"I sure will miss being alive," said Cleo. "I was enjoying it very much."

Cleo was lost in the middle of a horrible dessert. It was awful. The sun was hot, she was out of water, and she had discovered that sand made for a terrible drink.

Night was coming, but it didn't matter anymore. She was too weak to even stand. She let herself fall into an uncomfortable clump of sand and prepared to watch what she was sure would be her final sunset.

As she fell, her head made contact with something metal.

"Ow," she said.

She lifted herself back up and picked up what she had hit out of the sand. It was a lamp.

"Hello," said the lamp.

"Hello," said Cleo, who was extremely dehydrated.

"My name is Lamashtu. If you rub my lamp, I will grant you three wishes."

"Sounds fair," said Cleo, who did so. She braced herself for blue flames or smoke to begin shooting out of the lamp along with an appropriately dressed homage to classical Arabian folklore, but nothing happened.

"Did it work?"

"It did, I'm just very comfortable right now and I don't want to leave. I can still grant your wishes from here. I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all. Thank you."

Cleo smiled and then frowned again.

"Wait. Are you one of those mean genies?"

"Mean genies?"

"The ones who twist everything around to make it horrible. You know what I'm talking about."

"I'm sorry?"

"If someone wished that they lived in a great mansion made of gold, a mean genie would grant the wish, and the person would be very happy to see the inside of their beautiful new home. But then they would try to leave to buy groceries, and they would find out that all the doors are made of gold and too heavy to open. So they would either starve to death or run out of air and suffocate. Maybe something even worse would happen, but only a mean genie could think it up."

"Have you ever met a genie before, Cleo?"

Cleo thought about it, instantaneously coming to an intense personal realization about the decades of anti-genie bigotry she had been unknowingly harboring.

"I guess not. I'm sorry. How did you know my name?"

"I am a knowledge genie. I know all that can be known, and I can only grant wishes that grant you, the wisher, knowledge."

"Oh. Are there rules?"

"Not hard ones," said Lamashtu. "I can choose what and how many I want to grant. We can call it quits when one of us decides you've had enough. If your wishes are obnoxious that will be sooner rather than later."

"Okay," said Cleo, who was too almost-dead to complain about what she viewed as the inherent narrative weaknesses that came with soft magic systems. "So I ask to know something, and you tell me it?"

"You'll get a vision of the answer."

"Cool. I please wish to know the best way for me to escape this situation."

Cleo closed her eyes and waited for her vision. She did not receive one.

"Does that mean what I think it does?"

"Yes. I'm very sorry, Cleo. I can only give you knowledge that exists."

Cleo sighed.

"Okay. It's fine. I didn't even want to be alive. Nope, not me. Never."

"Sorry."

"Uh," said Cleo. "Whatever. How long do I have left?"

"Don't make me answer that. You're bumming me out."

"Fine. Might as well make the most of whatever I have left, then. There were multiple facts that I always wanted to know, and now I guess I can know them, if you don't mind obliging."

"Not at all. Go ahead."

"Is there somebody in charge of everything? I always wondered about that."

Cleo received a vision of a pickle on a dark street.

"Hm. Is it possible for me to make a complaint?"

Cleo did not receive a vision.

"Did my mom love me?"

Cleo received a vision of her mother, who shook her head.

"Did my dad?"

Cleo received a vision of her father, who stuck his hand out parallel to the ground and rocked it slightly to each side.

"Is Peachtown really that nice of a place?"

"Nothing controversial, please."

"In your opinion, what is the most important thing I could possibly know?"

Cleo received a vision of someone who knew the difference between desert and dessert.

"Your mental spelling is abhorrent," said Lamashtu. "No offense."

"None taken."

Cleo stared at the sky and tried to think of something good to ask, but nothing came to mind. She briefly considered wishing to know the second most important thing, but decided that it would be tacky.

"Huh. I guess there isn't much I want to know. It doesn't seem to matter much anymore."

She suddenly smiled, remembering the last thing she really, really wanted to know.

"Oh! The Wonka contest. I love riddles, and I was keeping up with that… could you please tell me what the answer was?"

"I'm sorry?"

"The answer to the Bucket puzzle. It's a riddle, and all riddles have answers. So what was it? I'm not going to cheat, not that I could. The whole being dead thing will probably put a damper on that."

"Wow," said Lamashtu. "I didn't realize you were such an awful human being."

"What?"

"Can't you just appreciate the fact that there's a puzzle in the first place? Why do you even need an answer? Why are you so selfish and entitled? What's wrong with you and why do you have such unreasonable expectations?"

"Sorry," said Cleo, who immediately realized that she was a horrible person for politely asking for the answer to an unprompted riddle she had been given by a stranger on the internet. "It is clear to me now that I am irredeemable."

Cleo turned her head to the side and filled her throat with sand.

W

On the tippy top of Mount Everest, there was a large skyscraper. It was one-thousand stories tall and not open to the public. On the five-hundred and twentieth floor, Marama Jewel, the world's greatest astronomy-hunter, had been tied up and hung above a cauldron of boiling moon rock.

A man stood and watched her not far away, the tower being his lair. He wore a bodysuit and cape both resembling a colorful night sky, and his face was covered with craters, his eyes like stars. His eyes were not like stars because they were vast and white and beautiful. His eyes were like stars because of a failed experiment that had turned them into uncomprehendingly hot spheroids comprised mostly of gas.

"You aren't going to get away with this, Señor Syzygy!"

Señor Syzygy cackled. His voice sounded the way good chocolate tasted when fed to someone with a strong, moderately sexy Spanish accent.

"That is where you are wrong, Marama. I'm afraid you don't quite understand the gravity of your current situation."

He walked to a wall and pulled a lever half of the way down, sending Marama that much closer to her doom.

"Release me and I'll murder you very slowly," said Maruma.

"Not much of a deal, is it?"

"If you don't, I'll murder you very very slowly."

Señor Syzygy laughed. "Oh, Maruma, my greatest nemesis. You've always lacked…"

He tried coming up with the right word.

"Something, even if I couldn't tell you what it was. But it matters not. My master plan is almost complete, and as my greatest nemesis, I'd like to give you the first taste."

He turned around and pointed towards the large cannon aiming outside of a large open window. Since they were so high up, it was pointed down.

"Say hello to my Big Fact Gun. In an instant, I can beam interesting facts about the topic of my choice into the minds of anyone on the planet. Any. Topic."

Maruma gasped.

"You don't mean…"

"Exactly. Astronomy is a topic!"

He walked over the Big Fact Gun and pressed some keys before flipping a switch.

"How about a live demonstration?"

The machine fired once, and Maruma watched as a streak of blue light fired off and traveled away from the tower.

"Skywatcher scum! What poor innocent have you inflicted your evil upon?"

Señor Syzygy wagged his finger at her.

"An innocent? No, Maruma. You don't know me at all, do you? There's only one person who I'd give the honor of being the first to be Big Facted."

"I don't understand."

"Right now, that Big Fact Beam is traveling across the planet… and in a short moment, it will come all the way around and enter this room from the window on the other side, hitting you. Yes, Maruma! Before this day is done, you will know exactly one thing about astronomy!"

"But that's impossible! It would hit the ice wall first!"

Señor Syzygy frowned.

Just as he had said, the Big Fact Beam came rocketing into the room, making contact with Maruma's skull. She braced herself in horror as she awaited some terrible piece of information about the cosmos to enter her mind, but nothing like that did.

"Um. Skywatcher scum. How long does it take?"

"What do you mean? It's instantaneous, you liar. I won't fall for your tricks! Whether you admit it or not, you now know one thing about astronomy!"

"Nope. Not even one. Your Big Fact Beam must be as busted up as your head."

Señor Syzygy shrugged. "Well, if that's the case, I'm sure you wouldn't mind if I fired it one thousand times at you?"

"Go right ahead," said Maruma. "I'm not scared of you."

Señor Syzygy fired the Big Fact Beam one-thousand times, and all of them hit Maruma dead on. It didn't matter. She didn't learn anything.

Señor Syzygy didn't need to hear her speak to confirm how ineffective it had been. The ignorance was plastered on her face. She did not have the ears of someone who knew what a quasar was, or the nose of someone who knew how spaghettification worked.

"I must have made a minor miscalculation when calculating the wave particle trompletion factor. It's a quick adjustment. A moment, if you will."

He opened the hull of the Big Fact Gun and gasped.

"What? Someone's chewed through all the wires! When did you…"

Maruma realized what had happened and grinned.

"Me? Oh, Señor Syzygy. I'm disappointed that you would think that. Can't you recognize it when you see it?"

"Recognize what?"

"Something fantastic."

A small orange fist burst out of the innards of the Big Fact Gun and connected with Señor Syzygy's jaw, delivering an uppercut that sent him flying across the room.

The fist and everything connected to it dashed across the room at an incredible speed, slashing the ropes tied around Maruma and allowing her to jump to safety. He stopped, allowing Señor Syzygy to take a good long look at him. He was as tall as four potatoes and wore a pinstripe suit, a Vulpes vulpes that stood as proudly as any man.

Señor Syzygy hadn't needed to look to know that it was him. The punch was familiar enough.

""Damn you, Mr. Fantasticer Fox!"

"You look well," said Maruma, now back on the ground and preparing herself to fight, her sword at the ready. "And here I thought we'd never work together again after Lima."

He growled.

"Don't blame me for that," said Maruma. "You were the one who thought the babies could be reasoned with."

"And now you both have the gall to ignore me," said Señor Syzygy. "No matter! My minions will send you flying through the stratosphere!"

"You'll never send us into space, skywatcher!"

"Well, we're already in-"

"Enough talk! Have at you!"

Creatively described space-themed robots dropped in through the ceiling and attacked both Maruma and Mr. FF, who engaged them in battle. If anyone had been watching, they wouldn't have had any trouble identifying where everyone was and what they were doing at all points in the fight, which lasted exactly as long as it needed to without becoming repetitive. There was much less of a focus on individual blow-by-blow action than there was on how everyone was feeling and operating in the heat of the moment, which gave it all a cohesive flow that nobody really took the time to appreciate.

The battered machines fell to the floor and collapsed into heaps, and their master armed himself with his famed weapon, Halley's Harpoon. Before Señor Syzygy could attack, he found a blade and a pair of sharp claws both pressed up against his throat, his enemies having beaten him to the draw.

"In retrospect," he said, "I probably shouldn't have designed a weapon that only works once every seventy-five years."

W

BBQbae: david i don't mean this to be rude but are you doing okay

BBQbae: i'm having trouble interpreting this as anything other than a cry for help

David10455898485820111038521211165579977851010101073000041205: ?

BBQbae: also, unborn baby, okay

BBQbae: technically the contest said "minor" didn't it

BBQbae: is a fetus even a minor legally in Wonkaland?

Kahn Feel: I don't care enough to check.

BBQbae: and how did the baby count as solving it?

BBQbae: wouldn't the mom be the one putting in the answer?

Kahn Feel: I assume figured out what to do, told her, and that counted.

Kahn Feel: Not sure how Wonka would know that, though?

the_ladwhocan: Confession, I haven't been able to stop looking up information about the tech Lim's mom uses to speak with him. It's crazy how overdesigned it is.

the_ladwhocan: You couldn't see it on the broadcast but the glasses she was wearing hook up to implants in her back, which themselves send and receive signals to/from her and his brain.

the_ladwhocan: That converts the thoughts of mother/child (or audio files, which the mom can play directly through the glasses) into sound waves that travel through her body and to the other in such a way that they can be heard and understood.

the_ladwhocan: She has literally turned her entire body into a speaker so she can play tin can telephone with her womb.

catayarn: what's even the point of that, i know babies are supposed to be able to hear people speak outside

the_ladwhocan: Sound quality. A baby can hear from the inside, but not with clarity. The internal sound system fixes that.

the_ladwhocan: All the better to hear the nuances of classical music with.

SupaMani: God, I hate audiophiles.

BBQbae: all that effort

BBQbae: and for fucking CHOPIN

Kahn Feel: What's wrong with Chopin?

BBQbae: nothing, if you like repetitive formless miniaturists

XxX_Blakin_XxX: oh, come on

XxX_Blakin_XxX: you wouldn't know good composition if it was staring you in the face

BBQbae: i just want to be clear

BBQbae: are you actually going to come here and defend chopin

btuffshield: this is a new low, even for blakin

XxX_Blakin_XxX: he changed the piano game and you all know it

BBQbae: i've heard of fucking dead feral cats with better taste in music than you

BBQbae: and the piano shit, lmao

BBQbae: god haven't heard THIS shit before

BBQbae: it's all you chopinheads ever talk about because it's the only fucking contribution he ever made and you know it

BBQbae: real composers have skill in variety, not specificity

BBQbae: show me him writing one good waltz, one semi-okay fugue even

XxX_Blakin_XxX: i don't think you're being respectful and i don't want to have this discussion right now

XxX_Blakin_XxX: Chopin is one of the greats

[XxX_Blakin_XxX has been temporarily banned from chat.]

GW: One day.

Chillaxian: I thought he was the more respectful one in that discussion, GW.

GW: Not about that.

GW: He's allowed to have wrong opinions, but there's a limit.

gremlin_guard: Okay, I'm done.

the_ladwhocan: Done?

gremlin_guard: Okay, I'm going to have one last try. I made a final list of all the answers I haven't tried yet, and if it doesn't work I'll accept that it isn't going to happen.

gremlin_guard: I'm probably not going to win the contest.

BBQbae: statistically, yes

BBQbae: no offense

gremlin_guard: I know that in my head. But now I'm going to try and accept that emotionally! Which is the hard part.

gremlin_guard: But that can come in an hour when I'm defeated.

gremlin_guard: Onwards!

5Gpants: smarter move, give up now

5Gpants: fuck wonka already, fuck the contest

heckkio: 5G gets madder about it everyday, makes me happy to see him so angry

heckkio: still don't get why

5Gpants: it's just

5Gpants: gaaaah, whatever

5Gpants: maybe i'll explain why tomorrow

heckkio: "i'm an edgy contrarian and i hate fun and i know i have no defense"

5Gpants: shut up

5Gpants: it's

5Gpants: look

5Gpants: tomorrow

5Gpants: i'll tell you why tomorrow

David10455898485820111038521211165579977851010101073000041205: Oh grem btw

David10455898485820111038521211165579977851010101073000041205: I ended up trying those breathing exercises you mentioned and they helped a lot

David10455898485820111038521211165579977851010101073000041205: i stopped having the nightmares about the room with all the elves

David10455898485820111038521211165579977851010101073000041205: i think i might even put up cookies and milk come december, haha, it's been so long

David10455898485820111038521211165579977851010101073000041205: grem?

W

Ned Brillbusker did not dislike Uttar Pradesh. He did not dislike the city of Lucknow, or the Air-Zamboni ride that had taken him there, or the stinger-ridden corpses of all the rival network employees who had been foolish enough to try and beat them to the scoop. He did not dislike the nice home that the fifth Golden Ticket winner lived and he did not dislike the fact that he had to be there.

He did dislike Mr. and Mrs. Ahir. They were uncooperative to the needs of the news, and were standing in front of the fifth winner's door.

"It isn't that we don't value what you do," said Mr. Ahir. "But our daughter is a little shy, and she told us that she'd rather not appear in front of several billion people."

"We wouldn't want her to feel uncomfortable," said Mrs. Ahir. "I'm sure you understand."

"I do," said Ned Brillbusker. "I would hate for her to feel uncomfortable. Which is why I want you to open the door. If her parents were bee-cinerated on live television, she would probably feel very very uncomfortable for a very very long time, and I'm sure we all want to avoid that."

"Maybe she could write a letter to you," said Mrs. Ahir, who did not want to be bee-cinerated, not even a little. "She works very hard in her writing classes and I'm sure she could explain herself well and answer any necessary questions."

"If it were up to me I would be very satisfied with that," Ned lied. "But it isn't. The BBC is run by busy bees, you see. The BBC's all-seeing bees will see as bees see and if they fail to see Keerthi than they will bee-cinerate any obstacle that stands between that bee-seeing. And to me, you aren't an obstacle. But to them, those very near-sighted bees, you must understand..."

The doorknob to Keerthi's room began to turn at the sound of intense buzzing, and a gentle voice spoke up from inside.

"If I come out and speak to you, will you promise not to hurt them?"

"Again," said Ned. "It wouldn't be me, it would be the bees. But yes, they would promise not to do anything."

"You don't need to do that," said Mr. Ahir. "It's fine, sweetie. A little bee-cineration never hurt anyone."

"Our factcheckers strongly disagree with that claim," said Ned. "But it is your choice."

"It's okay, Dad. I'll come out."

The door opened, and Keerthi Ahir slowly walked out. She was twelve years old and made up of mostly carbon and awkwardness. Her neck was too long and her forehead was too large and she had one big skin tag on the middle of her nose and sometimes ever since she was little when she was alone she would wiggle it in front of the mirror and call it Chetan and have silly conversations with it.

"Hi," said Keerthi, sticking her shaky hand out to try and be polite. "Please don't bee-cinerate my parents."

"The bees won't need to, now that you've done the sensible thing and come out. Now, may we see it? Your Golden Ticket."

Keerthi reached into the pockets of her private school uniform and picked out the ticket and handed it to Ned.

He looked at it for a moment and handed it back.

"Well," he said. "That certainly is a Golden Ticket if there ever was one. How do you feel about having won it?"

"Um," she said.

"You don't need to look at the cameras," said Ned. "Or the bees."

"Um," she said.

Keerthi's mother wrapped her arm around her left shoulder and pulled her close. Her father did the same for her right side.

"I'm sure she feels strongly about it, and we're very proud of her. But she might be a little tired from all this attention and bee-cineration talk. Thank you for-"

"I didn't think it would work," said Keerthi, interrupting her father. "I was typing up whatever came to my head. It doesn't even make any sense for that to be the answer. Nobody else would have..."

Keerthi's mother brought her head down to her daughter's ear and whispered something. Keerthi whispered something back. Mrs. Ahir thought about it for a short moment and then smiled wider than she ever had in her entire life. She whispered to Mr. Ahir and he did the same.

"Please do not do that," said Ned. "It is very rude to everyone watching at home. No one has hearing that good."

"I think," said Mr. Ahir, "That Keerthi is doing great. That is all that matters."

The three of them stepped back as a smiling huddled mass into Keerthi's room, and Mrs. Ahir shut the door. Ned knocked again, but they did not answer.

He sighed. He did not sign off or order the cameras to stop rolling, instead calling an intern to bring him a certain device. Igor's reanimated corpse shambled over and placed it in his hands, and Ned held it up for the benefit of the audience. He pressed a button and turned it on while beginning to speak.

"I would like to apologize to everyone watching for the less than comprehensive coverage," said Ned. "Unfortunately, I suspect there is nothing to be done about it. If my hunch is correct, even bee-cineration would not bring us any closer to the news."

The device began to beep wildly.

"Yes, there we are. I have only seen this once before. Sadly, the Parent-O-Meter confirms it. Mr. and Mrs. Ahir are wonderful parents. We are recording maximum levels of love and support for one's chosen interests in this household… not to mention stability and emotional security readings that are off the charts. It is with a heavy heart that I am able to say with full confidence that Keerthi Ahir has been raised to feel comfortable sharing everything she is thinking and feeling with her guardians, and that she completely loves and trusts them."

He sighed and shook his head.

"For society, perhaps, this is good. But for the news, there could be no worse state of affairs. After all, no good parent would ever let their child end up on television."

He wiped a tear away as he ended the broadcast.

"I'm Ned Brillbusker with the BBC, signing off."

W

The problem with stealing from younger children, Chili had discovered, was that sometimes those younger children had older brothers and sisters.

He once had one of those, he remembered.

He had somehow gotten away with a nice jacket and more chocolate than he had ever touched in his life, at least one-hundred bars of the stuff, along with the sack the short little fat boy had been carrying it all in. It was his. His eyes were black and his nose was bloody and his body was covered in bruises but the chocolate was all his.

He walked on the city streets for a long time with his trophies, not exactly understanding what he was doing. He had finally gotten something good, and he was risking it all by walking around and giving them a chance to catch him again, but he didn't stop. He realized that he liked it. He liked the way that all the grown-ups around him were ignoring him, ignoring his chocolate and the blood trickling down his face. He especially liked that they couldn't completely ignore him, even just when quickly walking by, that they had happy faces that became sad when they saw him and what he had earned.

Time disappeared, and he kept walking around in the cold. The older brother of his victim had hit his head hard, and it was tough to think. But the feeling of victory didn't subside. He kept walking.

At some point he realized he had ended up in something of a crowd that had gathered up at the glass window to a storefront, watching the display televisions. The news was on. They had found the fifth Golden Ticket winner. He had missed most of it, but he watched anyway.

He watched her and her family step back into a door, holding each other closely. He watched her smile.

The one that didn't finish anything hadn't smiled.

The one that vaped hadn't smiled.

The one that praised the sea had definitely smiled, but he hadn't seen it. Her helmet prevented that.

If the baby had smiled, he never would have known.

But her. She was smiling. She was smiling and she had something that he never would have and he didn't know what it was - he remembered that he did know what it was, it was the Golden Ticket - and he hated her. He wanted her to die even more than he wanted Grandpa Groinfogger to die.

He wanted her to hurt. He wanted her to lose.

"Thank you, Ned. In other breaking news, boy detective Chillenial Lee has announced that he has solved the Golden Ticket puzzle, although he has yet to input his answer. He intends to demonstrate his solution tomorrow in front of a private audience at his manor, with plans of a time-delayed livestream..."

Chili stopped listening. It didn't matter what anyone else thought or did or planned.

There was one more Golden Ticket, and it was going to be his.