2005 did not stop at one implant. On June 7, my family doctor put a Philips HITAG S 2048 into my right hand; on December 20, my girlfriend Jennifer got an EM4102 of her own. By the end of the year the household key count was trending toward zero.
The right-hand chip solved a problem the first one couldn't: security. The EM4102 is a read-only ID, fine in a personal context where an attacker armed with my tag data can do nothing unless they've specifically targeted my one-off systems. The HITAG S added crypto features and 255 bytes of storage, enough to build things like rotating one-time keys. For the install we used an Avid animal syringe: ejected the pet chip, loaded the HITAG, autoclaved the whole thing, and the doctor did the rest. It took about 30 seconds.
He wasn't wearing gloves, which is when I learned that standard exam gloves mainly protect the doctor from you, not the other way around; they aren't sterile anyway. Since he knew I wasn't carrying any infectious illnesses, he skipped them.
The HITAG S goes in
Jennifer was hesitant at first and had a lot of questions. But she watched me use the implants every day: no pain, no migration, no drama. She got curious, mostly because she wanted her own front door to work the way mine did. The moment she hinted she wanted one, I called the doctor. Her EM4102 went into her left hand in December, and we programmed each other's front doors for mutual access, a detail the press would soon find irresistible.
Jenny's implant
And yes, everyone asked: if things ever didn't work out, either of us could remove the other from the authorization list. Access control comes with an undo.