In the rest after Gem Education Message repetition fifty, Pearl could maintain her body indefinitely. She could feel the energy within her gemstone almost hum as it began producing energy faster than her body was using it. She no longer felt so tired constantly.

'Making light from my gemstone uses energy too,' Pearl thought. 'If I make it too bright, I start using more energy than my gemstone regains.'

The comforting voice ordered her to make herself ready to meet her Master and wait. The voice had described several outfits that she could wear for her first appearance. 'A tunic should make a good impression,' Pearl thought. 'I will make it match the sight emotion of my hair and make the edges match my nose. Hopefully those are good emotions to portray. I'm not sure which sight emotions means happiness, but I'm think my Master will understand. They can tell me if they want me to wear something else after I meet them.' Pearl felt an echo of happiness at the thought of meeting her Master. It wasn't as strong as when the voice told her how amazing her Master was, but it was still good.

Pearl waited.


Pearl startled. 'I hear voices. Voices plural. New voices!' Pearl would have done something to express herself but wasn't sure how to. 'I should get ready. They may release me at any moment.'

The voices came closer but stopped still toward Pearl's side. A voice asked, "do you want to take the notes?"

"I can record it." The second voice was higher pitched. Pearl heard a soft grinding before the second new voice began again. "This is Mauve Spinel performing final checkout on the four Pearls before we open them. Assisting me is Bufonite representing the medical perspective." There was a pause and several faint grinding sounds before the second voice, Mauve Spinel, began again. "Checking the panel for the first Pearl now. Systems appear nominal. The Pearl is no longer drawing upon the ship energy. The GEM process reports no issues, pulling up the medical information now."

The deeper voice, Bufonite, then spoke, "No medical issues detected. The body is stable. I can confirm that the gemstone is producing energy. Everything is normal. Imperial Topaz should be thrilled." The two voices shared a duet of laughs at that for some reason.

There was some moving and the voices were closer to Pearl this time. Mauve Spinel began. "Checking panel for second Pearl at this time. Systems reporting nominal. The second Pearl is no longer drawing upon ship energy. The GEM process reports no issues."

"No medical issues. Body is good, gem is good," Bufonite reported.

There were sounds as the two Gems came closer. The voices sounded incredibly close but muffled when they spoke again. "Checking panel for the third Pearl. Systems are nominal. The Pearl is no longer drawing upon the ship energy. The GEM process is er…" Mauve Spinel paused. "The GEM process reports a fault. Hardware failure of visual projectors. The log reports the damage was sustained a hundred and thirty two Homeworld Standard Revolutions ago. That would be when we launched or shortly afterwards. Looks like it failed on… on or before GEM seventeen. Before it would have shown any of the visual lessons."

Bufonite cut in. "Mauve, move. Let me check the medical stats." Pearl could hear Bufonite doing something. She appeared to be louder at using the panel than Mauve was.

Pearl was beginning to worry about what they were saying, like an unknown hollow within her torso. 'Odd that I would associate emotions to my body and not my gemstone,' some small part of Pearl opined.

Bufonite continued slowly. "Medical status is... within tolerance. Its body is stable. The gemstone is producing energy, but at a reduced rate. Showing at seventeen percent reduction from designed energy production with equivalent reduction in maximum energy capacity. Scanning for physical evaluation."

Pearl felt as a warmth began at her head and travel down her body, with a faint vibration accompanying. 'That confirms it. They are talking about me.' The worry dug deeper into Pearl. She felt tears begin forming in her eyes. 'So this must be sadness,' Pearl thought.

Bufonite spoke softly. "Showing lateral compression distortion of the gemstone. That would explain the reduced energy capacity. The Gem's eyes appear to be functional so no physical atrophy due to lack of visual stimulus. Although some excess liquid... " Bufonite swore, "Gangue! She's awake."

Pearl froze. 'Can she see me?' Pearl thought. 'Is it better or worse that they can see me as a failure,' she considered.

The three gems stood in a thoughtful silence; two outside considering about the one inside the container.

"Does she have a chance?" Mauve asked softly.

"Medically, she'll be fine. Only quartz Gems really use more than fifty percent energy and that's only in combat situations. But it will be up to her owner to decide." Bufonite replied. "Who is her owner, anyway?"

"Looks like she's your boss's. Rose Quartz," answered Mauve.

"That's a relief then. Rose is the best division lead to take her in."

"Hey, Moonstone's not a bad division lead either," defended Mauve.

"You calculators aren't all bad, but you'd treat this Pearl like an experiment. Rose is all empathy and caring and all that slag," Bufonite said.

Pearl some tentative relief start filling the hollow in her chest. 'My Master will fix it. Everything will be good.'

"Fair enough," Mauve conceded. "Anything more we can do for this Pearl?"

"Not at the moment," answered Bufonite. "The gemstone deformation could be fixed in the long term, but that's over revolutions. Imperial Topaz wants the Pearls opened in three short cycles. She wants to make a ceremony out of it."

"That's what I heard," agreed Mauve. "So long as her Pearl is perfect, I think she'll want to continue the ceremony, but it will be her call."

"Mind your words, Mauve. You're recording," gently commented Bufonite.

"I'll transcribe and delete it when I get back to my terminal." Mauve started walking away from Pearl.

Pearl felt and heard a surprisingly gentle thud on the side of her space. "You'll be fine, little Pearl," Bufonite whispered. Pearl could then hear Bufonite thud her way across the floor to where Mauve Spinel must be.

Pearl heard the two Gems examine the last Pearl, finding that one to be nominal like the first two. Then they left.


'I have three short cycles before the ceremony. However, I don't know how long a short cycle is,' Pearl thought. 'Actually, that isn't strictly true. I know that there are twenty nine short cycles in a long cycle. I just don't have any context for what either of those means.'

Pearl thought back to her contextless lessons. Apparently she had been missing the visual component to her lessons. That was where the context was supposed to be gained. Maybe there was supposed to be some visual indicator of time during the rest periods so that she could develop an instinct for time.

'I'll just have to figure out context for myself,' Pearl decided. 'There are sixteen long cycles in a standard revolution. And I've been broken for one hundred and thirty two standard revolutions.' A wave of sadness threatened to overwhelm Pearl again.

'Focus on the numbers,' she chided herself. She pushed against the sadness, using the objectiveness of numbers as a lever.

'I finished education message repetition fifty. That makes either thirty three or thirty four repetitions since the… incident. Focus on the numbers. So thirty three will go into one hundred and thirty two… exactly four times. Maybe the repetition were based on the Homeworld standard revolution?'

Pearl thought back to her internal clock that she had improvised. 'There were roughly 223,187,148 word beats adding the Gem Education Message and the rest.' Pearl thought a moment. 'If I'm not certain that my word beats were consistent, then that number is already inaccurate. I can round that number some, to make it easier to solve. I will call that 224 million instead. I can divide that by four, getting fifty six million word-beats per revolution. Divide by sixteen, that's roughly three and a half million word-beats per long cycle.'

'Divide three and a half million by twenty nine short cycles in a long cycle and that is… That is a hard number to divide in my head. I can't really break the twenty nine into easy parts.' Pearl stopped to think about the problem at hand. 'Maybe I can get close instead. I can break the three and a half million into a three million part and the half million part. Those numbers look easier to solve.'

'I can do both parts of the number separate. I can divide the three million by thirty instead of twenty nine and get one hundred thousand. I can divide the half million part by twenty five instead and get twenty thousand. That is likely close, since the three million is six times bigger than the half million part and I estimated the three million division with an error that was one fifth as big as the error on the half million division. And the errors were in different directions, so they should cancel out. Six errors high and five errors low!' Pearl's forehead felt warm as she ran through the math.

'Add the hundred thousand and the twenty thousand and get a hundred and twenty thousand word-beats per short cycle. The ceremony is in three short cycles, so that's three hundred and sixty thousand word-beats until the ceremony,' thought Pearl triumphantly.

Finally the wave of sadness that Pearl had been ignoring swept back. Pearl wept.


Author's Notes:

25 Earth hours to a Homeworld short cycle.

29 short cycles (or ~30.2 Earth days) to a long cycle.

16 short cycles (~1.32 Earth years) to a Homeworld Standard Revolution.

A GEM repetition is 4 Homeworld Standard Revolutions (5.3 Earth years)