Alexa Thinks about a Simpler Streak

Note to Reader: This story picks up shortly after the end of the earlier story "Alexa is Intrigued by a Streaker".

Thanks for reading!

One week after the event, Alexa was having doubts about the highly public striptease and naked walkabout she'd performed; not regrets, exactly - thinking about what she'd done that day never failed to excite her. The memory of her brazen behavior now provided her with go-to imagery when she felt like masturbating. What was troubling her was the realization that however exciting, what she had done had very little in common with what she had found intriguing in the first place about the female streaker whose appearance on a local TV news station had inspired her.

Where the televised streaker had seemed lighthearted, Alexa had been stressed out. Where the streaker seemed like she had been spontaneous, Alexa had planned out each tiny detail of her behavior. Where the streaker was clearly having fun, Alexa had been nervously following the rules she'd developed. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed in retrospect that the only part of her adventure which had truly been fun was her completely improvised interactions with the unexpected delivery driver and the passengers on a passing bus!

Alexa knew it would be difficult for her to emulate the TV streaker's apparently spontaneous approach to something as outrageous as running around while naked in public; by nature she was a planner, not the sort to just wing it, especially not about something as scary as streaking. From her research online about streaking's heyday on college campuses in the 70's, she remembered reading that a lot of people just got caught up in the excitement of seeing their fellow students streaking and suddenly found themselves imitating them. "Well, that's not about to happen anytime soon," she thought, "the woman on TV got me interested, but if I wanted to avoid planning all the spontaneity out of it I'd need some other sort of external prompt, something not under my direct control, to get me to suddenly drop my clothes and take off running!" Since she wasn't likely to happen upon other streakers to encourage her, and couldn't imagine what might work as a substitute signal to impulsively do something so rash, actual real-life streaking seemed to be part of her past, not her future.

With no expectation of actually doing it, thinking about what it might be like seemed harmless enough. Not having solved the problem of replacing the momentum seeing fellow students streaking could provide, Alexa began to think about other aspects of doing a typical streak, then realized she was on the verge of repeating the intense planning which had resulted in her previous naked escapade. To avoid turning any potential future streak into another tightly choreographed event, she decided to limit her planning to the most basic choices; location (her college), clothing (normal, no special outfit), timing (loosely, during her lunch break).

Since the college had canceled all summer classes due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and practically all businesses in the area were still shut down, the convenience store where she worked was still almost completely devoid of customers during her day shift; she hadn't had more than two customers in any one day in the last month, and most days she had exactly none. Given the negligible effect it would have on sales, Martin, the store owner, agreed that she could lock the store up and spend her lunch break somewhere else as long as she limited her absence to one hour or so.

With so little to consider in detail beforehand, Alexa was surprised at how quickly her comparing her own outrageous behavior to a more typical college student streak seemed to be leading her to consider actually doing what she'd begun calling a "Classic" streak! She took comfort in the fact that she hadn't figured out any sort of random replacement for seeing peers going streaking; without some external prompt to take the place of fellow streakers, she knew her tendency to overthink things would most likely make the experience more like work than the silly fun she thought it ought to be. "No danger of my getting naked in public again just to be following a script, even if it is one I wrote," she thought.

Alexa mostly filled her long, quiet days at work with reading books, but she needed some other diversion from time to time. One quiet Monday afternoon she was browsing the app store, looking for a good time waster of an app to download to her phone. She had been aimlessly browsing when a suggested app popped up and caught her eye. Called "The Randomaster", it was an all-purpose random item generator; capable of generating random numbers within a range the user selected, or randomly display a word from a user-defined list, or a card or multiple cards from a standard deck, dice, coin flips, or even a basic Yes / No choice.

She quickly grasped the potential for this app to set up a sequence of decisions based on randomly generated data. A sequence of the right data could be a signal to undertake a specific course of action, in this case streaking! This might allow her to react to external cues the way someone in a setting where streaking was common would react when seeing other people peeling off their clothes or already running around naked! "I probably should leave this alone," she said to herself, "but I'm curious to see how the app actually functions." She downloaded it and opened it.

Late that evening, after several hours of experimenting with the app's options and cracking open a textbook she'd kept from a statistics class, Alexa had developed a set of hurdles, all of which would need to be cleared in order for any streaking to take place.

1) Random number selection - The app generating a number between 1 and 20 (out of a possible 1 to 100) would represent the user (Alexa) seeing other people streaking or getting ready to do so, leading to the next hurdle.

2) Random word selection - The app generating a word (from a list created by Alexa) which might or might not be something within the usere's sight right then, wherever she happened to be at that moment. She would make at least a quarter of the words on the list be things likely to be present at a typical college quad, like ivy or sidewalks and the rest of the words not very likely, like porcupine or parachute. If the word randomly pulled from the list described something which WAS within sight, that would indicate she was being influenced by seeing other people streaking and was actively considering following their example! Leading to the final hurdle.

3) Random Yes / No choice - The app would display either a No, keep your clothes on and continue being a spectator, or Yes, take everything off as quickly as possible and go for a short run!

Alexa was pleased with the simplicity and decisiveness her three hurdle app setup possessed; the odds were stacked pretty heavily against actually leading to streaking any one time the app was used, but she thought that seemed appropriate; even at its most popular, it wasn't as if most people were doing it. She thought most students walked through the Quad at least 3 or 4 times a day; with that many opportunities, the three hurdles were likely to result in some naked foolishness on a daily basis!

Whether or not Alexa was inclined to take her chances trying out the hurdles herself was another matter entirely. She knew the odds of her ending up naked on the quad were slim, but not negligible, especially if she ran through the steps multiple times. Even the very slight chance she'd have all three functions of the app align and call for her to go running naked in such a public fashion and such a familiar place was enough to make her shiver whenever she thought about it.

Still, trying to duplicate the more whimsical nature which she believed to be typical of Classic streaking had become her goal; if she could combine the excitement being naked in public clearly held for her with a more playful experience, she'd feel like she had accomplished something worthwhile. She needed to know if placing her fate in the care of the app and its randomly generated choices would actually make the decision to streak feel less stressful, assuming it ever came to that.

Since she was supposed to only leave the store unoccupied for an hour, she decided that once the drive to and from the campus and time spent parking and walking to and from the Quad was all accounted for, she would have no more than 40 minutes available at the quad on any given day. She decided she would make an attempt to get through all three hurdles four times each day, setting her phone's alarms to go off at 12:10, 12:20, 12:30 & 12:40. She had thought she could add a fifth attempt at 12:50 but shuddered as she realized that though unlikely, it was at least possible that the time immediately after 12:50 wouldn't be available for her to drive back to work because she'd already be occupied, running around in the nude!

On Monday, May 11, Alexa ate her lunch in her quiet workplace around 11:30 to leave her lunch hour free for a visit to her campus, her first since in-person classes had been halted.

Having worked out the odds of her ending up naked on any typical four attempt day, Alexa had stayed with her initial idea to dress normally; her outfit was irrelevant, other than being reasonably easy to get out of in the unlikely event she somehow beat the odds and made it through all three hurdles. The faded jean shorts and t-shirt from a concert she'd been to a few years ago were not meant to stand out, but the shorts were short enough and the shirt tight enough that her presence strolling through the Quad was noticed by a crew of roofers working on top of Fortinum Hall. She noticed that she'd been noticed, and shivered a bit as she guessed that they were likely to be active there for several days. Kind of like her. "Oh, well," she thought, "a streaker at a spot like this has to more or less expect to have an audience!"

Not wanting to need to juggle a lot of belongings, besides her clothing she had only three items with her; her keys, her phone, and a paperback novel she'd brought to pass the time.

She was more than a little rattled by how close the first use of her app came to sending her streaking:

1st hurdle, Number: 18, leading to...

2nd hurdle, Word: window, leading to...

3rd hurdle Yes/No: NO, leading to...Alexa beginning to breathe again!

"Wow, that was intense! I really thought I might be about to get naked!" she thought.

The remainder of her first day of allowing her fate to be controlled by the app was uneventful, with all attempts failing to get beyond the first hurdle. She couldn't help feeling a bit disappointed, having been prepared to follow the final hurdle's verdict and go streaking if YES had been the word, but she knew that over a small number of tries the odds that she'd be keeping her clothes on were far higher than were the odds she'd be ending up naked.

Day two of her experiment found her still of interest to the roofers, and generally sharing the Quad with more people than the day before. She spotted a couple of her instructors in the groups strolling across the Quad, passing her spot on a bench along one of the main sidewalks crisscrossing the space. From what she overheard as they passed by, they were happy to be heading out to lunch after what sounded like a morning full of boring meetings and were dreading more of the same in the afternoon. When her 12:10 alarm sounded with the forlorn faculty members still trudging across the Quad she was surprised to find herself thinking how it would liven their day if she were to get past all three hurdles, strip quickly and jog past them! It wasn't in the cards, then or at any other point that day, as she never made it past the first hurdle, with all numbers generated being well above 20.

On day number three, Alexa wore a tank top and bicycle shorts, not because they were any more revealing, but just because they were at the top of their respective drawers. "Well, at least the roofers seem to approve," she thought while laughing. The day's other group of interest was a carefully spaced crowd of trainee RA's, hiking all around the perimeter of the Quad and making a few stops where their tour guide paused to point out some detail or another on the buildings ringing the large lawn. At her 12:30 cycle of the app she thought she might be about to become a new highlight of the tour, as the app showed a 9, followed by the word "Tree"; she nervously tried the Yes / No function, relieved to see NO come up on the screen. Relieved, but with a hint of disappointment, surprising but unmistakable! The 12:40 attempt didn't provide any suspense, a number 55 providing an anticlimactic end to the day's sessions with the app.

Thursday, day four of her experiment, found Alexa wearing a fairly conservative halter top and some seriously short Lycra shorts, not for the viewing pleasure of the roofers or anyone else, but simply to even out her tan lines a bit. As it turned out, the sight of her sprawled out on a bench was a welcome one for the college's football team, looking bedraggled after their first morning practice. When her alarm went off at 12:20, just as they were walking past her, she hesitated for a moment before opening the app. Embracing the random factors she had placed in control of her actions, her hesitation was short-lived. She pressed a button, beginning to shiver a bit as number 7 came on the screen. When the word "Bird" came up next she shuddered, her hand shaking as she asked the Yes/No function for the final decision. She couldn't have imagined this scenario before now, but knew her next actions, however embarrassing, would be decided by this random answer chosen by an app!

NO appeared on the screen; without thinking, she surprised herself by shouting, "Damn!" but accepted the decision the app had made for her. She was thankful she'd been held back just a moment later, as she heard one of the passing players call out, "Hey Alexa, I thought you'd graduated and were out of here!"

It took Alexa a minute to put a name to the face, her pulse shooting up noticeably as she realized she'd been on the verge of willingly stripping naked in front of not just the college's entire football team, but more importantly, had almost stripped in front of Jay Bonnoli. The same Jay Bonnoli who had graduated from her high school one year after her, and used to hang out with her younger brother! One different answer from the app and she could have forgotten about going to any high school reunions. Ever.

"No, I'm kind of in suspended animation," she answered, "I had a job lined up, but the pandemic did away with that, so I'm just killing time now, thinking maybe grad school makes sense," she answered, wondering if she was blushing as much as she felt like she was.

"Well, nice to see you. I almost missed you entirely, without my glasses you were just a blur until I was 10 or 15 feet away," he said as he started walking again to catch up with his teammates.

It surprised Alexa that the football team was even having practices; everything she'd seen in the news made it sound like their season was sure to be canceled. She felt a little bit sorry for them, but not so sympathetic that she regretted the app's decision to let her remain dressed!

The 12:30 and 12:40 cycles were mercifully dull, with neither round getting past the first hurdle. Thinking as she drove back to work about her brush with hometown notoriety, Alexa wondered if she shouldn't just quit before she really got into some kind of trouble. She decided to carry on with her experiment through the following week, but end it after that no matter what had or hadn't happened by then.

On Friday, the clothes at the top of the heap were a short sleeve button down chambray blouse and a slightly short black skirt with an elastic waist. She laughed to think that the extra time it would take to unbutton the blouse would be balanced by the time saved by how quickly the skirt could be removed! The knowledge that she wasn't likely to actually be called upon to get undressed allowed her to joke with herself about the slight chance it could happen.

As soon as Alexa arrived at the Quad she noticed a few new developments. A fairly large but portable set of bleachers had been set up in one corner of the Quad, and there seemed to be an open-air meeting of the business department faculty taking place near her usual benches. The meeting looked to be all the department's full and associate professors, not the adjuncts who had taught most of her classes. She did notice one professor she'd actually had a course with; Dr. Buncombe had also been her advisor. He noticed her as well, and excused himself from the people he was sitting near to come over and talk with her.

"Hello Dr. Buncombe!" she greeted him.

"Hello Alexandra," he replied, "I'm glad I ran into you. I was hoping to ask you if you've considered our MBA program, several of your instructors have told me you'd be a fine addition to the program."

"Well, no I haven't, not because I"..she began before being interrupted by the 12:10 alarm, saying, "Excuse me, this will just be a minute." She quickly hit the random number button, saw 67 on the screen and continued her conversation, "I hadn't planned on going to grad school, but now, with the job market being what it is, I probably should think about it."

The Professor and Alexa continued discussing her options, including the possibility of working as an assistant to Dr. Buncombe himself, talking long enough that the 12:20 and 12:30 alarms interrupted them; "Sorry, I need to deal with this, I'll just be a moment," she said each time, hitting the number app again and getting an 87 at 12:20 and a 33 at 12:30. The conversation went on until Alexa sensed the 12:40 alarm was probably nearing. She excused herself, saying needed to take care of something. They said their goodbyes and went in opposite directions, he back to his meeting and Alexa taking a seat on the bleachers. She had only been sitting a few minutes when the 12:40 alarm sounded.

"Might as well get this over with and get back to work," she thought, "not exactly an MBA level position, but at least the hours are flexible."

She absentmindedly hit the Number app: 19. "Hmmmn, okay," she thought as she hit the List app: BIRD. She looked around apprehensively; sure enough, she spotted a bunch of crows lined up on a power line! Now getting nervous, she paused a moment before pressing the button for the Yes / No app, looking around at her surroundings one more time before she committed to the scandalous behavior she now had an even chance of carrying out. She saw at least a dozen faculty members in one corner of the Quad, a few other clusters of 2 to 6 office staffers scattered around the perimeter of the space, and of course, the 8 or 10 roofers still overlooking the Quad from atop Fortinum Hall. "Not even considering anyone inside the buildings who might be looking out a window, looks like I'll have no less than 30 potential observers if the Yes / No app gives me the wrong answer," she thought, holding her breath as she pressed the button.

YES came up on the screen! YES!

Alexa felt a little dizzy but didn't hesitate, knowing that if she was going to do this she needed to move fast and not think about what she was doing. At all. Still sitting on the bleachers, she unbuttoned her blouse as quickly as her damned trembling hands were able to, then pulled her arms out of the sleeves. She set the blouse down on the space next to her, then pulled her skirt down, lifting her butt just enough to let the skirt slide past on its way to her feet. She had hoped by changing position as little as possible she might, for a little while longer, avoid having her increasingly outrageous behavior attract attention.