Chapter 11: Unstripped in Florida

The following week, Tamara was at the medical school following school, and after her MRI study session, she went to see Tim Saunders, the medical center’s engineer. Tim maintained the center’s electronic diagnostic equipment.

“Hi, Tim,” she called as she went into his shop.

“Hi, short stuff,” he answered. “Got a new mod for the MRI today?”

“Ha. You wish. If I invent something, I won’t let you touch it. You make circuits that do weird things.”

Tim had shown her a little box he had made which had nine LEDs on it that blinked in a random pattern. He insisted the blinking had a pattern but only the most intelligent people could see the pattern. So when he wasn’t looking, Tamara popped the box open—it just snapped together—and peeked. It was a simple hack; inside was a tiny counter/display-driver integrated circuit, a timer IC, a couple of resistors, a capacitor, and a 9-volt battery. And the LEDs.

“Still raggin’ me about my toy? Tough. I get more positive comments about that thing than anything else I do around here. So how may I help you today?”

“I wanted to see if you had a fourteen-inch length of superconducting #16 or #18 gage wire you don’t need. You had some from the MRI coils.”

“Sure. What’s this for?”

“Tell you in a bit.”

She took the wire and took a little cardboard tube about one-and-a-half inch in diameter out of her backpack. She wound the wire carefully around the tube, leaving about two inches free on each end, and taped it to hold its shape. When that was complete, a second trip into Tamara’s backpack yielded a cheap disposable film camera with a built-in electronic flash, but Tim could see that the flash lamp itself had been removed. Tamara popped off the camera’s back and a little circuit board was exposed.

“This one actually has a decent power IC. I need your soldering iron; I got a larger cap to install.”

Tim watched as she replaced the capacitor on the board, then changed the camera’s battery holder from an AA to 9-volt. Tamara asked for his digital voltmeter. She switched on the little camera circuit and Tim could hear the whine as the oscillator began charging the flash’s capacitor.

“I changed the battery. Now this should charge the main cap to over 400 volts instead of 320 volts, and the fly-back transformer should produce 4000 to 6000 volts when fired.”

“What are you doing? A high voltage discharge circuit and superconducting wire coil ... oh shit! You’re not building an EMF pulse generator. Please tell me you’re not. Girl, that can cause some serious havoc, you know.”

“He he. It’s in a good cause. You have a nail or big screw you don’t need and a little flat piece of copper?”

He dug into a box of parts and produced the items.

She clipped one test lead to the nail and the other to the piece of copper, laying it on the workbench. Next, she took the other ends of the leads and clipped them onto the terminals where the xenon flash tube used to be connected, and then used a jumper to bypass the camera’s shutter switch.

She turned to Tim. “I need an insulated needle-nose pliers.” He handed one to her. She looked around the bench. “Oh, good. I’ll use those insulated gloves too. And you might want to turn off any nearby electronics.”

Tim groaned. “Sure. Nothing is on right now—oh, the ‘scope. Okay, it’s off.”

“You sure?” she asked and Tim nodded. “Phone too?”

“Oops,” Tim said and pulled his out to turn off.

“Okay. Here goes.”

Holding the nail with the pliers, she touched it to the copper strip. There was a loud crack and a bright flash of light and some smoke as the nail fused itself to the strip.

Tamara gave a little whoop. “That’s perfect. Now to add the coil.”

Before she touched the circuit board, she took a screwdriver and used it to short out the capacitor pins on the board, just as Tim was about to tell her that the capacitor might still have a remaining charge. Sure enough, there was a little snap and a spark could be seen. She did it again with no result and she nodded.

Tamara disconnected the test leads and soldered the ends of the coil she had made to the flash lamp connector pins. Then she cut the circuit board’s lead to one end of the coil end and wired it to the camera’s shutter button and the other shutter button lead to one side of the fly-back transformer’s primary.

She told Tim, “The original circuit could have the flash lamp in parallel across the output because it wouldn’t fire until the xenon gas was ionized. I had to bypass that. Gotta put a switch in the charging circuit too.”

She did that.

“Now the test. First, though, some cosmetics,” Tamara said as she took a piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil from her backpack, folded it into four thicknesses, and cut a circle in the center of the foil. She pressed that opening over where the camera lens projected out on the camera’s front. Then she folded the wire coil so it looped around the lens, lying over the foil.

“Electrical tape, please. Oh, it’s right there.”

She covered the foil and wire loop with the black tape.

“Four thicknesses of aluminum should protect the LT3420 power IC. Tim, you have some of those RFID inventory tags? I know you keep a batch here.”

“Is that what you built? A RFID killer? Damnation. Okay, let me get a tag. Hey, do you also have a reader in your magic backpack?”

“No, just a phone app,” she grinned. “It works okay too.”

She turned her phone on and opened the app. She had to put the phone right next to the tag before the app responded.

“Works,” she said, displaying the number stored in the tag. “The phone emits only a tiny amount of RF power so you have to get it real close to read the chip.

“Now the test. Let me turn off my phone first. I calculated what the range of this setup should be and it’s a max of five meters—little less than 20 feet.”

She turned on the charging switch and the faint whine could be heard; then the ready indicator lit up.

“Here goes nothing,” Tamara said and put the RFID label next to the camera.

Using an insulated screwdriver... “Take no chances” ... she grinned at Tim ... she pressed the shutter button. There was a little pop.

“Oooo. No smoke or flame. Good sign,” Tamara said with a smile. “Now to see...”

She turned her phone on and opened the app. When she passed the tag over the phone, there was no response and she smiled triumphantly, “Sweet!”

She tried it on the front and back of the phone and there was no change on the screen.

“Do you have another one? Sitting in your metal cabinet file over there, they’re both shielded and too far away to be affected by this EMF.”

Tim brought one over and she tested it; its number popped right up.

“Tim, can we sacrifice this one? I want to be sure nothing burnt out in the camera itself.”

“Oh, sure; why the hell not?”

Tamara repeated the test and was overjoyed when she saw that the device still worked and that the new tag was dead now.

“Tamara, you aren’t gonna do anything...” Tim began.

“I didn’t make this to do anything evil,” Tamara told him. “I’m not using it to get into trouble.”

He slowly nodded.

Tamara thought, After all, helping kids feel better isn’t evil, is it? And I certainly intend not to get into trouble.

“Okay, last test. Your RF field detector, you have it down here now—not up in the MRI room?” she asked him and he nodded. “I want to measure the power flux density this thing puts out at five meters, two, and one. Set it to the RF spectrum power analyzer function, please. That’s about five meters where you are right there, good. Ready? Here goes.”

She fired the device and then tried it at the closer distances.

“Wow. Good results. At five meters, only 12.5 watts per square centimeter; two meters, about 63 peak; at a meter, about 250. The pulse length is five milliseconds. So cell phones nearby should be okay and most other electronics too. I wonder how this would affect a RFID reader unit if it’s reading when I pop my device?”

She checked the time. “Oh look, we’ve been having way too much fun here and I have to get home soon now.”

They said their goodbyes and Tamara left the shop.

Now I’ll need to see how they work on a Florida chip, she mused. But how can I get one? Maybe Beauford ... Oh! What a great idea! I wonder if Dr John can get any of the chips from his clinic or if he knows of how to get any—rejects, maybe?

At school the following day, she saw her new friends at lunch.

“Hey, if somehow your chips stopped working and your parents knew they didn’t work anymore...” Tamara started.

“ ... then we could wear clothes?” Sylvia finished. “You bet! But how can that happen?”

Tamara leaned in close to them. “This is a huge secret, but I think I’m onto something. You can’t tell anyone, right? Until I make arrangements.”

They agreed to keep the secret.

When she was leaving the lab for home the next time that she was there, she recalled that Dr John should be at his apartment now too, and his apartment was close by.

When Dr John came to the door, she asked him, “Is there any way I can get one of those Florida RFID chips, like if you needed to take one out or something?”

John grinned at her. “Sue told me that you’re really against the SiF program. Are you going to try to use them in an anti-stripping campaign?” She shrugged noncommittally. “Well, be careful. Messing with them when they’re implanted is illegal, you know. Just don’t get caught. I’m sure you have a plan. Okay, the chips? We’ve gotten some that couldn’t be used because their packaging was damaged and they weren’t sterile anymore. If we still have them, I’ll bring them home tomorrow.”

Tamara was very happy about that. “I’d think that the state would want to keep track of them?”

“Well, what I heard is that the nurse tells the county office that issues the tags that if their sterility is compromised, they’re destroyed to prevent accidental use. Oh yes. We might have others too. Parents buy them and have to take them to a doc. Then they may get buyer’s remorse before the procedure. Or the kid convinces them not to do it.”

The following day, Dr John brought home three chips; he called her and she went to get them.

The next time Tamara was in the hospital on her way to the MRI lab, she passed a nurse wheeling a medication cart. On the top of the cart, she saw several small metal vials with a screw cap, about two inches long and three-quarters inch in diameter. She stopped and asked the nurse about them.

“We have them in the gift shop. They have a screw cap and are waterproof and can hold pills. Most people who need nitroglycerine caps for angina keep a few in these. They go on pendants or key chains.”

Tamara stopped in the gift shop and saw they came in a pack of two for only $5, so she bought a pack.

There goes the rest of my allowance for the week, she thought. But it’s worth it.

Now that she had the actual chip to test, when she got home, she tried the RFID reader app on her phone. When she brought the chip next to the phone, a string of digits and letters appeared.

Hmm, just an alphanumeric sequence. They must link it to a central database, she thought. At least they don’t store personal info on the chip.

Then she put a chip in one of the pill tubes she bought. Her phone app couldn’t read it.

I don’t want to sacrifice one of my chips to try to zap it. I have a better use, she reflected. I have an idea for Saturday.

The following day at school, Tamara began her plan. At lunch, she spoke to her friends.

“Hey, can you get maybe six more kids to go to the mall with you? Then we’ll have six in clothing, me, and you three. Being in a large group should shield you from being singled out if the SiF alarm sounds while your chip is still working. Then we’ll see about how to kill the stripping program for you. But secrecy still, okay? Are you gonna go through with it?”

They agreed. Tamara showed them the app on her phone. She held the phone up to Sylvia’s arm and showed her the code that displayed; she repeated that for the other girls.

“So you see how the officials can detect that you’re stripped—they can see the code, using the readers they have.”

The girls looked at her with wide eyes, amazed.

On Saturday, Tamara met her friends and the others as they walked over to the local shopping area. Tamara was carrying her backpack. It wasn’t a true modern mall shopping oasis; it was a block filled with many shops and was roofed over and had several entry doors at each end. It was a favorite spot for the local teens to hang out. All of the shop and main entrance doors had the “Stripped in Florida” scanners and cameras. Giggling to herself, Tamara slipped one of the three chips she had out of its little metal tube as the group passed by the scanner. The alarm went off and there was a frenzy around the door since many people were passing through that area.

Tamara slipped the chip back into its tube and about a minute later, some security guards ran up, one waving a portable scanner. He started pointing it at all the clothed people, not realizing that the scanner wasn’t a truly directional device. After several minutes they gave up. Tamara repeated her stunt at several other scanning stations around the mall and that’s when her three friends began to realize that something was up. The last time the guards came running, Tamara, being careful to be a distance from her naked friends, triggered her “camera” just as the guard pointed it at one clothed girl.

“Damn,” the guard exclaimed as he looked at the device’s display. “The dumb thing quit.”

The other guard came over and they both tried to get it working with no success.

Good! Tamara celebrated. It knocks out the portable readers. Let me try the ones at the shop entrances.

She exposed her chip and walked past a shop sensor; the alarm went off as Tamara quickly covered the chip and fired the camera. The alarm stopped in mid squawk.

Time for phase two, she decided, after zapping about a dozen similar door sensors.

Sylvia and Julie were still with her, Sondra had to return home, and the other clothed kids had wandered off to somewhere else.

“You guys feel brave now and want to try getting dressed? There will be no consequences at all,” Tamara assured them.

“What do we do?” Julie asked, a little fearfully.

“I have clothing for you to wear. A top and shorts, in my pack. Let’s hit the ladies’ room.”

The restroom doorway was equipped with a sensor too. It made Tamara wonder just how much money had been spent on “Stripped in Florida” infrastructure—it would probably take fifty years or more of registration fees before the infrastructure costs were recovered, she guessed. So much for making money for the state.

Inside the room, the three slipped into the handicapper stall.

“You ready to go through with this?” she asked. “Your chip will stop working soon, so when you leave here, you’ll have to be dressed,” Tamara said as she took two pairs of clothes out of her backpack.

“You really can do that?” Sylvia asked.

Tamara nodded.

“I’m in,” Julie said, and then Sylvia nodded.

“Sit down,” Tamara instructed them and pointed to a bench in there. “Remember when I tested your chips?”

They nodded.

She took her phone out and showed them that the chips were still working. Then she put the phone back into a pocket in her backpack—one lined with some metal foil she had obtained from Tim—as she surreptitiously triggered the camera.

“All done,” she announced as she stood up.

“What?... “How?”

Tamara took out her phone and waved it over both girls’ arms. Nothing appeared in the display.

“You didn’t feel anything in your arms? No tingle or warmth?”

They both said “No.” Then Julie: “What did you do?”

“Just something I figured out that cell phones can do,” she dissembled as a subterfuge in case officialdom traced her campaign back to her. “But you can’t tell anyone I know how to do it. Did you find out if any kids in the school actually want to continue being naked?”

The two girls looked at each other. Sylvia said, “We didn’t actually speak to everybody, but enough of us stripped kids know a little something about each other.”

“Yeah, even the kids who liked being naked at first are gettin’ real tired of it,” Julie commented.

“So if on Monday it turns out that everyone’s chip gets zapped, no one would be brokenhearted?”

The two girls looked at each other and both shook their heads.

“Okay, here’s the test now. Put on these clothes and we’ll go out. The alarm won’t go off. If it does or if you’re afraid it might, then just duck right back in here and you can strip again. But you won’t have to.”

They left the restroom and the alarm at the door remained silent. The three girls high-fived one another. Then Julie looked at Sylvia; they grabbed each other’s hands and shouted at each other, “Shopping!” Then they squealed, “CLOTHES!”

The girls grabbed Tamara and hugged her. “You’re a lifesaver, girlfriend!” Sylvia gushed

Julie began crying. “I never realized how much my clothing meant to me. It was ... was ... was how I felt to me ... I mean, how I expressed myself. With no clothes, I lost that. It made me feel empty inside. Tamara, thank you for giving me back to myself again!”

Tamara could only nod back happily. She felt a glow of joy.

They went shopping. Tamara had just enough money to splurge on a cute top that she fell in love with.

On Monday, Tamara, Julie, Sylvia, and Sondra stood, dressed in their uniforms, at the main school door as the kids filed in. Tamara had zapped Sondra’s chip the day before, after swearing her to secrecy.

Whenever a naked kid came by, Tamara fired her zapper. She managed to “convert” almost all of the kids that day. With about 520 students, there were only 47 in the SiF program. She missed just six.

Of course, there was a clamor about Julie, Sylvia, and Sondra being clothed. If they were wearing clothes, the door sensors should have sounded an alert. The sensors at the school door were checked; they were still working. The three girls were paraded through the main doors again and the alarm didn’t sound. They tried another door with the same result. Police were called and their portable scanner did not indicate the presence of a chip in the girls. Without knowing the implanted chip code, there was no way to field-identify a stripped child by name. The responsible county official, she was the “Stripped in Florida” supervisor for the county, was contacted. She came to the school and asked that the girls’ parents be called.