Genesis
Apologies for the long absence, everyone. There were complications with my surgery and I'm finally feeling back to normal, at least a bit. This is still a hectic time in my life but I'm going to ease back in slowly, so my updates will be slow but will be happening at least.
…..
"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
-J. Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb
Nobody recalls what kind of gem she was.
The annals do not speak of her except in relation to her research, and so much of what she discovered was on her own time in her own private residence. It was remarked upon that she was terrible at taking notes, and she was so hopelessly sentimental that the notes that still remain are tainted by her philosophical thoughts.
She could have been a Kunzite, though her work lacks the thoroughness. She could have been a Peridot, though one with access to the materials she had are rare enough. A Sodalite is not outside the realms of possibility, they were on a level with Kunzites at one point in gem history. The few garbled recordings of her voice seem to suggest that she was an Emerald, though this is considered one of the wildest theories.
What is known is this; she had taken some runoff from a spawning ground, water-tainted and almost devoid of nutrients. Why she did this is unknown, but she ran a series of electrical currents through the substance and found that it calcified around a single point. She kept it in pure distilled water for a time and continued to run the currents and the layers around it grew. Perhaps she was trying to create a new building material.
What she created instead was the first pearl.
The archival footage shows it to have been a very stunted creature compared to modern pearls, about a third of the size they're commonly made to these days. It was bleached white and its manifest eyes had no pupils and a hollow dip around the sockets. It was incapable of speech, it could only make a kind of high-pitched whine. Moreover, it found movement to be taxing and remained in a rigid stance most of the time, with its arms outstretched. It did not walk, but performed an awkward 'hop' to get around. Common thought is that it was blind.
It did seem to have genuine fondness for its creator, crude as it was at expressing this fondness. It followed her voice and clung to her when it could, and indeed the creator seemed to be quite fond of its creation too. There is a silence in the cycles that follow the death of the creature when it seems that the creator was grieving. The creature's mass was brittle and unstable, and it crumbled just ten cycles after its birth.
The second pearl was taller and more defined, and this one seems to have been blessed with vision, though its structure was no less brittle. The creator had added a culture of nutrients to the water and letting the core gem soak before the currents were administered, and the result was more recognizable as a pearl prototype. Although its mass did frequently crumble, it was often easy to repair. It also whined in the absence of speech, but it was able to walk unassisted.
A simple intellect could be observed in this, the first official pearl prototype (though its unfortunate predecessor came from the same process, it is not considered a true pearl). It showed signs of higher cognitive function, of recognizing consequences. It was observed to flinch when a voice was raised to it, and sometimes covered its head in expectation of a blow. It is a shame that it also died after just a few cycles, some theorize that it could have been taught to behave as normal pearls do.
The second official pearl prototype benefited from longer electrical currents being applied to its core. A secondary feed of nutrients gave its gem the glossy smooth surface now seen on all modern pearls. This creature was capable of crude speech, although it mostly just copied words it had heard in the research facility without knowing what they meant. It dubbed the creator 'Crostyu', a mangled form of colostrum-tube, the implement it was most familiar with. Other researchers noted that it repeated this word over and over towards the end of its short life as its other brain functions deteriorated.
This pearl, unlike the ones before it, did not die a mass death, but rather its gem began to shut itself down after a time of stress. The creator thought the reason was the longer electrical currents, and she shortened them again but applied more in different locations for the fourth attempt.
The third official pearl was a triumph. It was capable of forming sentences, it could count, it was observed to be sad when the creator was not in the laboratory. It was discovered that the pearls could be colour-saturated, where before it was thought that they were naturally white. This pearl could sing, though no recognizable words came from it. It formed attachments to other lab workers other than the creator. The only issue it had was a mass that was incredibly brittle, so much so that just the act of walking would cause the legs from the knee down to shatter. It was kept immobile in a cushioned berth to avoid shattering it further, but these efforts were in vain. A clumsy lab visitor knocked the berth from its perch and the pearl was smashed.
The next few attempts brought the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh pearl prototype into existence. Higher cognitive functions were observed in each and the brittle masses became sturdier over time, though the nature of their creation in distilled water kept them dainty. The seventh survived for almost one hundred cycles before its neural pathways fried and it jumped from the lab window. It is noted that the creator was despondent following this incident, and did not return to work for almost half an orbit.
The eighth pearl prototype was made in the creator's own home, and although this was a flagrant disregard for the law it was overlooked for the progress she had made. This newest pearl could speak, even debate simple subjects, and it was capable of moving far more gracefully than any before it. An extended period in the distillery meant its gem and mass both were bigger, bringing its height to almost half a pelmetre. At this point, an Emerald observed the creator transporting the pearl prototype and demanded to be given one for her personal use. When this was explained to be impossible, she offered to fund the research in exchange for the prototype, and this was granted.
After the creator's petition for the prototype's return was thrown out, she resumed her work on a ninth prototype. Interest in the project was generated when the Emerald was pictured with the pearl, and plans were drafted to mass produce the pearls as personal companions for the commercial market. The creator objected but was overruled.
The ninth prototype is the closest on record to the modern pearl as we know it, although its memory bank is recorded as being less than a third of the size and its fine motor skills are nowhere near as developed. Its body was preserved after death and it is now on permanent display at the Third District Tableau. After its design was finalized, the schematics were sent to waiting factories to begin mass production.
The creator's last known correspondence on the subject of pearls was that she had no desire to own one of her own, though she would certainly have been granted one for free. She was recorded as saying she regretted making them at all, but would not explain why. She made one last attempt to get the eighth prototype back in her possession but was denied. When the verdict was read out, she departed immediately to a colony planet three galaxies away and has not been heard from since.