Coming up on some big moments here…and yes, one of them is Roger’s. 🙂
↓ Transcript
Dennis: The distraction team has engaged. The deviant troops should be flanking her soon.
Roger: It won't matter. Oh, god...
Msaka: Quiet, you. Unless you can help?
Roger: I don't -- I'm a journalist. I'm can't be a part of this!
Jacob: Leave the boy alone. He's the only civilian here. He's allowed to freak out.
Girii: He thinks he can --
Jacob: Shush. Let him spit it out.
Roger: I just -- I...I'm not a part of this. I'm not the one who... Jacob? I don't want to decide who lives and who dies!
Roger: It won't matter. Oh, god...
Msaka: Quiet, you. Unless you can help?
Roger: I don't -- I'm a journalist. I'm can't be a part of this!
Jacob: Leave the boy alone. He's the only civilian here. He's allowed to freak out.
Girii: He thinks he can --
Jacob: Shush. Let him spit it out.
Roger: I just -- I...I'm not a part of this. I'm not the one who... Jacob? I don't want to decide who lives and who dies!
Probably a result of all the crap the last AI dumped into his cyberlinks. (Pre-coffee post, forgive me for not coming up with proper names/references.)
Oh, Roger. You’ve seen Lola – now, you get to choose who *lives*.
Otherwise, well: you, the army, London, the British Isles, and probably the whole world… won’t!
Poor Roger.
Eventually he realizes that he can solve an awful lot of problems by killing people.
The more he kills, the bigger the problems he can solve.
But you know that, right?
Paraphrasing Varsuvius (spell?) from Order of the Stick: as the size of the fireball grows, the number of social situations it can solve approaches zero.
…dammit, need an edit function…
social situations it _can’t_ solve
Paraphrasing in a sense, I was actually cribbing from page 19 of chapter 18 but I think that was itself taken from what Vaarsuvius said.
His editor compared him to a cockroach in survival abilities. That and his previous reactions made him seem like a coward (not an insult – a very sane response when dealing with the things he is dealing with). In this case, refusing to decide is moral cowardice also, and I suspect the code in his head is telling him just how many he is killing with every decision and non-decision.
I assume he can at this point remotely take over Lola’s chair. Possibly also her bag o’ viruses.
Poor Roger… He started out this adventure wanting to see what it was like being Jacob and now he’s beginning to truly understand why all the Genocide Men have dead looking eyes. You can’t make decisions like that without a cost to your humanity.
Recall Roger has the Guayaquil complex, which included reduced testosterone and adrenal response, making the population more docile …
… of course, so does Caera …
… I guess the increased docility is mostly expressed on a population level. :-\
A very good point – he is actually programmed (sort of, significant predisposition) against violence. I wonder if he can overcome it. Maybe Jacob can help.