Chapter One: The Opal and the Incubator

A small, white, round stone gently rolled out of the incubator, and clicked quietly along the slide-ramp as it rolled onto a small, violet cushion. It had the appearance of fine marble, identical to all of the pearls that had emerged before it, but had a light scratch on the surface of the gem.

Thousands of pearls had been produced, although the formula for pearl production had not quite been perfected. With a calculated percent error of 1%, very few pearls that had come out of the machine were unable to emerge from their gemstones and take on a physical human construct.

"So..." it was a small, business-like opal gem who was running production today. "You said your name was...Rose Quartz?"

Rose nodded, looking a bit more sullen. She smiled lightly at the opal as the gem cast her a strange look.

"That's a strange name for you," the opal gem commented.

"Well...we haven't really been agreeing lately..." Rose murmured in response, looking away. Her resolve softened as she followed the opal gem into the 'not-so-typical' kindergarten. Rose watched as the high-compression chambers hummed and roared with gem production, allowing her attention to slip away.

"Right, right!" the opal commented, knowing not to pry the subject any further for fear of losing Rose's business at her incubator. "So you said, you needed a pearl?"

"Yes! Of course..." Rose said with surprise, immediately turning back toward the opal and coming back to reality.

"Well, it has been a bit of a slow day...see, we ended up with a bunch of bad pearls..." The opal gem walked over to the pearl that had rolled out of the incubator when Rose walked in, lifting it to examine it.

"See, this one has a scratch. It won't be any good, you know?" the opal was explaining. She led Rose over to a machine beside the incubator, with a small slide leading into a tank where all of the defective pearls landed. "So instead of shipping them out to our buyers, we end up melting them down and using to material for other things. Pavement, for example. It seems as though with the Diamonds expanding themselves, and having more roads built, that they will always be in need of pavement.

The opal gem tossed the small, slightly-scratched pearl into the tank with all of the other weird ones, and Rose watched in horror as the tank closed, and super-heated. When it opened back up a moment later, what would have been tons of gems had become a congealed mass of melted, pressured, and still super-heated pearls. The gemstones had lost their individual forms, and instead had been pushed into a massive block, ready to be used for other purposes.

"See, now we can put them to good use," the opal was saying, but Rose Quartz only stared at the block of what-used-to-be gems in horror, barely managing to hide how sick she felt at the sight of it all.

"Umm..." Rose murmured. She shook her head and looked away when she could not stand it any longer.

"Is something the matter?" the opal gem asked curiously, genuinely unaware of how Rose looked upon the ruined gemstones.

"...So, are there any other Pearls that have just been produced?" Rose asked timidly, looking visibly uncomfortable.

"Yeah, there are a few other pearls that came out this morning," the opal gem said. "Let's have a look."

Rose followed the opal gem as she lead her back to some of the pearls stacked on the other side of the incubator. Hundreds of pearls had each been placed on their own, violet pillow, and now needed only to emerge from their gemstone.

Rose actually smiled as she saw all of the gemstones before her, captivated by the new lives that were about to emerge.

"Ugh, how did this one get in here?!"

Rose looked away from the perfect gemstones and saw the opal gem pick up one of them off of a pillow, staring at it distastefully. Rather than having the perfect, round shape that the other gemstones held, this one was more oval-shaped, having a slightly longer slope along its surface than the perfect spheres that had emerged from the incubator earlier that day.

"See, this is an example of another one that...desperately needs to be melted down." the opal managed to say, her gaze drifting over the oval-shaped pearl with distaste.

Rose stared in horror as she watched the opal begin to walk back toward the other machine.

"Wait!"

The opal stopped, and turned around.

"I'll take that one, please," Rose Quartz said, regaining her calm demeanor.

The opal gem stared in disbelief. "This one?" she said, holding out the pearl in her hand.

"That is a rather fine Pearl, really..." Rose said. "It caught my eye. No other will do."

"You're positive of this? You know it may never have a physical form? It could just be a useless stone forever."

Rose Quartz took a moment to stare at the pearl that the opal held in her hand. Ushering the other gem over, Rose Quartz took the oval-shaped pearl into her hand, holding it up to one eye.

"Flawless..." Rose breathed to herself, not noticing as the opal raised an eyebrow. "The finish is so pure. Really, this is beautiful...Don't you see it?"

The opal winced, shrugging her shoulders and beginning to look uncomfortable standing beside Rose Quartz. "It's...defective. Usually, when someone of your status comes in here-"

"Former status," Rose Quartz corrected gently. "They'll be sending me to the new colony soon, just to be sure that I don't cause too much trouble."

The opal raised an eyebrow. "I see," she said smugly. She let her gaze drop knowingly to the pearl in Rose's hand. "And, what? You thought that you would save what you can?"

"Well, they may not see it, but I happen to find it a terrible waste," Rose Quartz voiced gently. She smiled sadly, looking down at the Pearl. "I am positive. I will only take this one."

"Alright, then," the opal approved, straightening up her posture. "You see, normally for pearls we charge quite a bit. But in this case...Since it would otherwise be used as material for the streets, I do not think it would be worth very much."

"I may very well be in luck if you can't see that she's worth every cent of your finest pearl," Rose said with a gentle smile, the same smile that she would later use when talking to Greg. "And I honestly cannot leave here without at least giving you some compensation for her."

"Very well," the opal gem said, "But I only run the machines. Make your way over to the front, and speak to the topaz in order to affirm this pearl as yours."