Diamonds Are a Robot's Best Friend

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Five – Unraveling the Tapestry


The light was dimming in the overcast evening hours, and a faint breeze was picking up, scattering scraps of paper across the concrete roof of the Marquis Diamonds building.  Far above the streetlights, the rooftop was blanketed in dark gray shadows.  All was silent, except for a few muffled grunts coming from the direction of the alleyway.  Then with a soft clank, first one, then two silver-green claws flung themselves over the wall, and morphed into sturdy clamps.

"Finally," Drew said, relieved to be finished with the four-story climb.  Not that it had been especially tiring or difficult, but it was the first time he'd ever tried something like that with someone hanging onto his back.

"This would've been a lot easier if you had just flown up," grumbled Brad, clinging on tightly.

They spilled over the ledge, and landed ungracefully on the rooftop.  "I've told you a dozen times, I can't fly," hissed Drew.  "How hard is it to remember that?"

"Couldn't you just eat a rocket engine or something?"

"Let's get our butts moving and get out of here – or my next newspaper photo is going to get taken down at the police station."

"Just relax … nothing's going to happen."  Brad chuckled, as he got to his feet and dusted himself off.  He was totally into the whole sneaking-around thing, and he'd dressed for the part in a black sweatshirt and dark jacket.  He took off his backpack and checked the contents.  "Camera looks okay.  Flashlight for each of us.  And plastic bags to collect the evidence."

Drew grabbed a flashlight and rolled his eyes.  "Evidence.  Oy vey.  Let's get this over with."

They started walking slowly around the roof, focusing on the ledge overlooking the sidewalk, where Rojack had been standing in the photograph.  Brad skulked around enthusiastically, sweeping his flashlight from side to side, humming the theme from Mission Impossible.  But all they could see was cracked, weathered concrete, blowing litter, a few antennas and satellite dishes, and the occasional pigeon.

"Well, maybe you can deduce something from this candy bar wrapper," said Drew, "but I am officially clueless.  I'm not sure what you were expecting to find up here."

Brad was snapping pictures with his camera as he spoke in a melodramatic voice.  "There's always something lying around that does in the overconfident criminal.  All we have to do is find it.  One tug at a loose thread, and the whole tapestry of deceit comes unraveled!"

"Tapestry of deceit?  Sheesh.  We're wasting our time, Brad."

"Come on, we haven't even started looking around yet.  Put those robot peepers to good use!"

"Okay.  Oooooh, look, I'm zooming in on the roof now!"  Drew's eyes hummed and telescoped a few inches out of his head.  He waved his hands in the air.  "Ooooh!  Really tiny rocks!  Really tiny bugs!  Yechhh, cockroach droppings."

"Come on, will you be serious for a minute?" groaned Brad.  "If we can find out why Rojack stole the diamonds, with Jenny right in front of him, then … hey, do you hear that?  That sounds like … voices."

Drew schlorped his eyes back to normal.  "There's nobody else on the roof but us."

"Shhhh!"  Brad cupped his hand to his ear, then swung his flashlight around, searching.  There was a narrow ventilation duct poking out of the roof a few yards away.  He walked over quietly, knelt down, and put his ear closer to the duct.  The voice was very distorted, and sounded tinny, but … "That sounds like the billionaire dude's voice.  I recognize that fancy accent of his."

"I thought your little brother was the one with the overactive imagination."  Drew snuck over, more than a little skeptical.  Suddenly they heard a female voice, and their eyes lit up with recognition at the same time.  "Hey, that's Jenny!"

Brad had his ear pressed against the metal of the shaft now.  "She must be working late on her model training," he mocked.  "Man, I sure wish I could make out what they're saying!"

"So much for unraveling the tapestry of deceit," said Drew, a little uneasy.  "We can't spy on Jenny.  Sure, she kicked us to the curb today, but she's still our friend.  It's just plain wrong and I won't do it."

"She must be getting her last session of training with all her new model friends.  Hmmm … all those supermodels, prancing around in their dressing room …"

A big, dumb grin spread on Drew's face.  "Wow, you're evil.  Okay, get your camera ready.  I got an idea."

Brad had to smile to himself – all too easy!  Drew might be a robot now, but he was still a guy.  As he tried to check the settings on his camera, he did a double-take as Drew's eyes stretched out of his face – connected by thin stalks, like a snail.  The eyes stretched down to the narrow ventilation shaft – it was only six inches across – slipped inside, and started stretching down towards the source of the voices.

"Do you have any idea how freaky that looks?" Brad asked.

"Do you have any idea how freaky this feels?" Drew answered.  "Okay, do you have that little cable that comes with the camera?  Plug it into the back of my head."

"Now there's a sentence you just don't hear everyday."  Brad hooked one end of the cable up to the camera, and plugged the other end into a socket that formed on the back of Drew's head.  The view-finder on the back of the camera came to life, and Brad was now seeing everything that Drew's eyes were seeing, deep inside the workings of the ventilation system.

"This is so insanely cool!" Brad grinned, watching the small, disorienting picture as the shaft tunnels weaved left and right.  "Picture's a little dark, though.  Okay, ahead … ahead … turn left …"

"No backseat drivers," Drew mumbled.  "Let me concentrate, and I think I can get some sound back to you, too.  Wait, hang on.  I think I'm almost there."

With another soft schlorrrp, a patch on the back of Drew's head turned into a small, solid-state speaker.  There was a soft hissing pop, and Brad heard several voices … but those voices were being drowned out by a high-pitched, hissing sound.

"What is that noise?" Brad wondered aloud.

"Just a second …" With one last right turn, Drew's eyes stretched through a ventilation grate, and came out in the vast interior of a large machine workshop.  "Nuts, no supermodels here."  He looked around briefly, and … "What the heck is she doing?!?"

There was Jenny, standing a few feet away from a six-sided slab of quartz that stood over ten feet high, blasting at the surface with her palm lasers.  She was looking through some kind of optical scope deployed from the top of her head, and she seemed to be concentrating very, very hard.  Maximillian Marquis and Rojack were standing a few feet behind her with a few other workers, all looking very contented.  There were five other, identical, six-sided quartz slabs to the side of the work area, each one of them a perfect glimmering mirror.

Brad stared into his viewfinder, stunned and confused.  "Well, Jenny was right about one thing," he said.  "Model training is a lot harder than I thought it was."  Jen, what in the world are you doing?!?


Jenny's palm lasers finally came to a stop, and she shook her hands a bit to cool them off.  "There we go – that's the last of them!  Six perfectly flat mirrors, down to the atom.  Whew!  That's hot work."

Maximillian Marquis strutted over and patted her on the shoulder.  "Sensational, Jennifer!  Simply sensational.  Once again, you have come to my rescue.  That our only quartz grinder should break down the day before the exhibition – I am most embarrassed."

"No problem at all.  Although I have to admit I'm still a little confused," she said, walking up to examine her reflection in the giant ten-foot hexagon.  "Why did you need mirrors made out of this stuff?  And why did they have to be perfectly flat?  Wouldn't it be easier just to use normal mirrors?"

"Ah, er … well, yes perhaps, but then again nothing about tomorrow night will be normal.  I insist on having the finest of everything.  My centerpiece exhibit will feature the Jovian diamonds and these giant quartz mirrors because they are without equal, anywhere else in the world.  People expect the exceptional from Maximillian Marquis.  And tomorrow night, I will deliver!  Exceptional jewels, and an exceptional young lady."

Jenny giggled, then grew a bit more serious.  "Thank you … but I was wondering if I could ask for … a little favor?  Could I invite some more friends to the show tomorrow night?  I already gave the two extra invitations to a pair of girls at school.  But I have a couple of other friends that I'd really like to be there.  Even if they are sort of being jerks right now …"

"Sadly impossible," replied Marquis.  Jenny pouted a bit, a little sad.  It would have been nice for Brad and Drew to be there to see my big night – although this wouldn't have been a problem if they hadn't made fun of me at lunch today.  Arghhh – boys!

"I am very sorry, Jennifer.  Perhaps this can make up for it.  I have a surprise for you.  Something for you to wear for tomorrow night."

Jenny's face brightened.  "A surprise for me?  What is it?  Where is it?"

"It is waiting for you upstairs, in the same room that you used for your training sessions with the other models.  Go, now!" he chuckled, with a grandfatherly laugh.  "Hurry!"

"Thank you!"  Jenny practically bounced out of the work area, and ran for the elevators with giddy excitement.  The doors slid closed.

"Finally," breathed Marquis.  "That took longer than expected, but the results speak for themselves.  We now have, perhaps, the six most perfect mirrors ever to have existed.  Impressive, are they not, Rojack?"

Rojack gave a quick glance at his large frame in the mirror, then tilted his head silently towards his master, with a mildly concerned look on his face.

Marquis nodded in agreement.  "You are right, she is starting to ask too many questions, and she is most frustrating to work with.  But without her talents, we could never have completed the mirrors - and that foolish robot girl is too enamored with her silly dreams to see the reality around her."

He turned to the center of the room, where there were still a dozen of his men and robots working feverishly.  Marquis walked over to the foreman.

"Will everything be ready for tomorrow night?" he asked.

"The Moonsword is in fantastic shape, Mr. Marquis.  They're just putting the final touches on it tonight.  We'll have the mirrors shipped over to her as soon as they're cooled off enough to transport."

"I trust I do not need to remind you to take extraordinary care of them," said Marquis, with a tone that carried an implied or else.  "And the Jovian diamonds?"

"Installed and ready to go.  They passed the energy stress test with flying colors.  No anomalies in the beam at all.  Boss, this thing is going to have twice the power you need to get the job done," the foreman laughed.

"More is always better," grinned Marquis.  "What of the necklace?"

"Take a look for yourself, sir."  The two men, followed by Rojack, walked over to one of the work tables, where a jeweler was putting the final touches on an amazingly beautiful choker necklace, studded with dozens of blue-white lunar diamonds.  He had removed the large, center diamond – and he was holding an intricate microchip in a pair of tweezers for his boss to see.

"Has it been set to the same frequency as the XJ-9's electronic brain?" asked Marquis.

The jeweler smiled.  "Took the readings while she was being fitted for it.  She doesn't suspect a thing."

"Excellent, excellent," murmured Maximillian Marquis.  There was a tray of loose moon-diamonds on the workbench.  He ran his fingers through the gems, savoring their color and texture.  "How very fitting that she wear lunar diamonds tomorrow night.  They are my very favorite of all fine stones.  And thanks to that silly robot, soon I will have more than any king, or sultan, or emperor in history.  After tomorrow night, I shall rebuild my mansion out of moon-diamonds!" he laughed.

He was interrupted by a soft beeping from a light on Rojack's black and silver chest.

The double-M insignia flipped open, revealing a small television screen.  On it was a picture from a security camera on the roof of the building.  Even with night vision lenses, the picture was a little fuzzy – but it was plainly a young man, perhaps a teenager even, next to a strange silver android of some sort.  And they had a camera.

Marquis frowned intensely.  "Deal with them," he growled.

Rojack smiled, nodded, and walked out of the room.


Brad was still clicking away with his camera, nearly dumbfounded from what he'd just seen and heard.  "I don't believe this!" he said, struggling to keep from shouting.  "The whole thing's a set-up!  He doesn't like Jenny at all, the big faker!  He's got her making – giant mirrors?  What's up with that?  And what's the deal with that necklace and the microchip?  Jenny could be in real danger!"

Drew shifted back and forth on his feet, even while his eye-stalks still stretched down into the ventilation shaft.  "Okay, okay, you've almost got me convinced.  This guy is starting to creep me out a little.  I don't know much about jewelry, but those guys don't sound like they're talking about earrings and bracelets.  What the heck is a 'Moonsword' anyway?"

"Keep looking around," said Brad, growing a little angry.  "We've got to find out if this guy is really going to hurt Jenny.  I knew that guy was no good!  That sneaky miserable old coot …  And Jenny!  She's all 'Mr. Marquis this' and 'Mr. Marquis that' and 'Tee hee, giggle giggle!'  She always was a sucker for a charming face.  Lousy rotten fancy-talker … we've got to warn her!"

"Focus, dude, and then let's get out of here," whispered Drew, nervously.

Brad gathered himself and looked in the viewfinder.  "Okay.  Boy, this is going to be one bad mamma-jamma of a Career Week project.  Hey, check out that huge wooden crate over in the corner.  Can you see what's inside?"

The picture shifted and zoomed slightly.  "I think it's empty.  But it's about the same size as those giant mirrors.  Maybe it's a packing crate?"

Brad squinted into the viewfinder.  "There's lettering on the side.  Can you read it?"

Drew focused for a second … "It says … 'Marquis Aerospace'?  Does that even make sense?"

"Well … he said that he owned all kinds of companies, not just jewelry and diamonds.  He probably owns an aerospace company too.  I'll snap one more picture and we'll figure it out later …"

They were concentrating so much on the camera that neither of them even heard the whistling sound rush towards them through the night air.  Brad just had time to notice a high-pitched, whistling shriek, when the metallic blades whizzed by his face, inches from his ear.  They sliced neatly through Drew's eye-stalks, without even slowing down, and whined off to one side.

Drew stumbled backwards, suddenly blind, with two silver stubs wiggling from his eye sockets.  "Whoa!!!  Who turned out the lights?!?"

Brad wheeled around, almost scared out of his wits.  He'd just come inches away from nearly getting his head cut off by … by what!?!

A large, silver-and-black forearm shot up, and plucked the spinning blades from the air with ease.  Maximillian Marquis' personal "assistant", Rojack, stood perhaps fifty feet away, his eight-foot frame looming menacingly in the shadows.  His weapon was a three-bladed boomerang – high-strength steel with, naturally, diamond tips, making it extremely dangerous.  And Rojack was very skilled with it.  He glared at Brad and Drew, with menace in his glowing red eyes, and a confident, cocky smile on his face.

Deftly tossing the boomerang in his hand, he grabbed it by one blade, took aim, and hurled it again.  Brad watched, mesmerized, as the shrieking metal blades flew through the night, directly towards his head.


Continued in Chapter Six