Mr. Bucket and the four children left the Control Center and entered the next room. They all stepped onto a wide brown conveyor belt and were immediately conveyed through a long hallway.

"Children! We are now being conveyed throughout the factory," said Mr. Bucket. "Have any of you been conveyed recently?"

"Well," said Lim.

"No place in the world will convey you like the Convenient Chocolate Conveyor! It can convey you, at speeds distinctly slower than a healthy person's moderate walking pace, to an extremely limited number of locations! It is a miracle of technology! There is no other way to travel!"

"Walking," said Keerthi.

"Swimming," said Tide.

"Vaping," said Lim.

Everyone turned and looked round at Lim.

"I was kidding," he said.

Mahuika vaped. It smelled like sarsaparilla.

"Baby!" shouted Mr. Bucket. "I understand that you are terrified by your memories of the screens! Still you mustn't interrupt. We are being conveyed at an incredibly speedgawking pace! I will not have time to explain all the rooms we are conveyed through if you prevent me from talking."

"You," said Tide. "You didn't have to make it out of chocolate. Not everything needs to be made from chocolate."

Keerthi noticed that no one was talking about the clams. She understood why Mahuika wasn't talking about the clams, because Mahuika was vaping, but she wanted to hear Lim and Tide talk about the clams.

Somebody needed to say something about the clams. The clams were bad.

"Don't say anything about the clams," said Chetan.

"Shushahush! The first room is coming! The Potato Room! Oh, how I love the Potato Room!"

The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor conveniently conveyed Mr. Bucket and the children out of the hallway and into the Potato Room, which was a large warehouse filled with a single large potato. It was larger than a normal potato, but only a little.

"This is the Potato Room," said Mr. Bucket. "It's where I keep my potato supply."

"It's one potato," said Tide.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "This is a chocolate factory."

"I should say something about the clams," said Keerthi.

"You should not," said Chetan. "It is the right thing to do but mentioning it will not make anything better. Leave the factory."

The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor conveyed them to the next room. Keerthi watched as a long interrupted sequence of machines hummed and whirred. Light green leaves dropped in through a hole in the ceiling to enter one side of it, packaged boxes whizzing out of the other.

"It smells like mint," said Tide.

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "This is where we produce all of Wonkaland's currency, caddies."

She sighed.

"It's worthless," said Lim. "He produces and delivers what are effectively unlimited quantities of it, hourly, to every capital of every country in the world. For free. The daily valuation rates make the papiermark look stable. There are entire slums in Asia and Central America where all the houses are built out of nothing but hundred quadrillion caddy bills. Some countries consider themselves to be actively at war with Wonkaland because the sheer physical weight of the amount of paper money he airdrops from the sky produces a force roughly equivalent to a large bomb. Last year a team of econophysicists in Spain discovered that any individual atom constituting each printed caddy bill, once separated, instantly becomes worth more than the entire currency."

"First of all," said Mr. Bucket. "I do not ship caddies to every country in the world! I do not send them to Urkeldelphia or Madagascar or Peachtown or Happiness Central or Australia."

Everyone either vaped or gave Mr. Bucket a confused look.

"Children," he said. "I do not know what opinions you have, but I always say both names. When you are in the chocolate business, you must work hard to avoid controversy."

"Earlier you mentioned one of them without the other," said Lim.

"No I did not."

"Yes," said Tide. "You did."

"There must be stringed seagulls in my ears because I cannot hear you! I was in the middle of defending the validity of my currency so! Second of all! This is an investment. Everyone will be using caddies when they realize how much nicer they smell than all the other money. That is why I am sending them out every which way."

"Sand dollars smell much better than mint dollars," said Tide.

"I don't see anyone building slums out of sea urchins," said Mr. Bucket. "Everyone loves the natural herbal aroma of caddies! Mint reminds people of tasty dinners! They are always using my money for incense."

"Burning it," said Lim. "They are burning it."

"Would you like a sample?" asked Mr. Bucket. "I cannot open any of the boxes, since they are to be shipped away, but you can all have what I have in my pockets. I will give each of you one Wonkillion caddies. Consider it an investment in the future!"

"Nobody take it," said Lim.

"Does it give you brain damage?" asked Keerthi.

"No," he said. "The cost of the amount of energy it would take to carry the extra gram far outweighs the actual value of the bill."

"You are only saying that because you are inside that fancy-shmancy Taranturoo! The math you are doing only works if it is powered by an impossibly expensive source!"

"Oxygen," said Lim.

Mr. Bucket paid Lim's words no heed, reaching into his coat. "Wait, where is my…"

He stomped his cane against the conveyor. "Those VIPs! Those rotten fingersmiths! Oh, they shall regret this! As soon as the tour is over, their online game playing experience will be dramatically reduced! The ping will rise, children! The ping will rise!"

"He can understand morality," said Keerthi. "He sees that stealing is wrong. If I explain to him that he should not make people into clams, he will stop."

The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor conveyed Mr. Bucket and the children out of the Mint and into another long hallway.

"He will not," said Chetan. "You already know that, because I am telling it to you."

"I heard people talking about him online," said Keerthi. "I read everything I could about him too. He had a hard childhood, but there were many people who cared about him. He must have a voice."

"Having a voice does not make you a good person," said Chetan. "You have to listen to it. Voices that are unused become corrupted. This is likely what happened to him. Think about him, Keerthi. You did the research. Please do not pretend that you do not know who he clammed. Do you think that anyone can get through to a person willing to do that?"

Throughout the years since the first contest, the Wonka scholars had been able to pierce together a respectable collection of information on him. Keerthi thought back to everything she read about Mr. Bucket before entering his factory and all she had learned about him since coming inside of it. About King Charles. About STARVING CABBAGE SOUP LAD.

About Charlie.

Charlie Bucket had been born inside of a small wooden house on the edge of town, which contained only one bed and only one flimsy table. He had a family who loved him dearly, including a mother, a father, two grandmothers, and two grandfathers, one of whom was the first person ever to be convicted of worker's compensation fraud in either England or the United States. He had no siblings and was at home constantly showered with attention, affection, and love.

He was poor. His father worked at a toothpaste factory, and no one else in his family had a job. His interviewed peers reported him having been so hungry that he stayed inside during recess as to preserve his energy. He only received a chocolate bar once per year on his birthday, which he would savor and make last for many weeks. Instead of a dog or a cat or a pair of rats, the only pet he ever had was a dust mite, which had to be put down after a horrible breathing accident. An average meal in the Bucket household during Charlie's childhood consisted of cabbage, grass, and expired toothpaste.

He was often bullied by the other children, who waved around candy bars in his face and legally changed his name in order to annoy him. He never responded to the taunting. His teachers claimed that he was a good and polite student, but they had been forced to grade him poorly since it was all he could afford. No one ever complained about his breath.

He lived in the same city as the largest and most famous chocolate factory in the world. It was impossible to escape the smell of constant chocolate in the air. There was no food store in this city that did not sell the chocolate that came from the factory. Everyone who tasted it thought it was the best chocolate in the world. The citizens of this city ate on average two-hundred and six bars of this chocolate every year. Charlie ate one.

When Charlie turned eleven, the owner of this factory sent out a letter to every television station and newspaper in the world explaining that he would be giving five Golden Tickets out, all hidden inside of his Wonka bars, and that the five children to find them first would get a tour of his factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate.

Four children won Golden Tickets before Charlie did. They were fed. They were rich. They had set world records. They had access to information and technology he could only dream up. For weeks Charlie looked at newspapers and saw their faces, their quotes, and their Golden Tickets. He saw his peers buying hundreds of bars for the contest while his family gave up food and vice to allow him two. Neither one held a Golden Ticket. Charlie would be painfully aware of his poor chances.

His father lost his job at the toothpaste factory, and he and his family began to starve. It was the coldest winter on record in the history of England or the United States.

The owner of the small stationary store where the Golden Ticket was won said that Charlie Bucket walked inside and placed a fifty [redacted] bill on the counter. He mentioned when talking to reporters that he was sure it was stolen, not that he cared. It was the thinnest child he had ever seen. The boy wanted to eat.

Charlie went inside the factory, and he met Mr. Wonka, who probably was not unlike the person Charlie himself grew to become. He saw a factory that, beyond the superficial, may not have been different at all from the one she was inside. He would have eaten for the first time in his life to his heart's content. He would have for the first time been treated to an experience that was both positive and unavailable to the average child.

Unlike Chili, he appreciated it. Salt, Teevee, and the newspaper reporters who interviewed Charlie all agreed on who he was. He was a good kid. He appreciated what little he had, he never swore, he always followed the rules, he hugged his family, he finished his toothpaste, he never said a bad word about anybody without being hounded into doing it first.

He was good.

Did that matter?

Keerthi, like most others who had done their research, agreed that Teevee was the most reliable source. His narrative was that it had been a morality tale. It was a deliberate effort on Wonka's design, Mike said. He was making a point. He was making a statement. The ultimate angel got to play inside the garden. Charlie was the winner no matter how he got there, and he became the owner of the most powerful company in the world.

He was good and he got rewarded for it.

Hence.

People who are good are rewarded.

That wasn't enough. It was something but it wasn't enough. Keerthi remembered that Mr. Teevee hadn't focused as much on that half.

"Keerthi," said Chetan. "You are right. This doesn't mean you should continue focusing on this. You cannot fix this problem alone. Please leave the factory. I know it's hard. Think about your mother and father. They love you and they are worried sick about you."

They were bad.

It wasn't important who Wonka loved. It was important who he hated.

Wonka hated them. Teevee said that Wonka hated them, that he dripped contempt for those four children and their parents with every spoken word. Keerthi thought he had been exaggerating and most people agreed. He was reliable compared to Salt, but he was also second place. Runner-up in a competition where gold gave you the keys to the kingdom and silver gave you a garbage truck filled with candy bars. If you sat on those memories for a lifetime and tried to think back on them, how could you have recalled any of it without imagining hatred?

But it made more sense if it wasn't imaginary. Wonka hated Gloop. He hated Beauregarde. He hated Salt. He hated Teevee. There was a false image of tough love, but it wasn't real. It was all punitive.

Drowned, disfigured, trashed. Made to make the walk of shame in front of the world, their names forever synonymous with their respective sins. He had to know they would never live normal lives after that. Lives at all.

They were bad and they got punished for it.

Hence.

People who are bad are punished.

At the age where it would have hit the hardest, Wonka had this unbreakable message carved into Charlie's soul. He was removed from a world that might have proven it wrong and locked inside of paradise, first with his mentor and then alone, his family failing to correct the delusion without being swallowed by it. Sixty years for that concept to internalize and ferment and rot inside the sweetest mental prison in the world.

What would that do to a person?

"He thinks the world should be fair," said Keerthi. "He thinks he's some arbiter of justice, and-"

"No," said Chetan. "If you are this close, better to get it right. I know it so you know it too. Give it some thought."

The Convenient Chocolate Conveyor had continued moving during Keerthi's tonally dissonant inner monologue, but it was still in the same long hallway.

He had not changed the topic.

"As impossibly popular and valued as caddies are, sadly they will soon be done away with," said Mr. Bucket. "Soon the WonkaCoin will render all physical money useless."

"The WonkaCoin? Singular?" asked Tide.

Mr. Bucket pulled a coin out of his coat. "Here it is. I haven't put in the computer yet, but it will be in my account soon."

"I thought you were supposed to mine it," said Lim.

"I did," he said. "It's mine."

"You are a monster," said Keerthi.

"Keerthi," said Mr. Bucket. "There are real criticisms against digital currencies, but you are being hyperbolic. It's not bubblegum."

"You are a fucking monster," she said.

Keerthi had cursed before. Twice, both times so quietly so only she could hear, alone in her room, and never in English. But it wasn't entirely new to her.

"We will have a talk about that later," said Chetan.

The curve of Mr. Bucket's mouth became flat. He pushed a button on his cane, and the Convenient Chocolate Conveyor stopped.

Legend spoke of a special rhetorical technique where a person could ask a question but have the sentence end with a period. Keerthi had never seen anyone who could do it in real life, but she had heard stories. It was a terrifying thought.

She did not expect Mr. Bucket to be one of those people.

"Why is that, Keerthi."

Lim and Tide did not say anything. There was the sudden awareness in the air that Mr. Bucket turned his mother and father and their mothers and their fathers into clams and he might have zero problem doing it to someone who levied serious criticism at his code of ethics.

"If you can find a way to turn this into a pun, you can still salvage this," said Chetan.

"You put the marshmallow in front of Chili." Keerthi did not understand why she brought that up. The clams were worse. She blamed his period-question. It threw her off.

"He ate the marshmallow," said Mr. Bucket.

"Yes," she said. "But you didn't have to put it in front of him. He needed to wait fifteen minutes to eat it, but if you didn't give it to him until the end, there wouldn't have been any risk of him failing."

"He ate the marshmallow," said Mr. Bucket.

"With who he is, there is no way he could have made it. You knew that. All you needed to do-"

Mr. Bucket tapped his cane against the floor and slowly leaned forward. Lim and Tide didn't move. Mahuika vaped.

"He ate the marshmallow."

It hit her. Her shoulders sunk.

"You think the world is fair."

He smiled.