of my clothing ever! I’ll participate while keeping my kit on!’ Then I told them what you, Mum, wrote to the school. I said very loudly, ‘Forcing any one of us kids to get starkers would be a felony for all the adults up here on the stage and a sexual offence involving a minor child has a minimum sentence of twenty years in jail. All you kids, on stage and in the seats, you don’t have to strip and they can’t force you. They can’t even threaten you ‘cause doing that would be doing a sexual assault. Assault is a threatening and battery is touching. I’m not refusing to take part in the Program. I’m just refusing to take off my clothes and everyone here has the right to refuse too.’
“The principal was trying to stop me from talking to the whole assembly—they couldn’t all hear me but enough kids did, and the sight of him trying to come after me as I kept moving away from him must have looked pretty funny—a slow-motion chase? He stopped doing that after he came at me once because I guess he didn’t want to make it look like he was chasing me around up there,” Sam giggled. “The teacher blokes started for me, but I stared at them and yelled, ‘I guess you wanna go to jail too?’ so they stopped and looked at each other.”
We were enthralled at her story. Gerry told her to continue.
“The other kids up there with me were goggle-eyed at this so I called to them that if they wanted to leave the stage, they could, any time they wanted. Then the principal tried to talk again with, ‘Young lady, you’re wrong...’ but then I interrupted him, again talking loudly, ‘You may try to strip me yourself. Those teachers over there can try too. Does anyone want to take the chance? Just come over here and try. If you do, I’ll fight you; I bet I can give you all kinds of bruises and scratches. Maybe you’ll even get kicked in your bollocks.’ Then I called out, ‘Hey kids! Anyone with a mobile, if they try to strip me, video it, okay?’ Then I told the principal again, ‘It’ll be on video, so when it turns out you’re wrong, you’ll have a lot of time in jail to think about what you did wrong. Or maybe not. I hear that child sex abusers don’t live very long in jail, you know.’”
Gerry looked at her daughter in amazement. “You told them that?”
Andrew interrupted. “She sure did, Mum. She put on a real show. She was brilliant.”
“I said things pretty close to what I just told you, Mum. Emma told me what to do, be strong. So I went over to the stage steps, and announced again, ‘I’m not refusing to be in the Program. I will do it but I will keep my clothes on. Kids, remember, if any teacher touches you, they’re breaking the law; it’s a felony. Who wants to leave the stage now? ‘Cause I’m leaving.’ I went down and everyone else followed. The principal and the Program person both looked really cross.”
“Anything happen then?” Stuart asked, relaxed now and enjoying his daughter’s tale of her courage and resourcefulness.
“Well, he dismissed the assembly after announcing that everyone should ignore what happened, our parents would be contacted and punishments would be in store, and that the Program was still going to be running in the school. When I got to each class after assembly, the teacher there said I was supposed to be starkers because I was in the Program and didn’t I know that? So I said I was doing a new version of the Program whilst wearing clothes, which made everyone laugh. Then I reminded the class that none of them needed to be in the Program unless they wanted to do it, and nobody could be forced to participate. So I guess I caused an uproar in each class today.”
Gerry laughed. “Yes, the principal called and left a message. He wants to talk to Dad or me.”
“I’m not in trouble, am I then?”
“Not from us, you aren’t,” Stuart said. “And we’ll work out any school problems.”
After Sam’s account of her school adventure, the kids stayed with me and pressed me to explain my interruption.
Andrew asked, “I saw your expression, Emma, so I know your ‘physics’ bug got tweaked. What’s this quantum-super-thing you mentioned?”
“Okay,” I chuckled. “Yeah, it’s sort of farfetched, but Sam mentioned being in two states simultaneously—she said she’d be in the Program, which means she must be naked, but also she said she was staying clothed. That set up a logical impossibility, and that made me think of the analogous situation in physics...”
“Of course it did, Emma,” Andrew sighed. “You always do.”
I stuck my tongue out at him.
“The same kind of seemingly impossible situation—it’s kinda like how the white top Abi’s wearing can also be black at the same time, comes from an interpretation of quantum mechanics that one of its original schools of thought came up with. A system can remain in two opposite states—that’s what ‘superposition’ is—until it’s actually observed—someone looks at it. The physicists who were doing the calculations that developed into quantum mechanics found it weird that their results defied common sense and the one result—of superposition—was totally weird, since it meant that a system could exist in opposite states at the same time—that’s a logical impossibility.
“This idea bothered Erwin Schrödinger, who was one of the developers of quantum mechanics, so he decided to explain this impossibility by using an example from the macro world—the one we live in—since we can’t directly see the effects of quantum events. So he came up with a kind of description of how superposition would work in the world we can see. That’s when he explained his thought experiment which showed how a cat in a sealed box can be alive and dead at the same time.”
“Really?” ... “Eeww!” ... “Killed a cat?”
“No, no; no cats were harmed in the making of his experiment. It was just a thought exercise, but it’s so famous now that it’s called ‘Schrödinger’s cat.’ He imagined a cat in a box with a device which is connected to a quantum event—the decay of a radioactive atom in the box with the cat—and when the atom decays, it makes the device release poison into the box, killing the cat. The atom has a certain probability of decaying every second, so as the seconds go by and the time that the atom will decay gets closer, the possibility that the decay has occurred increases. Schrödinger pointed out, according to that original interpretation of quantum mechanics, that after a bunch of seconds pass, mathematically the cat is both dead and alive at the same time, as long as you don’t take a peek at it. When you do, the superposition state collapses—you see either a dead cat or a live one—and never both.”
Abi interrupted. “I still don’t get how something could possibly be two entirely different things at once, like you said my top could be both white and black at the same time. Even if I get dressed in the dark and can’t see what I’m wearing,” she giggled.
I laughed. “You’re getting into this nicely, Abi. That’s kinda what bothered those physicists back then but now we just do the maths and try not to worry about what they might seem to show. Erm, try this example. It’s really not the same kind of maths as we need for quantum mechanics, but it might give you an idea of something strange that maths can show. Here’s a quiz. Two plus two. Answer?”
They all looked at me like I was barmy. “Four!” shouted Abi and Sam.
Andrew just shook his head and smirked.
“Good. Two minus two?”
“ZERO!” they all yelled.
“Brilliant. Two divided by two?”
“ONE!”
“Excellent, full marks. Two times two?”
“FOUR!”
“Heh. That’s correct. Now reverse that. What’s the answer?”
Sam shook her head. “Huh? Reverse it?”
Andrew interjected, “Two times two is like two squared. She asked for the square root of four.”
Abi looked a bit thoughtful but Sam replied, “Oh! Two!”
I nodded. “Correct. So we’re all agreed? Those are the only possible answers for those arithmetic operations? Two plus two is always four, never five or sixteen, and two divided by two is never anything but one, correct?”
They all agreed but very hesitantly. They knew me and sensed I had a card up my sleeve (notwithstanding my short-sleeved top).
“What if I told you that one of those calcs had more than one correct answer?”
Andrew grinned broadly. “Emma, damn, you did it again.”
“Who? Me? Whatever could you mean?” I asked innocently.
Andrew laughed. “You suckered us. Square root of four? Two is correct, but it’s also negative two. That calc has two answers!”
“A-hah!” I cheered. “So that’s a concrete, real-world example about how maths can show how something can have two kinda opposite answers at the same time, innit? The answer to the square root question is two different numbers, opposite, and both are correct. That kind of maths has nothing to do with superposition, like the cat experiment shows, but it gives the idea that maths can show things that aren’t totally intuitive. And Andrew knows this; I live in a world where I see maths all around me, so when Sam was telling us her story, I saw her story in terms of maths again.
“So when Sam claimed to be a clothed Program participant, it made me think of her as being both a naked girl and a textile girl at the same time, but any peeking at her—especially staring which is quite rude—isn’t allowed ‘cause you’d collapse her condition and reveal what she’s really like! She’d become Samantha’s cat. But no ‘pussy’ puns, please.”
Then I had to dodge the hail of cushions and pillows and other objects that were slung at me. Fortunately most were soft. Then they all tackled me and started tickling...
Next: Emma learns about the fallout from Sam’s Program escapades. Then she faces the greatest shock in her life. Nothing will ever be the same for her after she gets this news.
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