The screen showed photos of vibrant and diverse students in various states of discouragement at the microaggressions suffered at the hands of their oppressive teachers and classmates.
“Traditional STEM studies hold up as a virtue such patriarchal norms as ‘asking good questions,’ ‘capacity for abstract thought and rational thought processes,’ ‘motivation,’ so-called ‘independent’ thinking, and a relatively low fear of failure. This toxic masculinity deters women and other oppressed peoples who have different values and different virtues to offer from participating in STEM.”
Dr. Ames chronicled the many wrongs perpetrated by STEM studies and practitioners, from the “use of Greek letters that perpetuate the myth of the supposed deep European roots of mathematics,” to the “obvious hetero-patriarchal bias in awarding research grants to overwhelmingly white, male, STEM practitioners instead of language, philosophy, and women’s and cultural studies researchers.”
The screen juxtaposed white male researchers in shiny clean labs full of glittering equipment with more “diverse” academics in run-down, cluttered, dirty offices and workspaces.
“My scholarship merges cutting edge techniques from the frontiers of Women’s and Cultural Studies to create open, democratic classrooms, in which all students are free to flourish. Each student is unique, an individual snowflake, requiring the correct culturally inclusive pedagogy that shields them from harmful microaggressions and makes even historically underrepresented students feel welcomed.”
Dr. Ames continued to extoll the virtues of her modern approach to STEM education while the screen behind her showed happy, diverse, smiling students working together, holding vials of colored liquids, standing in front of blackboards with… high school algebra? I coughed to suppress a laugh as one of the images showed a young woman pretending to solder the wrong side of a circuit board while holding the iron on what would have been the heated tip.
“The only way to get sexism out of STEM is to get more women into STEM. But that’s not enough! It’s time to move beyond superficial numerical measures of equality. It’s not enough to have 50% women in STEM so long as STEM itself continues to poison the world with its toxic masculinity. We must change STEM itself!
“No longer can mathematics remain value neutral, educating our youth in ethics-free, absolutist thought. Math indoctrinates students that there are right and wrong answers. Math trains students in detached and calculative reasoning that disregards the contextuality of those with differing yet equally valid opinions. Math is a tool for the distribution of money, the very instrument by which we manipulate and cause vast disparities in wealth.
“The math we teach is littered with the symbols of oppression, punctuated with ‘greater than’ or ‘less than’ signs.
“In the future, there must be only equality!”
The crowd roared their approval.
“There are many champions of social justice at Georgia Tech. You’ve met a couple of them here today. Allies like Amit Patel, who bravely stood up for women and social justice. His provocative theory that systemic discrimination and cultural pressure are responsible for the disparities between male and female athletic performance is under contract to a major publishing house and will appear just in time for the holidays!”
The screen showed the cover of Amit’s book, Think Yourself Thin: The New Theory of How Expectations Shape our Bodies’ Reality. I noted the cover already declared it to be a New York Times Bestseller some four months before the scheduled release.
“And there’s Madison Grant, the intrepid young journalist whose Pulitzer-nominated reporting exposed both sexism and a Chinese spy ring at Georgia Tech!”
The screen showed Madison’s article in the Georgia Tech student newspaper, The Technique, still shots of Madison’s tearful interviews on CNN, and photos of her leading protests on campus.
“I’m pleased to announce,” Dr. Ames continued, “that forward thinkers in the Physics Department have merged the positions of the disgraced Professors Chen and Graf to create an Endowed Chair in Social Justice Studies in Physics. I will be at Georgia Tech starting this fall, directing the Social Justice Initiative and helping to lead Georgia Tech to a new era of tolerance, inclusivity, and equality! The era of bigotry, sexism, and racism is over! We will deplatform all the heads of the Medusa!”
The crowd went wild at Dr. Ames’ impending triumph over the reactionary forces of the hetero-patriarchal hegemony that thwarted her last year. Or something like that. On autopilot, I rose to join the herd in the standing ovation. Only then, did I realize the implications. Ames was replacing Gomulka. The Civic Circle was going all out to win the battle they’d lost last year. They were making a major, high-profile attempt to converge the campus.
The floor was finally opened to questioners who competed in gushing about Dr. Ames’ bravery and her courage at leading the charge to defeat sexism and racism at Georgia Tech. Finally, I saw Johnny Rice step up to the microphone. “How can you claim to be a champion of tolerance when you propose to deny a platform and silence anyone who disagrees with you?”
“If you tolerate intolerance, then intolerance becomes tolerated and tolerance dies,” Dr. Ames explained. “The one thing you can never tolerate is intolerance. You should educate yourself on the paradox of tolerance. It all follows from quantum mechanics.”
Dr. Ames stared smugly at Johnny. “Reality manifests itself in contradiction. That’s the lesson of quantum mechanics. The deepest truths appear to be contradictory to our limited minds. Niels Bohr called it ‘complementarity.’ When we reduce political axioms to deep contradictions, that’s how we know we’ve arrived at fundamental truths.”
Chapter 12: The Prisoners’ Dilemma
I caught up with Amit at a Civic Youth Workshop on Social Justice Convergence.
“The initial step of convergence is to demand inclusion in the enemy’s private spaces,” the speaker, a dreadlocked young woman from Berkeley, began, giving examples like women seeking access to men’s clubs.
Amit sat in the back of the room with me. “What’s with your friend from TAGS?” Amit whispered. “Johnny Rice?”
“The second step,” the speaker continued, “is to demand the enemy change their space to accommodate us.”
“I think Johnny got woke last night, in a good way.” I explained what happened.
“These demands inevitably cause resentment and frustration. The third step in social justice convergence,” the dreadlocked woman tossed her ratty looking hair, “is to demand the enemy stop harassing us because they don’t like our demands!”
“Johnny’s been chatting with the Civic Youth,” Amit said softly. “He explains how he wants to understand their diverse perspectives and then he ties them up in logical knots and exposes their contradictions. He’s driving them crazy.”
“Step four in social justice convergence is to demand new rules or laws to remove the enemy from ‘our’ space because they won’t fall in line with our vision for what the space should be!” Now our instructor was glaring at us for whispering in her talk. It was hard to pay attention, though, since we’d heard it all before from Gomulka. I pretended to be interested.
“In step five, you tell the enemy to get out. ‘Why don’t you go off and create your own space if you don’t like ours?’”
“We need George P. Burdell to reach out to him.” Amit whispered. I tried to figure out how we could accomplish this. I didn’t want to reach out to him at TAGS – it might be too obvious to link it back to me. We’d need to track Johnny down on campus once classes started in the fall.
“The sixth and final step in convergence is to demand the enemy not create their own space after we’ve kicked them out of what is now ‘our’ space.” I looked through the program. I’d noticed all the elite boarding limos and buses and heading back to the Jekyll Island Club Hotel after Dr. Ames’ keynote. There was nothing on the program about sessions or activities there, though. Another secret meeting? One to which even trusted Ci
vic Youth weren’t invited?
“You!” an angry girl grabbed my shoulder. I turned around. “How dare you stand me up?” It was Comfortable Shoe Girl. What was her name? I had completely forgotten about her after Amit and I were called away by Bernard.
“I’m sorry. I got called away by Bernard. Business before pleasure.” I smiled at her.
“You could have at least called or something,” she pointed out.
“I don’t have your number.” I opened a new contact form and handed her my phone.
She stood a moment, uncertain. Then she took my phone and entered her name and number.
Ah, Jessica. From Mount Holyoke. Now I remembered. “We’re heading for dinner, Jessica” I told her. “You can join us.”
She looked disappointed. “I’m supposed to be at a reception for Women in Media.”
“Some other time then.”
Amit and I grabbed a bite to eat.
“Not bad,” Amit rated my performance, “You got the number close, but never apologize to a girl. It makes you look weak and needy.”
“I really have too much going on to be trying to pick up girls.”
For once, Amit didn’t dispute me. “I have the evening free. Maybe I’ll head on to that Women in Media event.” He smiled. “Good luck tonight.”
I hopped the shuttle to the Jekyll Island Club Hotel.
* * *
“So, Mister High-and-Mighty’s finally gonna make an appearance,” Mr. Humphreys welcomed me back to the Network Ops room in the basement of the Jekyll Island Club Hotel. “What the hell happened to you? Last night, I got this call that you were fired, then this morning, you were ‘reassigned’ to be in the Civic Youth as an ambassador from TAGS.”
“There did seem to be some confusion on that point,” I acknowledged. “I figured I’d come by and see if I could help out.”
“You take the support line.” He shoved it my direction.
“Yes, sir.”
He wasn’t even trying to pretend he wasn’t in the middle of another of his online games. “I put in my full shift. I may be on call, but now that you’re here, I’m off duty,” he explained, noticing me noticing what he was up to.
“No problem. I got it covered.”
What I had in mind was going to be a bit tricky. Fortunately, it was a slow night. Everyone seemed to be attending alcohol-soaked parties, not agonizing over their Internet connectivity. I pulled up the network management software. I looked up the IP address for the router and wireless access point in the cottage reserved for the Bank of the Holy See.
I scheduled a firmware update for the router, pointing the updater to a random text file. That should thoroughly scramble the router. Then, I wrote a separate script to copy the log file and overwrite it just after the firmware update. Finally my script would erase itself. That ought to cover my tracks. I checked the timing. I had fifteen minutes.
“I need to get a cup of coffee,” I told Mr. Humphreys. “Want anything? I’m buying.”
“Get me a tall mocha. With whipped cream.” Heh. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist my offer.
I ran upstairs, squeezed my way through the crowd to the bar, and placed my order. I saw Rob looking immaculate in his servers’ uniform circulating through the crowd collecting trays of dirty glasses and dessert plates. I don’t think he saw me. I looked at my watch. I had a few minutes to spare. I took my time bringing the drinks back down to the network control center.
T-minus thirty seconds.
I walked in. “Here’s your tall mocha with whipped cream.” I handed him his drink.
Mr. Humphreys thanked me with an inarticulate grunt.
I glanced at my watch. Ten seconds… Nothing.
Did it work? I saw the connectivity light go yellow. I pretended not to notice, and got up to throw away the drink carrier. A minute later the connectivity light turned red, and an alarm started chirping.”
Mr. Humphreys glanced up at me, a frown on his face.
“I got it,” I acknowledged, silencing the alarm.
His attention returned to his online adventure.
Gee. Loss of connectivity to the Holy See Bank’s cottage. I tried a remote reset, which didn’t work because I’d thoroughly scrambled the firmware.
“I got a bum router,” I announced.
“Reflash the firmware,” Mr. Humphreys muttered, his attention focused on his game.
Oops. If I overwrote my garbage firmware with the correct firmware, that would solve the problem I’d just created. I should have thought through that contingency. I quickly made a backup copy of the correct firmware so I could undo what I was about to do. Then, I overwrote the correct firmware with my garbage firmware.
“What’s taking so long?” Mr. Humphreys asked.
“Checking the firmware update,” I lied. “Trying it now.”
I reflashed the firmware, and nothing happened because I’d just overwritten the original garbage file with the exact same garbage file.
“Still broken,” I announced. “I’ll run over there and replace the access point.”
Mr. Humphreys finally looked up from his game, a frown on his face. “Download the latest firmware update from the support site and try that.”
Yeah, that would also solve the problem I’d created. He wasn’t making it easy for me to complete my sabotage. I went through the motions of downloading the latest firmware and immediately overwrote it with my garbage file. Now, I was going to need to get the correct files updated to hide the evidence of what I’d done, but time was running out. I had to get over to the cottage. Naturally, the update still failed.
“Didn’t work,” I announced.
“Go fix it, then,” Mr. Humphreys grunted.
Finally.
I grabbed a spare router and the tool box in one hand, my coffee in the other as I headed out. The security guys at the door searched my tool box, and even looked inside my coffee cup. They were disturbingly professional.
The cottage was just a couple hundred yards away on Riverview Drive. I knocked on the door.
I waited.
I knocked on the door again.
Bulldog opened the door. “You,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Your Internet is down,” I explained, “and I need to fix it.”
He eyed me suspiciously.
“I really need to take care of this.” I held a finger to my lips. “Quietly.”
He glared at me a moment. Then, Bulldog let me in.
I pulled a big foil bag out of my tool box.
He got the idea, deposited his cell phone in the bag, and took the bag. “Follow me.” Bulldog led me to the living room. An old man looked up at us, raising an eyebrow. Bulldog held the foil bag out to him. The old man turned his phone off, removed the battery and placed it in the bag. He picked up a remote, turned on the TV, and cranked up the volume until it was uncomfortably loud.
“That’s not necessary,” I assured him. “I disabled the data connection to your cottage and all the surveillance gear runs through it.”
“Better safe than sorry,” he said softly, leaning toward me. I recognized the voice. It was Brother Francis, as I’d suspected. He turned to Bulldog with a gentle grin. “Please ask… Caitlin to join us. Immediately.”
“Be seated,” Brother Francis turned his attention back to me as Bulldog withdrew. “Now, is there anything you’d like to tell me before they return?”
I laid my cards on the table. “I need to speak with you about an opportunity to decapitate the Civic Circle.”
“Why ever would you want to do such a thing?” I could see the twinkle in his eye. “I understand you are a confidant of the Thirteen, and you’ve even met the Worshipful Master, himself.”
“You know perfectly well they killed my parents,” I pointed out. “You told me as much yourself not two months ago up in Chattanooga.”
Brother Francis nodded. “You have made a most remarkable use of your two months,” he said shrewdly. “In only two months yo
u have worked your way into a position in which you can rub shoulders with the Thirteen. I know many who have spent a lifetime trying, and failing, to accomplish the same. Only two months,” he repeated, his eyes looking right through me. “Amazing. Unless, of course, you’ve been working at it a bit longer. And have some help.”
Just then Bulldog and Perky Girl – Caitlin? – came down the stairs. Her hair was wet, and she was wearing a too-short green silk kimono. Our eyes met. She halted – her pale skin reddened as she adjusted the kimono to better cover her cleavage and crossed her arms in modesty. I noticed there wasn’t a ring on that finger as my eyes swept down to her exposed but well-toned thighs. I looked back up in time to see her eyes flash at me in anger at the impertinence of my gaze. Bulldog gently took her arm and pulled her into the living room.
Brother Francis smiled indulgently at Bulldog, “You could have let her get dressed, first.”
Caitlin glared silently at Bulldog then back at me.
“You said, ‘immediately,’ Boss.” Bulldog did actually seem a bit chastened.
“My apologies to you both. What’s done is done,” Brother Francis turned back to me. “Young Mr. Burdell here was just explaining how in a mere two months from discovering that the Civic Circle murdered his parents, he managed to work his way into the confidence of the Thirteen.”
“Yeah, we’d all like to hear about that,” Bulldog said, looming menacingly over me.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss my secrets,” I explained. “I’m here to explain to you how we can decapitate the Civic Circle tomorrow night. They will be meeting in their Inner Sanctum under the Sans Souci, next door to the Jekyll Island Club Hotel.”
“Just as you’re not at liberty to discuss your intimate luncheon with your charming associate Miss Ding Li in the Red Flower Pavilion of the Beijing Bistro earlier today?” Brother Francis asked.
They had a disturbingly accurate account of my day’s activities. “I am no more aligned with the Red Flower Tong than I am with the Ordo Alberti,” I assured him. “I am an independent actor.”
The Brave and the Bold Page 25
