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Chapter 82 - Planning for the Future

Anne Arundel County, Maryland: one year later: June

It had been a year since Tamara graduated with her doctorate, and it had been a busy one. On the industrial front, she had selected her headquarters site where the manufacturing facility would be constructed. It was located west of Annapolis, fairly close to the resort, and had good connections to rail and highway services. There would be several buildings; one for offices; one for a research and development lab; and the plant facility itself. The engineering firm had completed the design and the construction would take about two years before occupancy.

Tamara now had a small staff of engineers and technicians working in a rented nearby warehouse she had converted into a small manufacturing facility. It was here where she planned to start fabricating small turbines, using a design which her engineers were developing for the Haiti facility to build when that facility came on line. When the sub-components needed for these turbines had been manufactured in Maryland, they would be shipped to Haiti where the final turbines would be manufactured for installation in Haiti. When the full factory capacity in Haiti had been reached, turbines would be manufactured to the specifications of Central and South American users and shipped from Haiti. Since Haiti was frequently hit by powerful hurricanes, Tamara’s engineers were developing a “hardened” turbine facility to be installed in Haiti and on the other Caribbean islands; they were developing an installation design that would make the power generation facility as hurricane-resistant as possible.

During the late spring, Peter completed setting up a small engineering lab in the warehouse facility, and by June, he and Tom Emerson and two technicians had begun working with the contractile strands that Tamara and Dr Li Seang had developed. And the issue about the names of the two Toms was kind-of solved: when it was necessary to uniquely identify them, Tom Armstrong was called Tom-A and Tom Emerson, Tom-E, which soon became “Tomas” and “Tommy.”

Tamara had set up two separate corporations in addition to her charitable foundation. One of them would function as a holding company and would handle the royalties and licensing agreements from Tamara’s inventions, plus the contracts with the Defense Department, such as the versions of the maser she had developed. Other inventions they would license included the levitating coil to be used in transportation vehicles, such as in trains; plus her other devices like MRI coils, her chemical synthesis chamber, and the G-force bearings. It would also handle any pharmaceutical applications that her research would discover.

Her other company, AlWin Systems Corporation, was the research, development, and manufacturing arm for the electricity-generating G-force turbines, secure communications, and wireless power transmission, the latter joint with EEC Energy Systems. And she had added robotics and prosthetic aids, including the synthetic muscle fibers and miniature controls for robotics.

Winnie had completed her sophomore high-school year. Last year, as a freshman, she had competed with the high-school JV volleyball team where her usual position was outside hitter, a result of her speed, power, and quick reflexes. Last August she had spent the final three weeks at the nudist resort with the Winsberg clan and was now an enthusiastic and confirmed naturist. She had done very well in the resort’s volleyball clinics, but since her high school classes began before the Volleyball Superbowl, she didn’t attend the event, but neither did Barbara nor Tamara. In her sophomore year, Winnie had been promoted to the varsity team to replace its senior outside hitter, who had graduated.

Tamara had been working with Winnie over the past year and now Winnie had many of the same abilities in inducing emotion responses in others. She already possessed many of the basic abilities: for example, she already could “hide in plain sight” and also tell when people were not being truthful. And she and Tamara had learned from the investigation of the illegal group home that while Winnie was living there, her ability to affect people’s emotions had unknowingly had a major impact on the operator’s ability to sell the orphans placed with her. That knowledge had come about six months earlier.

Six months earlier

Tamara and Winnie learned from both Mason and Sam some things about what the investigators had gleaned from the group-home records. One very interesting fact was that before Winnie had arrived at the facility, most prior visits by a “client” had resulted in a girl being selected and leaving the home; this had happened at about a frequency of once per month. But while Winnie was living there, over a two-year period, only six girls had been selected, plus herself. When Tamara had learned this, she wondered whether Winnie had somehow influenced the selections.

“Now that I see that pattern,” Winnie told her, “Maybe I did. When we had to appear for the ‘inspections’...” she made finger quotes, “...I was sensing that those people were bad and in my mind, I was telling them to go away. But a few of those people, usually the couples, didn’t have the really bad evil feeling that the others did. Those people did take a girl. But the one who took me—I guess I never had a chance to affect him ‘cause he picked me from a photo. Did Sam tell you if they found any of the girls?”

“Actually I was coming to that,” Tamara told her. “The six girls from while you were there—five were taken by couples and one by a single woman—have been located. They were made to serve essentially as domestic slaves for those couples and that woman; those people were all somewhat well-to-do. Before you came, though, the other girls from that home who had been bought just disappeared, and the investigators believe they were trafficked out of the area because there’s no trace of the people who bought them.”

“Does that judge or the caseworkers know who set that up?” Winnie asked.

“They won’t say a single word, apparently, even when told that they could get a life sentence for kidnapping a minor. Even as an accessory to the crime, it’s still a life sentence. Maybe they’ll eventually talk before their trials.”

Winnie thought for a bit. “When you were telling me about the Naked in School Program and how its national office was taken over by a sex ring, I’m wondering if these people were somehow part of that and didn’t get caught...” she mused.

“Winnie, that’s a really good thought!” Tamara exclaimed. “I’ll mention that to Sam and she can let the investigators look at that possibility.”

Present time

Sam was on the phone with Winnie. “Winnie, your idea hit pay dirt about the criminals who were involved with the Naked in School scandal,” Sam told her. “The investigators had run out of leads and your idea gave them a new direction to check. They found that there were a small number of people who had entered the U.S. legally who were thought to possibly be connected to that cartel, but no evidence against them could be developed. Then those people disappeared and had kept under the radar pretty well. But because of that scandal, the FBI began looking for the whereabouts of all foreign visitors from Europe and your suggestion got them to look closely at those who had traveled to West Virginia and the general vicinity of western Virginia. That’s when they hit pay-dirt and got a break. About nine suspects are in custody now who have some kind of link to that group home. Also, several of the girls who were rescued from their domestic slavery situations have ID’d three of them as having visited the group home while they were living there. So good job, my dear; that was an awesome tip.”

“So they didn’t find any girls from before I came to that home?” Winnie asked.

“That’s what I heard,” Sam replied.

“So how about this? Did anyone think to show a picture of the lug who kidnapped me to the girls that they did find?”

“Oi, Winnie. Not that I heard, but again, that’s a great idea; possibly will give more leads. I’ll check. Gotta run, but I’ll see you guys at Emma’s this weekend.”

Tamara had been listening. “So you’re quite the detective, right?” she chuckled. “I agree with Sam. That was great thinking. Listen, we need to meet Peter at the dojo in 30 minutes. You ready?”

“Yep. Let’s go, then.”

About a year ago, Peter had convinced Tamara and Winnie to start judo lessons and Winnie, with the ‘warrior’ ethos her grandfather had instilled in her, had taken to it like it was second nature. Her promotion test for nikyū, the second-level kyū brown belt, was scheduled in two weeks; she had just one more level to pass before reaching black. Tamara was still working toward her blue belt but her sparring technique was driving her senpai crazy—in sparring, her lightning-quick reflexes and her ability to sense how her opponent would move allowed her to disengage quickly and thwart the attack. Her unconventional approach to break a full grapple and turn the attempt into a pulling match was not going to let her advance any further. She had to engage more, basically, and go through the katas.

As Tamara told her senpai, “I’m just keeping you from throwing me is all.”

“But what you do is a shido! Avoiding attempting a waza. Four shido in a row is a hansoku-make, a defeat. You must try for some kind of waza instead of dragging me all around the mat.”

Later, Peter told her what he had seen.

“Sweetie, you’re so effin’ quick, try this when you spar. Duck in under his guard, grab his left shoulder and right elbow, take a big step with your left leg to his right side, foot parallel with his, and lift his elbow as you move in. Then bring your right leg forward while pulling him hard against your hip using your grip on his shoulder, drag his right elbow down to unbalance him, and quickly hook his right leg with yours and pull it back hard. Bend down at your waist, keeping your right leg straight behind you while holding him firmly against your hip. He’ll go right down, won’t have a chance. That’s called osoto gari and it’s a basic foot technique. Here, let’s get into a grapple position and I’ll show you. Then try doing that with me.”

Tamara tried it and sure enough, it worked.

“Peter, you teach me better than Roy can, you know,” Tamara grumped.

“He’s teaching you the katas and techniques in the required order so you can learn them for being promoted. Judo is very formal and structured. Being a scientist, you should appreciate that.”

“You’re right. Okay. Next time I’ll engage him better. But I still hate being thrown down.”

“How far have you gone in the techniques?” Peter asked. “Has he covered all eight for your next level?”

“Um, yes... but I can only do maybe five of them reliably.”

“Sweetie, you’re actually making better progress than I did when I started. You started just a year ago. It took me two years to get to where you are.”

“Thinking back to what I saw that Amelia could do, it motivated me to learn,” Tamara said. “She told me that time in Cambridge wasn’t the only time she put down a jerk who attacked her.”

“No kidding?” Peter said. “Another time too?”

“Yep. The following spring, after school. She was at a pizza place waiting for Jeremy to get there and a guy tried grabbing her. She told me she didn’t damage that one permanently, though, like she did to that fake guard. She did a hip throw and that just got him knocked out.”

“She’s quite a fireball.” Peter agreed.

They got dressed and waited until Winnie was finished; then left for home.

~~~~

That weekend, Emma had invited Kevin’s group, including Cindy, Tom (Tommy), Lynette, and her Tom (Tomas) to her home; Emma’s sisters-in-law and their guys were coming too. Tamara had arranged the day and she would be coming with Winnie, Barbara and the men. This was to be a special occasion—Tomas’ introduction to social nudism.

Several weeks earlier, Denise had called Tamara and suddenly became very hesitant to speak for some reason—this was completely unlike her. Then Amelia got on the line.

“Denise doesn’t like to talk about other people’s personal stuff and this is kinda personal, but I can do it, no problem, since we have permission,” Amelia laughed. “This is about Tomas; he wants to join in with everyone in all of our social activities, including the nudism ones, but he’s had a major problem with nudity since he was a youngster. And Tom’s experience with that Naked in School rot was kinda like Peter’s own Program experiences with it in some ways; although they both weren’t actually in it a week, they were both badly affected. Tom told me that he was deliberately chosen to participate, like Peter was specially picked too. But Tom had medical warnings in his school file about his panicking when being exposed to nudity. So when he got picked anyway and the teachers tried to strip him, he virtually destroyed the school’s office trying to escape them—you know how huge he is. He laughs about it now and calls himself ‘The Hulk.’ [Naked in School - Tom’s Troubles]

“As well, it turned out that he also panicked from just seeing others naked. And...”

“Whoa! Hold up there!” Tamara interrupted. “You’re going way too fast. You said maybe five or six sentences about Tom and now I have eight questions. And you haven’t even got to the reason you guys called!”

“I do rush into things, don’t I?” Amelia laughed. “Okay. When Tom was little, some big kids stripped him starkers and threw him into a pool where he almost drowned—he was hospitalized for a week. Apparently he got PTSD from that experience but it didn’t show up until a year or so later. He wouldn’t even take off his shirt at the pool or beach, no matter how hot it was. And nobody connected his excessive modesty to that drowning incident because, as Tom told me, he was able to go into swimming pools afterwards, even though he did refuse to learn to swim. The shrinks Tom saw to treat that modesty didn’t know that in Tom’s subconscious memories, nudity had become equated with death, or at least with drowning. And his simply seeing naked people had become a trigger too; it was a subconscious reminder of his near-death experience and he panicked every time he saw nudity. Does that answer one question?”

Tamara laughed. “Three, actually. So go on.”

“Hey, I’m on a roll. Now we come to his getting picked in the Program to strip off. Seeing the naked kids in school in the first week he was in school was turning him into a wreck, so his parents took him to a shrink who gave him some anxiety drugs. Well, turns out that a side effect of one of those drugs can be psychosis and that happened to him; he began getting dreadful visions and hallucinations when he saw those naked Program kids in his classes. Meanwhile, his getting picked wasn’t random; the head teacher had been told about how Tom reacted from just seeing nudity and he decided that Tom needed to be put in the Program to cure him of his fright over seeing naked kids.

“So the head put Tom in the Program the following Monday and Tom was called to the school office alone, after the other kids for the week had been called. The head thought that would help Tom, thinking that they’d ease him into stripping off because he could get starkers without the other kids around. There were two teachers in the office to make sure that Tom got stripped; that was done in some schools apparently. When the head sprung the news on him, that he was being put in the Program, and told him that he had to strip off, Tom froze in panic. So the teachers went to strip him and that’s when Tom lost the plot.

“Tom told me that he felt like he was fighting for his life against a deathly shadow that was coming for him and, while he was trying to escape from the two teachers, he trashed the head’s office. He told me that he threw chairs at them and pulled down a bookcase whilst trying to get out of that office. When he got out into the main office, he got trapped between a security guard coming in and the two teachers coming at him from the head’s office, so he couldn’t get to the main door. In his panic, he began throwing stuff at them—chairs, desks, file cabinets, computers, whatever he could pick up or push over, to try to bull his way out of there. He wound up throwing a chair through a window to climb out. He completely destroyed that office. How am I doing now?”

“All caught up, my dear. This is totally fascinating... did they expel him or punish him in some other way?”

“No—his folks had a solicitor meet with the head teacher and the school solicitor. His solicitor was great—he nailed the school officials to the wall, especially since the head had ignored Tom’s medical records which the school had on file. Doing what they did by selecting Tom, they ignored the medical warnings in his file, so the school and the staff were open to both a negligence lawsuit and as well, assault and battery charges ‘cause it’s illegal in England to force-strip anyone. Despite that barmy Program law there. So Tom wasn’t punished and got exempted from being in the Program. But all of this info about Tom’s past is just background to the reason we called you. Tom’s almost fully recovered from his PTSD—when he learned why he reacted to nudity like he did, because of the near drowning, that allowed him to get some professional therapy directed at his PTSD. He’s almost normal now—still a bit shy about nudity, but that’s a normal reaction.

“Several times now Tom has hinted to us that he’d like to be more of a part of our social lives here and he’s mentioned our nudism. So, a couple days ago, Denise and I asked Tom directly if he really meant it and if he and Lynette really wanted to try out social nudism and he said that he did. So we’re gonna do it here at Denise’s place with the six of us, plus maybe Cindy and Tommy, but we thought that wouldn’t be much of an experience for him. Tomas needs to be with others he doesn’t know as well as us but who are quote, ‘safe people.’ That’s in quotes. That’s where you guys come in. We wanted to know if you guys would agree to come here and be with us for Tom’s unveiling.”

Denise broke in. “See, I knew that Amelia could do a much better job of explaining about Tom, right, Tamara?”

“Yep, she did good. I’m actually thinking that it seems to me that Amelia knows far more about Tom’s situation than a simple conversation with him about his experiences would explain,” Tamara said.

Amelia chuckled. “Wow. She nailed it. You’re awfully perceptive, Tamara. There actually is more to his story, but telling you that is up to Tom; that’s his decision. So what about your coming here to help us?”

“So I can do better than that,” Tamara told them. “Terence, Winnie, and I all got our feet wet—and the rest of our bodies too—at Emma’s Nudist Resort. Emma’s home is a haven for nudism outside of a full resort experience and I’m sure that she’d love to host you guys. She entertains nudist guests most every weekend in June and July. You know her sisters-in-law and their guys; they’ll probably come too. Would that be okay?”

“Err, I don’t see why not... You sure it would be okay with her?” Amelia asked.

“I’m pretty sure... I’ll find out and call you back.”

Tamara’s plan was okay with Emma; she was always delighted to host more converts to social nudism.

~~~~

Tom and Lynette did just fine with their first nudist experience. Tom was a little shy at first, but when he saw that Terence and Jay, both being large physical specimens themselves, were nonchalantly chatting while standing around sans clothes, he vowed that he wouldn’t be a chicken and went off to Emma’s “changing room” and stripped. Lynette, concerned for him but vastly amused at seeing how he had suddenly become completely focused on getting himself undressed, followed suit. Or suitless, actually.

Later, Tom did tell Tamara about how it was Amelia who had found the key to his PTSD issues and started him on the road to recovery.

“I’m mostly normal now, thanks to her,” Tom said. “She’s an amazing person. The best time I ever had in high school was being on stage with her in that musical we did, too.”

Then Jay came over and Tom and Jay began discussing Tom’s cross-country racing season. Tom had tried out for Westphalia’s team and became a member. He had reasonably fast times; his high-school best was 17:51, and in his college races, which were 8-K, he ran about 32:40.

Jay commented, “You know, guy, I’m still amazed at how you, as big as you are, can do so well in those long-distance races.”

Tom chuckled, “I am too. But I’ve been cycling and running since I was 12 or 13. I started to get really big after that but I suppose my running muscles never got the message to slow down.”

Jay laughed. “So you still cycle? There’re quite a few cycling clubs in the area.”

“Yeah, and Westphalia has a team too. Also, it’s a club sport. I ride with the club when the X-C season’s over.”

“Hey—I’m being paged. Looks like Kevin wants me over there,” Jay said. “Lynette’s there too, so I guess that it’s not private. Let’s see what they want.”

They walked over. Tamara was there talking to Kevin and Sam and Peter, Lynette, and Barbara were there too.

When Jay and Tom got to them, Kevin told them what they had been discussing.

“Both Tamara and I have had some vague plans to do something in basic primary education, possibly along the lines of how the Montessori movement developed. And Tamara has ideas that involve her brain research, looking at latent human capabilities regarding charisma and empathy. It also looks like ideas and techniques from the Avery project might become part of our plans, Tom, so your insights into the Avery Program and how it emotionally affected the kids could be very useful.”

“I don’t see how I could help, Kevin,” Tom demurred, “but what do you have in mind?”

Tamara answered, “It looks like the vague ideas that Kevin and his posse had discussed with me back after the knighthood ceremony are coalescing now. I wanted to start a brain research foundation to investigate the brain’s processing of emotional content and that idea’s morphed into involving younger kids to learn how group dynamics help in forming empathy and charisma. In short, the question involves whether those characteristics are innate or are they acquired. So part of the plan is to establish a school, going from kindergarten through twelfth grades, where we can unobtrusively monitor kids’ social development.”

Kevin nodded, “The structure would follow the Montessori principles. But there’s a real kicker of a difference—this would be a completely nudist school.”

Apparently this was not a surprise for Sam, Peter, Lynette, and Barbara, who all nodded.

Tom looked thunderstruck while Jay laughed at his reaction. Tom was the first to recover.

He asked, “Why? What the hell, I thought that the naked in school idea was a big frikkin’ mistake!”

“Yeah, I gotta hear the reasoning here,” Jay commented, “but I see why you’re including me in on this. It’s my law firm’s connection to county governments and school districts, right?”

“You got it,” Sam answered. “Kevin, tell them what you told us.”

“Sure. To answer you, Tom, it’s that Cindy and Tommy, plus Cindy’s brother Roger, and Denise and I, have thought about what we’re seen in nudist resorts where families with young kids have been members. Also, Roger told Cindy that he and his wife Ayame have become close friends with a couple who grew up in a full-time nudist community and they went to a nudist school in that community. There are only two places in this country like that, where such a nudist school exists. From our personal observation, those of us who worked on the original Avery Program and who’ve kept in touch with us have seen how very well adjusted those kids are who’ve grown up in a nudist environment.

“We all know most of the talking points in favor of nudism. When people shed their clothing, their interpersonal interactions are more direct and intense, more open and friendly. We see that total strangers will greet each other openly and quickly can become fast friends. We’ve assumed that this happens because the wearing of clothing produces a psychological barrier—it’s the person’s armor against the hostile world. And the clothing people wear gives certain economic signals too. Designer outfits and dresses. Armani suits. Accessories too, like Rolex watches.

“The nudist experience raises a lot of questions about how people interact and there are no firm answers, just lots of educated guesses. The Naked in School Program was devised to make kids into well adjusted adults but it failed because nobody had any idea of the results of stripping away a person’s psychological armor without replacing it with a form of armor of equal strength. I believe that an equal-strength armor can be found in the openness of the freedom of a shared intense emotional experience. Shared experiences can forge psychological bonds between people and make them feel a certain responsibility for each other.

“Denise and I saw first-hand what happens when a person’s psychological armor is lost when we ourselves got thrust into the Program in high school. For myself, I reacted to the anguish I felt from the kids who got forced to strip; they reacted like they felt that they had become totally defenseless—and they did. Their psychological armor was gone. That’s when I got the idea that it might be able to replace their feeling of vulnerability caused by being naked with a kind of bonding by creating an emotional experience that would be shared with the other victims. The saying that unity gives strength came to mind. I thought that by turning the experience of making the kids get naked together into a shared and intense group experience, it could become a bonding experience, but only if a very strong shared emotional component was added.

“And somehow that worked—and it formed the armor that replaced the need for clothes. An intense shared emotional experience. It was enough to fortify the kids to be able to go into the school’s hall and be seen by everyone there. That’s what the Avery Program is all about too, helping people to learn how to develop interpersonal relationships through team-building and making emotional—that is, empathic—connections. A kind of social bonding.

“But true socialization really begins—this is when children start to become socialized—that happens when they begin school. And that’s the target time we want to start working with. And the nudism part is intended to remove the kids’ psychological armor which develops right about the same time as socialization begins—it’s a natural tendency, since it’s something material and tangible, rather than psychological, and much easier to just put on and then forget about. Does all of that verbal diarrhea make any sense?”

“Damn, Kevin, if you were in a courtroom arguing a case, the entire place would be frozen from that blizzard of snow you just spouted,” Jay grinned. “Sure, the general concept makes sense to me, even if I’m a recent convert to the cause. Tom? What about you—you’re the real newbie here.”

“Kevin—you mentioned anguish in kids who had to strip and you turned that around with just bonding? How’s that possible? I’ve seen the Avery bonding exercise in action and I wonder how it could be strong enough to overcome the fear and humiliation I felt in school with that naked program. When I was auditing the Avery Program from behind a screen, I felt ... ah ... discomfort and reluctance at some of the first bonding exercises but that mostly faded a little after the role-playing sessions and a cooperative attitude had developed in the group. But when I had to be in the classroom with naked kids in my first high-school week, I couldn’t ... ah ... endure the emotional turmoil I felt from them, plus I had that reaction to seeing nudity itself.”

“Sure, Tom. This will be a long explanation, though. Because of my insights and, I suppose, leadership about Program matters in my high school, the principal had asked Denise and me to be a kind of peer mentor for the Program group that was selected for the week following our own Program week. What Denise and I wound up doing was basically instinctual. She knew from her own experience and emotional sensitivity what those kids were feeling and myself, I could see how distressed a number of those kids were. We both immediately knew what we would have wanted under the same circumstances. Emotional support.

“It occurred to me that just about everyone in the whole school knew that I somehow had gotten an exemption from being naked—the reason for how doesn’t matter right now—and I had spent my whole Program week clothed by wearing lycra tights and Denise in a swim suit—accommodations that I was able to force the school to give and the other kids couldn’t figure out what was going on with Denise and me. We’ll skip why we got the exemption; it’s not germane. So if I showed those terrified kids that even I could sacrifice my exemption and get naked with them, it might help prove that there wasn’t anything to fear. I sensed that by using my empathy for them and demonstrating my emotional support, it might alleviate some of their terror.

“In short, by becoming naked together with them, with Denise and I doing it voluntarily, it had formed a bond with the group, one of a shared experience. But it seemed to me that sharing the experience of simply undressing together would only form a weak bond that could be quickly lost after Denise and I were no longer with them. I realized that I needed to replace that weak bond with a bond having a very strong emotional content, and tie it to the others without my needing to be part of it. I already had half of the makings of such a bond—the kids’ scary experience.

“You know how the rides at amusement parks are intended to get the adrenalin flowing? They’re designed to give people an emotional high—from fright, usually—and a lot of people even get off sexually on those stimuli. Or think of haunted house attractions or horror movies. Well, the result of a teen getting naked with other teens makes for an awfully strong sexual situation, even if you’re otherwise scared half out of your mind. I assumed that I could use that arousal, the scared kids’ aroused emotional state, just like a scary roller coaster, and direct it toward the other kids in their group, the kids whom they would be intimately involved with during their Program week, and get them to form a group bond.

“So what I did—and Denise sensed what I was doing and copied me—was to show the reluctant kids that they were a unique group by inventing a special naked hug and using it with them. I told those kids, who were desperate for any emotional support they could get, that it was a special ‘Program hug,’ a unique naked Program greeting, and it should be used to support and encourage each other. We got everyone into practicing doing it with each other, and as a sign of how those kids accepted it—for the emotional support it gave—we even convinced the guys to hug each other!

“It had the desired effect; that sexualized hug created an instant bond among the group. It worked very much like the Avery bonding sessions but it happened very quickly in this case, since the kids were naked, frightened, vulnerable, desperate for emotional support, very suggestible, and emotionally aroused—they were now getting armor to replace their lost clothes. Their new armor came from an intense reliance on the support of the others in their group and, as I was amazed to see, a kind of pride in how they had bonded with each other. It was almost scary to see how powerful—and dangerous—that messing with people’s sexuality like that can be, actually.

“So Tom, can you see how that could work to turn around someone’s anguish?”

“That’s some frikkin’ wild story, Kevin. But... um... I had a personal experience that worked almost the same way, so I think I can understand what you did. That was an amazing insight you had too. From what you said, then, I gather that the Program at your school wasn’t as bad as in others I’ve heard about.”

Kevin nodded. “It wasn’t as bad as in other schools, although there were some kids who didn’t get much help from that bonding. They were just too scared, or had other reasons, for that bonding exercise to help them any. A forced situation is always bad, no matter how much sugar-coating is applied. For some kids it was like a band-aid on a sword slash. That’s why I finally made up my mind to oppose the Program outright and worked to stop it in the schools.”

“Okay, then,” Tamara broke in. “Tom, Jay, you guys understand what we’re working toward here?”

Tom slowly nodded and Jay asked, “I suppose you want me involved because a number of my firm’s attorneys serve as the legal advisors for school districts in the nearby counties?”

Sam smiled at him. “Nailed it, dear. My firm isn’t into municipal and education law the way yours is. Anyway, Tamara found out something else this week to move this project along, right, Tamara?”

“I did. You guys know that my foundation bought this property, a former sand and gravel quarry that’s next to Peter’s nudist resort. They’ve been refilling the hole there for a few years, but I found out this week that it’s mostly filled now and with some additional preparation work, the site development can start whenever we want. I’ve had a consultant working on some plans. One is a school building complex to conform to the terrain we’ll be sculpting on the site—right now it’s mostly flat. The plan is for two single-story buildings with plenty of outside access. A lower school to grade 8 and a high school. And elsewhere on the site, a group of buildings to serve as a research facility for psychology and neuroscience. It’ll be physically and visually separate from the school. And the school will have an athletic area to be shared with the nudist resort.

“We’ve also acquired a sizeable amount of property in the vicinity around the old quarry site and resort and my plan is to build a gated community somewhat like the one in Columbia, Maryland. The difference is that this will be a nudist community and, of course, connected to the resort and school.”

“Yeah, Tamara always thinks big,” Peter winked at her. “This change to the area will be immense.”

“So how much land did you acquire?” Kevin asked.

“Just short of a thousand acres. We’re thinking of maybe fifty homes and a few common areas. Possibly a pool and clubhouse; it depends on how close a relationship we want to have with the resort, but the Allermans are receptive to a type of associate membership for the residents. If that happens, we’d help Ron expand, like make the clubhouse larger and possibly build a second pool. The high school would have a pool too. Indoor.”

“What kind of time frame are you considering for getting the school started?” Jay asked. “I’m assuming that the school would come before your research park.”

“That’s true; I’d start the research facility slowly and see what talent would want to work on the projects I have in mind. Then we could design a facility, rather than try to shoehorn research projects into an existing facility,” Tamara responded. “And I’d like to open the school a year from this coming fall. The permanent buildings won’t be ready but I have a plan to start before they are.”

“The next step, I suppose, is to put a prospectus together for the school project,” Kevin mused. “Our philosophy, description of the program, planned facilities, teaching and administrative staff, demographics, geographical drawing area—lots of things to cover. We’d give you the prospectus, Jay, and your firm’s lawyers can approach the state, county, and area school officials with our general plans. We have a tentative agreement with the Ed School at Westphalia as a chartering body and for a group of faculty to function as advisors and consultants. They view this as a very interesting project and want to involve advanced students in the school’s planning.”

The little group broke up soon after this gathering and went off to join the people playing in the pool. Tom and Lynette had a very good time for their first nudist excursion, and while he felt comfortable with the group at Emma’s, Tom told Amelia that he still was a little concerned about a full resort experience. So Amelia suggested that he do what Tamara and Terence had told her that they had done for their own first experience—start a day or two early and work up to his own public “exposure.”

So Tom went over to Peter to discuss his doing just that for when he and Lynette would be going to the resort.

Meanwhile, Winnie had gotten an idea she thought was awesome and found Tamara and Barbara to explain it.

“I want to invite my varsity volleyball teammates to come to the resort to play with the resort team!” she exclaimed when she got them both together. “Can we arrange that?”

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