Who: Peridot, and Holden Wilson When: Friday, May 15th (back dated) Where: Random place with a bench. What: A man finds an alien eating toothpaste. It's exactly what it sounds like. Rating: PG Warnings: NA Status: Completed Gdoc.
Though she had been stuck on Earth for months now, Peridot still wasn’t quite accustomed to everyday life in such a location. Back at Homeworld, her home was mechanical, technological, but most of all it was familiar to her. This place was organic; there was too much flesh, and not enough machinery. The technology of the place was also obsolete by her own standards. Where as Homeworld had been able to project life like holograms for centuries; it seemed that Earth had only begin to tamper with such technology recently.
There were a few good things about the place. Her roommate, though annoying, had proven to be a source of fascination for the Gem. There were also consumables that she had found pleasing. Her favorite so far? Something that humans weren’t supposed to eat.
“This concoction of water, glycerin, sorbitol, sodium lauryl sulfate, cellulose gum, flavor, sodium hydroxide, and titanium dioxide has proven to be a pleasant experience when consumed,” she spoke to herself before sitting on a bench at the park.
The mechanical Gem opened the tube of Colgate toothpaste, and squeezed a generous amount into her mouth where she gnoshed on the minty concoction, and swallowed it.
~
Jogging got his head in order. Holden actually did tend to jog even when he was in Dubai. There were a lot of looks which got cast his way since white men running there? Wasn't the most usual scenery. He had never cared since it'd been the only form of exercise he'd really taken to over the years and he had too much energy to not burn it off somehow. His dog was at home with Sean which was the only reason he was looking when the woman squeezed the toothpaste into her mouth to start eating it.
Holden literally skidded to a full stop in front of her. Incredulity lit up his face as he tried and failed to suppress a smile. Test City was never boring. Even on the most mundane of days, Holden could count on the place to come up with something to throw him off the beaten track.
"You realize you aren't supposed to eat toothpaste, right? I mean, I get it's very fresh and minty and---okay, no. I don't get it. The stuff is gritty and terrible. I can't imagine how you can stand eating it. I'm just checking to make sure you aren't about to poison yourself. It has a number to call although I don't think it'll work here. Do you think they have Poison Control in Test City?"
Who knew?
No one was from anywhere which made sense to him. People talked about magic, aliens, invasions had happened, and the list went on from there. Holden had been an advocate for the rights of everyone to be treated with equality and respect his entire life. He'd never dreamed of a population where he'd have to be representing people with literal superhuman abilities. They were straight out of big action films in some cases. He wished he knew what kind of person he was talking to since he realized he might have offended her unintentionally.
"I'm sorry if I'm being rude. I don't know. Toothpaste might be fully edible among your people. I try not to jump to conclusions. It's just hard. Since I'm human from a human world where there aren't anything other than humans and Test City definitely has more than humans. Feel free to save me from myself at any time."
~*~
Mouth full of toothpaste, Peridot jerked a bit before regaining her composure. Her first instinct was to snap at the man before her, but she managed to swallow the pasty concoction in time to calm herself. “Hmmm, yes, I suppose this would be inedible for your kind. It does nothing to me, except to provide a strange sensation in my oral receptacle.”
The green Gem looked at the guy. She was, in relative terms, rather new to Earth. Most of her life had been spent doing technical repairs on Homeworld; and later she’d been assigned certain missions to other planets. It was only a little over a year ago that the Yellow Diamond Authority had given Peridot an important mission; to reactivate one of the larger Kindergartens on Earth. Peridot had taken a rather arms length away approach to the assignment. Mostly she had used her robonoids, and other machines to help with the bulk of the mission.
Now she was fully stuck on Earth, and had little choice, but to observe the different inhabitants of Test City. She had come to see humans as interesting, but simple creatures. The person in front of her was no different in her eyes.
“If it is vital for you to know, I am what is called a Gem. My name is Peridot, and I assume that you have a name that isn’t the word ‘human’?”
~*~
"Right. You're a Gem and named after one, Peridot, very pretty, my mother's birthstone. I'm Holden Wilson. I'm a civil rights attorney. I basically try to make sure everyone is treated equally."
He was talking to an alien.
Holden wondered at which point in time the carousel of life had started to spin wildly out of control to the point it had scrambled his brains so he thought he could talk to aliens about whether or not something could poison them.
What if he'd offended her? She looked pretty annoyed. It could be that was her resting face. Some people had a resting bitch face. He had a resting laughing face. It made people think he was always in a good mood which was, okay, usually right, but sometimes made him want to beat inanimate objects with the useless set of golf clubs his mother had bought him when he'd graduated law school. She'd been under the impression all lawyers golfed.
Holden hadn't golfed in his life. He had beaten a few things with the clubs over the years. Bad break-ups usually resulted in him paying a guy at a junkyard fifty bucks to let him swing a nine-iron at anything he could stand to hit with it. Some people wanted talk therapy. He preferred to work on his swing.
"If I have been incredibly offensive to you or your culture in any way, I sincerely have not meant to be. I know people say things like that all the time, but I mean it. I'm a guy who respects others no matter how they come. I was just---it isn't every day I'm jogging and see someone eating toothpaste. You do a pretty good job of looking human. I think that's possibly a compliment? If you're trying to blend in?"
~*~
“I’m green, and last I observed, humans only exhibit a similar hue when affected by pathogens,” she quipped back in a bored tone.
Peridot stood up from the bench she had been seated on earlier. The empty tube of toothpaste went into the trash, and for a brief moment she thought of tossing this ‘Holden’ in there as well. She decided that even thinking about such a thing would not bode well for her. If she was going to be stuck on Earth, then she would have to try her best to get along with the others that had been pulled here.
“Actually, it is more like your gems are named for us. What is this about a birthstone, and why would your mother have my type as hers?” she asked with genuine curiosity.
It was something about humans, and the people of Earth that Peridot didn’t quite understand. She had mentally recorded that nearly everyone in Test City was wearing some form of gem, or stone. She didn’t understand it, because those stones were useless; there was nothing magical about them; they served absolutely no purpose except to look pretty.
“It is hard to offend me,” she noted, “unless you touch my stuff.”
~*~
Holden rubbed his neck, "I, uhh, actually had a roommate in college who turned blue because of a prank. It's a lot easier to pass off a weird skin color than you might think. People are very strange about being 'alternative' in their looks from time to time."
He had seen quite a few people who had enjoyed having things implanted under their skin, tattoos to cover every bit of skin visible, piercings in places he didn't want to think about, and the list went on. Alternative looks were common in the United States. They were even popular in Dubai. Holden had gotten used to dealing with unusual looking people in his line of work.
If he passed judgment because of looks, he'd have been in the wrong business for a long time.
Civil Rights were about more than sexuality or religion though those were the most hot-button topics on the market. Holden had defended people who had been wrongfully terminated for the wrong haircut or hair color. He'd once tried a case where a law office the block over from his had fired one of their partners because the man had dared to get a tattoo on the back of his hand. It was all a mish-mash of things which were supposed to be inalienable rights. That was what Holden was interested in defending.
"I don't actually know that much about the history of birthstones. I just know it's a tradition which goes back a long, long time in human history. It's a lot like Astrology though. Some people believe in it. Other people think it's all a load of---lies. Peridot happens to be the birthstone for the month of August. It's when my mom was born."
~*~
Deftly, Peridot moved her fingers a little ways from her wrist to form a screen in midair. The fifth finger, as usual was the stylus. The devices given to her, to all of them, were too archaic for her use. Peridot using a smartphone was the equivalent of a Millennial using a gramophone to play music with. Needless to say, the Technician had done a bit of tweaking, and coded her own system to do everything the smartphone could do. Ironically, despite wanting to get rid of it, she had learned that her system still had to rely on the phone.
It was frustrating to say the least.
“Hmmm, Astrology, the study of planets and their effect on humans based on their position that day, and the day of that person’s birth. Two of these signs fall under that month; Leo, and Virgo. I am aware of only one lion type being, and I do not see how I could possibly relate to a female who has yet to engage in the act of procreation with a male human.”
She continued to look around, but when the information became a jumbled mess of information regarding the peridot stone, and other stones, Peridot had shut down the screen. “You are a civil rights attorney? Tell me, how can all members of a species be equal when not all are equal at all.”
Of course she was referring mostly to the Homeworld system. Ever since her creation, Peridot had learned that she would never be equal to the Gem Warriors; but that she would never be equal to the Gem Servants. Technicians such as herself were considered mid tier, and she couldn’t imagine it any other way. ~*~
Civil Rights were a universal matter. Holden couldn't explain to Peridot why birthstones were important to people or why they chose to value pseudoscience topics such as Astrology, but he could explain the concept of Civil Rights. His entire life was built on the belief everyone deserved equality regardless of any other factors. It wasn't a feeling for him. It was a certainty. He'd defend someone's rights to the very death if he had to even if they weren't fighting for rights he himself wanted or understood.
"Civil Rights fall under the classification of the First Amendment to the American Constitution. The shortest explanation is people are guaranteed the right to the pursuit of happiness. What makes me happy might not be what makes you happy, but I have a right to want it, to have it, to seek it out for myself all the same because that is an inalienable right in our justice system. As long as people aren't breaking judicial laws -murder, larceny, I'm sure you're aware of the legal system-, they should be treated equally regardless of how they choose to seek their own happiness."
Some people wanted to tattoo themselves to look like cats. They wanted whiskers, docked ears, a few wore tails pinned to their pants. What they were doing was an expression of themselves, but they weren't breaking any laws. Holden had defended a whole community of Cats who had been denied even an interview for an employment at more than one establishment based solely on how they presented themselves on a visual level.
No one could tell another person how to dress if their dress was in direct correlation to their religion or their self-identification. Holden held that to be an inalienable right the same as a Muslim woman's right to dress in full burka should be respected. He didn't believe religion was something which could be defined by the government nor did he believe a government should have the right to tell a person how they could self-identify.
"Self-identification matters on a deeply personal level for many people. It should be something which the government is not allowed to control. People should not have to worry their right to freedom of self-identification or self-expression can cost them their job, their home, their right to an education or a relationship or anything which any other person is entitled to because they have a right to be themselves. That's what Civil Rights attorneys like myself fight for: people's rights to be who they feel they are at their core. We do believe every person has an equal right to be themselves. I believe every person from the Queen of England to the Cat Lady I represented last year is on equal footing in terms of their right to the pursuit of happiness. Your culture doesn't think the same?"
~*~
Just about every word that came out of Holden’s mouth was like a slippery eel. No matter how much Peridot wanted to catch it, grasp it, and hold onto it, they kept slipping away. The only thing she got out of his speech was that he believed that no matter what, everyone was equal. Peridot’s frown turned even lower, and she sighed. “If my culture treated everyone equally then we would have perished long ago. Our culture relies on a system that shouldn’t be tampered with, just because a Pearl decides that she wants to be a warrior instead of an intelligence agent.”
She wasn’t going to mention the Crystal Gems; mostly because she wasn’t all that aware of them. She knew that they lived on Earth, declared themselves as the guardians of Earth and all it’s living creatures, and they loved to destroy her things. She knew nothing about the Gem Civil War that had happened over 5,000 years ago, except what Jasper and Lapis Lazuli had told her.
Which was that they were fighting for control of a planet that they considered garbage, a hunk of rock, and miserable. Gems were like collectors it seemed. They collected planets, and even the ugliest of planets had to go into their collection.
~*~
"Sounds as if you and I have a lot to learn about one another's cultures."
It was the only counter Holden could come up with which wouldn't be potentially offensive to the Gem. He couldn't imagine a mindset where the idea of equality was seemingly deemed absurd at the outset. Thinking along those lines were antithetical to every core value he had. Holden had built a life around every person being equal, deserving to be treated equally, and having equal rights which were worth fighting for no matter what the cause.
He would fight for anyone's rights regardless of whether they shared the same belief system as himself.
Holden realized with a small smile he would even fight for Peridot's ability to believe everyone should be classified, categorized, and coordinated at birth---or creation. He wasn't sure how their biology worked. She seemed very, very different to him on a biological level. It was a question he wouldn't dare ask either. Some things were meant to be private. Propagation of one's species was on the list for Holden Wilson.
Waving at her lightly, he said, "I'm going to be on my way to leave you to your meal in peace. Thanks for chatting with me a while and sharing a little of your people. It's always a good day for me when I learn something new. Test City seems pretty good at teaching me new things, too."
Holden started jogging back down the path hoping he wouldn't get ribbed too hard by Sean about how long it had taken him on his laps. What excuse would he give? Sorry? I got distracted by an alien eating toothpaste? No. He was just going to leave it for now and hope he came across more enlightened the next time he came across an alien species.