Lamp Entertainment presents…
Chapter 8: Snow on Homeworld
A Few Days Later Back on Homeworld…
December 8th.
Operations were going smoothly back on Homeworld, despite the need to increase the security at all sites should the Winter Shadow attempt another attack.
As always, the Diamonds brought something new with them from their visits to Earth. This time it was "snow." Not that gems didn't know of snow. But they didn't know that you could play in it. This was a huge development and made the gems that originated from frozen colonies hold their heads up a little higher. Even more so the Larimars, Snowflake Obsidians, and Sapphires. Some of them got downright obnoxious when bragging about how they had been digging through ice and snow thousands of years before it was cool.
And yes, most of them didn't even realize they made that pun. No matter how much the Lapis Lazulis teased them about it.
Anyways, there was a huge demand to get snow on Homeworld as well. Which was both easy and difficult. Making it snow? Easy. Give two dozen Lapis Lazulis two hours and they'd cover the planet in snow. If you made it sound like a challenge, they'd do it in one and a half.
The hard part was getting the snow to stay there. Homeworld didn't really have a winter season and the overall global temperature was, by human standards, fairly temperate. With any luck, the snow would last for maybe an hour before it turned into slush. And as a lot of gems came to discover, slush was just about the worst thing in the universe.
So how do you lower the global temperature of an entire planet (preferably without moving it out of orbit)?
The solution turned out to be rather simple. The Dark Cloud.
Despite the sinister name, The Dark Cloud was actually not all that malicious. It was a tool developed to be used during mining operations on asteroids or planetoids that were a bit too close to their star. Excessive amounts of sunlight and solar radiation could mess with sensors, electric equipment, or even simple eyesight.
The Dark Cloud was a pretty simple invention all things considered. In theory, it was as simple as putting a layer of dust made from pitch black particles in orbit around the asteroid or planetoid you were working on. The dust let through some light, but still blocked most of the detrimental radiation. The best part was that there was a readily abundant source of black dust from the factories that produced the syn-crystals that made up a large portion of gem technology. All you had to do was to load up enormous containers with the space-age equivalent of sawdust. Pack it together and place some concussive explosions in it. Let them out into orbit, detonate the explosives and let gravity do the rest of the work. The only downside was that the dust particles would heat up and decay sooner or later. So The Dark Cloud was mostly used on quick mining operations to extract some rare resource. A second generation called The Silver Cloud had been proposed using a reflective material instead. That one was a lot more expensive to create but could last a lot longer.
Of course, the fact The Dark Cloud would decay after a while suited Homeworld just fine. They wanted a winter, not an ice age.
With The Dark Cloud in orbit, the global temperature lowered quickly. Within three days of the Diamonds' return from Earth, Homeworld was covered in snow.
It was a beautiful sight to behold. The days were dimmer and grayer, but it made all the light seem so much warmer and brighter. Every building was covered in thin layers of snow and frost, like cakes dusted with powdered sugar. Occasionally, a ray of sunshine made it through the clouds and it made everything sparkle as if the starry sky had fallen down to the ground.
The streets were buried in snow. Some of the shorter gems completely disappeared in it and had to let bigger and bulkier gems walk in front of them to clear the way. Everywhere you looked, you could find quartzes and a few other gems playing snowball fighting. It didn't take long for gems to start putting up their own lights and decorations that lit up the now very dark nights.
It was enchanting. It was beautiful. It was…
It was a terrible idea.
White Diamond came to this realization a little too late. Sure, the white snow was enchanting in its beauty, much like White herself. But, ah… it did have the unfortunate side effect of making her blend into the background whenever she was out and walking.
She had been hit by not less than twelve low-flying ships and hover vehicles. Twelve! Seriously, did gems not watch where they were going? Even worse, no one ever let her play in the snowball fights! They said it would be "cheating." What rubbish! She only had two hands, but some of the fusions they let play with them had four! And she hated the feeling of the cold, wet snow on her exposed toes whenever she accidentally stepped in a particularly deep snowbank. And this one time when she tried to make a "snow angle," she nearly crushed several gems, and it was apparently her fault that they didn't move out of the way. And this other time…
"Then again," White sighed to herself. She was sitting down on a rooftop, watching a game of snowball fighting. Spinel had invited a couple of Quartzes to fight. A dozen big and burly soldiers against her, Yellow Pearl and Blue Pearl. You really had to feel bad for those poor Quartz soldiers. "All the little gems seem to have so much fun…"
So she kept her complaints to herself. Seeing others be happy made her happy and that was enough for her.
She would not be so happy if she knew what was going on in one of the old laboratories only a couple of kilometers away at that very moment. But that's a story for another day. Tomorrow, to be more specific.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Fun Fact: I really did misspell snow angel, but the typo worked with the joke, so I kept it.