Empress Theresa: Chapter Five Analysis · 7:35pm Apr 10th, 2023
The excitement of the nuke is behind us now, so let's see what happens in the aftermath.
With absolutely no lead in, Theresa wakes up in a hospital with Prime Minister Peter Blair standing next to her bed. She correctly guesses that the secret of HAL is out.
Now, what would any of you do if you found out that you had been lying in a bed, legally and medically dead for two weeks? You might experience a spiritual or religious reawakening that affirms your faith in a higher power. You might realize how you’ve probably taken your life for granted before and start to really, truly appreciate the life you have now that you’ve almost lost it for good. You might almost die again from the shock of it! Not Theresa! Theresa wonders how famous she’s become because of it, and if anyone has said anything bad about her because of how famous she is!
Do you understand that!? She’s treating the fact that she escaped her own government’s attempt to Kentucky fry her with a nuke as if it was just some stunt to raise her subscriber count!!
The nurses remove some electrodes from Theresa’s forehead, and she hears a large crowd of people cheering somewhere. Perhaps Theresa is as schizophrenic as she thought she was back in chapter one? Or perhaps the hospital staff needs to get out more often if removing electrodes excites them so much.
Remember how Theresa was just in the South Atlantic? South of the equator? Now she’s in London. North Atlantic. North of the equator. That’s a long way to tread water when you’re dead. More impressive is how after two weeks after buying the farm, she shows no sign of decomposition. Not even discolored skin. We can only assume this to be the work of HAL, but it’s not made clear.
It turns out that the British government is now going to bend over backwards to provide accommodations to Theresa, including room and board, new clothes and free food, because she is so special. She then eats fish and chips to convey how little Boutin knows about English culture and how much he knows about English stereotypes. She’s become such good buddies with PM Blair by now that they can sit down and swap jokes with each other. Nobody’s jokes can be that good, but an unseen crowd laughs whenever Theresa makes a funny.
Hmmm…An unseen crowd cheers at Theresa’s triumphs and then laughs at her jokes. Has her life become a sitcom!?
Well, it’s time for the big show. It seems that Theresa’s lifelong dream of being loved by everyone in the whole, wide world has been achieved. Just to emphasize how special she is, there is a crowd big enough to fill a football stadium waiting for Theresa to make her first public appearance outside the hospital to cheer her on. If only they knew what kind of person Theresa was, they might have gone to watch a football game instead.
Theresa’s going to be on TV now! She’s a big star because it took a big number of hours to revive her, and people like that kind of drama! People are holding up signs that say ‘WELCOME’ and ‘HELLO.’ One says ‘COME TO IRELAND.’ (I can think of a certain Irishman I know who would fly a great big ‘FECK OFF’ for Theresa). Among them, Theresa sees a sign that says ‘SAVE US.’
What’s this? Intrigue? A mystery to be solved? A question to be answered? Indeed! Theresa wonders what’s going on instead of basking in her self-importance! Blair tells her that the winds around the entire world have come to a complete halt. And everyone knows that Theresa is the key to starting the wind again. Go, nameless college freshman! Redirect the flow of atmospheric pressure! You can do it!
Aww, but Theresa is so humble now. She just wanted to be a high school math teacher. (Theresa likes numbers. Go figure). But she is assured that she has a chance to teach millions more people something more important. How when the world falls apart, how you have to show the world what’s within you. Remember when Ginny showed up? Theresa put on a slutty dress and waited for Jack to come to her. I think we already know that Theresa is as hollow as her author.
They agree to televise Theresa’s story with a BBC montage so that the world will know about HAL and how important Theresa is. Theresa suddenly never wanted to be famous and that she never wanted to be on television, even though she seemed to revel in it when she was a star pitcher on the boy’s baseball team. Which Theresa is the real one? The smug, self-important attention whore, or the modest, humble girl from Smalltown, USA?
We get that answer almost immediately, and without a hint of self-awareness. The world is apparently on the brink of demise, and Theresa has gone shopping! She buys numbers of clothes in a number of minutes. Last of all, when she returns home, PM Blair has a green dress to honor her Irish heritage. In all seriousness, if you want to offend an Irish guest, presumptuously give them something green to wear. Or draw a shamrock in their beer.
For the first time since she’s woken up, Theresa is allowed to talk to her husband. He calls her, even though she didn’t seem too concerned about talking to him before. She doesn’t even seem to care, because she insists on waiting to talk to him in person as her BBC montage begins. What we can tell from this chapter so far is that Theresa is completely obsessed with herself. She wants to know how famous she is and if there have been any trolls talking about her when she wakes up from a coma, she goes shopping first thing after she learns about the impending doomsday, and now she cares more about watching a story about herself on TV than talking to her husband, who is probably worried sick about her after believing her dead for the last couple of weeks! Yet nobody calls her on this!
What happened before Theresa was abducted? The US president thought Theresa was a danger to the country and told Admiral Ruck (who?) to arrange her execution. Ruck was hesitant to kill a nobody from nowhere, but loyalty to his country made him do it. He learned how a bullet wouldn’t be enough to kill her, so he arranged for Theresa to be nuked. Everything was covered up neatly, even as her family seemed to put in minimal effort to find her.
An investigation of Theresa’s dorm room revealed that she had been concealing a large number of pages that are filled with mathematical equations, which she had codenamed ‘MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.’ The most brilliant mathematicians in the state are called to examine it, but Theresa is too brilliant for them to figure out what she was working on. And then a phony commendation from US president Martin is given for Theresa’s bravery in the face of adversity.
But what’s this? There was a microphone on Theresa’s jumpsuit that she was wearing when she was about to be nuked? And some of them took videos? So they could leak this information to the world? What treasonous pig did this!!? Who’s responsible for this debacle!!? That at least explains why Theresa has so many fans all of a sudden. Just shrug and keep going, people.
People are praising her for her incredible bravery around the world. Her quote from Tecumseh is so inspirational that people are going to make a movie about her. What about a movie about Tecumseh, huh? Those were his words that moved everyone. Where’s the justice!? I bet Tecumseh was a hell of a lot more interesting than Theresa ever was!
Hey, there’s Steve (Theresa’s husband, remember?) at a senate hearing! All he says is that he knew nothing about the alien living in Theresa, but Theresa is so amazing! Another segment has Father Donoughty talk about how amazing she is too, and how she’s a martyr! The next segment shows how PM Blair (with no proof or logic at his disposal) concludes that Theresa is the reason that the winds around the world have stopped, since it happened after her attempted execution.
The chapter concludes with President Martin resigning and making his defense secretary president, since the Vice President is sleeping at the moment. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be funny, or if Boutin doesn’t know the intricacies of such a system.
I wish I had a daughter as amazing as Theresa. I name her Theresa.
5722320
I wish I was as amazing as Theresa. Except it's unrealistic to think that anyone wouldn't have to earn such awesomeness.
I think the idea is that a Royal Navy vessel operating in the South Atlantic recovered her body. The Royal Navy do maintain a naval base in the Falklands. It is, however, nonsensical of them to have flown her body to the UK for treatment when there's full medical facilities much closer.
5723053
Falklands! Right. See, I knew about that, but there's no reason for the average person to retain that knowledge. And there's no point in the story that states that perhaps the RN sent a ship from there. The author is clearly working on the assumption that everyone who reads this would know that off the top of their head.
5723142
Precisely. All that would have been needed was a small section of dialogue to explain that. But I suspect Boutin expects people to know the story by osmosis.