Author's Note: Just so there's no confusion, this story takes place in an alternate timeline where COVID-19 never happened.
Chapter 05: The Quest for the Diamonds
Richmond, Virginia. June 6th, 2020.
The school year had finally come to an end, meaning Jimmy and Sophia could at last be free of School, where they were forced to do painfully trivial schoolwork on subjects they already understood effortlessly, and interact with cretins who chose to mercilessly tease them for being different.
"Tiffany and her friends are so cruel!", Sophia said to her brother. "I know, Frank hit me in the stomach at Recess! And people laughed." Sophia looked down. "I don't know why they all have to be so mean."
Then, Jimmy got an idea. A wondeful, somewhat mischevious idea. "You know, you and I might not be much to be reckoned with physically, but with our combined intellect, you and I could build something of immense power to get back at them."
Sophia looked back at her brother, intrigued. "Jimmy, you know that violates the number one rule Mom and Dad established about keeping the true extent of our intellect a secret." Jimmy hadn't forgotten, as they both never forgot anything, but he was having none of it. "To hell with that, we don't deserve this cruel treatment from our classmates! I won't tolerate it any longer."
Sophia grinned. "Neither would I, but that poses the same problem that comes up every time we get invention ideas: Where would we build it?"
It was a good question. In their small apartment three stories off of the ground, they really didn't have anywhere to build anything. They could, theoretically build things in their bedrooms, but neither of the two wanted to risk blowing up or burning down the apartment complex.
But if they could live in an actual house, with a backyard adequately large enough for them to build a shed, then they could secretely build an underground tunnel, which could then be turned into a lab, where they could conduct all sorts of experiments, and build any invention they came up with in their minds.
They both knew what they had to ask their parents for.
For dinner that night, the Neutrons had all agreed upon McSpankies. A pretty good can't-go-wrong choice as long as they didn't do it too often, both because they got a twenty-percent discount on the food thanks to Judy's employee status and because it just genuinely tasted a lot better than society gave it credit for.
Though the family still liked to occasionally mix it up with Sopranos Pizza and Choker's Chicken some nights.
Tonight, Jimmy and Sophia decided to just stick with what they considered to be old reliable, their favorite option off of the menu: The Big Spank. A burger which was mostly just a typical burger, but with an extra slice of bread in the middle of it, and an extra large amount of the resturaunt's signature, "Spanky Sauce". It may not seem like much, but just those two changes to a typical burger could make a surprisingly big difference. The two children had big smiles on their faces after they took the first bite of their burgers.
Hugh being Hugh, decided to get three Big Spanks all for himself.
While Judy normally would've opted for a simple chicken sandwich, she worked a particularly exhausting shift at the resturaunt tonight, so she decided to get a Big Spank herself.
Six Big Spanks in all.
A few minutes after the family sat down to eat, Jimmy finally worked up the courage to ask his parents, "So, Mom! Dad! Me and Sophia don't mind living in Richmond all that much, but...we were wondering if maybe we could...buy a house for sale in a nearby neighborhood?"
A somewhat upset look crossed Judy's face, almost as if she was afraid this would happen. Jimmy then continued, "We don't need a big house, we just want one with a backyard so that we both have a place to"-
"No, I'm sorry, we can't afford that.", Judy answered, cutting her son off. A look of concern crossed the children's faces. Then Sophia said, "But...but Mom! This apartment is really small, we're all suffocating in here!"
Hugh chimed in, "Believe me, if I had the money for it, I would have a big old duck statue in my room, but I'm afraid you're mother's right. We're kinda broke."
Jimmy continued, "Even if you both were to put your combined paychecks together?" Judy answered, "Jimmy, we're already doing that most of the time! Believe me son, I wish we could live in a house, in a lovely neighborhood, but unless we get really lucky and stumble on some diamonds in the near future, that's just not going to happen."
A sad look crossed the children's faces. Judy continued, "I'm sorry, I really wish I could give you more."
Later that night, as the nine-year-old Jimmy lay in bed, he still hadn't let go of the wish for a house.
"Come on, think...think...THINK..."
"Unless we get really lucky and stumble on some diamonds in the near future..."
Jimmy's eyes widened as he shot up out of his bed, and said to himself, "Idea Bomb!"
"...Oh. Oh, good lord, that sounded awful. Note to self, never say that again when I get an idea. Will need to come up with a better thing to say. But a great idea nonetheless!"
The next day, while they were hanging out in his room, Jimmy pitched his idea to Sophia.
"Listen, remember how the whole, "House with a backyard", thing didn't work out?". She nodded. He continued, "Well, Mom mentioned that we could solve that problem by stumbling upon diamonds to sell. She said that as a borderline impossible hypothetical...but I think you and I could arrange something like that!"
"...Intriguing, what are you getting at?", Sophia asked her brother. He continued, "Well, it would risk damage to the apartment, it would be a tedious slog trying to find all the parts we need at the Junkyard, and we could very potentially get caught trying to take the coal we need off of the train considering the fact that we still haven't been able to perfect our invisibility cloak, but if we succeed at these things, then we could very well make our OWN diamonds right here in the apartment!"
Sophia raised an eyebrow. "You wish to take coal off of the train? That's stealing, you know." Jimmy responded, "Do you have a problem with that?" Sophia answered, "Jimmy, an adequately large diamond could potentially yield hundreds of thousands of dollars, of course I don't mind. With that much money, we could afford the house, and then some!"
Jimmy grinned, "I'm glad we're on the same page. First, we'll need to get the parts we need for the diamond-maker. To do so, as I mentioned before, we'll most likely find all that we need down at the Junkyard. If you don't have any plans, I don't see why we can't just go look tomorrow.
Sophia answered, "I do have a plan. This one."
So far, the two had been at the Junkyard for about thirty minutes, and they had only found twenty-four percent of the parts they needed. The Junkyard smelled awful, and touching all of the gross, thrown-away items there felt rather disgusting, but they remained determined on their quest to gain financial security, which would then lead to their more important goal: a place to build their own lab.
As they searched, a garbage man spotted them. "Hey!", the man called out to them. They chose to play it cool. "Hey there!", Jimmy responded, casually as if they had just bumped into one-another on a relaxing nature walk rather than chose to spend their day wading through junk in a shithole.
The man ran up to them. "Hey there uh...kids. Say, you two picked a hell of a place to spend the beginning of your summer vacation. Aren't you two a little young to be wading through garbage looking for scrap?"
The Neutron twins took one long look at each other, and then responded in unison, "...No."
It took two more additional days, (And some very aggressive showers) but they finally managed to amass all the parts they needed to build the diamond-maker in the apartment. Keeping the parts and plans hidden from their parents wasn't too hard, as they were able to walk themselves to-and-from the Junkyard due to the fact that it was only a twenty minute walk away, and their parents would always be working at their respective jobs when the children returned home with the parts.
And keeping it hidden for now was very important, for they both knew that their mother would force them to stop due to her over-protectiveness.
It took about three weeks to properly build the diamond-maker in Jimmy's room, (And to properly apply the invisibility cloak to it so that it wouldn't be spotted) they could've had it built in just ten days, but it was of paramount importance that they ensure they weren't accidently building something that would just explode upon being used.
The machine wasn't exactly of any use to them if it was just going to kill them.
"Okay, I think it's ready to be used. the heating and pressure system should work properly now, but the only way we'll know for sure is to do an actual test.", Jimmy said. "Which means it's time to go get the coal.", Sophia replied.
"Indeed. Let's hope our invisibility cloaks hold up tonight. They likely will, as so far it hasn't let us down when it comes to keeping the diamond-maker hidden, but you and I are not perfect.", Jimmy said.
"...Not yet.", Sophia replied.
The train came to a stop at 5:00 PM for twenty minutes, which meant that the twins had twenty minutes to grab the coal they needed. It was time to find out whether or not their invisibility cloaks were going to let them down.
If they were caught, both them and their parents could be in very serious trouble.
They looked at the coal car, which was being guarded by a lone security guard. at first, the twins merely watched from their hiding place, waiting for something to happen. Then, the guard leaned into his radio, and said, "Hey, I gotta take a dump. I'm gonna be at the crapper for a few minutes. I'll try to make it quick."
"Perfect.", Jimmy whispered to himself. "My hypothosis was right, I told you these ropes would be necessary! We gotta make sure he can't get out of that port-a-potty, but first, we need to make sure our invisibility cloaks are working." They both activated their own individual cloaks via a switch on their watches. "I can't see you, can you see me?", Jimmy asked. "No. let's put on our glasses, now.", Sophia answered.
The Invisibility glasses were to ensure they could see each other while using the cloaks. They were made from old 3D-Glasses they kept as mementos from the Ultra-Lord reboot movie they saw a few months back.
"I can see you, now.", Sophia said. "And I can see you, now. Okay, let's do this."
They ran up to the portable toilet with the ropes at the ready to trap the guard inside. As they wrapped the rope around the toilet, they heard a loud moaning coming from inside, along with a very long, very loud, very wet fart which echoed inside the toilet. Jimmy snickered while Sophia rolled her eyes.
Finally, after four passes and a strong double-knot, the guard was trapped, meaning nothing stood in the way now between them and the coal car.
Jimmy looked at his watch. "Fourteen minutes remaining. Let's get the coal.", he whispered to Sophia. With that, the two children ran up to the exposed coal-car, and began to load some pieces of coal into their backpacks. The coal stains would be borderline impossible to get out, but if their diamond quest proved successful, having the money to buy new backpacks would be of no concern.
The guard started to bang on the plastic door of the port-a-potty to open, but he wasn't getting out without help.
It only took three minutes before both of their backpacks were all filled up with coal. "Hey, Jimmy, you're cloak is flickering off!", Sophia said in an aggressive whisper. Jimmy replied, "Yeah, yours is, too. Let's go!"
After making sure their backpacks were properly zipped up, they took off running.
"Yo, Eddie, you back from the crappah?", the locked-up guard heard through his radio.
The two children returned home an hour later. As usual, their parents were both still at work.
"Hahaha! I can't believe we got away with it!", Sophia said with glee.
Jimmy smirked. "I can. With our combined intellect, we can do anything." He said in a warm, genuine voice.
They walked into Jimmy's room, and towards the Diamond-Maker. "Well,", Jimmy began. "I suppose this is the moment of truth.", he said, bringing a singular lump of coal towards the machine. They had an eighty-four percent chance of this being successful.
The other sixteen percent dictated that the children would be blown up.
"Moment of truth...", Sophia said to herself, quietly.
Jimmy at last placed the coal inside the machine, and closed the two doors shut. "Okay, we need to do this in a manner that will result in the least likelihood of death, here, so I'm going to start the heat at a low setting, first." Sophia nodded.
Five minutes passed. So far, so good. "Okay, let's turn up the heat a little."
Ten minutes passed. The air around the machine had grown warmer, but otherwise all still seemed well. "Can we please turn it up some more, now?", Sophia asked. "No, five more minutes.", Jimmy responded. "Oh come on, Jimmy! Doing it now will only increase the risk by two more percentages. Our odds would remain favorable."
Jimmy looked to the floor for a few seconds. "...I suppose it's okay." With that, he turned the heat up some more.
Fifteen more minutes passed. By now, although they were safely protected by their well-crafted machine, were they to stick their hands inside, their skin would immediately melt off of their bones.
"Jimmy, I think we can bring down the pressure plate, now.", said Sophia. Jimmy shook his head. "No no no, we're at the right heat now, yes, but the coal needs to adjust to it for at least twenty more minutes." Sophia rolled her eyes and let out an annoyed sigh. This was taking too long!
Jimmy continued, "Were we to slam the plate down now, we would risk the fifty-fifty possibility of-ah, hey!", Jimmy cried out as he was shoved aside.
Sophia was now briefly in charge. "We didn't come all this way for safety, brother!". With that, she lifted her hand up to the pressure plate release lever.
"Sofie, NO!", but it was too late. Their lives were now determined on a coin-flip chance. She brought the plate down on the super-heated lump of coal...
...and everything was okay. No explosion occourred.
And as the pressure plate slowly lifted itself off of the floor of the machine...a large, glistening diamond now sat where the lump of coal once was.
"We...we did it, Sofie. We actually did it."
"We, we did! Haha, we did it, Jimmy!"
With that, the two young genuises ran up to each other, and proudly did their secret handshake. (Which consisted of a simple pinky-swear combined with a fist bump)
"Isn't this great? We're never gonna worry about money again! That Lab will be ours! Think about how proud Mom and Dad will be!", Sophia said.
Jimmy chuckled softly in response, but then his thoughts returned to the choice his sister made less than a minute ago which could've very well resulted in their deaths.
"Hey, what's wrong?", Sophia asked him.
"...Yes, we succeeded, but...that was very reckless, what you did, Sophia. Because we didn't wait for twenty more minutes, you risked a fifty-fifty possibility of blowing up the apartment and killing us, both. We got lucky, this time, but...please, be more careful in the future, okay?"
She looked down at the floor for a moment. "...Yeah, okay. I'm sorry."
Their parents both returned home from their shifts an hour and a half later. "Mom! Dad! You have to come see what me and Jimmy did!" They followed their curiously happier-than-usual daughter into Jimmy's bedroom, and what they saw next utterly blew their minds.
Inside Jimmy's room, in the corner, sat a large machine with a small, thick windowed door in the middle of it. "Wow, Jimbo, what did...you two do with that thing? It's not a pie oven, is it?", Hugh asked, prompting an eye roll from Judy.
Jimmy laughed softly. "No, Dad. Even better."
With that, Jimmy slowly revealed what he was hiding behind his back, and what his parents saw caused their eyes to grow even wider than they already were.
In his hands, he held a large, shining diamond.
"Oh-oh! Jimmy, how did...how did you...how did you two make that?"
Jimmy played innocent and rubbed the back of his neck. "Oh, it's not important, we have our ways. In any case, we have a far more important matter to discuss here. We can make a lot more of these diamonds no problem, in which case we'll eventually have so much money, we won't have anything to worry about. And you know what that means, eh? Big House?"
Judy looked down at the ground, deeply lost in thought. Finally, after a good thirteen seconds, she looked back up, and without looking at either of them, said, "Hugh. Sophia. Out. I need to speak with Jimmy alone."
Hugh and Sophia looked at each other, confused.
"Now!", Judy said in the most commanding voice she could muster. The two obeyed and walked out of the room.
Jimmy had a confused, somewhat nervous look on his face. "Mom...I thought you'd be ecstatic! Are you...mad?"
Judy replied, "Son, how did you make this jewel?"
Realizing she wouldn't take anything less than the full truth, Jimmy began to explain. "Well, in order to get all the parts we needed to build the actual machine, me and Sophia...secretly went to the Junkyard more than once."
Judy replied, "Mm-hmm. And the coal?"
"W-what?", Jimmy said in a vain attempt at playing dumb, again. But one of the biggest cons of your mother knowing that you were a genius was that playing dumb almost never worked.
"Don't play with me, Jimmy. I know you needed coal in order for this to work. Where did you and your sister get it?"
"We..." His face flushed. He knew he was in trouble. "...We stole it from the train."
Judy shook her head. "Jimmy!"
"B-but okay just hear me out! Yes, me and Sophia really wanted a real house with a backyard so that we had a place to properly build inventions, but...I just can't bear to see you and Dad keep living like this!"
Judy's eyes widened. Her son continued, "You and Dad...work so hard, for so long, to keep me and Sophia clean, and fed, and clothed. So much so, that..." Jimmy's eyes started to water and his voice started to break. "...That we almost never get to actually be together. I've seen how tired you and Dad are. All the time! You both deserve so much more than to have to spend almost all of your time working at jobs you both vicerally hate and then having to come home to a tiny, dirty apartment!"
"So I decided that enough was enough! Yes, we stole some coal off of a train, but I would rob a THOUSAND trains if I thought it meant I could give my parents and sister better lives!"
Judy sat there in minor shock while her son cried. "Oh, Jimmy, I..."
She extended her arms out. "Come here, baby." With that, Jimmy leaned in to the hug, and quietly sobbed as his mother hugged him. "...Okay, we'll do it. We'll make the rest of the diamonds, and then we'll sell them. Then we'll get the house. We should make at least a couple-million dollars, if I had to guess.", Judy said.
She continued, "Listen, Son, I...I'm grateful, but I want you to make me a promise." Jimmy leaned out of the hug to look his mother in the eye. "Anything, Mom."
"Stay out of trouble from now on. And keep your sister out of it, too. She's a lot more impulsive than you, so you have to keep a close eye on her."
Jimmy looked down for a few seconds, then replied, "...Okay, Mom. I will."