The Weapon - Resurrection - part 30
By Diana the Valkyrie
Once upon a time
Update: 05/07/2003 to valkyrie05


A few minutes later, she glided on those great white wings down to Matty's
garden, and walked to the front door. I got there in time to welcome her in.
"Showoff," I said. She looked behind her and upwards. "I suppose I better fold
these up, else I can't get in through the door," she grinned. "Showoff," I
repeated. "Did you like them?" "Brilliant. Whose idea?" "Duncan. He said it
puts me on the side of the angels. You humans do go heavy on symbolism, don't
you?" "Only one problem." "What?" "People will expect to see them all the time
now." "No, the thing is, I can just show them now and then. Once people have
swallowed one impossible thing ... " "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast" I replied, "but would you really have
crushed that guy's heart?" She smiled. "I wasn't inside his body. I just cut
my hand off at the wrist, his imagination did the rest." "Your hand? You cut
off your own hand?" "Hey, it's not a real hand, you know?"

"Ah."

"Well, I wouldn't want to hurt him. But I did need to find out who was playing
with bombs." "So shouldn't you now be putting the frighteners on the folks at
Imperial Imports?" "No need. I imaged all the data off their computers, I'm
doing a forensic analysis of it now. I'll have a pretty solid case by this
evening, then I'll dump that back to New York's finest, and they can do the
rest." "You know, what you did to the bomber, means the confession won't be
admissible?" "I don't know, that's the cops' problem. Anyhow I wasn't after
him, he's just a pawn in the game, I was after the people behind him. Now
they'll go down, and it'll show anyone else with the same idea that they'd
better not go up against the Guardian of Humanity."

Matty brought some food to the table, while Wendy wrestled on the floor with
the children, then got them sitting listening to her while she told them a
story. I was talking to Matty, but I overheard it. It sounded like it was
something out of the history of the Black Hole folk. And soon Matty and I
stopped talking, so we could listen to Wendy's story.

"Once upon a time, there were two princes. Or maybe they were two princesses.
Anyway, they were in love, and they travelled the galaxy together, looking for
new things to learn about, and devising mathematical theorems that no-one had
ever devised before." "What are mafical thumbs, Aunt Wendy?" "They're like
pretty patterns." "Oooh." "And they were known by all the People for their
limpid lemmas and elegant theorems. Because that was what the People loved to
do more than anything; mathematics is capable of infinite beauty, and the best
mathematicians of the People were honoured above all. That's why they were
princesses. Or maybe they were princes."

"Princesses," said one of the children. Wendy smiled. "And then one day, one
of the People messaged all the others about a new life he'd found, it was a
planet circling round a small yellow star, in company with several other
planets. But on the third planet, life had evolved, and had gotten as far as
self-awareness." "What's warenes, Aunty Wendy?" "That's when you know that
you're you." "I know I'm me!" "And I know I'm not you!"

"So the People agreed that they had to help them stay out of the Galaxy War
that was raging, because the Mazdas or the Ahrimans, one or the other, would
suck them in to fight on their side, unless these new people could stay
neutral. But to stay neutral, they had to tell the Mazdas and the Ahrimans to
get lost. And to do that, they'd need a powerful weapon." "What's a powful
weapon, Aunt Wendy?" "That's like a big stick, you wave it at someone so they
know not to mess with you." "Oooh."

"And because the two princesses were so much in love, and because they made
such elegant theorems, the People all decided that those two should have a
baby, and the baby would be sent to look after the people on the newly
discovered planet." The children were listening intently to the story, and so
were Matty and I, this sounded like a bit more than just a fairy story.

"So the two princesses visited a star that had no planets, and with them they
had four more People, to help them to make the new baby. The four midwives
surrounded the two; the four were at the apexes of a tetrahedron, the two were
at the middle of it." "What's a traydon?" "Like a pyramid. Each of the four
midwives started to generate energy, and they pumped that energy via
gravitational waves into the two princesses. The two were gradually brought
into a state of high excitation by the absorbed gravitational radiation, and
their components were progressively kicked into higher quantum states. That
process of excitation took a very long time; the midwives were pumping up the
princesses for years and years and years. But eventually, they were fully
pumped by the midwives and were ready for the next part."

"Granny Matty tells us we mustn't get too excited, because then we run round
the house making a mess." "Yes, it's a similar kind of thing. When the
princesses were fully excited, the midwives were tired, and had to take a
rest. The two princesses were orbiting around each other in a very tight
orbit, very close together, and began to fire gravity waves at each other. But
the effect of the gravity wave on the pumped-up quantum state, is to trigger a
fall to the next lower state, which releases some energy. That energy is
converted to a gravity wave which is fired back at the other princess. It's
resonance, it's a bit like the way you make a swing go high by giving it a
little push at the right time each time it goes by. There's a chain reaction;
each arriving gravity wave triggers more quantum drops, releasing more energy,
which is fired back. It isn't reflection, it's more like reflection with
amplification. And it's a chain reaction." "Do they explode, like a bomb?"

"No, sweetie, it's more controlled than that. Loving and controlled. The chain
reaction builds and builds. But they did very slowly and sweetly, because they
were in love with each other, and they each wanted it to be good for the other
one, and to last a long time. But eventually, the chain reaction leads to an
explosive release of energy, in the form of a huge gravity wave which is
directed along the axis linking the two. It's really huge, because it's got
all the energy that the four midwives pumped into the two princesses, and the
two princesses give it everything they possibly can."

"And now luck plays a part. Because that gravity wave could go in either of
two directions. If it goes away from the star, then that's it, and there's no
baby. But this time, everything went well, and the gravity wave hit the star."

"That's why it had to be a star without planets. The beam of energy hit the
star, and caused a partial gravitational collapse into a flurry of black
holes; the star was severely damaged by this, of course, but you shouldn't
worry about that, damaging a star is like damaging a pebble on the beach. And
anyway, most of them recover, unless you're trying to break them on purpose."

"After the intense gravity wave, the two princesses were exhausted, and the
midwives had to do the next part. They carefully chose four black holes from
the ones that had been made in the star, two with each type of spin, and two
with each type of charge. And they brought those four black holes together,
and so the two princesses had a new baby!"

"What did they call the baby?" "The People don't have names. The baby didn't
get a name until she arrived at the planet where she was supposed to be their
guardian, their Weapon, but when she got there, they gave her a name."

"What did they call her, what did they call her?" I think the children had
already worked out the answer to this.

"They called me Wendy," she said.

. . .