Weaver Márquez
Weaver Márquez is a gifted mathematician and Shannon's cousin and childhood friend. A mysterious woman with a semi-mystical presence, Weaver guides Conway and Shannon to the Zero in Act I.Shannon describes her as having had trouble focusing in high school, saying, "She was so smart, but always going off in different directions, mind racing, like five conversations going on in her head at once and you're lucky if even one of them is with someone in the room." She has a tendency to mysteriously disappear.
Life and work
Her childhood residence was the Márquez Farmhouse, constructed at 100 Macondo Lane on top of a hill after her family bought the land. Weaver left her family after learning of their massive debt incurred by the farmhouse. At one point, she was an intern at the Bureau of Reclaimed Spaces, but quickly grew bored; here she befriended Lula Chamberlain, who she remained penpals with after her internship ended.
Weaver studied mathematics in university. At this time, she also worked as one of Donald's research assistants for XANADU. Along with translation work for the Bureau, she used math to help translate between Spanish and English. She is the inventor of The Formula, used at the Hard Times Distillery.
Weaver also previously worked at WEVP-TV, where she handled the archives. According to Dashiell, she had a "head for signals." In Act IV, Mimi recounts how Weaver suddenly disappeared from the station, although this was not uncommon given the station's transient workforce. However, following her disappearance, a pirate signal began mysteriously intercepting the station's broadcast, transmitting a video in which Weaver stood in the middle of the studio, facing the camera, and mumbled a strange, indecipherable message that came through only as a sinister-sounding hum. The video came with on-screen captions using a non-standard font, which repeated on loop:
- "Go underground, as deep as you can go. The air is cool and the earth is damp, and when you close your eyes you are surrounded by the dead. Remember where that is? You'll find your way from there. I think this place is what you're looking for. Some of it will wash away soon, but I think you'll be happy here, even without the mail, school, and these magnificent, tragic horses."
This same video appeared dozens of times over multiple years before the station was wiped out by a flood. Mimi remarks that the video of Weaver may have been the station's last broadcast before the flood.
The video may be viewed here.
Family
Weaver is the cousin of Shannon Márquez. Her parents are Remedios Márquez and J. Márquez.
Name & references
Weaver is named after scientist and mathematician Warren Weaver and the famous Colombian magical realist author Gabriel García Márquez. Her and her cousin's names reference the Shannon–Weaver model of communication, used in the fields of information theory and telecommunications, and the street name and number of their family's farmhouse, 100 Macondo Lane, are references to the town of Macondo in Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.
In Act I, Weaver asks Conway, "Which of your parents was it who wouldn't allow you to watch television?", a near-direct quote from the play Equus.
Per the V&A's Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt exhibition, Shannon's framing of Weaver – "But Weaver's not a puzzle. She's a mystery." – is a reference to the writings of Gregory Treverton. Treverton differentiates the concepts by describing a puzzle as something solvable if information was not being withheld, while a mystery provides too much information with no guarantee of relevance; puzzles can be solved, but mysteries can only be framed.
Development
According to Jake of Cardboard Computer, a character named "Aleks" (seen here) was "going to be one of the marooned grad students working in Donald's cave/lab". Also referred to as Alejandra, Aleksandr, and Alex, the character Alejandra became the basis for Weaver's design.
