The Weapon - Resurrection - part 6
By Diana the Valkyrie
Breakfast with Wendy
Update: 18/05/2003 to valkyrie05


I woke up the next morning. It didn't take me long to realise that I hadn't
dreamed the previous day; Wendy noticed I was awake, and said "Boiled or
scrambled?". "Uh," I replied, wittily. "Boiled or scrambled?", she repeated.
"Uh, boiled," I said, choosing one at random. She hopped out of bed and left
me to work out what to do next. The choice wasn't difficult; once I'd gathered
my wits together, and realised that the Guardian of Humanity was in my kitchen
cooking up eggs for breakfast, I thought it would be churlish of me not to get
up and dressed.

Sure enough, she'd found my eggcup. And the coffee. And the toaster. I sat
down and started my day while she stood and watched. "I couldn't find the
Marmite," she said. "I don't have any," I said. She nodded. I gestured to a
chair, "Aren't you going to join me?" "I don't eat," she said. "Oh, of course,
sorry, I'm not at my best first thing in the morning. I'll be better after
I've had my coffee." She nodded again.

After I'd filled myself with toast, egg and coffee, she started to clear the
table and wash the dishes. "Look, let me help you with that," I said. "No,"
she said. "But look, ... " "No." Golly, she's difficult to argue with. I stood
and watched her, and thought a bit.

I've spent 23 years studying her. I've heard of this effect she's got. I
wanted to help with the dishes. The first "No" considerably lessened my
enthusiasm for that, and the second "No" killed it completely. OK, doing the
dishes is a small thing, but I've read about her doing this in other
situations. She seems to be able to weaken your resolve to the extent that you
change your mind about what you want.

I went into my study, and tidied up a bit. After a short while, she followed
me in there. "When do you have to go to work?" I asked. "I don't have to," she
said. "I phoned them and told them I wouldn't be in today." "I didn't hear you
use the phone," I replied. She looked at me. "I thought you spent 23 years
studying me?" Oh. Of course. She doesn't need a phone, she can use the
telephone system directly. Hell, even my PDA can do that. "So can you do that,
just take a day off? Won't they have problems staffing the place? Won't you
get into trouble?" "No," she answered, "they'll just get one of the other
girls in for an extra day. Yes, I'm in trouble, kind of. They fired me."

Oh shit. I looked at her, appalled. "I'm sorry, Wendy, this is all my fault.
Will you be able to find another waitressing job easily?" "It's not a problem,
David, I don't actually need money." "You don't?" "What do you think I spend
it on, food? Clothes? Rent?" She didn't eat, or wear clothes, and she didn't
have anywhere that she lived. Interesting question. "So what do you spend it
on?"

"I spend a little bit on candles, I give the rest to the church." "Candles?"
She nodded. "Why candles?" "For Duncan," she explained, and she looked sad
again. "You light a candle every week?" "Every day," she said. "Why? What do
you thnk that does?" "His soul sees the candle and is comforted."

"Wendy. Please, sit down. There's a lot I want to ask you about." She sat on
the floor. "Do you mind if I record our conversation on my PDA?" I asked. I
wanted to be sure that I didn't miss anything. She shrugged, "Sure." I picked
up a reporter's notebook, so I could make notes as I went along.

"OK, the first question is, why did you go underground, and will you be back?
I mean, will you go public, and be the Guardian of Humanity again?"

She sat, cross-legged. She was wearing white silk trousers, and a scarlet
tunic. I couldn't see a cape. "I didn't go underground. I just couldn't face
things after, after." I saw her eyes go moist, and I felt like a rat, I was
putting her through the mill again. "I didn't want to talk to people, I didn't
want to deal with their sympathy, or with their telling me they understood how
I felt when they didn't in the slightest, because they're human and I'm one of
the People so they can NOT know how I feel. Or with the people who think I'm
not human so I can't have feelings. I couldn't deal with all the people who
want something from me." "Want something from you?" She nodded. "What do you
mean?" I asked.

"You have no idea, David. People would come up to me while I was doing
something. If you get a kitten out of a tree, then a crowd gathers, and people
want me to help them get a tree stump out of their garden, or haul away a
scrap car, or take their sick dog to the vet. They'd come up to me and ask,
they'd shout from the back of the crowd, they'd tug on my cape to get my
attention. I'd tell them, you do *NOT* tug on the Guardian's cape, but there's
always some who do. And there's the letters."

"Letters?"

"Letters, postcards, emails, texts, messages. My father is dying, please help,
my mother needs an operation, please help. My dog got run over, my cat had
eight kittens, I lost my job, I crashed my car, my brother, my sister, my
baby, my baby, my baby ..." she looked down at the floor. "They all think I
can help, and I'm their last chance, and they're desperate. What do you do?"

I thought about this. It must have been like a constant pressure, like wave
after wave, a constant battering of human hopes and prayers.

"And some of them aren't actually possible, and those that are possible, I
can't do all of them, there isn't time. And I couldn't just ignore them, so I
used to write to each of them to tell them how sorry I was, and that I
couldn't help them because I was already committed to other things, and that
must have been the worst letter they ever got, because I'd just killed off
their last hope." "The alternative would be not to answer the letter." "Which
leaves them with false hope. It's hard to know which is worse." "But didn't it
take a whole lot of time just to answer them?" "No, I just spun off a handler,
and we had a laser printer, and someone else put them in envelopes and posted
them. But I knew that each one, when it arrived, would be like a kick in the
face. And it hurt me each time to have to do it, each time it was like
something twisted and bruised inside me. And I was already so full of pain
from, from, when he, from. Duncan. Duncan. Duncan."

I waited for her to continue.

"And I couldn't take any more, I just couldn't, so I hid myself, it wasn't
difficult, I just got a job as a waitress, they don't look into your past very
carefully."

"So are you feeling better now? It's been 23 years, memories fade, the pain
gets less."

"And what if the memories don't fade? What if you have a digital memory? What
if it's all as sharp and clear now, as it was then?"

"So is the pain less?"

She looked up at me. "NO!!!" she howled, and broke down and cried.