Chapter 2

By mid-April, I had finished refining my Cooper-pair calculations; I couldn’t find any errors or invalid assumptions in the calcs, and had also come up with some ideas for a device to give the material recipe I had developed a practical test. That’s when I decided it was time to show my idea to my physics mentor prof at UAF and get his opinion. I hadn’t mentioned it before, but the Physics Department had won my loyalties. They had promised me a bunch of things: I would be sponsored for a highly accelerated BS program which would allow me to sit the required courses as a regular class member and by completing others by testing out. I could get course credit for some humanities by independent study too, completing the course by writing a major essay. I would also be admitted to the Physics PhD program; and for the icing on the cake, I would be given a teaching assistantship—as soon as my visa could be organized to allow that. I had learnt that I loved to teach and was good at it too.

Anyway, after I showed my Cooper-pair calcs to my prof, he went totally bat-shit and rang up every faculty member he could reach and just about ordered them to get to the seminar room, right now. Then he practically dragged me there and told me to get up front and present my “research,” as he called it. When I was done talking, there was a firestorm of applause and every solid-state or condensed-matter specialist in the room was clamoring that I needed to set up a project to build the apparatus I had designed to test my mathematical theory. When the noise level finally toned down somewhat, the chairman, who had wandered into the room after hearing all the noise, pointed out that the cost of the supplies and equipment needed for doing such a proof of concept project was well above the department’s budget and any existing grant funds couldn’t be used for unrelated work.

This news put an immediate damper on the celebration. So I went to my prof and whispered in his ear, “I’m sure that I can self-fund this, you know.”

He stared at me. “What! How? This will cost maybe $100,000 to $200,000, as a quick guess.”

“I have access to my family trust. I think I can get the trustees to make a grant. If I write up my calcs like an article in Physical Review Letters, could the department get it vetted so that it would have peer support?”

“Absolutely, Emma! This is the most exciting thing I’ve seen in my entire career. Let’s get going on this.” He turned to the others in the room, which now had broken up into small conversational groups. “Everyone! Emma just told me that she has an idea for a grant opportunity. So let’s put the enthusiasm on hold for a bit and we’ll see how the funding develops. Also—please respect the confidentiality of her research. She has priority, as you all know, and needs to get some patent advice too. This is exciting, but let’s damp it down a bit, okay?”

There was a chorus of agreement from the group and everyone began to leave, most people stopping to chat with me for a minute or two. But soon I had to return to the boring life of a high-school student, and that’s how I completed my first year of high school in Fairbanks. UAF did have a number of undergrad summer classes, so I registered for a few which were required for my bachelor’s degree. But most of the summer would be occupied with my working on the superconductivity component recipe and trying to find a way to make its components into a conductor—some kind of wire—to carry the power.

I had sent the copy of my paper with the funding request and its faculty review to my trustee, and Uncle Scott’s local attorney, Mr Jameson, had added a note that he was in the process of submitting a patent application, even if the final device wasn’t possible to build as planned. I had come to rely on Mr Jameson and also Mrs F since Uncle Scott was back in the field as soon as the weather cleared up in the early spring. According to Mr Jameson, any patent-licensing proceeds could be assigned to the trust or to a company created by the trust. He also told me to put a dated copy of my original calculation pages in an envelope, seal it, and send it to him by certified post. He’d put the unopened letter in his safe. That, he said, would be proof of any patent priority.

We got an immediate response—just a week later. My trustees liked the idea for the project and agreed to fund it from a foundation which had been created by the corporation that my trust owned. Making the grant that way would apparently avoid any taxes too. The grant funds I was given allowed us to obtain some really high-tech apparatus which could be shipped to us quickly, since it was now the (short) summer here.

So most of my summer was spent in working on the project, taking uni classes, and enjoying the summer warmth. Crikey—nobody had warned me about the mosquitos! They’re huge! The first time that I complained about them, Joyce joked, “Hey, mosquitoes are our state bird!” And one of my classmates claimed, as he swatted at a particularly large one, “The mosquito repellent that works best around here is a shotgun.”

Also during the summer, the Physics Department helped me form a team made up of two of the department’s faculty members and several students to work on the process for forming the superconducting material into a wire conductor; my initial idea of containing the recipe of doped substrate in aligned linear carbon nanotubes was turning out to be very difficult to build. I worked on refining the substrate recipe—based on my first calculations on Cooper pair restraint, I had some additional tweaks to make—and I also had ideas for other methods for charging the nanotubes with the formulation. After the patent app was submitted, I had also organized a paper for publication in Nature Materials, a major physics journal. The paper was accepted that September and was sent out for peer review.

When September arrived, high school started up again, but now I was attending both uni and high-school classes, splitting my time between them, and my small amount of free time was spent tutoring and checking on my physics project. There was little I could do for the physics project right now since it was all lab work at this point and my specialty was theoretical, so my little group at the uni was busy in the lab.

The month passed with nothing remarkable occurring in either school, but during the last week of September, it got very cold suddenly and we got hit with an unusual early winter storm; the northern lights auroral display was incredible after the storm passed. About a week after that freak storm, I was at home doing my schoolwork, sitting at the dining room table, when Mrs Flannery came in.

“Emma dear, I’m afraid I have bad news—I just got a call from AZF Energy. Your Uncle Scott hasn’t been heard from; he’s more than seven days overdue at his site.”

“Oh damn—that’s bad. Yeah, I figured something was up; he hasn’t rung me lately. He was using his company’s plane on this latest survey trip—he must have been flying when the storm hit. Shit.”

She looked at me—she didn’t like my cursing, but ... well, I cursed. A lot. My mum and Grandma did all the time and I picked up that bad habit.

“Yes, they told me that the searches haven’t found any trace of him or the plane so far. I’m so sorry,” Mrs Flannery said to me whilst she rubbed my back gently.

I was kind of expecting to hear something bad when I hadn’t gotten a ring from him for almost a fortnight; Scott usually rang me every five to six days to check in and see how I was doing. My life hadn’t exactly been forgiving where the fates of my other relatives were concerned.

“Well, Mrs F, you know I barely knew him; I had never met him before he came to England to help me move here. Till last year I was living in London and he’s been working outside the U.K. for years. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about him, but it’s not like he ever was like a parent figure for me.”

“Yes, I knew that, dear. But still...”

“Yeah, I know. He is my family and I do love him. Now the bloody government people will all be coming around, won’t they. I’ve heard it all before, that I’ll need a legal guardian again. Okay, I guess I’ll have to talk to Mr Jameson, about this, right?”

Mrs Flannery nodded. “Yes. Your attorney should know what needs to be done now. Well, I’m sorry for the bad news again, dear. Joyce should be home soon and we’ll have dinner in about an hour.”

“Thanks, Mrs F. And don’t worry about me. I’ll be just fine; everything always works out for me, it seems. I’ve learnt not to panic when bad stuff happens.”

She left, leaving me to my own thoughts.

Word had quickly reached the school about my missing uncle, but I had prepared and organized a letter from Mr Jameson to the principal which said that despite his being missing, he was still my legal guardian unless his status became changed to deceased. My uncle had put sufficient powers of attorney in place to cover any normal school, medical, or social need. Even so, I had to suffer, together with Mrs F and Mr Jameson, a visit from the state’s Child Protective Services people. They soon left, apparently satisfied that my situation was stable and that if any guardianship issues needed to be addressed, the U.K. consulate would be the appropriate authority to get involved.

Miss Williams, the nosey parker, wasn’t satisfied with my situation being so easily sorted, however.

She tried to get me to tell her how devastating Uncle Scott’s disappearance was for me; that the emotional shock was too much and that I probably needed psychological therapy—perhaps even antidepressants—to help me cope. I politely told her that I had lost two family members with whom I had been much closer, my mum and grandma, and that I had coped with their loss without significant damage to my psyche. She then claimed that I must be in denial.

That was it; I was already quite cross with the woman. Now, I decided, I would not deal with her any longer. I called Mr Jameson and explained the problem. He got me an appointment with a licensed PhD psychologist who spoke to me for a while and then went to the school and asked to review Miss Williams’ notes. Apparently, after a brief disagreement over pupil privacy, which the school lost, she found that Williams had very few notes about me, so the principal was told that Williams was not to see me anymore for any of her so-called mental health counseling sessions.

Maybe I should see if UAF also has a degree program in precognition, because, as you’ve probably figured out since you’re reading my story, that that bloody Naked in School Program did indeed come to Fairbanks, Alaska. The notice came by post to Mrs F on the 12^th of October; it spoke about how her daughter Joyce was now eligible to be selected to participate in the Program as a naked student and that Mrs F, as Joyce’s parent, had to complete and sign various forms, one which was a parental acknowledgment of the notification; another was for the parent to give the required informed consent; a third was a certification for females, that the pupil had received “The Shot” within the past three months (this was an immunization which prevented pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases); and a fourth was a permission form for the school to administer The Shot if the pupil’s anti-pregnancy status wasn’t current. A form and instructions for requesting an exemption from participating in the Program was included too. I glanced at the forms mentioning The Shot; I’d need to find out what that was all about. Then when I began reading the choices on the exemption form, I noticed that the exemption options were quite limited, though. Something else to investigate. I noticed Mrs F reading the exemption instructions.

“Oh good,” she said, looking up at me. “Joyce can get an exemption.”

She explained. Apparently Joyce suffered from a condition called Raynaud’s phenomenon and her symptoms were triggered by her getting cold, which explained why she always seemed to be wearing a lot of clothes. Silly me. I thought she really must like clothes, much more than her friends. I asked Mrs F about Raynaud’s.

She told me, “A year or two ago Joyce began getting discolorations of her fingers, toes, ears, and nose and her skin would feel really cold and turn white or even bluish. It spread to her feet too and they got numb and painful. When her feet got bad, it hurt her to walk or simply stand. Even with using heat pads or taking a hot bath, the pain could last for several hours. Her doc told us this was typical Raynaud’s, but a severe form of it. He said that when she gets cold, her blood vessels tighten and this cuts off the blood to her extremities. He told me that this condition isn’t caused by another disease and she’d be fine if she kept her body warm. This is a bad problem to have in Alaska,” she said ruefully. “So this nudity nonsense is out for her; she has a medical reason.”

“Yeah, that’s the pits and especially in our cold climate. Say ... Did a school letter come about me?” I asked.

“No. Maybe because of your age, 13, you’re automatically exempt. High schoolers are 14 and older.”

“Hmm. Somehow I’m not so sure they’d exempt me for age,” I mused. “Doing that would be intelligent. I think there’s little intelligence shown about what’s in this program. Look here.”

I had been reading through the brochure which came with the letter.

“First, at the beginning there’s an intro and reading it, I see that it’s pure bollockry.”

“Emma, what’s that word?”

“Well, you don’t like cursing, but for Yanks, it basically means bullshit. Let me read it to you.

“‘The Program has been carefully designed to help you become more comfortable with your body and your sexuality, to treat others in natural balance as both individual people and sexual beings, to learn to harness your natural energies, and to behave in a more mature and morally conscious manner. By becoming more comfortable with your body and sexuality, your sexual tensions will be diminished. This is your opportunity for rapid personal growth.’ That rot is pure psychobabble.”

She nodded. “I agree. Also, I don’t see how being humiliated by being the only naked kid in a high school would make someone more comfortable with their body.”

I continued, “Then there’s another requirement—it’s called ‘reasonable requests’—crikey, this is even more humiliating. From reading this, I see that it allows other students to grope the sexual organs of a starkers kid. So that means that the school will not only sanction sexual molestation, this rule compels the Program kids to willingly endure it. Another rule listed here is called ‘relief.’ The kids in the Program are expected to wank themselves or get another student to do it to them before each class starts.

“And there’s even more cack here. It says nudity is required everywhere for the whole week, even coming to school. If you use the school’s transportation, this says you must be naked on the bus during your participation week. Otherwise, it says pupils are to disrobe outside the school and leave their clothes in boxes there. Then they’re supposed to reverse the process at the end of the day and get dressed outside. You know that school starts at 7:55 a.m. In the winter it’s close to zero F then. And what happens if it’s snowing?”

“That’s just insane,” she said.

“Another thing. It says that all sports are to be done naked, but protective equipment for that sport may be worn. Most of our winter sports are outdoors. But skiing, and in the spring, track and footb ... erm, soccer, don’t need much special protective equipment. Just the appropriate clothing. Oh, the hockey rink is outdoors. Ugh, naked hockey? Oh yeah, those indoor sports ... the gym and classrooms are bloody cold much of the time too, so I’m trying to imagine how one would play competitive sports like volleyball or basketball in a cold gym whilst starkers.”

“Oh yes. Joyce has problems with her cold classrooms, especially in the gym. She wears sweats and a warmup suit and the teachers complain about her heavy gym clothes all the time. They said if she has a medical reason for wearing heavy clothes, then she shouldn’t be in gym at all. That’s a really stupid idea. She likes the exercise she gets in gym class; she just needs heavier clothing while she’s exercising.”

I flipped another page. “Look. It says that you don’t pass the Program if you don’t do something they call ‘community outreach.’ That’s apparently being naked in places outside of the school. Like the shops? The mall? Outside? How do you even get to these places without getting frostbite all over your body, let alone getting ... what is it ... hypo ... hypothermic?”

“Close. Hypothermia.”

Then I read to her the other mandatory activities which the Program included.

“It says here, I quote, ‘All bathroom use and all gym preparation (for physical education or athletic competitions, showering, and similar activities) shall be performed in the facilities provided for the opposite sex.’ I ask you, is it safe for a lone naked girl to be showering in a boys’ locker room? ‘Cause that’s what this requires.”

Mrs F only shook her head.

“And there’s more of this rot. Here’s a thing called ‘classroom demonstrations.’ I’ll read what this says: ‘Participants in the Program must be expected to assist teachers and instructors in the performance of their lesson plans. Participants shall cooperate with their teachers. Because of the educational value of said assistance, teachers and instructors may ask for participation and demonstration beyond that described under reasonable requests.’ It also says that demonstrations can be videotaped and published on the school website.”

Mrs F interrupted, “Goodness, really? What kinds of things could be videotaped?”

“It says that teachers can use Program students as live training aids for health, biology, physical education, or sexual education classes, as a figure model in art or photography classes, and as a research subject for sociology or psychology classes. So I guess they can record those. And it looks like teachers using kids for these demonstrations get even more liberties with kids’ bodies than the reasonable requests allow.”

I read a bit more to myself. Damn, the bloody minging prats who thought up those rules should be ... well, given a taste of their own rules. I was almost physically sick after reading some examples. Any objections or resistance to having your body violated in the ways suggested was not permitted. Refusing reasonable requests and not participating in classroom demonstrations were other Program violations, and some violations would extend the Program participation time by days or weeks. I pointed out a few of those passages to Mrs F.