Escape Artists

Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on December 07, 2013, 09:41:20 AM

Title: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: eytanz on December 07, 2013, 09:41:20 AM
EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos (http://escapepod.org/2013/12/06/ep425-boy-zaquitos/)

by Bruce McAllister (http://mcallistercoaching.com/)

Read by John Chu (http://johnchu.net/)

--

The Retired Operative Speaks to a Class

You do what you can for your country. I’m sixty-eight years old, and even in high school—it’s 2015 now, so that was fifty years ago—I wanted to be an intelligence analyst . . . an analyst for an intelligence agency, or if I couldn’t do that, at least be a writer for the United States Information Agency, writing books for people of limited English vocabularies so they’d know about us, our freedoms, the way we live. But what I wanted most was to be an analyst—not a covert-action operative, just an analyst. For the CIA or NSA, one of the big civilian agencies. That’s what I wanted to do for my country.
I knew they looked at your high school record, not just college—and not just grades, but also the clubs you were in and any sports. And your family background, that was important, too. My father was an Annapolis graduate, a Pearl Harbor survivor, and a gentle Cold War warrior who’d worked for NATO in northern Italy, when we’d lived there. I knew that would look good to the Agency, and I knew that my dad had friends who’d put in a good word for me, too, friends in the Office of Naval Intelligence.
But I also knew I had to do something for my high school record; and I wasn’t an athlete, so I joined the Anti-Communist Club. I thought it was going to be a group of kids who’d discuss Marxist economics and our free-market system, maybe the misconceptions Marx had about human nature, and maybe even mistakes we were making in developing countries, both propaganda-wise and in the kind of help we were giving them. I didn’t know it was just a front for Barry Goldwater and that all we were going to do was make election signs, but at least I had it on my record.
Because a lot of Agency recruiting happens at private colleges, I went to one in Southern California—not far from where my parents lived. My high school grades were good enough for a state scholarship, and my dad covered the rest. It was the ’60s, but the administration was conservative; and I was expecting the typical Cold War Agency recruitment to happen to me the way it had happened to people I’d heard about—the sons of some of my dad’s friends. But it didn’t. I went through five majors without doing well in any of them; and it wasn’t until my senior year, when I was taking an IR course with a popular prof named Booth—a guy who’d been a POW in WWII—that I mentioned what I wanted to do. He worked, everyone said, in germ warfare policy—classified stuff—at Stanford; and I figured that if I was about to graduate I’d better tell someone, anyone, what I really wanted to do in life: not sell insurance or be a middle manager or a government bureaucrat, but work for a civilian intelligence agency—get a graduate degree on their tab maybe—and be an analyst.


(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP425__TheBoyinZaquitos.mp3)
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Cutter McKay on December 08, 2013, 12:48:25 AM
Well, I'll kick this one off with a solid, "Meh". Not that the story was bad, I did enjoy aspects of it, but there was a lot that bugged me. I really like the way the MC developed so many ticks and phobias over the course of his military career all based on the horrific things he did. And I appreciate that the MC went to all the trouble to save the kid and his family. It's an interesting character quirk that makes him save this one boy over the thousands he's about to kill, so that aspect of the story was well done.

I didn't understand why this retired operative was confessing to a classroom of students that he was responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. I mean, he says that the government isn't trying to shut him up because it's all old news so no one cares anymore. Well, no one may care that this top secret information is being released, but I'm pretty sure people are not going to just brush off the fact that this guy straight up murdered thousands. Sure, it's the military, sure it was covert ops stuff decades ago, but it wasn't war time. These deaths aren't casualties of war, they're murder. Why in the world would any school teacher ask a mass murderer to speak to their students?

Really, it's not the events of the story that bother me, but the framing of it. If the MC was speaking to the class as a confessional or something, like he's there to talk about being a corporate exec, or a CIA recruit, and then he unloads all of this stuff out of the blue, then I could see it. But as it's set up, he's there specifically to talk about his experiences as a CIA operative spreading disease in the name of government control. That just doesn't sit right with me.

The other thing that bothered me with this one was the narration. Not that John Chu did a bad job, he did a very excellent job reading this story. I just didn't feel like his voice fit the character we were being presented with. I mean, the first line says he's sixty-eight years old. John sounds like a teenager. So already I'm thrown off trying to picture this gruff old CIA agent with a kid's high-pitched voice. Not to mention the fact that John, to me anyway, sounds Asian. (Admittedly that might be due to the fact that the only other stories I've heard John narrate were for Asian characters, and young ones at that, and he did a great job with them.) I'm not saying there's anything wrong with sounding Asian, don't read that the wrong way. But the character in this story wasn't Asian. So having him sound Asian really contradicted the down-home American boy we're presented with. And I found that distracting.

So overall, though I liked some of the aspects of this, I'm not likely to promote this one or even remember it in the near future.  :-\
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Dyalos on December 08, 2013, 09:28:30 AM
" I'm pretty sure people are not going to just brush off the fact that this guy straight up murdered thousands"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOCYcgOnWUM

http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/05/who-is-stanley-mcchrystal/201850/

http://forcechange.com/22425/demand-accuracy-in-casualty-reporting-for-drone-strikes/



Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: matweller on December 09, 2013, 02:42:22 PM
Yeah, I wasn't going to mention any of the recent actions for fear of seeming to push my political agenda, but we have a LONG history of economically and militarily terraforming countries to suit our purposes (see most of South America) no matter how much death of innocents it causes or how poor the results prove out to be in the end. Not to mention the casualty list of innocents from drone-bombing in Pakistan is now in the hundreds and racing to the thousands.

It happens.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Max e^{i pi} on December 09, 2013, 03:16:57 PM
I mostly agree with Cutter on this one.
The story was very well told and I enjoyed watching the character development, but... it was a little weak. I can't put my finger on exactly what made it weak. Maybe it was the setting, like Cutter said. Maybe it was an author trying to do something he shouldn't have, like we heard at the very end, after the Daikaiju. Maybe it was a combination of factors.
Also yes, John Chu read it very well, with all the right inflection and tone. But his voice was just wrong for this piece. Wilson Fowlie or Nobillis might have been a better choice.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: matweller on December 09, 2013, 04:09:16 PM
4th wall info: It was John Chu or no episode this week. He did brilliantly and turned it around in 3 days.

Listener criticism: Nobody complained when Mur read all-male pieces, which suggests to me that while it's nice when a narrator's voice matches the main character, we should also be able to divorce storyteller from story and just listen to the writing.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Max e^{i pi} on December 09, 2013, 04:28:25 PM
4th wall info: It was John Chu or no episode this week. He did brilliantly and turned it around in 3 days.
Didn't realize that. All props to John for super fast narration work and to Mat for what must have been a hectic and difficult episode to produce.
Listener criticism: Nobody complained when Mur read all-male pieces, which suggests to me that while it's nice when a narrator's voice matches the main character, we should also be able to divorce storyteller from story and just listen to the writing.
When Mur reads an all-male piece it's just someone telling me a story, and there is no problem divorcing the storyteller from the story.
But in this case it was someone standing and telling his story, the story of his life. It was first-person written, and presented as a lecture of someone telling his story, not someone just reading a story. However well john read it (and he read it very well) , it just didn't feel right. His voice was too youthful and lacked a certain world-weariness that would have made the listening experience even better.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: matweller on December 09, 2013, 07:01:26 PM
Actually, I concur, I was just being something of a snotty Devil's advocate. I would have done it myself if I hadn't already been in too many episodes recently.

It's always a bit of a tug for me. I tend to take in stories from a more distant perspective than most that allows me to ignore such things as the narrator's timbre or even plot holes, but it also means that I sometimes gloss over things that affect other people in the audience more directly. That being said, I do sympathize. I pretty much abandoned ST:Voyager on the second episode because Janeway's voice annoyed me so much, and I hate that because I know it's a well-done show. And don't even get me started on anything containing Fran Drescher or anything where Joey Lauren Adams has to cry… :P
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Max e^{i pi} on December 09, 2013, 07:08:29 PM
I would have done it myself if I hadn't already been in too many episodes recently.

Oh yeah, why didn't I think of that? I can totally hear Cpt. Dyllan Pike telling this story...  ;)

Also, there's no such thing as too many episodes.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: matweller on December 09, 2013, 07:41:35 PM
I would have done it myself if I hadn't already been in too many episodes recently.

Oh yeah, why didn't I think of that? I can totally hear Cpt. Dyllan Pike telling this story...  ;)

Also, there's no such thing as too many episodes.

Ego stroke noted and appreciated. I try not to make it my personal performance venue... ;)

It would have been a little grimier than Pike, though. More like:
http://pseudopod.org/2011/04/08/pseudopod-224-the-horror-of-their-deeds-to-view/ (http://pseudopod.org/2011/04/08/pseudopod-224-the-horror-of-their-deeds-to-view/)
or
http://pseudopod.org/2010/01/29/pseudopod-179-fading-light/ (http://pseudopod.org/2010/01/29/pseudopod-179-fading-light/)
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: olivaw on December 10, 2013, 02:57:36 AM
Nasty. Pretty much everything about the story is nasty. The actions, the reactions, and the passive lack of reactions. The narrator's sob-story, and his pseudo-heroism. The kind support he gets afterwards, to get over it all and build a life having murdered thousands. Nasty, nasty, nasty. Just what a story like this needs to be.

Do we need a story like this, in a world where conspiracy theories abound, and government spooks are blamed for everything from HIV to autism? Where 'Bush / Obama / Blair / Cameron is evil' is the easy answer to every geopolitical problem?
I don't know. It's not the kind of story I'd seek out, anyway. But I'm glad it was so well-written.

And well-read as well. I don't think the voice came across as young, in particular. It was careful, perhaps cautious, perhaps affecting some naivete, which might be traits of youth, but might also be traits of someone who has somehow blotted out emotionally the enormity of what they have done, and is being very careful to handle the subject with some distance, to avoid unpicking those mental barriers.

Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: InfiniteMonkey on December 10, 2013, 05:31:06 AM
Also yes, John Chu read it very well, with all the right inflection and tone. But his voice was just wrong for this piece. Wilson Fowlie or Nobillis might have been a better choice.

I wouldn't say he was "wrong", but he didn't conjure up anything Robert Ludlum-ish. Knowing he's an Asian-American, I pictured a bespectacled, rolly-polly young man, like the kid in Up all grown up (no one would suspect him!). Again, I don't think he was bad. He just made the character even less threatening that he makes himself sound.

(And now I'm wondering what it would sound like with Norm Sherman....)

And that's partly a feature of the story. The narrator just doesn't come across as all that dangerous - in fact, he's a little neurotic.

As for the story, while I appreciate the emotional reality of the narrator's transformation, I just think the use of an epidemic to destabilize a government like that is more than a little stupid. It's far too indiscriminate.

Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: laurasbadideas on December 10, 2013, 08:57:24 AM
I liked the narration. The character was written as someone whose emotional development had stopped (or, at least, stopped progressing forwards and started moving sideways) when he was a fairly naive Establishment kid in the 1960s. The narration reflected that, even though it didn't sound like the physical voice of a 68-year-old man.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: PotatoKnight on December 10, 2013, 04:26:05 PM
I thought that John did a great job reading it and intended to come here to say so. I appreciate the effort the podcasts go to to match narrator to story, but I don't think that does or should mean that every reader is "acting" as the narrator. The youth of the voice tied the piece closer to the action of the time period where the story is set than to the coda, and that's a good thing.

Knowing that he turned it around at the last minute makes it all the more impressive.

I'm in the camp of folks who consider this piece very effective in the discomfort it inspires, and terrifyingly believable. The narrator's motivation--to serve his country and not out of jingoism or politics but because the US is an experiment in good government--felt very real to me and was consistent with both his willingness to perform his tasks and his need to push back when something triggered him personally.

It raises questions for the audience that that the character doesn't really ask--like at what point does the US lose its grand experiment status (even if we grant that it has that status to begin with). You could imagine an idealist in the narrator's shoes seeing the things he's asked to do as a betrayal of those ideals, or you could see that idealist going the other way and believing fully that it was necessary for the good of the cause, however distasteful. The narrator takes neither path. Rather, it's just "the way things were done" a fact of the world almost devoid of moral character. It's a strength of this piece that it manages to present a person who is the more-or-less proximate knowing cause of thousands of deaths and the even more proximate cause of a family surviving and and the end it's hard to qualify him as a good or bad person. It's a lot truer than the morality stories usually present when they tackle this kind of issue.

This story raises a lot of interesting questions beyond the one we most often address in these comments (was the story good?).  The one I'm turning around in my head is--in the narrator's position, what are the possible choices we would call moral or ethical?  Did he have a good option?
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Unblinking on December 10, 2013, 05:19:07 PM
Didn't care for this at all.  The character didn't feel like a real person to me at all.  I cannot fathom what kind of person it would take to do this in the way that he did it.  He did not feel malice, nor rabid patriotism, nor hate.  He stated himself in the interview that he felt like he was a part of no country because he felt empathy towards people from other countries and he seemed to really mean that since he tried to take back the wrong-sounding of it and he didn't strike me as conniving in the way it would take to fake that flub.

I couldn't fathom how this character could knowingly be okay with becoming a plague vector and indiscriminately killing thousands and thousands of people, people who he would be in direct contact with.  (as opposed to someone ordering a military strike who will never be on the ground, for instance) It was interesting that he developed phobias and OCD tics from doing this, but really I had a lot of trouble drumming up any sympathy for his anxiety when he is causing widespread and indiscriminate and painful death wherever he goes. 

His rescuing of the boy and his family were good, I guess, in the sense that he wasn't completely inhuman, and to that family it did make a huge difference.  But it seems like he is touting this as a "look what a good person I am" moment, when he has done so much to contradict that at every step along the way.  "The plague vector with a heart of gold" the movie poster might say.

I agree that the framing device didn't make a lot of sense either.  And why 25 years for the silence clause rather than lifetime?

There were just so many things that didn't make sense in the character as explained to me.  To me, this story had the feeling of propoganda.  I mean, clearly it has its message, and I'm not saying the message was bad, but to me the message seemed to undermine the storytelling, like watching a propoganda movie where everything is obviously tuned to come out to an exact outcome the author wants to preach about.

I thought John Chu did fine as a narrator.  He did sound younger than the character, who would ideally have sounded older, but I thought it was fine.  It is a little harder to separate voice from character in 1st person story, but still possible.  In my mind, it was no different from 1st-person male-character stories that Kate Baker reads on Clarkesworld (which are a little disconcerting if she nonchalantly mentions she has male bits halfway through the story but not too bad).  And good on him for coming through on such short notice.  I was also glad that none of the dialog in the story had the stilted, awkward, cadence that has made some of his other narrations hard to listen to.

Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Cutter McKay on December 10, 2013, 05:46:28 PM
" I'm pretty sure people are not going to just brush off the fact that this guy straight up murdered thousands"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOCYcgOnWUM

This is interesting, but not really applicable to my point because this all happened during wartime with Japan. Yes, the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people is deplorable, but their country chose to go to war with the US.

http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/05/who-is-stanley-mcchrystal/201850/
Again, not exactly applicable because, though their detainment and torture is certainly wrong, these are select military targets, not hundreds or thousands of innocent bystanders.

http://forcechange.com/22425/demand-accuracy-in-casualty-reporting-for-drone-strikes/

Now this is one is similar to the story and just as deplorable, but my complaint is not that these things don't happen, I know they do. My issue is with the framing of the the telling of the MC's story. He's speaking to a classroom of students. We aren't told the age group or study of the students, could be high school, could be college, could be CIA recruits. Whatever the setting, this would be the equivalent of asking one of those drone pilots to come and speak to a class about how many innocent people he killed in the name of the mission. That's what I don't like about this story. It's not his actions during the mission, I know that kind of crap happens every day, it's the fact that he is calmly addressing a room full of students and explaining his actions with no remorse. Sure, he's developed some neuroses from the events, but at no point does he say he regrets his actions. The story doesn't focus on those neuroses, instead it tells us how he managed to work through them and live a happy, normal life after being a mass murderer. Are we supposed to celebrate him? "Congratulations Heir Himmler, I'm glad you can sleep comfortably at night..."

4th wall info: It was John Chu or no episode this week. He did brilliantly and turned it around in 3 days.

And I commend John for his work and ability to come through in a pinch. As I said, his narration was solid. And I appreciate what you did, Mat, to get the job done so we have a story to complain about. :P  Thanks for all you do.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: DerangedMind on December 10, 2013, 06:15:28 PM
I think I felt the same way about this story the way I did about some TV shows, such as 'Oz'.  I found the story well written, well produced, and well narrated.  But I found it disturbing.

I think one of the things I found disturbing about it is that I couldn't rule out the possibility that the government would actually use bio weapons in that way if they thought they could could get away with it. 

Quote
And why 25 years for the silence clause rather than lifetime?

Normally information is classified for a 25 period.  But like others, I was surprised that he would be so openly talking about it like that.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: PotatoKnight on December 10, 2013, 08:16:12 PM
On the issue of openly talking about it, this is a case where the date the story was written might be relevant. He's speaking in 2015, which is close enough to our present as to be non-future. But the story was written in 1993, almost immediately after the end of the Cold War and 20 years ago. It would be a reasonable assumption that US intelligence actions during the Cold War would be no more a secret or object of shock by now than similar acts during WWII were by the early 90s.

I also didn't get the sense either that he exactly got the text of his speech vetted. My guess is that the context is that a high school (my guess is high school since he starts out talking about held in high school) got wind that there was a guy who had been an intelligence operative during the Cold War and had him speak. He just took it from there. Nothing he has to say is classified, so the government doesn't really have any way to legally silence him. It's not far-fetched that a high school would invite him to speak to a history class or something--I remember Vietnam vets talking to my high school.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: El Barto on December 11, 2013, 12:30:07 AM
Disturbing news today (12/10/13) "Madagascar village hit by bubonic plague" -- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25324011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25324011)

Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: ElectricPaladin on December 11, 2013, 05:00:20 PM
I found this story deeply unsatisfying, but I'm not sure if that's a bug or a feature. You see, in my mind, the main character's deeds require what amounts to a deep psychosis. A towering sociopathy. I am not convinced by arguments like "national security" and "indoctrination" and "just following orders." This man was a terrorist, a sick and twisted person. The intelligence leaders who gave him these assignments were sick and twisted people. I know there are arguments against this position, but it's the one I find most compelling.

As a result, I found the arc of the story a little too pat. We didn't get a clear idea of what led this young man down this dark path. There was no damnation by degrees. There was just "hey, you want a job murdering tens of thousands of innocents? It's got great benefits." "Sure, where do I sign!" Normal people don't do that. Healthy people don't do that - at least, not until something - or many small things - happens to them to make them unhealthy. I found his redemption at the end a little too easy - "I got some therapy, rose in the ranks of a pharmaceutical company, and now I'm a happy, healthy family man!"

That said, maybe that's the point. Maybe the point of this story is that there are these soulless sharks swimming among us, that not all of them are mad dogs that we recognize and - hopefully - lock up or put down after they slice up a few hookers or rape somebody. Some of them are normal-seeming red-blooded American boys. Some of them are in national security. Some of them are CEOs and elected officials.

Like I said, maybe it's a bug, not a feature.

Or maybe the author and I have radically different ideas of what makes a "compelling character" or a "normal, decent person," and as a result this story just wasn't for me.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: PotatoKnight on December 11, 2013, 07:39:21 PM
You see, in my mind, the main character's deeds require what amounts to a deep psychosis. A towering sociopathy. I am not convinced by arguments like "national security" and "indoctrination" and "just following orders." This man was a terrorist, a sick and twisted person. The intelligence leaders who gave him these assignments were sick and twisted people. I know there are arguments against this position, but it's the one I find most compelling.

I strongly disagree with this assessment.  I don't think there is anything unusual or sick or twisted about the character when he starts--it's the horror of what he's done that damages his psyche.  I believe many people of ordinary moral firmness and sanity with his motivations would do exactly what he did. And, of course, that's exactly what's so terrifying.

The character believed in the United States and wanted to serve it. It was the Cold War, and many people believed that the United States was subject to  grave threats. Our character is of mediocre intelligence and high motivation so when he's given a chance to help out he says yes. He belives that there is no quitting, that like the Mafia he is in for life.

And what he's asked to do doesn't seem horrible, really. Crack a tooth, touch some doorknobs. Cough a few times. It's not like he's getting blood on his hands or watching people die. And the disease he's spreading is totally curable. People are going to die because the drugs won't get there in time because the Agency will see to that. But he didn't do that. He just did what he was told by people smarter than him that he trusted.

Now, in terms of consequentialist ethics, none of that really matters. People are dead and he knowingly took actions to kill them.  But in terms of human psychology, all this is essential. All the psychological factors that tend to make people go with the flow are brought to bear on the narrator. The evil seems distant. A respected authority told him what to do and that it was necessary. His personal responsibility is diffuse. If you read about the Millgrim experiment, or the concept of diffusion of responsibility, it becomes clear that it is shockingly easy to get ordinary people to do objectively horrible things by applying these psychological factors. And our narrator is no doubt selected for the job in part because he's not exactly a deep thinker.

But the story isn't called "the thousands of dead in various lesser-developed nations." The story is called "The Boy In Zaquitos."  The moment this story is built around is the mediocre guy with (ironically, given his job title) little sense of agency and a pile of nerouses finally snapping and doing something he wasn't told to do. What changes? This boy reminds him of a boy he once knew, or a child he might have.

Again, in terms of raw utilitarianism, this is nonsense. Why should it matter what this one kid looks like?  But humans react to people we see as "like us" in a profound way.   The compelling thing about this story isn't that the character is a sociopath--he's not (a sociopath wouldn't be torn up by the work like the character was and certainly wouldn't save the boy).  The compelling, and terrifying, thing about him is that he's normal.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Sgarre1 on December 11, 2013, 08:28:57 PM
The banality of evil!
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Cutter McKay on December 11, 2013, 09:17:53 PM
The compelling thing about this story isn't that the character is a sociopath--he's not (a sociopath wouldn't be torn up by the work like the character was and certainly wouldn't save the boy).  The compelling, and terrifying, thing about him is that he's normal.

As I said earlier, I don't so much have a problem with the events of the story. My complaint is with the framing of the story. He's sitting there calmly describing these murderous actions to a group of (presumably) high schoolers. He shows no signs of remorse for his actions. I get what you're saying about him being led blindly into the terrible acts because he's not too bright and just following orders. But it's 40+ years later. In retrospect, does he feel nothing for his actions? No guilt? No remorse? And what kind of high school teacher would ask a man to come speak to a class about these heinous crimes?

I also didn't get the sense either that he exactly got the text of his speech vetted. My guess is that the context is that a high school (my guess is high school since he starts out talking about held in high school) got wind that there was a guy who had been an intelligence operative during the Cold War and had him speak. He just took it from there.

And this would make sense if it seemed to me like he was getting this off his chest, like he just couldn't keep it in any longer. The theory that his speech wasn't vetted, and he was just going off the cuff, would work if he got up to speak, started talking about the cold war, then stopped, got misty-eyed or something, and launched into some deeply disturbing confession about what he really did. And by the end tried to say something to the effect of, "I know what I did was evil, but at least I saved that boy. Right?" As it is, there is no remorse in hindsight for his actions, so I have to agree with EP that he is a psychopath.

I can't help but think this story would have been much more compelling if it had just been told as it happened. Rather than the framing story where the MC is looking back on the events, what if we had just been told the story as he experienced it? Then we could have seen his transformation, and the development of his neuroses, and his emotions as he struggled to save the boy. Presenting it as the speech 40+ years later as it is serves only to distance me from the action and the emotion of the story. I think that's what has killed this one for me.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: laurasbadideas on December 12, 2013, 10:29:43 AM
I get what you're saying about him being led blindly into the terrible acts because he's not too bright and just following orders. But it's 40+ years later. In retrospect, does he feel nothing for his actions? No guilt? No remorse?

He had years of "therapy" to help him deal with that. I imagine the agency shrinks he went to were more interested in helping him rationalize his actions and maintain his unquestioning respect for authority than in encouraging him to examine his past and get in touch with his true feelings.

And what kind of high school teacher would ask a man to come speak to a class about these heinous crimes?

He mentions his sons are almost grown up, so I just assumed he'd signed up to speak at career day at his kids' high school.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: silber on December 12, 2013, 11:11:21 AM
Wow that was gritty!  I really enjoyed this one.  I just listened to Mcallister's story "Hero: the Movie", which was awesome, over at Drabblecast and am impressed by this author's range.  Would love to hear more of him on the show.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: littlepossum on December 12, 2013, 12:03:35 PM
It feels that there is something in this story about the evil normal people are capable of and the way we use rationlisation, avoidance and the rejection of personal responsibility to deal with the guilt.
I think that despite his claims of declassification that this little lecture to the highschool is another thing the agency hadn't expected him to do.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Dyalos on December 12, 2013, 01:21:09 PM
Whatever the setting, this would be the equivalent of asking one of those drone pilots to come and speak to a class about how many innocent people he killed in the name of the mission. That's what I don't like about this story. It's not his actions during the mission, I know that kind of crap happens every day, it's the fact that he is calmly addressing a room full of students and explaining his actions with no remorse. Sure, he's developed some neuroses from the events, but at no point does he say he regrets his actions. The story doesn't focus on those neuroses, instead it tells us how he managed to work through them and live a happy, normal life after being a mass murderer. Are we supposed to celebrate him? "Congratulations Heir Himmler, I'm glad you can sleep comfortably at night..."

Sadly I've seen many such lectures in my life, "BookTV" frequently features book tour presentations from just such people, and West Point academy, military think tanks, and many similar institutions use these lecturers as objects of unwholesome study in international relations, especially from foreign operations like Mossad or the former KGB.

"These days, there is a profusion of CIA memoirs. And lots of controversy surrounding them.":

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-06-04/local/35461165_1_cia-spymaster-john-kiriakou-publications-review-board

To provide a more "applicable example" for you, per the specifications put forward, here is a reportedly grim and vivid drone pilot who expresses no explicit remorse beyond "feeling sick":

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/23/us/drone-operator-interview/

and here is a picture of him lecturing college students after he was invited to do so by the University of Montana:

http://www.montanakaimin.com/news/article_b7f7e638-abe2-11e2-9eb9-001a4bcf6878.html
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: El Barto on December 13, 2013, 02:14:44 AM
I did not like the story at all.  It was fantastically unbelievable.  I cannot imagine that the CIA would recruit some normal young kid to become a mass murderer.   If something so horrific ever happened it would be someone they could trust implicitly, wouldn't it?  Some middle aged guy with no family?  The way this story just skipped over that huge point seemed crazy to me.  We did not get to see anything about how or why he was willing to do this other than the lecture about how America must survive for the good of the world.

Also, I did not care for the narrator's smug self-congratulation for not killing one kid while he murdered everyone else around him.  How is what he did any different from walking around executing tens of thousands of people with a gun?  What he did was arguably much worse because it caused huge numbers of agonizing deaths. 

Also I thought the fact that he was speaking publicly about it to be crazy.  What he did was a crime against humanity sanctioned by a government.  The story would have been much stronger had it ended with him being caught, exposed, and the rest of the world nuking his home country to end the experiment.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: evrgrn_monster on December 13, 2013, 03:25:21 AM
I'm going to have to side with Cutter; I, too, had a huge problem with the framing of the story. It didn't make a whole lot of sense that this would be a speech given to a school. I have had my fair amount of Vietnam vets come speak at my schools, and a few even went into details of the deaths that they seen and even caused. However, that is nowhere near the same magnitude of what this man did. He passively murdered many, many civilian innocents, which cannot be brushed away as just an outcome of the horrors of war. The story itself was alright, but the framing killed it for me.

Actually, the story did bother me a bit, in that I wanted him to be punished for being weak and letting so many people die when all he had to do was not bite down. In fact, him rescuing that one boy and his family actually infuriated me; it allowed him a release from his responsibilities. He could look back at all the death and illness he rained upon nations and see this one instance of mercy he decided to act out upon and go, "Hey, I wasn't so bad now, was I? Look what I risked to save this poor, freckled boy." Granted, that may have been the point of this story - this character doesn't seem like someone I'd want to pity or feel compassion towards, and since I left feeling disgusted with him, mission successful?
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Devoted135 on December 13, 2013, 09:26:56 PM
Well, that was disturbing! I agree with PotatoKnight, he seems to have been able to rationalize his actions with "following orders" and doing "everything he could" to avoid infecting people at home. High motivation and low intelligence, indeed! To me, this is a brilliant exploration of what people are capable of, even if it can only provide one possible snapshot in the end. This is in spite of the framing device, which I agree is contrived and detracts from the core of the story.


I cannot imagine that the CIA would recruit some normal young kid to become a mass murderer.   If something so horrific ever happened it would be someone they could trust implicitly, wouldn't it?  Some middle aged guy with no family?  The way this story just skipped over that huge point seemed crazy to me. 

Actually, this was explained in the story. Only a person with a very specific biology would be able to be a carrier of the disease without actually succumbing to it. That's why they initially rejected him but later re-recruited him after they had run the blood tests.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: El Barto on December 13, 2013, 10:47:26 PM
Actually, this was explained in the story. Only a person with a very specific biology would be able to be a carrier of the disease without actually succumbing to it. That's why they initially rejected him but later re-recruited him after they had run the blood tests.

I did understand that the kid had the right biochemistry to be able to be a carrier and that made them want him.   But the author never explained (to my satisfaction) how they were able to convince a nice college graduate to become a mass murder just like that -- with relatively little drama.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: SonofSpermcube on December 15, 2013, 04:45:47 AM
I mostly agree with Cutter on this one.
The story was very well told and I enjoyed watching the character development, but... it was a little weak. I can't put my finger on exactly what made it weak. Maybe it was the setting, like Cutter said. Maybe it was an author trying to do something he shouldn't have, like we heard at the very end, after the Daikaiju. Maybe it was a combination of factors.
Also yes, John Chu read it very well, with all the right inflection and tone. But his voice was just wrong for this piece. Wilson Fowlie or Nobillis might have been a better choice.

I think it was how the tone of the presentation didn't match the emotional development of the character in his own narrative.  And I don't mean the way John Chu read it.  It's like "oh hey, let me tell you about a career option you might not have thought of and by the way here is how it nearly destroyed my soul, anyone want to know about the benefit package?"

It wasn't awful, but it probably would have been better told straight, without any framing. 
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Unblinking on December 16, 2013, 03:09:55 PM
I think it was how the tone of the presentation didn't match the emotional development of the character in his own narrative.  And I don't mean the way John Chu read it.  It's like "oh hey, let me tell you about a career option you might not have thought of and by the way here is how it nearly destroyed my soul, anyone want to know about the benefit package?"

Well said.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Jen on December 16, 2013, 03:16:17 PM
I agree with PotatoKnight - "terrifyingly believable" sounds about right. I can't imagine someone just deciding "yeah, I guess I'll become a mass murderer!", but I am sure those people do exist and there are other people in power, somewhere, who could decide to use them... this is what makes the story so scary. I can't say that I exactly *enjoyed* it, but it made me think, and it made me ignore all the flaws pointed out in this thread.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: albionmoonlight on December 17, 2013, 04:02:28 PM
I think that the author had some sense of the tension that we are recognizing with the "how could anyone agree to do this" questions.  I think that's why the story contains the part where the examiner perks up when he hears the narrator talk about not really having a country.  If someone was TOO patriotic or TOO driven to do "good for America," then he might not be able to handle the assignment.  The story mentions how the participant before the narrator could not hack it.

I think that the narrator was the perfect choice to be this kind of weapon, both because of his psychological makeup and because of his natural immunity.  And, to the extent possible, the story tried to show us this.

Also, very timely story as more and more leaks come out regarding the NSA and the sense that those in charge will do whatever they think is necessary to protect and serve their country.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: SonofSpermcube on December 17, 2013, 05:09:03 PM
Disturbing news today (12/10/13) "Madagascar village hit by bubonic plague" -- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25324011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25324011)



shut

Down

EVERYTHING
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Moon_Goddess on December 17, 2013, 07:04:56 PM
Disturbing news today (12/10/13) "Madagascar village hit by bubonic plague" -- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25324011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25324011)



Lucky.... Best way to win is to be lucky enough to start in Madagascar.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: CtrlAltLee on December 18, 2013, 08:19:32 PM
This story is going to stay with me for a while.  I could easily see it happening in an alternate timeline. The way the narrator just gets to walk away and  live a prosperous life with everything anyone could ever want materially while his victims lose all of their tomorrows make it even more upsetting. There's no absolutely no justice, but the narrator is so earnest and self-loathing it was hard for me to hate him for it. Especially knowing that's the way it goes in real life so often.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: davidthygod on December 19, 2013, 12:18:29 AM
I really like the concept of how he becomes an outdated weapon, so he is just sort of retired and noone cares.  We have better ways to implement our biological warfare agenda, so go do whatever you want now.  As he tells his story, it feels like a document that is unsealed after a period of time.  He talks to this in the story as well, but it strikes me as more realistic the way it works here, than all of the over the top movies and stories where they have to kill everyone remotely involved so the secret doesn't get out. 

I liked the whole story, it was a great commute distraction.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Jompier on December 19, 2013, 04:25:13 PM
I agree with PotatoKnight - "terrifyingly believable" sounds about right.

Likewise. Setting aside the issue of how the story is framed (i.e., career day speech? something else?), it had a truly horrifying believability to it. I could hear and understand the twisted logic of using a human as a vehicle of biological warfare. If someone shoots a canister of something into an area and it starts emitting a mist of some sort, I would think I would back away. But a person, I wouldn't think anything of it.

As to how the character was brought on to do this work, I had no problem here either, why wouldn't it be easier to recruit someone who desperately wanted to be an operative, enough to go through with interviews at which he knew full well he had no chance succeed. He was mentally vulnerable and open to suggestion of any way that he might be of help and the mechanism of help (i.e., spreading infection) seems to work because it distances the main character from the destruction he brings about. It's like when we have a cold and we think nothing of touching doorknobs, countertops, and maybe even shaking hands, all the time running the risk of passing the cold along.

Good story. I ended up buying McAllister's Dreambaby as a result.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: danthelawyer on December 23, 2013, 07:59:46 AM
I have to agree with Cutter across the board, including (I'm sorry to say, given his heroic stepping in) Mr. Chu's narration. I have to add that I thought the story was terribly predictable, and really quite boring. I was glad to be doing other things while I listened, because I was just sort of biding my time till it ended.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: SonofSpermcube on December 24, 2013, 09:01:12 AM
I think it's clear that the protagonist is supposed to be a pretty boring guy. 
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Pi Rho on December 26, 2013, 05:27:04 PM
Only just got around to listening to this one and was compelled to join the forum so that I could comment. I really did not like this story for two reasons; the narration and the science.

My dislike for the narration is different than everyone else, I do not care about voice fitting character or anything like that really. My issue is that I feel a narrator ought to at least take the time to properly pronounce words and if they are not familiar with a word then they should make some effort to familiarize themselves with it.

Throughout the story I had to listen to the word Yersinia mispronounced Your-a-sen-ya and it drove me utterly batty. Now yes, I understand that sometimes Latin species names can be difficult and had the story been about Caenorhabditis then I might be a bit more forgiving but Yersinia is really straight forward, it sounds like it looks: Yer-sin-i-a

Secondly, the science... Maybe I am being overly nit-picky because I am a microbiologist but for me a good sci-fi story pays attention to the science behind the story. Granted it may require some suspension of belief but it does not require you to completely forget that there is some level of fact behind your science. Now I am not asking for the author to provide a graduate level course on bacterial pathogenesis in the story but it would be nice if he were able to give something more than a botched/butchered Wiki regurgitation that allows the author to make a human into a bio-weapon through a ridiculously roundabout manner when a much easier, and successfully proven, ages-old method would have accomplished the same thing for pennies on the dollar.

These things combined just ruined the story for me.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Fenrix on December 27, 2013, 06:15:38 PM

My dislike for the narration is different than everyone else, I do not care about voice fitting character or anything like that really. My issue is that I feel a narrator ought to at least take the time to properly pronounce words and if they are not familiar with a word then they should make some effort to familiarize themselves with it.


If you stopped to read the things up-thread, due to technical difficulties, the narrator was brought on board at the last moment and delivered a narration in three days under a schedule pressure. While I agree perfect pronunciation would be the optimal solution, we were not operating in optimal conditions.


Secondly, the science... Maybe I am being overly nit-picky because I am a microbiologist


maybe...


...when a much easier, and successfully proven, ages-old method would have accomplished the same thing for pennies on the dollar.


Which ages-old methods of covert operations would you have employed? Is destabilization through covert genocide completely unbelievable?
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Listener on January 02, 2014, 01:19:10 PM
Story: The framing part felt more science-fictional than anything else. The rest of the piece was pretty much "the US engages in biological attacks so they can get favorable-to-them economic/social change", which sadly isn't really fictional. I was driving from GA to NC at the time, so I figured I would stick the story out, but normally I would've skipped it. The ending didn't really hit me that hard, mostly because I've used that technique before in my own writing: guy does something that affects thousands, but doesn't make a change until it affects one.

Narration: This was probably my favorite of Chu's narrations that I've heard across the casts.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Pi Rho on January 03, 2014, 04:47:35 PM
Apologies for the delay, I only just returned from holiday

If you stopped to read the things up-thread, due to technical difficulties, the narrator was brought on board at the last moment and delivered a narration in three days under a schedule pressure. While I agree perfect pronunciation would be the optimal solution, we were not operating in optimal conditions.

I had read up-thread and I can recognize there was a time crunch. However, I disagree that that is an excuse for the mispronunciation of a straight forward word. There is nothing confusing or difficult about Yersinia, it sounds exactly how it is spelled and so the adding and subtracting of phonemes by a professional narrator just hits me wrong.


Which ages-old methods of covert operations would you have employed? Is destabilization through covert genocide completely unbelievable?

This was not really genocide as the goal was not to wipe out an entire people, just spread enough chaos to result in destabilization. And I never said that a government performing destabilization was improbable, as it is rater factual. My grief is that spending ungodly amounts of money to find a "Typhoid Mary", training them in covert ops, engineering a tweaked strain of Y. pestis and then repeatedly sending out this animated bio-bomb is too unbelievable when the alternatives are easier, cheaper and, from the point of the government interested in causing havoc, more deniable.

The best way to spread things like this is to use the means nature/evolution put in place. The author goes to great detail to describe how the agent is supposed to start these plagues in the areas where they would most likely spawn, it would be much easier and more effective to release plague infected rats or fleas into these areas and let the natural order of things take its course than to rely on pseudo-secret agent humans. The rats and the fleas are better vectors and do not have the problem of conscience. In the same manner, medieval Europeans and ancient Chinese used to fling infected corpses (human and animal) over castle/fortress walls during sieges to great effect. If we go back to your comment about genocide, I would cite for you one of the ways by which the Europeans decimated the Native Americans; they did not use white men infected with smallpox but instead passed out blankets inoculated with the virus. Cheap, easy and significantly more believable for spreading a plague than "False-tooth Frank" the (not-so) super spy...

Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Fenrix on January 03, 2014, 09:21:52 PM

My grief is that spending ungodly amounts of money to find a "Typhoid Mary", training them in covert ops, engineering a tweaked strain of Y. pestis and then repeatedly sending out this animated bio-bomb is too unbelievable when the alternatives are easier, cheaper and, from the point of the government interested in causing havoc, more deniable.


If we accept that the narrator is reliable, the operative was planted as a journalist for a socialist newspaper. I'm pretty certain that his paychecks weren't coming straight from the feds. If bureaucrats are good at anything, it's covering their asses, so they would be able take this socialist wing-nut writer who has major personal space issues and cut him loose with an comfortable amount of deniability. Brand him as part of the colander-hat crowd and assassinate his character and you'll be fine. 


The best way to spread things like this is to use the means nature/evolution put in place. The author goes to great detail to describe how the agent is supposed to start these plagues in the areas where they would most likely spawn, it would be much easier and more effective to release plague infected rats or fleas into these areas and let the natural order of things take its course than to rely on pseudo-secret agent humans. The rats and the fleas are better vectors and do not have the problem of conscience. In the same manner, medieval Europeans and ancient Chinese used to fling infected corpses (human and animal) over castle/fortress walls during sieges to great effect. If we go back to your comment about genocide, I would cite for you one of the ways by which the Europeans decimated the Native Americans; they did not use white men infected with smallpox but instead passed out blankets inoculated with the virus. Cheap, easy and significantly more believable for spreading a plague than "False-tooth Frank" the (not-so) super spy...


Have we seen any biological warfare programs that use vermin as the vector? As I recall, these plagues also have a high casualty rate on the vermin carriers. So there is no easy manufacturing in some US lab and then getting them through customs to turn them loose. I'm not sure I'd count smuggling infected vermin across borders as easy. Nor would I count setting up a covert bio lab somewhere in the country and staff it with folks to manufacture the plague and infect vermin and release them. Ballistic deployment of infected corpses is neither subtle nor easily deniable. I'm not seeing a compelling scenario that's both easier and more deniable.

If we were talking about a culture other than American, you might be able to build a case for something like an infected suicide bomber, who instead of being strapped down with explosives is packed with disease. But suicide attacks tend to be anything but covert.

I'll grant you that introduction of European diseases had an apocalyptic effect on native populations. However, if you want to cite organized genocide by whitey (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1088/did-whites-ever-give-native-americans-blankets-infected-with-smallpox) make sure you take into account that there are not a large number of primary sources that support the position, and there has been some problem with "academics" falsifying and exaggerating the scale of active and malicious participation (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/plag/5240451.0001.009/--did-the-us-army-distribute-smallpox-blankets-to-indians?rgn=main;view=fulltext). Is all this just part of ongoing cover-up or is it part of another compelling fiction?
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Scattercat on January 04, 2014, 03:49:27 AM
Just because the smallpox blankets weren't a standard method doesn't mean they weren't attempted and didn't work.  Lord knows the U.S. army has tried more hare-brained schemes than, say, dropping a box full of fleas in an isolated area.  (The firebomb bats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb), for instance.  Or the trained dolphin "assassins."  Yes, neither of those ended up actually *working* per se, but it's far from implausible that fleas and rats would be used, and the point about them being both cheaper and easier to deny is valid.)
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Varda on January 04, 2014, 01:42:50 PM
You guys! Obviously, the solution is to let everyone commit mass murder in his or her personal unique and individual way. Pi Rho can release the plague fleas, Fenrix can try out the false tooth thing, Scattercat can hand out comfy smallpox blankies, and I'll keep on leaving doughnuts in the Escape Pod lounge to encourage the obesity epidemic.

The important thing, though, is that we kill all humans. Let's never lose sight of that goal.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Fenrix on January 04, 2014, 02:17:32 PM
Screw the tooth. I've watched Dune and know that works. Just know who you're breathing on.

I want bat bombs! Imagine what our Godzilla movies would look like if the bat bomb development had beaten the nuke out the door. And the cold war. Oh the possibilities!
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Varda on January 04, 2014, 02:33:01 PM
I had to Google "bat bomb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb)" but, boy am I glad I did. Holy crap. In the spirit of epidemics, can we make them rabid bats?

What none of you know is that this story was actually part of Escape Pod's CIA Recruitment Partnership Program. The story is purposely implausible to generate a lot of brainstorming about how we'd do it better, and the person with the best plan will be selected to go finish off that rather tenacious kid in Zaquitos they've been having trouble with.  ;)
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Myrealana on January 15, 2014, 03:49:22 PM
I just wasn't wild about this story. I tried to get into it, but the narrator's asides about Y.Pestis seemed ill timed, and I got lost. Plus, I didn't enjoy the framing mechanism of having the narrator telling his story many years after with the benefit of experience.

It's an interesting concept, but I would have been more engaged with a more present-time telling. I didn't feel any tension. When I reached the end, it was kind of a shrug - meh.

After all the pre-story buildup about the author, I expected much more.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: SF.Fangirl on January 31, 2014, 10:58:11 PM
The other thing that bothered me with this one was the narration. Not that John Chu did a bad job, he did a very excellent job reading this story. I just didn't feel like his voice fit the character we were being presented with. I mean, the first line says he's sixty-eight years old. John sounds like a teenager. So already I'm thrown off trying to picture this gruff old CIA agent with a kid's high-pitched voice. Not to mention the fact that John, to me anyway, sounds Asian. (Admittedly that might be due to the fact that the only other stories I've heard John narrate were for Asian characters, and young ones at that, and he did a great job with them.) I'm not saying there's anything wrong with sounding Asian, don't read that the wrong way. But the character in this story wasn't Asian. So having him sound Asian really contradicted the down-home American boy we're presented with. And I found that distracting.

I agree with you on the first point.  It actually threw me out of the story that the narrator sounded so young when he's established to be elderly-ish.  It would have worked if the story had not been a flashback, but since it was crafted that way, I kept thinking, especially after the asides to the audience within the story, that this narrator was wrong for the story.  This is probably the first time this has every occurred to me because that is not something I usually notice or evaluate but it was a super-obvious mismatch in this story.

That said, I have never noticed that the narrator had anything but a neutral accent.  I thought he sounded perfect as an American teenager.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: SF.Fangirl on January 31, 2014, 11:19:12 PM
I found this pretty "meh," which makes me sad because I like biological terror stories (albeit usually told from the POV of the scientist trying to stop the plague) and I had rather high hopes.

Somehow it made something horrible very banal and a boring story.  The most interesting part was when he admitted during the interview that felt more like citizen of the world than an American, and then that aspect of his character didn't get revisited again.  It almost seems like a citizen of the world would object a lot more than a gung-ho American. I was pretty bored by the end paid the barest attention is his rescue of "The Boy in Zaquitos" and the ending where he got therapy and everything worked out okay in the end.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: CryptoMe on April 12, 2014, 05:54:54 AM
I thought this story was just okay. I didn't love it, but I also didn't hate it. It kept me entertained on my run.
The main character was also just okay; didn't love him, didn't hate him. But, I can sort of sympathize with him a bit. Sometimes people just go with the flow, even when going with the flow is morally wrong and costs you personally.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: hardware on May 05, 2014, 11:25:03 AM
I liked this one, can agree that it seems a bit surrealistic for this guy to be talking about this in class, but then again: check out the documentary  The Act Of Killing for an example of mass murderers happily educating about their deeds in real life. What made this story so dark was of course not just the CIA killing off lots of civilians (we all more or less expect that to happen) but the meek eagerness to participate under a misguided wish to serve his country (and to live up to his fathers deeds). Banality of evil indeed. The way the story conveyed that was it's real strength. For what it's worth, I also found the narration fine, and the discussion above highly entertaining.
Title: Re: EP425: The Boy in Zaquitos
Post by: Gamercow on May 06, 2014, 01:44:18 PM
While I had some eyebrow-raising moments about the story being set in a classroom, I had no problems with the rest of the story.  It wasn't particularly memorable, but it was well put together. To address some issues:

The MC was a great candidate for many reasons.  He was motivated to work for his country, but not intelligent or driven enough to be a useful member of any agency.  He was VERY malleable, as most teenagers are.  He had no connections other than his parents, who would understand obligations and secrets, and wouldn't ask many questions.  Most importantly, he had the right biochemistry.  I don't think that the government spent boatloads of money searching for the right candidate, I think they had "plague-spreader" on their loooooooong list of projects, and the MC matched the requirements, so they went ahead. 

Because that's what humans do.  That's why we care more about the death of the family dog than the death of tens of thousands in a genocide in Africa.  Our brains just can't cope with that scope, and refuse to process it most of the time. He found a personally relevant attachment to the boy, and therefore felt obligated to save him.  It also internally absolved him of the deaths of the thousands of others, and more importantly(to him) the death of the pretty girl in St. Whatsit. 

Because like the MC at the end states, the government has plans like this in the works ALL THE TIME.  Maybe not all of them to this scale, but there are some crazy/devious/insidious plans in the works all the time because they need to be prepared for various contingencies.  Go read about some of the wacky Cold War and nuclear defense systems.  Or look at things like mustard gas and napalm.  Those are atrocious, yet very effective weapons. 

Because the person is infinitely more controllable. 
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