EP040: Even Vadsø Thaws

[Swamp]

EP040: Even Vadsø Thaws

By Bruce Holland Rogers.
Read by Stephen Eley.
Musical guest: Red Hunter.

The only person who might understand is Sponheim, the Corrections Sociologist. He just arrived. It’s his job to understand me thoroughly and to write a report that his successors will use to decide if it’s safe to revive me. His report will help them decide if I am no longer a threat to society because society has changed enough to deal with me, or has learned to treat behaviors like mine.

“I am already remorseful!” I tell him at our first interview. “I won’t do it again!” We are sitting at a table by the water. A light mist falls. “I shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t even have thought about it. Once, I was one of the people fighting to preserve the last wild polar bears! I wanted to protect the earth!” I get myself worked up. I am close to tears.

Rated PG. Contains themes of ecoterrorism and global disaster. If you can explain that to your kids, it’s family-safe.


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[Unblinking]

I had no sympathy whatsoever for this character. 

His motivations made sense, being furious about impending collapse of ecosystems due to human activity, but his goals were so nonsensical!  "Damned humans will make the earth unliveable in 100 years.  My solution is to make the earth unliveable in 5 years instead.  That'll teach them!"  What kind of insane person comes up with that solution?! 

And his arguments with the doctor, which were supposed to garner sympathy of some kind, I guess, just further justified his being cryofrozen to my eyes.  So even though he's failed he's convinced that some other moron with a vendetta and no brain cells in their head is going to carry out his quest, and the reason he doesn't want to be frozen is that this other person carrying out this quest will kill this guy in the process.  Good!  His plan was to quickly kill 95% of the earth's population, and now he's trying to get sympathy because he's no longer going to be in the other 5%?  He really thought that would gain sympathy?

So yeah, no sympathy whatsoever, and without sympathy, it was hard to care much.