fandomhigh | Library, Wednesday

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Library, Wednesday

The books were actually behaving themselves today, and so Peridot was making use of any of her spare time in the library by looking up the properties of Earth's metals. She wanted something sturdy, but lightweight, and preferably only faintly magnetic...

... Maybe capable of having an antimatter blaster built into it...

Not that she didn't enjoy being short, but she couldn't find the ladder again, and was having one of her 'I really miss my limb enhancers' days. If she could just figure out adequate replacements, maybe a ladder would be entirely unnecessary anyway.

Maybe. Hopefully.

Probably not.

[OOC: Open!]

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"They should sort that out," Breq agreed.

She had had engines that could blow up half a planet.

"But I suppose it's going to take a very long time for them to even go outside their own solar system."

"Long by their standards, anyway," Peridot mused, reaching up to pull an atlas from the shelf and flipping through its pages before holding it up to Breq. "I suppose they get some credit for getting from flight to space travel all within a century, though."

"True, although that might just mean they were late to invent flight. Perhaps they put effort into other things. They do have goo music."

She leaned forward to look at the map. "Do you know where this island is located?"

Peridot nodded and flipped through the pages until she found America.

"Somewhere around here," she offered, pointing at the spot just off Balitmore, "but it's never guaranteed that these maps will have Fandom on them at all. It's like some versions of Earth aren't even aware it exists."

In fairness, the Earth of her reality had a large water-filled crater where Russia was supposed to be. That sort of thing just happened, sometimes.

Breq reached for the atlas and began to skim through the maps.

"There are enough different climate zones to support a large variety of species of plants and animals," she noted, not paying much attention to Fandom's invisibility on the map.

Quickly she made a few conclusions about how a Radchaai annexation would be made efficiently. She couldn't help it. She didn't even like it much. And she certainly wouldn't mention it to Peridot.

"If there is another species in this universe that do space travel, I think they would be quite an obvious target. Unless the species were dependent on another type of atmosphere."

Considering Peridot's people were just going to blow the whole planet up, she probably wouldn't have judged very hard for that one.

"They have so many resources here," Peridot agreed with a nod. "Homeworld was interested in Earth for that reason, a few thousand years ago. Atmosphere doesn't matter to us at all."

"You mentioned that, or at least that was the conclusion I drew," Breq said. "What kind of resources were your people interested in?"

But why blow up a perfectly usable planet?

Why? Spite. Almost entirely because of spite.

"Minerals, mostly," Peridot replied with a shrug of her shoulders. "The plan for Earth was to create a new series of Kindergartens to create more Gems in, and then when those resources were exhausted, turn it into another Gem colony."

She frowned a little, and then shrugged.

"That was before my time. The plan changed after that."

"How did it change?" Breq asked.

"We abandoned the planet and the Diamonds put it to a different use as a sort of... experiment," Peridot sighed. "One that would have destroyed it completely, but it never reached its final stage."

A fact that she was both thankful for and a little conflicted about.

"Destroyed it? What kind of experiment?"

That reminded her a little too much of Garsedd.

"A massive geoweapon," Peridot muttered, wrinkling her nose a bit. "It was... in poor taste, and made no rational sense."

To say the least.

"That sort of thing doesn't always make sense," Breq said. "Or it does, but for the wrong reasons. Why did they do it?"

"I... I thought it was in order to strengthen Homeworld," Peridot said, and now she was poking through the books some more, even though the atlas she'd pulled was already sufficient. "As it turns out, it was more... to satisfy a grudge, I think. There was a war. We lost."

"My... people did something similar," Breq said. "We were challenged for the first time, and our ruler ordered the complete destruction of our enemy. It changed us."

She closed the atlas.

"Is that why you are here? Because you refused to participate?"

"In part." Peridot wasn't looking up, now. "Originally I had come to Earth in order to check on the progress of the experiment. I ran into some resistance, and was unable to return home."

She had little problem talking about it, even if she wasn't making eye contact now. She wasn't proud of it, either.

"Now I can't return home because I had a hand in destroying it. The Diamonds would have me shattered if they knew."

Noticing the lack of eye contact, Breq asked:

"Do you think you did the right thing?"

"For Earth, absolutely."

Peridot shifted her weight uneasily, and then started to walk. They had books about space travel to find, yet. And this let her keep her eyes on the floor.

Breq followed, still holding the atlas.

"For you, then? Considering the circumstances. Considering the choice."

That one was a harder question to answer. Peridot walked quietly for a while before finally pulling together the proper words.

"I lost everything I know for this planet," she said, finally. "I'm a traitor to my own people, and I don't belong here. But for the first time in my life, my future is my own. I don't know what to do with it yet... but I'm starting to think that maybe it was worthwhile. Not easy. But worthwhile."

"I think I understand," Breq said after a while, then fell silent.

Peridot just nodded a little in response to that, finishing her trek to the books about space, and then quietly looked for one of the few about modern Earth's space program. It took her a moment, and she had to climb up onto the shelving to get what she was looking for, but she was small and surprisingly nimble, and she fetched the book with the ship schematics in it with ease and held it up to Breq.

"Thank you."

Breq opened the book, leaving the previous conversation behind, which was what she guessed Peridot preferred.

"As one could expect, I suppose," she said, studying the blueprint of the moon lander.

"Primitive," Peridot agreed, hopping back down to the floor and crossing her arms in front of herself. "But... crudely effective, I suppose."

"It filled it's purpose."

Breq looked up.

"What are spaceships like where you come from?"

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