Chapter Text
The instant their messenger’s hind foot disappeared into the access shaft of their puppet chamber, all of Seven Red Suns’ neuron flies were flooded with regret.
“Why, why did I do that?!” the iterator all but moaned in despair, their puppet dropping to the floor despite the lack of gravity within the chamber.
Why had they thought sending Five Pebbles that golden pearl, filled with its highly illegal and highly probable to go wrong data, was a good idea? Suns was Pebbles’ mentor! They knew how he could get when confronted with new and interesting projects, let alone ones born from Sliverist ideas! Worse, it wasn’t like they could just… ask Pebbles to change his mind!
Firstly, they already knew he wouldn’t. Secondly, Pebbles was probably too entrenched in preparations for the experiment detailed in the pearl to even notice, let alone answer, any of Suns’ messages over broadcasts or calls. Thirdly, even if Suns were somehow able to get someone from Pebbles’ local group to step in by outing him as Erratic Pulse without also managing to out themself—or a great number of other iterators—as being a member of the group SliverOfOcean… the only one who would have any ability to halt Pebbles’ progress would be Looks to the Moon via a forced broadcast. But that wasn’t exactly a viable option, considering that she wouldn’t be able to keep one up continuously as the cycles passed and would, eventually, be forced to drop it. Thus freeing Pebbles to just continue with his plans and start the experiments anyways, and likely at an even more dangerous pace than originally planned. Then, were she to try and send another forced broadcast after recovering, and happened to do so at the wrong time…
…Suns shuddered to think of the consequences. Of the slow, painful death they may have just consigned their friend to. Of how all they would be able to do was watch from afar, unable to help or offer any real comfort, as bit by bit Pebbles rotted away… and how there was nothing they could do about it, now.
The gravity of their puppet chamber began fluctuating wildly in their hopelessness, sending the many pearls accumulated within careening wildly. Suns watched despondently through their puppet’s ocular lenses from its position on the floor, rooted in place against the gravitational changes by the mechanical arm attached to its back. Too lost in their grief to care when a red pearl chipped upon crashing into the wall. Barely noticing when a blue pearl fractured after crashing into a pink pearl—which also fractured as the velocity sent it spinning into one of the upper corners of the chamber. Apathetic when they registered a dull “thump!” and the ping from a warning of possible damage from their puppet’s head acting as the landing pad for a golden pearl—
—Wait.
A golden pearl?
Suns immediately turned on the gravity in their chamber, their puppet scrambling to move, to grab hold of the impossibly-colored pearl—ignoring all the while the clinks, crashes, and pings of damage warnings as the rest of the pearls rained down around— and on top of—it.
That golden pearl… should not be in their puppet chamber. Seven Red Suns distinctly remembered implanting it into their messenger’s chest. Remembered the way it shone all the more golden and brightly where it contrasted against the creature’s dark, purple fur until the last of Suns’ careful stitching knitted muscle and skin back together and hid the contraband from sight. So how could the pearl be here, now, still ensconced within their chamber and safely away from Pebbles’ desperate, grasping hands?
Suns pondered the question, as any good iterator would, as they conducted a visual study of the pearl in their puppet’s grasp… only to fumble and nearly drop it when they arrived at a solution. At a memory.
“Wait… I own two golden pearls.”
One was, of course, the pearl that held the dangerous, illegal instructions for how to create genome-altering organisms. But the other…
The other dated back to relatively early in Suns’ existence—way back before the idea of mass, global ascension had even been a passing fantasy in the minds of any of their creators—and held a recording for the debut of a musical composition. One which Suns had the misfortune of being forced to star in via literally forced patterns of breathing that had not only been highly uncomfortable and put some of their simulations massively behind schedule, but was also, Suns was sure, a core reason behind why they disliked their creators’ music so much.
Suns… felt extremely foolish to have forgotten that particular pearl’s existence. They would blame it on the trauma of its creation, if not for the fact that they had chosen to inscribe the illegal data meant for Pebbles on a golden-colored pearl specifically because that music pearl existed, and they’d wanted to use it as a layer of obfuscation. If anyone had caught Suns with the pearl during a live call, Suns could have claimed that it was just that old music pearl their creators had gifted them, for whatever inane reason their creators had. And if anyone saw Pebbles with it, he could just claim Suns had gifted it to him via a messenger since everyone knew how much Pebbles liked cultural artifacts. …Though, now that Suns thought about, they couldn’t actually remember ever telling Pebbles about that clever idea for obfuscation. Or even the fact that they had possession of a cultural artifact like that to begin with.
One which would have made a far better present for Pebbles than the one Suns just sent.
Although… now that Suns was looking more closely at the pearl, they got a squirming feeling among their processing strata. A feeling that was simultaneously sinking and uplifting, because the more they looked at the pearl within their puppet’s grasp, the more they realized that, just perhaps, their obfuscation gamble worked a bit too well. Based on a purely visual inspection, the two pearls were so identical that Suns honestly couldn’t tell which golden pearl they were actually holding… and they were starting to doubt their memory of which golden pearl they had actually sent.
They could always read the remaining pearl to find out, of course, but… they were honestly a bit afraid to.
On the one hand, if this was the illegal pearl, then it meant Pebbles would remain physically safe… but also stuck in a dark and desperate mental place that might be very hard to break him out of, especially if he thought he’d been betrayed, and that Suns had sent the wrong pearl on purpose. On the other hand, if this was the music pearl, then the confirmation of what Suns had just done when sending off their messenger would only serve to crush all their newfound and fragile hope that maybe—just maybe—everything would be okay. That maybe they weren’t as much of a failure of a mentor—of a friend—as they felt in the current moment.
“But surely I could never be so lucky,” Suns thought with a sigh of their vents as they turned off gravity again, letting the pearl float as far away from their puppet as possible and sending out and order that it was to be taken a way and stored in the deepest recesses of their structure so that they wouldn’t be tempted into reading it and having to bear that certainty, one way or the other.
Still… “Surely this burgeoning hope is just a false one, apt to break the second my overseers note the heavier rains from Pebbles’ can as he increases his water intake to support the large, delicate, and dangerous project I’ve just dropped in his lap,” they couldn’t help but think.
“Surely there is no way I sent the wrong pearl by mistake.”