The Weapon - Oblivion - part 5 By Diana the Valkyrie The problem is, she's forgetting things. Update: 26/07/2003 to valkyrie05 After lunch the next day, we flew down to central London, to Imps. It wasn't far, just a few miles, so Wendy took the opportunity to show off a bit. She flew low, just a few hundred feet up, and I could see people on the ground were pointing up doing the "It's a bird" thing. Because there was no chance they'd think she was a plane. Not with those great white feathery wings flapping fifteen beats to the minute. I sat on her back, my legs dangling on either side of her waist, with nothing to hold on to except I clutched a double-handful of her hair. I didn't feel very secure perched up there, with nothing holding me in place, but I kept telling myself that if I did fall off, she'd notice and catch me before I could splat on the road. I felt like I was riding a great winged horse, a Pegasus. I whistled a few bars from Wagner. I don't think anyone heard. We landed dramatically in the Imps quadrangle; she swooped down, curved up at the last moment, stalled and landed upright, on her feet. Totally faked, totally theatre. She's good at theatre. I disembarked, she folded up her wings, and there was a spattering of applause from some students who were sitting on the grass. We walked into the building, hand in hand, to visit Dr Meredith. I soon found the right office, and knocked on the door. "Come in." The bad news was that Dr Meredith was female; of course, I already knew that. Why bad news? Because I was getting really fed up with all the dominant women that seemed to cluster around Wendy's life. The good news was that she was unattractive. Skinny, mousy-coloured hair, no makeup and all the dress sense of, of, well, of a quantum physicist. Why is that good news? Because I find it infinitely easier to deal with that sort of woman than with the tall, blonde and gorgeous type. How I managed to deal with Wendy herself, was a complete mystery to me, she's the sort that makes me want to run and hide. I think I managed to sublimate it by hiding from Wendy, behind Wendy herself. And she always let me hide in her arms. Not literally, of course. I found it tough enough to cope with my feelings about the Guardian of Humanity, even Fiona make me quail a bit, and the women that we'd hired to run Pretty Flamingo make me feel downright intimidated, I always wanted to hide behind Wendy when there was any sort of board meeting. There was only one guest chair, so I sat in it, and Wendy sat cross-legged, hovering in midair, one of her most impressive stunts. "I'm David, and this is The Weapon, also known as the Guardian of Humanity," I began. "But you can call me Wendy," she smiled. "Serena," said Dr Meredith. I nodded. "Here's what I want to do," I continued, "I'll explain what the problem is, then you ask questions." She nodded. "Wendy isn't an artifact, she's a person. But she isn't anything like us, her core is four black holes, and it's no use asking me how four black holes gets to be intelligent. She says she can generate as much power as a thousand stars." One of Serena's eyebrows rose about a millimeter. "What you see when you look at her, is a force sheet, Wendy can tell you more about that. She's pretty much indestructible, and she'll live for several billion years." Another millimeter. "I don't know how much computing power she's got there, but I'm pretty sure it's a lot more than you and I have." Wendy smiled enigmatically, and I tried to remember to ask her about that some time. "And she has a digital memory, she remembers everything she sees or hears, and there's no degradation over time." Serena was trying hard to look cool and unimpressed, and failing. It is just not possible to be unimpressed with Wendy. The more I find out about her, the more impressed I get. "The problem is, she's forgetting things. Some things that happened a long time ago but which were very important, some things that happened recently. And that shouldn't happen. So she's worried, and I am too. Obviously a medical doctor is going to be pretty useless on this, so I thought I'd get her to talk to you, since your the top, er, dog, er, in quantum physics." Damn. I should have seen that coming. A female dog is a bitch. Oh well, too late now, let's hope she doesn't make a fuss about it. "Four black holes?" said Serena. Wendy nodded. And that was the last thing that I understood for the next few hours, because Serena went to the whiteboard and started writing equations, Wendy was doing the same except she used her cape to write on, and it was all greek to me. Actually quite a lot of it really was greek, I know what a lambda looks like. This went on for a couple of hours. I got bored, and picked up a magazine to read. "The Journal of Theoretical Physics." I leafed through it casually, and discovered that they didn't seem to communicate in English. Eventually Serena started getting quite excited about something to do with plasma control and the generation of force fields, and Wendy was smiling a lot and saying "No" and shaking her head occasionally, and I realised that what was happening now, was Serena was trying to get Wendy to tell her something, and Wendy was refusing. "Wendy," I said, "You have to answer her questions, she's trying to help you." "No she isn't," said Wendy, "she's just trying to find out how I generate my force fields. And she's trying to get a GUT out of me." "GUT?" "Grand Unified Theory, a theory of everything, that unifies gravity, quantum mechanics, relativity, the electroweak force and the strong interaction." "So give it to her." "No." "Wendy, she needs this to be able to help you." "No." Damn, it was dig-in-the-heels monosyllabic refusal time again. "Why not?" "No." I tried to outflank her. "What does Duncan say?" "No." I looked at Dr Meredith. She spoke up, "This could save us centuries of research." I noticed Wendy give a very tiny nod at me, and I guessed that this was exactly the reason why she wasn't being forthcoming. "Serena," I asked, "do you really need this to be able to help her?" "Well, no, but it would be so good to have." "Look. This is the Guardian of Humanity, you know what she's done for us. Now please, she needs our help, and you're the expert in this area, could you suggest what she might do to stop losing her memory?" Dr Meredith twisted a lock of hair around her finger. "Um. This is a practical problem, you see. I'm a theoretician. I don't do practical stuff. Show me a leaky pipe, and I can write down the Navier-Stokes equations, but ask me to fix it, and I'll call a plumber." "So who's a plumber?" "Well, when I have problems with my computer, I call the help desk." "Wendy isn't a computer." "No, but you said she has a digital memory, maybe the help desk could help."