Maker

is innocuous. Nevertheless, they arrest me, put me in _{handcuffs, and take me to the State Police office for} “_{You can’t have that. No.} more questioning. I’m “processed” and sent to a room No, you can’t have that. where a detective questions me for an hour or more.

The telephone in the room never stops ringing. The I’m calling the police.”

U.S. secretary of homeland security wants to know about the “Boston Logan Terrorist Suicide Bomber.”

I’m terrified, exhausted, and want to fall asleep on every remotely soft surface I see. I realize I’m not going to get my problem sets done.

Nothing makes any sense. One minute, you’re an MIT student trying to be organized and do good work, and the next you feel like only Chuck Palahniuk could write a more bizarre story.

Before I know it, reporters are calling my family and everyone I’ve ever known.

After several hours, I’m placed in a police transport car to be taken to East Boston District Court. The radio is on, tuned to a daytime talk show. The host is trashing me by first, middle, and last names, discussing various vast, awful, and mean speculations about who I am and what happened. The officer switches it off without comment.

How does the media know my middle name, where I live, and how to reach my family? How is the radio capable of telling me what happened at the airport, before I’m even sure myself? It’s evident that someone in the police department sold the story for a really nice dinner.

My house is staked out, so I stay with a friend. My old dorm is surrounded, as are my old haunts, including the machine shop at MIT. One time, I’m spit on: while I’m riding my bike around Copley Square in June — ten months after being arrested! — a man snarls, “You shoulda done time!” and hocks a giant loogie on my spokes.

For months, I can’t walk down the street or use public transportation without being recognized. Many people take their cues from the same factless news reports. I can even tell which news sources a person tuned in to, by what they believe about me.

This is Boston, the same city that blew up Cartoon Network’s LED signs and a private firm’s traffic counter because the unidentified electronics weren’t well-labeled enough to prevent the bomb squad from thinking they might be a threat.

After ten months of slow-progress court proceedings, East Boston District Court finally drops the hoax device charges. I’m ordered to perform 50 hours of community service, avoid being arrested in Massachusetts for one year, and submit an apology to the people who almost shot me because they Star Simpson grew up in Hawaii and studied at MI T.

overreacted to the LEDs on my sweatshirt.

If I don’t, I’ll be charged with disorderly conduct, which is hard to defend, because it’s not necessary for the state to prove I intended to be disorderly, only that I behaved in a disorderly way. In the end, I choose to finish the court case at the first possible opportunity, because the ordeal has exhausted me.

I’m well aware that things could have gone much worse. To quote State Police Maj. Scott Pare at the press conference, “Thankfully because she followed our instructions, she ended up in our cell instead of a morgue.”

I’m disturbed by the idea that, with one hysterical phone call, the state can be set in motion to relentlessly persecute anyone. Especially in a town full of tech hobbyists. Also, the State of Massachusetts seemed unable to stop persecuting me, no matter what the facts were, once the wheels were set in motion. I don’t like what this means about the future.

Of the few hilarious side effects of the arrest, the funniest involves the 2007 International Symposium on Wearable Computers. All of my wearables superheroes (especially Leah Buechley, whose LED clothing project appears in CRAFT, Volume 01) were to convene for the symposium, held, by chance, in Boston. I was invited, and I was delighted to accept.

Only there was a catch. The venue chosen was the Hyatt hotel at Logan International Airport. The judge’s ban against my approaching MassPort property of course blocked my ability to attend the event. So, getting arrested both wholly created, and destroyed, that opportunity for me.

Many thanks go to my legal team of Tom Dwyer, Serina Barkley, and others at the firm Dwyer & Collora, to my parents, and to Tim Anderson, Hal Abelson, Gerry Sussman, Patrick Winston, Ken Manning, and everyone who knew better than to take the police and press accounts seriously.

Editor’s Note: Star Simpson wrote a how-to for making your own light-up sweatshirt at Instructables: makezine.com/go/starshirt.

48 Make: Volume 16