Chapter Text
The sun was bright and beautiful and lovely. The wind was blowing over the rolling hills outside the barn. Lapis rested on one, enjoying the sunny day, while Connie did the same in her own way - using her sword to practice basic swipes and stances. No reason to let the light go to waste, after all.
And then Peridot strolled out of the barn and began, “Connie, I was looking through your phone-”
“Nope. That’s not what I needed today.” Connie carefully put down her sword in the dirt, and looked down at the little green gem. “We need to talk about that.”
“Yes, that’s why I’m here.” Peridot rolled her eyes. “I thought we could compare record-”
“No. No.” She held up her hands. “Stop. You can’t go through people’s stuff.”
“Steven let me look through his bathroom!” Peridot protested. “You’re just being selfish! How else am I supposed to learn about you?”
Her voice was as flat as her expression, “By talking to me?”
“We’re talking now!” she chirped, beaming back at Connie. “About your phone and the recordings. I thought we could compare-”
“Stop!” Connie groaned, covering her face just so she didn’t have to look at that downright contagious smile. “Please. Peridot, my phone is private. There’s personal stuff on there. I don’t want you looking through it, okay?”
“Why can FaceSpace have your information? You trust her and not me? You’ve never even met FaceSpace!”
Connie tried not to smile. It wasn’t funny. Smiling would just encourage Peridot. “Well-”
“And YoctoSearch! She gets to know everything too! I’m a much better friend than any of these people, but when I ask to implant location services into people everyone gets upset.”
“Stop bringing that up,” Lapis called.
“Then stop leaving without telling me where you’re going!” Peridot retorted.
“Please, focus. Over here.” Connie waved her hands in front of Peridot’s face. “I don’t want them to have my information! They just take it and there’s nothing I can do about it unless I get rid of all my accounts. If I get rid of all my accounts it’s harder to talk to my friends here in Beach City, and my family and penpals from all across the world.”
Peridot crossed her arms. “Nice try! If that was true, why wouldn’t you just scramble the signal and randomly generate profiles to hide your information?”
“Because I don’t know how to do that!” Connie cried, exasperated. Her hands flung up in the air, and she was glad she remembered to put her sword down before talking to Peridot. Peridot tended to make Connie fling her arms around a lot. “If I did, I wouldn’t let a bunch of giant, weird shadowy corporations steal all my data!”
“Really?” she asked. “You’re not just best friends with FaceSpace?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want anyone to have all that, but especially not people like FaceSpace! We’re reaching peak oil, Peridot! What happens if we haven’t developed alternative energy sources and YoctoSearch’s AI knows where I live? I don’t want to be a drone worker in the apocalypse!”
Peridot looked down at Connie’s phone, completely ignoring her dramatic outburst. “I can fix that.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Hiding your information. It’s easy.” She walked to her computer (some kind of scientific calculator) and plugged in the phone. Her fingers typed away as she spoke. “And the peak oil is an interesting thought experiment. Solar is obviously the superior source on a planet as close to its star as this one, but a planet with oceans like this once could utilize-”
“Water currents as an energy source,” Connie finished, starting to grin. “Yeah. The biggest risk is sea life, but you can make generators that are safer to fish than windmills are to birds.”
“Yeah!” She laughed. “Not bad for a human!”
Connie looked over her new phone, impressed by the sudden banishment of ads from her phone as she clicked through several of her favorite websites. The two that did manage to sneak through were in random languages, from random countries. “Not so bad yourself. You were asking about my recordings. Did you mean my lectures from school? Or audiobooks? I know some really good ones.”
“No, I meant all the recordings of Steven that you listen to every night.” Peridot shrugged. She looked over at Connie, seeing the girl’s expression scrunch up and go red. “What are you doing with your face?”
“It’s his songs. They help me fall asleep when I’m stressed - especially now that he’s, well…” She trailed off, looking down at the ground. “Don’t tell Steven.”
“Why not?”
“It’s embarrassing!”
“It’s just music!” Peridot snorted. “I was going to ask if you wanted some of my recordings of his songs. He sings a bunch when you’re not around too.”
“Oh, I don’t think I should.” She shook her head. “That’s probably private too. You should probably assume lots of things are private, Peridot.”
“Nah, it’s fine. I already took out the ones he told me not to tell you about. Which is eighty five point seven percent of the ones you haven’t heard, but there’s still some good ones.” She held out a flashdrive. “Here. Your computers can use this, right? I copied all yours to my devices already.”
Connie smiled a little. “You miss him too?”
“He’s my best friend. Of course I miss him. I assumed you did too, being his third best friend.” She smiled, patting her arm with all the condescension of someone who believed herself to be in first place. “I was going to talk about music, but the energy crisis sounds more interesting.”
Connie hesitated a moment, then took the stick. Her face was still red as she slipped it into her pocket. “So…peak oil, huh?”