The Weapon - Resurrection - part 28
By Diana the Valkyrie
The press conference
Update: 01/07/2003 to valkyrie05



On Matty's TV, the scene shifted to the press conference, just in time to see
Wendy flying in, those great wings beating slowly as she flew. She took her
place on a raised stage, and held up her hands for quiet. Eventually, the
assembled journalists realised there was no point in continuing to shout in a
confused mass, and she got silence. "Here's the rules of the conference. One
question at a time, please, put your hand up and wait until I point to you,
otherwise we won't get anything accomplished. And we'll continue the
conference until you want to stop. I can easily stand here talking for a week
non-stop, I bet none of you can last more than 48 hours." They laughed. "OK,
you in the orange tie and the check jacket."

"Where've you been all these years?" "I was hiding."

"Why were you hiding?" "I had a personal tragedy, and I needed time to get my
head straight."

"What was the tragedy?" Bloody hyenas, I thought, leave her alone. "It was a
personal thing, part of my private life, I'm not going to talk about it." We'd
already discussed this area. I told Wendy, when they started getting into
personal areas, just politely and firmly tell them that you aren't going to
answer.

"Where are you from?" What a dumb question. "I'm not from this planet, you
don't have a name for where I'm from. And I'm not human, but you already knew
that." She hovered several inches higher to emphasise the point, and they
laughed some more. Then she unfurled her wings, and beat them a few times, and
they fell silent and just took pictures. She was awe-inspiring.

"Who appointed you to be the Guardian of Humanity?" Tricky one. "No-one. I
just took the job. You want to arm-wrestle me for it?" More laughs.

"What do you anticipate will be the effect of lifting the economic sanctions?"
Uh-oh, money question. But the answer she gave, must have come straight from
Duncan. "An immediate boost to business confidence around the world, which
will be reflected in a surge in the stock market. If you stay in this press
conference for the full 48 hours, better call your broker to get into the
market before the surge. In the medium term, all countries will increase their
exports, and the law of Comparative Advantage will mean an rapid increase in
world production value. In the longer term, people will be in a better
position to do what they do best, and trade for what they don't do so well.
It's stupid growing tomatoes in the north of Scotland, you grow them where
it's hot, and trade for them. The lifting of barriers to trade is the main
thing that will end the Great Depression. And nothing. Repeat, nothing. Is
going to get in the way of that happening. If I have to intervene to make it
happen, then I will."

"How do you mean, intervene?" Wendy played her video of her flying at a brick
wall, and smashing it down. "I'll do what it takes," she said, "and here's
why." And she played the video of the children playing in the park.
Non-specific threat followed by upbeat image, very good.

"How tall are you?" "I can be any height I want to, this isn't a human body, I
just make it look that way, so I don't look scary to children. I'm six foot
three right now."

"Is it true that you killed the sun once?" "Not really. I just put up a
curtain, so there was a shadow over the planet. Then I took it down again. You
couldn't see the sun, but it was still there." She just put up a curtain. She
made it sound like something you might do in your living room. "It was a black
curtain." They laughed.

"What about the oil shortage, lifting economic sanctions isn't going to make
oil appear from nowhere." "I have a plan for that. We're going to revive
Pretty Flamingo; fifty years ago, Flamingo lifted a lot of oil, although
nothing compared to world supply. That's going to change. Flamingo will become
the main energy producer in the world."

"But where will you find the oil? All the fields are exhausted." "It won't be
oil. Energy is what we need, oil is only one way to get it."

"Will you be re-opening the Pretty Flamingo orphanages?" Wendy looked
uncertain. "I don't know, we haven't thought about that yet."

"Are you married?" Wendy scratched her head. "I'm not human. I don't think I
can actually get married, in the legal or religious sense."

"What's your relationship with the Church of the Holy Guardian?" "I went to
one of their services once, but I was in disguise. Apart from that, I've had
nothing to do with them, and what they believe and do is entirely their own
responsibility."

"Do you believe in God?" "That's a personal and private matter, and I'm not
going to answer you."

"You're evading the question, do you believe in God?" "I'm not evading, that's
a personal question, and I'm flatly refusing to answer."

"What nationality are you, you sound British." "I've lived in London for many
years, but I'm not a British citizen. Or a citizen of any other country, come
to that."

"So you're an illegal immigrant?" "No, I'm not. You have to be human to be an
illegal immigrant, and I'm not human."

"So are you some sort of robot? A machine?" "No, I'm a person. I'm just not a
human person. I'm one of the People."

"We can all see your wings, are you an angel?" "No, I'm just a person; not
human, but just a person, one of the People." But no matter how much she
denied it, I knew that the image would stay in people's minds. She folded up
her wings some more, and they became smaller, smaller, then vanished. "See?
I'm no angel."

"Do you have a soul?" "Tell me how to determine whether I have a soul or not,
and I'll tell you if I have one." More laughter. "I thought she handled that
one very well," I said to Matty.

"Now that your old Wielder is dead, who is your new Wielder?" Wendy looked
away from the audience, and down. I thought she looked sad for a moment.
Jackals. Then she looked back up, and said "That's personal, I'm not going to
answer."

"Do you have any children?" "I had one, but she died to save a city of eight
million people from a nuclear fireball. I have two adopted children, but
they're grandmothers now. And I have eight billion other children."

"If you had a child, you must have sex. How does that work?" "Come up and see
me sometime, honey," she said in a Mae West drawl, and everyone laughed. "Is
that your pencil in your pocket, or are you pleased to see me?" Wendy the
comedienne.

"You said, anything that gets in your way, you'll break it. What did you
mean?" Wendy played the video of her smashing through a brick wall again.
"When I arrived on this planet, I was called The Weapon, the Guardian bit came
later. What I'm really good at, is breaking things. Especially things that
threaten my children." She played the video of the children playing in the
park. "Clear?"

"Where do you buy your clothes?" "I'm not wearing clothes. What you can see is
a sheet of forces, I generate it to make myself look nice and non-scary"

"So what do you really look like?" "You wouldn't be able to see me with your
naked eye, I'm too small to be visible."

. . .

The questions continued, non-stop, for hours. I began to wonder if it had been
such a good idea to call an unlimited press conference, but Wendy was right;
the journalists stamina gave out before hers did. One by one, they gave up in
exhaustion, or ran out of questions; within 24 hours, the conference ended as
the last journo there fell asleep in his chair. But the effect of the press
conference was tremendous.

The speech at the UN was heard live by millions. But then all the news
channels replayed it again and again, it was printed in the dead-tree media,
translated, commentated, and I think there couldn't have been anyone in the
world how hadn't seen it, and heard umpteen instant pundits explaining what it
meant. And that was followed by the marathon press conference; for the next
several days the only topics in the media were the Guardian of Humanity (and
the New Deal, as people were starting to call her plan), and the latest royal
sex scandal. We had effectively captured the attention and imagination of the
world; now all we needed to do was harness that force to drive the New Deal
forward.

I didn't see the whole press conference; Matty had made her couch into a bed
for me to get a night's sleep, although I found it difficult to doze off with
the excitement of the day. And there was something missing; I'd gotten used to
Wendy holding me at night, and I missed her, I missed her a lot.

The press conference was still going the next day, it was really amazing how
silly some of the questions were getting. But Wendy and Duncan made a good
batting partnership, and I watched it to the very end. The last shot of the
press conference showed Wendy flying up through the ceiling, wings widespread,
somehow without damaging it. I watched the TV as that happened, and then I
stood up to go outside, but she beat me to it; she was inside the house and
hugging me before I could get to the door.