The Weapon - Resurrection - part 2
By Diana the Valkyrie
Is she or isn't she?
Update: 10/05/2003 to valkyrie05


When I woke up next morning, the thought uppermost in my head was "but what if
she is?". It's a simple application of game theory. If she isn't, and I waste
a couple of days on her, then the cost isn't great, and because no-one finds
out that I chased such a stupid red herring, the embarrassment factor is low.
But if she is, and if in those couple of days I can establish that, then the
payoff is, well. Mind-boggling. So I very rationally made the decision to
spend just two days on this possibility. No more.

The first thing I did, was dig out a whole bunch of pictures and video.
Obviously, I've looked at all this stuff before, but I never before looked at
it with a view to recognition. I loaded up some of the best pictures and video
on my PDA, so I could have it in front of me when I saw her; it's handy to
have what you need in a pocket-sized thing. And the next day, I went back to
the same restaurant, in the evening.

She was on duty again, and I sat at one of the tables she was serving. While
she was bringing me my order, I pulled out my PDA and brought up a few
pictures, and looked back and forth between her and the pictures. They
confirmed what I already knew - there was at the very least, a strong
resemblance.

But that isn't enough - it could be coincidence. I needed a more precise
analysis. And if there's one thing that computers are good for, it's analysis.

I used the camera on my PDA to take pictures of her while she was waiting on
the table. I got some good close-ups as she brushed the crumbs from the cloth,
and as she walked to the kitchen and back, I got some video. I do realise that
it's not exactly ethical to take pictures of people without their knowledge,
but sometimes we do things that are a bit naughty.

When I got back home that evening, I downloaded the pictures into my desktop,
and launched the face comparator program. While it was running, I made myself
some coffee, and by the time I got back to the computer, it was ready.

The program said "No match." It told me that there was no way that the two
faces could be the same person, they were just too different. It gave me a
very high statistical confidence level for that result, the t-value was more
than 5. I sighed. It had been nice hoping for the possibility, but there is no
Tooth Fairy after all. I went to bed, and slept badly. Curry two nights
running was not something that my stomach was used to.

The human brain doesn't work the way you might think it does. It doesn't
switch off while you're asleep, there's still something happening, that's how
you have dreams. The current theory is that what it's doing, is sorting
through the short term memories of the day, making sense of them, and storing
some of them in long term storage while discarding most of the rubbish you
encounter each day. I woke up in the morning with the realisation that the
computer was wrong.

The result I'd gotten just plain wasn't true. Those two faces really were
similar, and the computer should have come up with a result that said "similar
but not the same". How could it have possibly been so emphatic about the
difference? I thought it wouldn't hurt to have another look; the good old Mark
I human eye/brain system is still a damn good pattern recogniser. So I brought
up some of the pictures that I'd taken last night, and ...

And? And nothing. Wait. That's not what she looked like! These are not
pictures of the waitress I saw. The proportions of the face are different. The
mouth is different. The shape of the eyes is different. Oh, the differences
were small, because really all human faces are similar. But I remembered what
she looked like in the restaurant, and this was not a good likeness.

I sat and thought about this. Defective camera? Corruption in the PDA? A
virus? No, none of the above. This was not some random corruption or
distortion, this was a small and subtle change to each of the pictures I'd
taken, making it look like someone else.

And then the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, like they do when someone
walks over your grave. There was a very good explanation for what had
happened. She'd seen the pictures I had on the PDA, she saw that I was taking
more pictures, she'd put two and two together and realised what I was up to,
and she'd done something to the data in the PDA that systematically altered
the appearance of the pictures I'd taken.

I tried to think if there was any other possible explanation. Maybe someone
was playing a systematic joke on me, and had replaced the pictures I'd taken
with different ones. But if the joke was to get me to get all excited over
this waitress, surely they'd want me to have a positive result from the face
comparator?

Obviously, she doesn't want to be found. But if that's the case, what's going
to happen if I just go up to her and blurt it out? What will she do? I'm
pretty sure she wouldn't hurt me, but still, is this wise? Then I thought, the
advancement of knowledge always calls for sacrifice, and I can't just pass up
this opportunity. If it really is her, then maybe she'll be willing to talk to
me, give me some insights into what happened, why she vanished, all sorts of
things. I'm probably one of the top twenty experts on the field today, but
with an information source that was straight from the horse's mouth, I'd have
an advantage that no-one could beat.

So, that evening, I went back to the restaurant a third time, and sat down at
one of her tables. She was by my side immediately with a menu. I looked up at
her. I opened my mouth to speak, and she shook her head, very slightly, and
put her finger on her lips. I closed my mouth again. Now what? She pointed to
the menu, and gestured for me to open it. When I did, a slip of paper fell
out, landing on the table. I picked it up and read it. "I'm off duty at 1 am.
Wait around the corner from the restaurant, I'll talk to you then."

That's it! She's virtually admitted it. I know her secret. And she knows I
know. And I know she knows I know. And I ... I stopped, before I got lost in
an infinite loop, and tried to eat. I was too excited to do justice to half an
unpeeled grape, let alone a spicy curry. I pushed the rice around a bit, toyed
with the aloo gosht, and desperately tried not to look at her when she cleared
the plates away. I went to the desk and paid, and left. It was ten o'clock, I
had three hours to wait.

My brain was spinning like a runaway gyroscope; I knew I had a million
questions to ask her, but it was difficult to concentrate and decide what to
ask first. And anyway, would she answer my questions? And what if she wanted
to preserve her secret, what would be the easiest way of silencing me? I tried
not to think about the obvious answer; from all my understanding of her, it
wasn't in her to kill people. But maybe she had other ways; maybe she could
just make me forget, or brain-wipe me like they were talking about doing to
habitual violent criminals. Or something else I couldn't even imagine. I mean,
this was The Weapon, she could extinguish the sun, imagine what she could do
to me. I felt like I was playing with fire.

And then I realised that there were two corners of the block that the
restaurant was on; which one did she mean? What if I were waiting at one while
she went to the other, maybe she'd think I'd not turned up. I walked round the
block to the other corner, then back again. This was crazy, whichever one I
was at could be the wrong one.

Come on, Dave, I told myself. You're acting like a teenager on his first date.
I'll just hang about at the corner, but I'll watch the restaurant, and if she
goes to the other corner, I'll run down there and catch her up.

So I stood at my street corner, peering around the edge of the building so I
could see the restaurant. I saw people come and go, but I was looking for a
female alone. Nothing so far.

It was cold. Bitter. London in winter. I had a coat, but after a couple of
hours, the biting north wind seemed to go straight through it, leaving me
chilled to the bone. But I didn't dare leave my post to get indoors for a
while, suppose I missed her? So I stuck it out, occasionally pulling my hands
out of my pockets to blow on them, and to get some of that warm air up to my
nose, which was starting to feel like an icicle. What happens if you get
frostbite in your nose? What happens if there's a back door to the restaurant,
and I don't see her come out?

So there I was, loitering on a street corner, trying not to freeze, and
generally acting in a most suspicious manner, while I tried to ignore the
crescendo of butterflies in my stomach. I'd been studying her for almost all
my adult life, for 23 years, and now I would finally be able to ask her
directly to solve some of the many mysteries that surrounded her. So naturally
I was nervous. But I was also scared. I felt like I was dabbling with power so
great that I could get burned like a moth in a flame. Cold, nervous and
scared. I was not the calm academic that I usually was. Cold, and getting
colder. I was shivering with cold, and shivering with fearful anticipation.
Well, I was shivering, and I didn't know which of those two was the main
reason. Plus, my bladder was starting to bother me, a combination of the cold
and the nervousness.