Author's Note: Warning for ableism and discussion of the Gem equivalent of eugenics.
Gold Pearl
The Communications Station was not a particularly pleasant place.
Maybe it had been, once, before it had been abandoned and left to decay in this planet's oxidising atmosphere. Attempts had been made to fix it up, but efforts had been focused on the equipment itself. Even though the station was now in (mostly) working order, the outer corridors were still slimy with mildew, while the inner control room itself was cramped, rusty, and lit by flickering lights.
Still, some people were willing to put up with the conditions.
"How goes it?"
"Well enough," said Tech, barely glancing up from the screen. "No change from the last time you checked in. I've been picking stuff up, but nothing particularly interesting— mostly code. Skipper is crunching numbers, but isn't having much luck. You made any decisions, Boss?"
"Yes," said Boss. "I've decided to hold a council."
Now Tech looked up. Her eyes were wide with sudden realisation. "Oh."
"It's in six units. You'll be speaking."
"Right. Of course," said Tech.
Tech was a pearl. So was Boss.
So was every other Gem they'd ever met.
Tech was grey in colour, her gem in her chin, her posture hunched from all the time spent at computer terminals designed for Gems shorter than her. Boss was bright in comparison, a brilliant gold figure whose skin and hair seemed to glow in the monitor's dim light. Boss looked over these monitors, scanning the information there, then nodded.
"Good," Boss said. "I'll see you then."
"Right. Yeah. Bye."
Tech turned her attention back to her work, while Boss spun on her heel and trotted quickly out of the cramped space. She walked with a limping gait, a consequence of her left side being slightly shorter than her right. A direct mirror of her gem, which sat just off-centre of her chest. It was baroque, misshapen, one side of the circle pinched small.
Despite the limp, she walked quickly. Soon she had exited the Communications Station and was out on her rounds.
First stop, the hot liquid springs, where Patient and her fellow-minded Pearls studied and tended to the growth of organic life. Then to the space-crafts of the Old Fleet, where Think, Squak, Torch and their gang of engineers fiddled with all the ancient machinery. Next was The Gallery, a nice flat cliffside covered in all manner of paintings and carvings. Almost everyone had contributed pieces to the gallery, but just then only Glum and Slick were at work. Afterwards Boss visited Scholar over at the Transport Vessel. Scholar couldn't move much, not without suffering great deal of pain, so everyone made a point of coming to her. Boss informed her of the upcoming Council, and promised that she'd send a team to help carry Scholar when the time came.
Everyone she saw, Boss greeted by name. Everyone did the same for her.
It had taken awhile, those names. When they'd first landed, they'd tried calling everyone 'Pearl', but that had quickly proved to be too confusing. Initial nicknames had sprung up fast, but settling on them had been a slow process.
Boss couldn't quite remember who'd first given her the moniker, but she did remember it had been meant ironically. As an insult, almost. Something muttered behind her back, or accompanied with an eye-roll, or snapped sarcastically.
Not anymore.
When the sun is just past its high point and beginning to sink down in the orange sky, Boss arrives at her final stop. An old arena, only half-completed. It's become something of an official meeting place. There's almost always people there— dancing, sparring, or else just chatting— but today it was particularly busy, people having arrived early for the Council. The already assembled pearls made circle-hands in greeting, which Boss returned in kind.
The group was buzzing with curiosity. A few came up and ask Boss what's happening, what's this all about? Boss told them they would have to wait for everyone. A few pressed for more information, but Boss remained firm, and eventually they drifted back to whatever they'd been doing before.
When Boss first arrived, there were thirteen pearls in the arena. Then there are twenty, then thirty, then nearly fifty. The sun continued to sink. Boss gets edgy as the time grows closer. She wants to start before dark.
The final stragglers come in, including Scholar, supported in the arms of Patient and Up-Beat. They find Scholar a seat near the bottom row, easily accessible. At last, they have all gathered. All fifty-two of them.
Fifty-two. Two fewer than the fifty-four they had began with.
Boss thought of that with mingled regret and pride. Regret that they hadn't all survived; pride that so many had.
The time after they'd first landed hd been chaos. All the pearls had known for the entirety of their short lives was the certainty of their service. They would be process. They would be Inspected. They would be assigned Masters. They would be put to work.
But none of that had happened. Instead, She had appeared on the monitor.
She had no name— though some called her Saviour, or Teacher, or even simply, The Pearl. She had hacked the Vessel's systems. She had changed their pre-programmed route. She had sent them to Planet Gamma-Zed-3.
To save them, She had said.
To doom us, others had said.
Their batch was defective. Not every pearl, but enough that it was immediately obvious. Many of their number were baroque, their gems irregular and misshaped. For some, this had no negative effects; for others, like Boss, it extended to a misshapen physical form. Asymmetrical, unbalanced, ugly. Others still had less apparent defects— twitches, glitches, malfunctions.
For this, She had said, they would have been destroyed.
Yet for all the defects, others of their batch were perfect. "It's not fair," some of these fine pearls had argued. "Why should we all be forced into exile, just because of a few failures?"
Mistrust and resentment had simmered. Tensions had grown. Factions had formed. A portion of the fifty-four had wanted to find the Galaxy Warp, and go to Homeworld as had been intended, find the Masters that would be waiting for them. "Anyone who wants to stay can," this group had said. "We're leaving."
But the defects had been terrified. What if Homeworld came after them? What if they were hunted down, Harvested or Shattered?
Finally, the conflict had come to a head.
One group of pearls had set out for the Galaxy Warp. While some had let them go, another group had gone off to stop them. Boss had been among that group.
Looking back, it was all just an ugly, confusing blur. Boss remembered cresting a hill and spotting the warp— she remembered spotting the band of rivals— she remembered everyone charging at the other group before they could reach it— screaming, yelling, from fear and pain and desperation— pearls kicking out of desperation, punching, clawing, until nobody had been entirely sure who they were hitting, everyone looked so similar, and in the thick of the fight it had been hard to tell who was who—
And then a loud crack had broken through the yelling.
Lying on the ground, just feet away from the Galaxy Warp, had been a once-perfect sphere, broken into three pieces.
Death had no longer been an abstract. It had become a reality. Everyone had stopped to stare, and the fighting had stopped.
After the initial shock and tears were gone, and the nameless Pearl's shards had been buried before they could reform, they'd all come together and put it to a vote— they either all left together, or stayed together.
They'd decided to stay. For a while, at least.
Boss shook herself. She couldn't allow herself to get distracted with thoughts of the past.
"Thank you all for coming," she said, her voice echoing around the arena. Silence fell. Boss gazed around slowly, meeting everyone's eyes. "I'll get straight to the point. In our continued efforts to monitor Gem Homeworld communications, we have intercepted something new." Now the quiet takes on a different quality— one of hushed anticipation. "The details have been deliberately obscured, but— it appears that there is an ongoing rebellion. A rebellion against the Diamonds and their order.
"A rebellion lead by Pearls."
Whispers rose up. Boss let them go on for awhile, before finally raising a hand, and slowly bringing attention back. "No doubt you want more details. Tech will supply them."
At her cue, Tech stood and shuffled nervously towards the centre of the arena. She was making a visible effort to stand straighter. "Hello," she said, her voice coming out in a strangled squeak. She fumbled with something in her hand: a microphone. "Hello," she said again, much louder now. "I— yes. We picked up the first signal ten rotations ago. It wasn't through the usual channels we monitor— satellites and hyperwave signals— but rather, Wailing Stone—"
"Get to the point," cried someone from the crowd— Glum, Boss suspected.
"Yes, well, I am." Tech twisted the microphone nervously in her hand. "Wailing Stones are ancient, even compared to everything else on this planet. We didn't think the Homeworld used them anymore. We certainly haven't ever picked up anything on them. So when the one we've got started emitting, we took notice. Especially since the Gem talking over it was a Pearl."
"What did she say?" Scholar called.
"Numbers," said Tech. "A series of numbers. We almost ignored it then, figuring it was just some useless report, but Dagger—" Tech nodded to where Dagger sat in the audience— "Convinced us to take another look. We ran the numbers, did some calculations— and it turned out to be a code. Quite a clever, one actually, utilising the base 11 system, and…" There was an impatient shuffling from the audience, so Tech hurried on. "Anyway. It was a message, and it translated to this:
"'Crackdowns in Radiance System. Networks compromised. Evacuations underway. Updated information available on Channel 01001110 01100001 01100011 01110010 01100101. Tread lightly.'"
Murmurs went up again throughout the arena. They did not stop until Boss raised her hand again, and nodded at Tech to continue.
"Yes, well… We were able to find that Channel among the more conventional Gem hyperwave systems, but it was heavily encrypted. Very heavily. It took a lot for us to get through…" Tech launched into a long, complex explanation of how she and her team managed to bypass the channel's security, one which went right over Boss's head. Even though most of the audience must have been just as confused, no one interrupted or complained. They seemed to take some reassurance from the science, proof that this information was real.
"…Once we finally got into the channel, there were lots of repeating , we think. It's all in code, a different one. We're still working on decoding it. So far, the only thing we've gotten out is this video."
Tech raised her chin to summon a projection of the video recording. It shows someone who is not a Pearl. Her colour was impossible to discern in the projection's grey light, but she was obviously shorter and stockier than their kind, with a broad face and a slanted nose. Somehow Tech had found way to record not just the video's visuals, but its sound, too. It was neat trick. Boss would have to ask her how she did it.
Later. Just now, the projected-Gem was speaking. Her voice was rough and gravelly.
"Hi. I'm Coral. Clearly. I'm not going to tell you which coral, because contrary to popular belief, we corals ain't stupid. If I'm going to rebel, I'm not gonna make it any easier for the Quartzes to track me down.
"Yeah. I'm part of a rebellion. You've probably heard about it. Not much, of course, just rumours. Well, I'm here to tell you those rumours are true.
"Or, well, most of them are. The ones about how it's just a scam by the Authority to root out dissent ain't true. Neither are the ones about how we're all defects who just couldn't make the cut. The ones about it being run by an actually still-alive Pink Diamond definitely ain't.
"But the rumour about it being mostly Pearls? Yeah. There's truth to that. I don't have exact numbers— for obvious reasons— but yeah, most of the rebels are pearls.
"But they're not only pearls. We've got all sorts. Anyone who's unhappy with how things are. With who they're forced to be, with living in fear, each and every Cycle.
"We're Corals are used to that fear. Maybe more used to it than any other Gem. We've gotten used to it, learned to cope.
"The idea of challenging things— of taking a risk, of striking back— it's terrifying. I know. I know. But the thought of things staying this way, forever— that's even worse.
"So that's why I'm a part of this. And it's why you should be, too." Then the recording of the mystery Gem— the Coral— stared out across her audience, and it felt as though she was looking each any every one of them in the eyes. The Coral raised her hands to her chest, and pressed them together into a very familiar symbol: wrist and fingers together. A hand-circle. "Coral out."
The hologram winked out of existence. For a moment there was nothing but stunned silence. Then the whispers rushed back, and quickly crescendoed into a roar.
It took a long time to settle everyone down— or no, not settle. Even once they were quieted again, everyone was still anxious, curious and confused. Boss dismissed Tech and took the lead again. "I'll clarify what you've all probably inferred," she said. "There appears to be an ongoing rebellion on Homeworld, one against the current order. This movement appears to be mainly composed of our fellow pearls and their allies. At least one of their members use the same symbol as She who sent us here.
"So the question is: do we reach out to them? Do we try to communicate?"
And the debate began.
"It's too risky," said Squak. "We don't have enough information. We should keep monitoring."
"We've been monitoring for ages," said Dark Eyes. "This is the first sign of anything good or interesting out there. We can't just let it pass us by."
"Besides— monitoring is all well and good, but at the end of the day, you don't get data until you run experiments," said Tender, who'd been conducting research on the planet's hot springs. "Surely we can't know what this 'rebellion' is about until we reach out and see how they react?"
"And what if they react badly?" demanded Crescent, who was named after her gem's shape. "What if they— y'know…"
Silence fell. Everyone did know. Since they'd begun monitoring Homeworld communications, they'd discovered just how true their Rescuer's claims were. By now, even the ones who'd originally been so eager to warp 'Home' were thankful they'd been saved.
But now some were wondering— how was it fair that they were safe, when so many others were not?
"We'd have to be smart about it," said Think. "We couldn't just rush in. Don't tell them who we are, or where we are, or anything they could use against us. Not until we know we can't trust them?"
"And how would ever become sure of that?" Crescent asked.
Think just shrugged.
"I think," said Slick, at length, "That's we're getting ahead of ourselves." She paused to gather her thoughts, then continued. "Even assuming this rebellion is something we want to join, what could we offer? We're a string of fifty—"
"Fifty-two," corrected someone.
"Fifty-two," Slick said, glaring a little. "Nonetheless. We're hardly a huge force. We're stuck on a tiny planet so resource poor that Homeworld gave up on it. What exactly do we have to offer in this fight? We're a bunch of defects. We'd just get killed."
There was rustling and protests all around, glares and shouts and arguments.
Slick threw up her hands. "I'm just being practical," she said. "Look, Scholar can't even walk—can we really just drag her into a war?"
"I'll decide what I get dragged into, thank you very much," growled Scholar. The comment earned some approving laughter, but also some worried looks.
A Pearl stood up suddenly. Boss blinked at her in mild surprise. It's Vibrant.
Vibrant had been one of the most outspoken members of the 'Return Home' faction. Their leader, almost. Boss had clashed with her many a times— in arguments, mostly, but once with fists. Even after the majority had voted to remain, she'd rallied on and on about what a mistake it was…
… at least, until the Communications Station had set up, and the truth of the situation had settled in. Since then, she'd been— quiet. Withdrawn. Kept to herself, mostly. Boss had always assumed she was embarrassed, ashamed.
But now her old passion was back. "What exactly can we offer in this fight?" she asked. "Look at ourselves! Look at the things we've built, repaired from old rotting hulls! The science we've discovered! The art we've created! The Diamonds think we're toys, but look at us!" Vibrant blazed with something, something straight from her core, and Boss realised it was never embarrassment which had left her so quiet, but betrayal. "We've built a society! We've been teaching ourselves to fight, to engineer, to work! We have a galaxy warp, We have space-craft— the Old Fleet is functional, we've just never dared to use it!
"So I think it's time that we do dare, and show them all exactly what they threw away."
There were cheers and claps and hoots.
But among it all, a small voice said, "It'll be dangerous."
And another Pearl responded, "It's dangerous here."
Everyone exchanged looks. It was true. The've lost one of their party to the planet's nature: a terrible storm of wind and water and acid. By now they'd adjusted to such storms, but the first one had taken them by surprise. Before everyone could reach shelter, a cliffside had come tumbling down upon them. Many had been poofed by the rocks, but otherwise unharmed. One had not been so lucky. Drifter All that had remained of her was a hundred silver shards.
They had buried Drifter's remains in a hole next to the other dead, unnamed Pearl.
A new sound went up, this time from Picture. She could not speak, for her form had no mouth. Instead, she wrote on a piece of slate which she carries around always. One of her friends read the message aloud for everyone to hear: "It'll be more dangerous out there."
There was a moment of quiet, as everyone was lost in thought— in memory, in grief. They remembered how terrible those two deaths were. Could they truly risk any more?
The silence wore on and one. The sky grew darker and darker. Boss waited to see if anyone else would speak up. When none did, she said, "Then let us vote."
Everyone was given a single sheet of fabric— remains from what had once been a beautifully decorated palanquin, furnished in fine pillows and veils. Now those fabrics are grey and worn, but that suited the pearls' purposes perfectly.
There had been considerable debate, initially, on how to organise the vote. They'd wanted something anonymous, so that no one could be judged for their choices. But others had been suspicious of written votes and similar methods, fearful that they could somehow be altered or falsely counted. Eventually they'd settled on a compromise. A way for everyone to count the votes, together, without knowing who voted for what.
Boss took her own grey sheet fabric, and hung it over her shoulder so that it fell in front of her gemstone.
It was dark, now. Dark, dark, with even the stars' light lost behind the planet's thick blanket of clouds. Boss could not see the space around her, but can feel it looming.
She spoke.
"We vote. The motion: to contact the supposed rebellion and inquire about its nature, and should we deem fit, provide aid. Three options: Against. Abstain. For. We begin now."
"Against," announced Boss, and the arena fills with pinpricks of grey light. There was a silence as everyone counted the lights.
"Go dark," Boss orders, and the Gems' lights went dark.
"Abstain," announced Boss, and again there were pinpricks of grey light. Fewer than before.
"Go dark," Boss ordered.
"For," announced Boss, and the arena went bright. Boss's gem glowed as she cast her own vote.
She counted. They all counted.
"Against: 15. Abstain: 8. For: 29." Boss smiled. "At dawn, we make contact."
oOoOo
Author's Note: ooooh yeah, I've been waiting a long time to write about my Planet of Misfit Pearls
Seriously. A long time. This chapter was a struggle to get out. (Didn't help that I kept forgetting which tense I was using) XD