Whatever Happened... to Robot Jones? Continued

Chapter 12: The Gala (Part 2)

While the eyes of most of the audience were locked on stage, on the motionless glass figure, Robot's eyes were darting all over the place. He looked now to his mother, who's head was spinning from left to right as well. "Where did your father go?" she whispered,and it sounded as if she was having the kind of anxiety Robot was feeling at the moment.

"I don't know," he whispered back. "He was just here a minute ago..."

His voice trailed off, too nervous to say anything else. His father had looked pretty miffed, the last time he caught sight of his face, and Robot understood why: The prospect of losing JNZ's identity to a former competitor was a slap in the face to his die-hard pride. Had he managed to somehow contain himself from having a meltdown right then and there, maybe he went away to release his frustration somewhere. Maybe he was outside, even.

In that case, Robot had nothing to worry about. But Dad unit was not the type to think rationally like that. Rationality was his mother's strong suit, not his father's. Dad unit vocalized his thoughts when he was mildly annoyed, but when he was truly angry, such as when he punched the lights out of Madman for supposedly spying on his mother, he had the habit of being oddly quiet in whatever way he reacted.

If Dad unit when out of his way to leave in a quiet manner, whatever he was thinking of doing wasn't going to be good. Get on stage. Tackle Claymore. Smash Ms. Crowe's incredibly fragile looking present against the wall. A hundred different scenarios played out in Robot's head at once, all of them Dad Unit's sudden and violent protest against the merger.

All of them resulting in his dismantlement.

Robot's eyes trailed back up to the stage, where Crowe stood with a silent, proud smile above her factory's creation. He couldn't put his thought about the short, glass girl into words until someone in the far back of the audience shouted:

"That thing ain't a robot!" came the first protest.

"There's no way!" came the second.

With his head spinning left, right, up, and down, his eyes even popping out of his head, Robot found his concentration tearing between looking for his father and the glass figure. The Crystal Unit, as it was so called, had enormous eyes, blacks for whites and whites for pupils, that gazed out onto the audience, to no one in particular, it seemed. It did not blink or given any secondary signs of life that Robot and other high-ranked robots such as his parents could attribute to a living machine, but that did not mean it wasn't a real robot. It was just... how could you make a robot made of glass?

Despite his grin, Mr. Claymore looked skeptical as well. "Well, well," he said, putting his hands on his hips, eyeing the figure from a step closer. "This is quite a feat. I'd say your staff has outdone themselves, indeed." He folded his arms across his chest. "That is," he corrected himself, "If the naysayers in our audience are wrong, and your... intriguing creation," he said, not sure how to describe the Crystal unit, "is really alive."

"Is she alive?" Crowe chuckled lightly. "I suppose your uncertainty is a given. Rest assure, she is very much alive." Donna Crowe looked from Claymore to the still motionless figure in front of her. She put the microphone back on the stand and bent down low to the unit's ear-which, like the rest of her, was totally transparent-as if to whisper something to it, but spoke loudly enough to be heard by most of the audience. "Crystal, I hereby turn over your ownership to Mr. Claymore, the man standing before you. It is your responsibility to obey every command that he gives to the best of your ability, and should the need arise, protect him." She looked at the figure for a silent moment before standing, back erect again. "Do you agree to these terms?"