How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the HAL (RB Vs. Empress Theresa, Chapter 12) · 4:37pm May 1st, 2021
Previously, on Empress Theresa:
A whole lotta math.
And now:
So, small correction: last chapter, I implied that Theresa and Steve were going to make an appearance before the United Nations. This was incorrect, and for that I must apologize. In reality, it's only Steve that's going. Thank you for your patience.
Also, Theresa ends the chapter by saying that Steve is grandstanding because it's his last chance to hold the spotlight, which is a pretty weird thing to say, adding once again to my pet theory that Theresa might actually be a narcissist.
Anyway, on to this chapter.
We open with Steve heading to New York.
Wait, just kidding, we open with North Korea bombing Theresa's water columns. These two events happen on the same page.
Theresa gets on the line with the PotUS. NK's launched a nuclear missile at the water columns in the Pacific. This is bad as, as was pointed out last time, the columns collapsing would knock out most coastal regions around the pacific, killing untold numbers of people. The book quotes it at one hundred million; I don't know how to fact check that number, so we'll just roll with it.
Theresa and the PotUS are worried about what will happen if the nuke hits HAL, who is still in the area supporting the columns. Which raises the question of why he's there, and how Theresa expects to raise more columns if HAL needs to babysit these ones, and how the one off Massachusetts is staying up if HAL isn't there, assuming it is still up, and—y'know what? We're just gonna move on. Point is, Theresa has four minutes to do something or things might get really, really bad.
“Arthur says get HAL out of there” I told the President.
“Then we lose a hundred million people?”
“Might beat the alternative.”
“How do you know HAL would be harmed?”
“I don’t.”
“A tough decision, Theresa!”
They come to the conclusion that saving HAL is more important that saving a hundred million lives in less than a minute.
Yes, I'm serious. Given the whole wind situation, it even makes sense, on paper.
Still. Scary conclusion for your future dictator to come to so quickly.
Now, I do want to point out, here, that HAL is made of dark matter (supposedly) and therefore shouldn't (or should only barely) interact with our 'light matter' radiation under the theories that Mr. Boutin brought up earlier. I guess Theresa and the author just forgot about that part.
Anyway, Theresa tries to come up with a way of getting HAL out of there without dropping the water columns. She has three minutes. She begins to cry. It is suggested that the North Koreans did this specifically when Steve was away to unnerve her.
With two minutes left, Theresa really gets down to business. She comes up with an idea that might make HAL stop, involving removing a tag number from her plywood board. Which raises the issue of how HAL will know that that has happened if he's in the Pacific right now, but that's unimportant. Maybe it's remote viewing. Who knows? Mr. Boutin didn't feel like explaining.
Theresa removes the number right as the missile detonates, vaporizing some of the water in the columns instantly and negating the issue of the water falling. She then replaces the number and the water starts climbing again, hitting the remaining water and creating rain.
It's never mentioned where HAL went in all of this, which was, I thought, the big issue. But whatever. We'll just assume he teleported. Which is a thing he can do, probably. This chapter has completely upended my understanding of how HAL was supposed to work, and we're only seven pages in.
Anyway, Theresa did it. Problem solved. Woooo.
We'll go over this more in the wrap-up, but I want to take a moment to talk about something: the idea that Theresa negates conflict.
When the conflict of the bomb is first brought up, we as an audience are given a question: will the bomb kill HAL, or will Theresa save HAL at the cost of a hundred million lives?
This is an interesting question. But we know the former won't happen; that would negate Theresa's World-Empress future. That leaves us with a new question: will Theresa kill a hundred million people, or will she find a third option?
The problem here is that we know Theresa won't screw up, because she can't. That would make her less than perfect, which is not what Mr. Boutin wants. He needs her to be what he considers a perfect role-model. She can't take a hundred million lives; that would ruin her.
And so we know it'll be the latter option, the third option, the one that sidesteps the moral dilemma, sidesteps the potential consequences of her decision, and leaves everyone safe and happy.
We also know it'll be Theresa who solves the problem, because she's the one who has agency in this situation. No one else is going to swoop in with a last-minute solution.
And, finally we know there won't be any real effort put in on Theresa's part. She'll think, sure, but in the end any grunt work will be down to HAL, and she faces no personal consequences. Nor will this effect her character in any way.
And so this entire scene is... pointless. It's filler. Mr. Boutin was worried we were getting bored and threw in a situation he hopes will up the tension and be more exciting, to get us re-engaged with the book. It's an action scene for the sake of an action scene.
But it doesn't work because we, as readers, know all of the above. And therefore there is no tension, because we already know how the scene will end.
And that's why Theresa's character is damaging to this book. Well, one reason, anyway.
Regardless, let's get back to the text.
Following these events, Theresa decides to stop the task anyway, having the water in the columns continue to rise into the atmosphere but sending no new water up, mitigating the whole tsunami issue.
Next, Prime Minister Blair shows up to explain why North Korea would do something so absolutely idiotic. The idea is that dropping the water columns would be devastating to South Korea, the US, and Japan. Why they thought this would not impact North Korea is a mystery (to me, not in the book). We are also told that NK could predict little retaliation for this action because the US is a 'humanitarian country', which... no? No, I'm pretty sure the US and most of the rest of the world would nuke the shit out of North Korea for doing way less than that.
They also thought blowing up HAL would bring back the wind. Which, let's be honest, it probably would, considering that wind is a natural phenomenon and the only way to stop it would literally be to stop it, but I digress.
Anyway, Theresa once again laments about her position and how she never asked for this, yadda yadda yadda. This also puts a wrench in her plan to fix the wind issue by raising a thousand water columns around the planet. What this would do ecologically to the the coastlines and ocean life is not mentioned.
Come to think of it, I wonder how many fish are raining down in Massachusetts right now.
Probably a lot.
Anyway, the world's leaders are treading on eggshells right now. Blair told them all that Theresa was upset at the previous events, and now they're worried about what she'll do in response. To quote Theresa:
I still had the power. Don’t piss me off!
Lovely.
Steve arrives in New York but decides to go back to London. He apparently has a plan.
Flash forward five days. Theresa has set up a pair of new tasks on a new piece of plywood. She starts the first, and soon there is a faint rumble audible in Britain. This is coming from the bedrock at the North Pole. Must be pretty loud, then.
Soon, the ice around the pole begins to break up. It ends up forming two concentric circles with a twenty-mile gap in between. I'm sure all this sudden movement is having absolutely no impact on the ocean surrounding it. None at all.
By noon, a mound of broken-up rocks has emerged from the oceans, forming around the two ice rings. I'm sure this will also have no tidal-wave sized consequences whatsoever.
There are gaps in each of the rock walls, which are one mile wide, and each wall is about five miles long. Then, the outer walls thicken outward, and the inner walls thicken inwards, which continues until each mound is half a mile tall and five miles thick.
These rocks are, I shit you not, there to stop tsunamis, ignoring that all this tectonic action has probably created several. Oh, and forget anyone actually living in the arctic. Did you know there are about four million people who live in the arctic? Greenland is probably underwater by now. There's also a few Russian bases up near the pole, which have probably become rubble. Hope there weren't too many people on them.
Y'know, some warning would have been nice, Theresa. Just saying.
Anyway, once all this is in place, she begins a new phase of her plan. She begins by raising four new water columns, three hundred feet wide. I'm not going to do the math this time. I think the point's already been illustrated.
Once the water hits a height of one thousand miles (see Eroraf86's comment), she does what she did before: she removes the tag from her plywood board. Immediately, the water columns begin to fall. The speed of the falling water in the atmosphere somehow causes it to turn to steam. Now, tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's not how that works. It would surprise me greatly if water droplets could vaporize at their terminal velocity, because, uh... well, because otherwise we wouldn't have rain. I'd expect more water to vaporize from HAL's lifting it than from it falling, honestly.
Anyway, all of this is just an experiment. It's successful! The chapter ends with the world wondering what Theresa will do next.
See you next time, folks. Enjoy your respite.
Because trust me: next chapter?
You'll need it.
I beg every ounce of your PARDON?! FIRST of all, the stratosphere begins at EIGHT miles above sea level; SPACE begins at SIXTY miles; a THOUSAND miles is well past mid Earth orbit. Oddly enough, given the stated height, the water vaporizing is actually the MOST realistic part of this scenario: if you're familiar with how thunderstorms tend to work, you might have heard of a microburst, which is essentially a blob of rain-cooled air that splashes outward when it hits the ground; the rain cools the air by evaporating as it falls, just as blowing on a spoonful of hot soup helps it cool down faster.
Of course, if the water was actually lofted into FREAKING SPACE, it would immediately start boiling away due to the low pressure; as the surface liquid boiled off, it would take excess heat with it, since evaporation selectively removes the molecules with the highest energy, thus cooling the remainder; and once enough water boiled off to sufficiently cool the remainder, it would freeze into a giant iceberg. If it was dropped before that happened, then you'd have over 900 miles of continuous acceleration under gravity, with no air resistance; by the time the water started feeling the atmosphere, it would be falling at about 5 km/s, which is about 60% of low Earth orbital speed. At that speed, while the water would indeed evaporate, it would very swiftly deposit all that kinetic energy as it rams into the air at hypersonic velocity, creating not just steam, but absurdly superheated steam, and quite possibly a significant airburst. I am not qualified to speculate beyond that, but suffice to say, this is a Very Bad Idea.
5510494
You are correct on the stratosphere. Noooot sure how I got that wrong; I would have had to both mix up the stratosphere and the thermosphere and lost a digit somewhere. Regardless, I'll fix it now. Although, I do have to point out that MEO begins just above Theresa's water column at 1243.7 miles, at least from the numbers I'm seeing. And I only know that because it's relevant in the next chapter.
Regardless, though, thank you for your expertise!
Less "what will the character do next" than "what will the author not bother to research next?" :B