Empress Theresa: Chapter Eighteen Analysis · 5:45pm May 8th, 2023
This chapter opens with a surprising display of humility from Theresa, who admits that she is just an eighteen year old kid who doesn’t know what she’s doing. Based on everything that we know so far, this is only included because the author is trying to deflect criticisms about his perfect little brainchild. Theresa also admits that not doing anything can be a mistake sometimes. Come to think of it, don’t you think that a lot of her problems from earlier in the book would have been solved if she didn’t just sit back to wait and see what happened?
The American ambassador, Ambassador Fox, sends over four CIA agents to visit with Theresa, and Theresa tells them all about how HAL’s ‘grounding’ power works. This story would be a hell of a lot more interesting if Theresa would just use her power and we saw her trying to get the hang of it, but that would require effort on the part of the author. Let’s face the facts: Boutin is no Robert Ludlum.
Well, Theresa uses this power to catch several hundred terrorists over the course of a week. She’s also mining silver from space now so that she can mint more coins. Coins with her face on them, no less. Now she’s making billions more dollars. She once again rubs it in Jack’s face for picking Ginny over herself. As if Jack and Ginny have any bearing on her life after so much time has passed. She’s got the power to do it, so why doesn’t she mete out terrible punishments on them? Because she’d rather ruminate about them for the rest of her life, because doing anything about it would eliminate any reason to complain.
We’re then introduced to another new character. Khaled bin Azad, the Secretary General of OPEC. Even though we get several paragraphs telling us about him, we instead are told that President Stinson is going to be meeting with Theresa at a summit. Boutin tries to deflect criticisms about how Stinson did nothing but rely on Theresa to do anything by saying that she was building morale. None of us are convinced, however.
The discussion at the summit is about how OPEC, in their infinite greed, wants to make Theresa into their personal puppet to make them more money. This is in direct contrast to Theresa’s plan to bring more carbon to Earth so that everyone can switch to driving electric cars for free. (I’m not kidding. That’s the way it’s explained in the book). There’s a whole lot of political and economic jargon that Boutin clearly doesn’t understand how to use in context or how such things work, so the scene becomes a huge muddle of talking heads. What we can glean from it is that Theresa plans to raise the sea floor of the Caribbean for easier access to drill for oil, just in case there’s an embargo on carbon. Does this seem smart to anybody reading this?
Remember Azad? He had his own secret OPEC meeting, and now demands that the US release the terrorists that have been ‘grounded.’ Here, the terrorists are referred to as ‘freedom fighters.’ He also demands a ransom of ten billion dollars and the return of Israel back to Palestine. As if any of these demands are in any way reasonable. But if their demands aren’t met, OPEC will withhold their oil from everyone else.
Steve’s got a lot of crazy ideas, doesn’t he? He’s got a new one, that goofy kid. After a thoroughly boring exposition that would make an earth science teacher cry, we learn that there may be an enormous, unknown oil field between Africa and Antarctica. Theresa maps out the area of the seabed that she’s going to raise up and sends out the word to evacuate everyone who lives in that area, since she doesn’t care about who gets caught up in the destruction. There’s our savior, people. Callous and homicidal.
The next morning, Theresa is told that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Scherzer, wants to meet with her. Theresa has a meltdown over more people wanting favors from her, and is taken to lunch to calm her down. The lunch scene wasn’t even worth mentioning, as we are then taken to PM Blair’s house, where PM Scherzer is waiting to meet with Theresa. Too much dialogue is espoused about nothing until we get to the real business of keeping Israel safe from its enemies. Theresa has a couple of plans. The first of which is to move Israel completely. Plan B is to raise an island from the sea and declare it the new land of Israel. And you thought Steve was the only one with goofy ideas.
Let’s talk about why this doesn’t work. The land where Israel now resides is considered the land that was promised to them by God, according to the beliefs of many devout Jews. To leave that land and call another land Israel would be blasphemy. Not kosher. A real schmuck. But it seems like PM Scherzer thinks that the rest of the Israelis are okay with leaving their holy land. But maybe it’s okay, because the island that Theresa plans to raise is in the shape of the Star of David!! How condescending can an author get!?
Scherzer has an additional request to move Jerusalem itself to the new island, just so it won’t be taken by anyone else. Theresa believes that she can easily do that. Scherzer also says that the design of the Star of David isn’t very practical and takes a stab at his own design. It’s described very abstractly what he makes, but it appears to be a series of L’s that meet at one end. Kind of like a…I don’t know…swastika!!! Real fucking nice. Boutin fails hard at an attempt at some kind of dark comedy and just comes off as even more racist than he did before.
The final part of the plan is to raise a land bridge from Israel to the new island, which is somewhere in the North Atlantic. Scherzer is satisfied with the plan. Especially with the contingency to create twenty-four hour daylight to deter any assassins who might be after his people.
This entire chapter was nothing but a gigantic virtue signal for Boutin about how much he cares about the environment, how much he hates Big Oil, and how much he supports Israel. And it’s all done as a way to deflect criticism of his book. Because if people knew what a good person he was, nobody would have a bad thing to say about his book. This is the thinking of somebody who never matured past sixth grade. He clearly wants to be as loved and revered as Theresa is in the book. But the problem is that Theresa is a thoroughly unlikeable character, just as Boutin is completely unlikeable as a real person.
That’s it for this one. See you Wednesday.
The Israel plotline in this book is absurd. If OPEC is such a problem, why doesn't Theresa just detach Israel from the rest of the Middle East and float it away, then put another bit of land in its place and call that Palestine?
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That would make much more sense than what she ends up doing. But there aren't any biblical parallels in such a sensible (such as it is) plan. And if there are no biblical parallels, Theresa can't be compared to God. Although I pointed out in the previous analysis how she's actually more like Satan.
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Theresa being the Antichrist would make for a far more interesting story. If HAL is a demon, that would explain a lot of her behaviour-why she reacts to things in ways no human would.