In Which RB Gets Angry (RB Vs. Empress Theresa, Chapter 22) · 5:06pm May 11th, 2021
Previously, on Empress Theresa:
Moses ain't got nothing.
And now:
It's time for Theresa and Steve to go back to America. Why they would want to go back is beyond me, but hey, it's their decision, not mine.
Remember Arthur, the Parkers' butler? He's been helping out a lot, so Theresa gives him a suitcase with ten million dollars in hundred dollar bills. Note that that's dollars, not pounds, so that's a mild inconvenience (where did they even get all these bills from, anyway?).
Steve returned to me and we took one last look around at the bedroom, and my work room where so much good had been done.
So much good, huh? Sure, fine, we'll go with that.
They thank the Parkers for their hospitality and they're off on their merry way.
Empress Theresa, the humble world saver and conqueror, the right hand of God, was no longer in their lives.
There could be no greater quote to demonstrate the continuing disconnect between Theresa's character and what the book wants us to think of Theresa's character. Did we mention how humble she is?
They rush through Heathrow through back doors and staff rooms and get on a plane. A public plane, I should specify, with the public on board. They have security guards, but, like, really? As soon as it gets out that you're on this plane, someone could shoot it out of the sky, and then where would you be? Even if you survived, no one else would. You'd have innocent blood on your hands! This plan is blatantly irresponsible, especially with how easy it would have been to get a private plane.
Anyway, all is going well, until suddenly everyone on the plane falls unconscious except for Theresa, including Steve. Theresa checks; he has no pulse. Keep that in mind.
Theresa theorizes that this may be HAL's fault; the last time they flew over the Atlantic, it was in her death plane. Looks like HAL remembered that. How unfortunate.
Theresa makes her way to the cockpit. The pilot and crew are, predictably, also dead. Or, well, Theresa keeps referring to it as 'deep sleep', presumably because she believes they'll wake up again, which they probably will. Granted, they'll probably suffer horrible brain damage, as the brain starts to die pretty quickly without oxygen, but you know how this book is.
Theresa doesn't know how to fly a plane, but it doesn't matter because most of the plane's sensitive electronics are dead. So are everyone's phones. This is because dark matter.
I'm not kidding.
I remembered something Steve said a few months back. He was talking about the deep sleep HAL put me in. “He put dark matter in you to hold your atom nuclei in place by gravity. But this wouldn’t work if electrons could move around. You would turn to soup. There was enough dark matter to keep the electrons from wandering around.”
See? Dark matter. No, it doesn't make any sense, do you even have to ask that at this point?
Anyway, the end result of this is that all the computer-driven electronics on the plane are dead, but anything else is fine, which is why the plane hasn't gone into a nosedive yet. Convenient, that.
Theresa gets mad at God. Then, she searches the cockpit for manuals on how to fly the plane. I was going to make a 'Flying for Dummies' joke here, but the book beat me to it. Point is, the technical manuals that she finds aren't helping.
Then a jet plane pulls up beside Theresa's 747. She realizes that everyone else must have realized that the plane was going off course and started panicking. And, well...
There must have been a lot of panic. ‘Theresa Hartley’s plane is missing!!!!!’
Five exclamation points, folks. That's a lot of panic!
Theresa goes back to the manuals. After a while, she finds the autopilot and turns it off, which is surely the right thing to do in this circumstance. Now having taken manual control of the plane, which I will remind you is a Boeing 747 and thus has a seating capacity of over three-hundred and sixty-six passengers who did not know they were getting on a flight with an unpredictable alien when they booked their tickets, Theresa begins to experiment. She makes small adjustments to the controls to figure out what everything does and how it works.
She then takes a break to think about a movie she once saw about Charles Lindbergh, and briefly fantasizes about how many people are at the airport waiting for her.
I know I just alluded to it, but can I take a moment to talk about how little regard Theresa is showing towards the lives of the other people on board the plane, including her own husband? She hasn't brought them up once during this entire thing, and has spent a lot of time thinking about herself and how unfair this all is. I know it's perhaps asking a bit much of a nineteen-year-old to show the level of emotional maturity necessary to consider other people in this sort of situation, but a little nod to what's riding on this scene, and whose fault it is, would at least give it some weight, and give us a reason to root for Theresa. Instead, we get none of that. As usual, this is Theresa's spotlight; there's no time to waste it on the common folk.
Anyway, after a while, another jet shows up and begins flying in front of Theresa's plane, beckoning her to follow it. I'm sure this is not normal procedure, but what's normal about a situation like this?
Theresa does so flawlessly, despite having no idea how to fly a plane, because of course she does. They descend a ways. The jet gets replaced by a propeller plane. They pass over a cruise ship.
Safe on their ship, most of them must have pitied me and my fellow passengers. But maybe a few of them were envious. When their cruise was over what would be worth remembering about it other than seeing me fly overhead?
That aside, er, aside, Theresa soon spots land: the tip of Long Island. She continues to follow the prop plane down. People on the boats below wave at her.
They just wanted to see me flying over which was likely to be the closest they could get to me.
Look how HUMBLE she is.
They turn to the left, away from NYC. Theresa is confused until she realizes they're going for a water landing. This is baffling to Theresa; she has apparently never heard of a pilot deliberately going for a water landing before. I guess she wasn't paying attention for the miracle on the Hudson back in '09.
Anyway, Theresa chickens out of this and flies over the landing strip they'd set up for her in the water. The prop plane leaves. Nice going, hero.
Why did they want me to do it?
I developed a theory. They didn’t know how skillful I was at controlling the plane.
You have literally never done this before. Stop acting like you know what you're doing.
Yeah, well, I’d been manipulating this plane for hours and I thought I was doing pretty good.
“I’m going to the airport! They can go to hell!”
Can you imagine if a real person in real life did this? In a 747? With hundreds of people on board? She literally just... decides she's good enough to actually land the plane! After flying it for like an hour! Against the wishes of the people trying desperately to help her! I... no! Just no.
How many pages are left in this chapter? Fifteen? Christ.
So she turns around and heads for the airport and lowers the landing gear. But, oh no! There are trucks on the runway! Hundreds of them! What are they trying to do, stop her from trying to land this plane with two hours of experience flying it and hundreds of people on board?
So, Theresa calls it off and starts to ascend—but she's doing something wrong, the plane isn't ascending fast enough. The Empire State Building is directly ahead of her. The altimeter reads 340 feet. Windows below are being blown out. She barely makes it through a gap in the skyline. She compares the damage she'd do if she crashed the plane to 9/11, because of course she does. Then she's past the river and into New Jersey.
She cries. How unfair this situation is! Fuck off, Theresa. You had every chance to have ended this in a safe manner, and your enormous ego forbid you from doing so. And now you have the gall to cry about how unfair it is? Go sit on a cactus and spin.
The prop plane is back again, by the way.
Theresa pulls herself together and makes a U-turn. She's heading back to the Atlantic.
I will now point out that everyone on this plane has had no pulse for over six hours, now, and are most assuredly not coming back to life. Not if this was the real world, anyhow.
Soon, she's back over the stretch of water cleared for her emergency landing. Good, now she can finally—
She U-turns again. She's going back to the damn runway. I guess the people on the ground realized that they had to give her what she wanted, because the tarmac is now clear of trucks.
Oh, and a crowd has gathered beside the runway. Theresa estimates it to about two million people. No, three million. No, everyone in North America.
She circles around again and goes in for the landing. The plane touches down. It stops two-hundred yards from the end of the runway.
“I can do anything!” I said out loud to myself.
FUCK. YOU.
Anyway, all's well that ends well. Everyone on the plane is fine. Steve is fine. Theresa is a hero for somehow solving the problem she herself caused in her negligence, AGAIN.
After a while, Steve and Theresa make it to a limo, and set off for West Point. The chapter ends, and THANK GOD FOR THAT.
Whew. That was a doozy, huh folks? I got genuinely angry there for a bit.
Just for a bit though.
See you next time.
Nothing more to be said about any of this, really. This has been the author's goal all along.
What the literal hell.