(Okay, so this story has some legs, yet.)
It wouldn’t matter where he met with her.
Most of the refugee contract civilians had gathered in the camp from various sites across the huge valley and surrounding ridges because this was the largest and best equipped installation. The lone uniformed serviceman, a Navy lieutenant of all things, insisted he was only a DoD coordinator, and refused to assert any military authority. Aside from managing to gain a few air drops of support, his only role had been to suggest they congregate on this camp while their normal auxiliary functions were suspended. There were no troops around, so whatever they were doing was best done here, or whatever else they could find to do to justify keeping the contracts open.
Sadler vaguely remembered something about a Human Terrain project. It was a great idea poorly executed. The term fell from public notice, but the work went on. That is, “work,” defined as however much activity could be justified politically under congressional funding rules, continued with some of the same people. Most of them were exactly what one would expect from this sort of politically correct pet project nonsense. Most of the Human Terrain specialists were people adept at inflating their CVs to match all the unpublished, yet obvious, checklist items so as to force someone else to pay for their esoteric and useless research projects.
Candace King bore a PhD in Sociology. She seemed to Sadler somewhat competent despite that handicap. He typically ate alone, but she joined him at his table during the evening meal, professing a personal curiosity. In his mind, Sadler was pretty sure this interview was provoked by the usual busybodies who desired, but lacked the authority, to conduct a torture and interrogation session. He decided to operate on the provisional assumption that Ms. King was as close as the council could come to a psychologist, but gave her credit for having sufficient charisma to avoid any hint of coercion.
Besides, it was likely she was bored to tears, since all of them were restricted to the camp unless moving something like the air-drop freight inside the fence. Before the troops mobilized and went poof, Sadler had worked directly with uniformed staff and hardly encountered other civilians. They never needed to know anything about him. On top of this, he was probably one of the few in the camp who ended up doing exactly what he was doing before the troops left. His only real complication was dealing with an entirely new regime and milieu to go with his job.
When she approached with her food tray, he stood, but she insisted he sit down and not observe protocol. She went through the spiel, introducing herself and noting that he had offered some intriguing comments when talking with others.
He decided the best opening for this game was a move just short of the nuclear option. “Dr. King, I’m sure you are familiar with the concept of systemic bias?” His tone of voice ensured she knew it was a question.
This caught her just as she took a bite from her fork, so she simply nodded assent. He gave her time to respond verbally, but all she said was, “It comes with being black, Mr. Sadler.” Her grin indicated she wasn’t hypersensitive about the subject.
He continued, “I will assume you’ve seen my personal jacket. So the fulcrum of attention is my stated antipathy for Western Civilization?” She nodded assent again to both items. “You will have noticed my bachelor’s degree in business from a monster state university known for Liberal Arts. Getting that degree meant a broad exposure to courses outside my major. One of them covered the history and literature of Western Civilization. Furthermore, I was exposed to a good deal of comparative civilization studies. I aced those courses along with all the others, despite a ton of reading. With full confidence I suggest I know what Western Civilization means, so my dislike is not simply ignorance.”
She asked, “Is there some other you prefer?”
“Pick one. Even our predecessors, the Graeco-Romans, weren’t so completely Aristotelian. And while our civilization is a hybrid, the West follows Aristotle on one major issue: Not only does it reject the existence of a higher dimension, but asserts that there can be no such thing. No other civilization we know of had a problem with it.”
She clearly had not expected Sadler to offer such an academic level discussion. She took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. “So you object to the limitations of Aristotle’s world view.” It was a statement as she struggled to get her head around all this.
Sadler offered one of his rare grins, just a hint of one. “I’m a trans-dimensional.”
