The group had arrived at a new door. Before Mr. Bucket opened it, he decided to see how everyone was enjoying themselves.

"How did everyone like the Slide Room?"

"Um," said Keerthi. "It was only a regular slide, wasn't it? Other than being so large. Not that I disliked it! I had never been on a slide big enough to be used by a Taranturoo."

"Not just any slide! It was made of chocolate," explained Mr. Bucket. "It's all part of my new edible playground line of Wonkastructure. Imagine! You will go out to play in the park, and you will say-"

"I have never played in a park," said Lim.

"Well," said Mr. Bucket. "You are a baby. Babies are mostly known for crying and pooping and committing international war crimes. I am sure the rest of you have played in parks."

"There isn't much artistic value in," said JUROR.

"I'm always busy making sure everyone knows the Ocean is god, so I haven't had the chance," said Tide.

"My house is inside a park," said Chili. "It doesn't have a playground."

"I vape," said Mahuika. "No one is allowed to vape in parks."

Mr. Bucket sighed. "Okay. But normal children do play in parks, and they will love this! They will be sliding or climbing or bar-monkeying and they will start to get hungry. But they won't need to take a break! No, they will snap off a delicious piece of brick wafer or vanilla glue and continue on with full bellies and high spirits."

"But won't they eventually eat all of it?" asked Keerthi.

"Of course," said Mr. Bucket. "And then the city will order another. More candy for the children, and more profit for me. It works wonderfully."

"But it would melt," said Lim.

"Nonsense! He didn't always use it, but Mr. Wonka himself had already invented anti-melting chocolate technology before I was born! I have only improved the process since! My Wonkastructure can withstand snow or sun and taste absolutely budsplattering while doing it."

"But it would be very unhygienic," said Keerthi. "Children would be getting their dirty shoes all over it. Germs would be everywhere."

"And bugs," said Lim. "Bugs would swarm them and gobble everything up."

"You children have little faith in me," said Mr. Bucket. "Of course I know about that! That is why the chocolate used in the Wonkastructure is mixed with a special antibiotic poison. It kills germs and bugs and squirrels instantly!"

Keerthi frowned. "But wouldn't that also-"

"Let us not get bogglecrumped in the details," said Mr. Bucket. "We still have so, so, so much to see and do! There is the room with the pink lemonade cows, and the room with the yellow lemonade cows, and even the room with the blue lemonade cows!"

"Quite the variety," said JUROR.

Mr. Bucket started to open the door and did, but not all the way. Once it was half-open he held it in place and turned to the children.

"Children," Mr. Bucket said. "And Baby too. This applies to all of you. I have one important rule I need to share before we continue on. This is a chocolate factory, not a chocolate store. This means that this is a place where candies are made. Not where they are bought. Do you understand the difference?"

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"It means, in plain American or British English, that not everything in here is ready for consumption," said Mr. Bucket. There will be many delicious sweets and fizzies and yumgappers for you to feast upon, but I will always tell you when this is the case. If you eat anything, or drink anything, or take anything that you do not have permission to eat or drink or take, I will have to immediately escort you out of my factory. I know this won't happen, since you are all intelligent and polite young people, but I must say it anyway."

"Why didn't you write that on the contract?" asked Lim.

"I did," said Mr. Bucket. "It was on the back. Also! I am aware of the cruelty and strictness of my words. It is horrible to tease people with what they cannot have, especially children, who are worth almost as much as regular people. So! If you happen to decide that you absolutely positively must have something that I say you cannot, I will still end your tour, but you may have it. But only one."

"I want the chocolate facto-"

"With some exceptions, Chili," said Mr. Bucket. "You may not have me, or my chocolate factory, or any other unreasonable item. But if it is a reasonable request, I will try to accommodate you. As long as you ask in advance before trying to take something, I will tell you if it is unreasonable or not."

"Is Keerthi's life an unreasonable item?" asked Chili. He wasn't actually going to ask for it, but he thought it would be fun to say. It was. She looked sad.

"Hmm," said Mr. Bucket. "It depends on what you mean by that. Let me think about it."

"Um," said Keerthi. "Can we go into the next room?"

"Certainly," said Mr. Bucket. "And have no fears about this next room! You may eat whatever you wish to while there."

"Will we wish to?" asked Tide.

"It depends," said Mr. Bucket.

W

The next room resembled an old history museum. From the high ceiling, thousands of lights pointed down, each one shining on a different brown pedestal. The pedestals were carefully arranged in rows and columns, some large and some small but all matching in design. They all had round glass cases and plaques on them.

Chili walked over to one and looked inside of it. There was a gummy bear. He read the inscription on the plaque.

F390 - THE LIVER-EAR GUMMY BEAR

GROWS AN EAR IN YOUR LIVER YOU CAN HEAR FROM

DOES NOT FILL YOUR STOMACH WITH TUMORS

DOES NOT NOT NOT FILL YOUR STOMACH WITH TUMORS

"What the fuck is this?" asked Chili.

"Good question," said Mr. Bucket. "This is the Failure Room! This is where I keep all my failures. Many years ago I was browsing the web-"

"Surfing the net," said Tide.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "I was using the computer inside the room with my cotton candy spiders, so it would have been the web. But! Yes! I was there! I was in the middle of a long creative drought and needed inspiration, and I had finally found it! There was a brilliant philanthropist who had formed his own charity - they take in injured dust mites and nurse them back to health - and he was giving a speech on how to succeed. He said that to succeed, you must fail! You will never succeed until you have failed, and if you do not fail before you succeed, then you never succeeded in the first place! In reality you failed to succeed! But since failing to succeed isn't the same as simply failing, it would fail to help you succeed! All successes only exist because of the failures that come with them!"

"I vape," said Mahuika. Chili walked over to her, snatched the vape pen out of her hand, and threw it as far as he could behind her. Her second pen reached her lips before her first touched the floor.

She vaped.

"See!" yelled Mr. Bucket. "Success born from failure! That is the only way! When I was unimportant and small like you, I had failed many times! I was failure! So it was only natural that I became success! But it was too much success, far too much! I used up all that failure I had built up, so I lost my passion. So! I decided! All I needed to do was make more failure, and that is what this room is!"

"Wouldn't it make more sense to show us your successes first? That is what most people," said JUROR.

"My factory has many superb sights and sounds and broken alliterations," said Mr. Bucket. "They are all amazing! But if I started with a more impressive room you would not be able to handle it! You need to adjust first. This room will help with that, since it is the one you can all best relate to."

"So the gummy bear doesn't actually work?" asked Keerthi. "It doesn't do any of the stuff it says on the plaque?"

Mr. Bucket picked up his cane and used it to scratch his forehead..

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "It's confusing. Let me explain! When I started this project, I was trying to fail so that I could succeed. But each time I failed, I found out that I had succeeded in failing. Succeeding in failing is as useless as failing to succeed, so that meant that I had failed to fail and that I wouldn't be able to ensure my success moving forward. I was stuck!"

"This is much less clever than you think it is," said Lim.

"How did you solve your problem?" asked Tide.

"It was easy!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket. "For example! Here! I set out to make a gummy bear that would help people with drinking problems. It would grow an ear in their livers! If they ever tried to give me and drink, they would be able to hear their liver scream!"

"Livers don't scream," said Lim.

"How would you know?" asked Mr. Bucket. "You don't have an ear in your liver."

"Aside from them not being sentient, I was conscious and self-aware ten minutes after my conception, and I lived next to one until my birth," said Lim. "They do not scream."

"To be fair," said Mr. Bucket. "It is difficult to hear the difference between pained shrieking and a Chopin etude. But I will take your word for it."

"So you managed to make the ears grow with the gummy bear, but since that succeeded, you failed to fail," said Keerthi. "Am I getting that right?"

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "But I figured out a way around it! All I needed to do was retroactively add goals to all of my successes so that they would become failures! That way I didn't even need to keep inventing. With F390, I added two goals that I knew would fail! Everything here has two failed goals and one successful goal. Which means that I finally succeeded at failing!"

"Which means that you succeeded," said Keerthi.

"Yes!" said Mr. Bucket.

"Which means that you failed," said Keerthi.

"Yes!" said Mr. Bucket.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Fuck you," said Chili.

"Okay," said Mr. Bucket. "Enough of that. Everyone go and enjoy my failures! Try whatever you like! You can try to guess which goal is the successful one out of the three and make a game of it."

"What about the glass?" asked JUROR.

"It is sugar glass," said Mr. Bucket. "If something isn't worth eating, it won't be worth looking through, I have always said."

"Are the pedestals failures?" asked Chili.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "They are pedestals."

Chili started eating one of the pedestals, which were made from chocolate. Everyone else left to wander about the room.

W

Chili woke up later on the floor. His face had chocolate on it.

He stood up and tried to see if anyone was close by. Far on the other side of the room, he saw the Taranturoo standing alongside the others. He stood up and began walking towards it. Sometimes he stopped to look at one of the pedestals, read the plaque, and scoop out an extra handful of chocolate.

One pedestal had a straw inside of it.

F1920 - THE ELECTRIC STRAW

A STRAW THAT DRINKS FOR YOU

DOES NOT COVER YOUR TONGUE WITH TUMORS

DOES NOT EVENTUALLY REPLACE YOUR TONGUE WITH A LARGE TONGUE-LIKE TUMOR APPENDAGE

One pedestal had a small pile of popcorn.

F49 - ANTI-POPCORN

POPCORN THAT TURNS BACK INTO KERNELS WHEN HEATED UP

SOMETHING SOMETHING NO TUMORS

DITTO

One pedestal had a smaller pedestal inside of it which itself was growing tumors. Chili did not read the plaque.

Soon he made it to Lim, who was standing with everyone other than Mr. Bucket in front of the largest pedestal in the room. Chili gasped when he saw what was inside of it. It was a man.

He was dead. His skin was orange, and his hair was green, and he was only a little taller than Tide, who was only six. He was wearing a suit and looked like a wax sculpture.

F1717 - CORPSE COOKIES

AN ALMOND COOKIE THAT INSTANTLY PRESERVES A BODY WHEN FED TO IT

DOES NOT PRESERVE IT BY TURNING ALL ORGANS INTO TUMORS

DOES NOT BRING YOU BACK TO LIFE FOR A BRIEF PERIOD AND MAKE YOU WHINE LIKE A BABY ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU WANT TO DIE AND BE TOTALLY UNAPPRECIATIVE OF YOUR COOL NEW TUMOR TONGUE

"Chili," said Keerthi. "You didn't eat anything in here other than the chocolate pedestals, right?"

"No," he replied. "As much as you wish that I did."

Keerthi did not reply. Chili could tell that she was upset about him not having made a fatal mistake. He reminded himself to make his revenge against her twice as horrible as he previously would have.

"None of us did," said Tide. "It's all tumors. Everything gives you tumors."

"Where's Bucket?" asked Chili.

"Long story," said Lim. "He was here a few minutes ago, but we were talking and I pointed out how everything he invented here technically would have already been a failure, since even though they did what they were supposed to they also give you tumors. He said that they wouldn't have been failures until he specifically added non-tumor-givingness as a prerequisite goal, and we all told him that was dumb and his success/failure conception didn't make any sense so he ran away crying."

"I chased after him," said Keerthi. "He told me to leave him alone. So we all decided to wait for him to come back. I think this is all a joke. I think he likes dark humor and is joking about all the stuff he says. Nobody would try to give anyone tumors on purpose."

"So eat something," said Chili.

"Um," said Keerthi. "I'm not that hungry."

"Taranturoo thinks you're lying," said Lim.

"I'm not," said Keerthi. "I had a big breakfast and it didn't settle well."

Chili sighed and looked at the five other children as he waited.

There was Keerthi, who he hated and hoped would die. There was also Tide and Lim and Mahuika, coincidentally all of whom he also hated and hoped would die.

There was also JUROR. Chili smiled.

"JUROR," said Chili. "Everyone is lying about the tumors. The plaques don't say anything about that. You should eat something."

"No," said JUROR.

Chili cursed himself. Why did his plans keep failing?

"So," said Tide. "While we wait. About the corpse in front of us. Nobody wants to talk about it."

"It's a fake," said Keerthi. "It must be. He's only trying to pull a prank on us. I read about the worker people he had in the books they wrote but they were making it up."

Lim scanned the body with his Taranturoo. "Nope. That is a real dead body."

"Human?" asked Tide.

"Yes," said Lim. "And filled with tumors."

"Did he vape?" asked Mahuika.

"I… don't know?" answered Lim.

"I vape," said Mahuika. She did.

"He did not vape," said Mr. Bucket, who had come back from the far side of the room. "None of them did."

"None of who?" asked Keerthi. "Mr. Bucket, who was this person?"

"His name was Roy," said Mr. Bucket. "He was an Oompa Loompa."

"An Oompa Loompa?" asked JUROR.

"Yes!" said Mr. Bucket. "Imported directly from Loompaland."

"There's no such place," said Chili.

"Of course there is! It's in the Hangdoodles."

"That isn't a place either," said Chili.

Chili had stolen many books in his life, and in doing so he discovered that there were several topics that he most enjoyed reading about. He liked reading about volcanoes, obscure diseases, and people who were suffering more than him. It didn't matter if it was fiction or non-fiction. He didn't understand why he liked reading about volcanoes, obscure diseases, and people who were suffering more than him, but he did.

He also liked maps. The book he had read more than any other was called "THE WORLD THAT WE LIVE IN", and it was a large hardcover atlas published by National Geographic. Chili liked National Geographic books and magazines, and since they could be easily found in any dumpster in the world, he never had to take a risk by stealing them.

The book had a map of every country in the world together with facts about the country. The book was published before the largest Baby War, so it had some outdated information, but he had read it at least one hundred times and memorized everything. He knew where Somalia was and that Mogadishu was its capital. He knew the population of Paris and the percent of people there that could speak German. He knew the GDP of Rome, and how much of that GDP was represented only by food. He even knew where Happiness Central was.

He also knew that there was no place called Loompaland.

"I cannot speak to your lack of education," said Mr. Bucket. "But of course there is a place called Loompaland. I have been there! As had Mr. Wonka. It was where he met the Oompa Loompas, who did great work for us both for a long time."

"So they weren't lying? You really did have small people who helped you?" asked Keerthi.

"Yes!" said Mr. Bucket. "What fantastic workers they were! How I miss them."

"He doesn't look the way she described them in her book," said Keerthi. "She said they were the size of dolls."

Mr. Bucket laughed. "Of course they were! You think there were really orange men with green hair walking around? That is what happens when you try to preserve a corpse with an almond cookie. It does not work, as you see. Any corpse preserver that makes a corpse start crying and screaming for a second death is a horrible preserver. In the future I will go with a professional taxidermist. That is a respectable profession, and has no almonds, as a bonus."

"I like almonds," said JUROR.

"That is a bad opinion," said Mr. Bucket. "But yes. Roy here was given the last one thankfully, so no one else will need to go through what he did."

"Mr. Bucket," asked Keerthi. "What happened to the rest of the Oompa Loompas?"

"I had to fire all of them, sadly. They tried to onionize."

"Don't you mean unionize?" asked Tide.

"I wish!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket. "Unions are easy to mince away. But onions! They cause nothing but tears. You see, there is nothing Oompa Loompas loved more than cocoa beans. They couldn't get enough of them! They did not want money, they did not want fancy new televisions. They only wanted cocoa beans! One day I was having them help me invent the healthiest candy in the world… it was going to have the same nutritional value of eating every fruit and vegetable at once, and it was going to taste delicious! When they were loading them all up into the machine, one of them got a whiff from the onions and so he decided to try it."

"Did he like it?" asked Keerthi.

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "He loved it! He shared it with all the others and they loved it too. Soon they asked if I would stop paying them in cocoa beans and switch over to onions. I was happy to do this, as onions are even cheaper than cocoa beans, but it came with a terrible price."

"They all got bad breath?" asked Tide. "My followers were on a seaweed craze a while back. I get that."

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "They all began whizzpopping."

"What?" asked Lim. "Because of the onions?"

Mr. Bucket frowned. "Yes. It was gross. The human body cannot handle too many onions per day. If you eat as many as they were, you are increasing your chance of whizzpopping."

"Oh," said Keerthi.

"All of those whizzpopping Oompa Loompas kept contaminating my factory! You cannot make candy when whizzpoppers are flying around! I felt terrible about it but I had to act. I asked them to stop eating the onions and go back to beans but they wouldn't hear of it. So eventually I had to let them go. Only ten Oompa Loompas still work at this factory, and I only kept them because I absolutely needed them! Although I am not sure what I am going to do with them now."

"Did the rest of them go back to Loompaland?" asked Tide.

"There is no Loompaland," said Chili. "He's a liar. Onions don't make people whizzpop. He probably killed them all and used their bones for candy."

"I didn't bring this up because there wasn't ever a good time," said Lim. "But my scans say that Mr. Bucket's bones are all made from reinforced peanut brittle. I thought that was worth mentioning."

"I know I can come off as a little nutty," said Mr. Bucket. "But I never killed any of my Oompa Loompas on purpose. To answer your question, Keerthi, some of them did. But most of them are now traveling the world together and searching for more onions and hopefully not standing close to other people in elevators."

"His blood is root beer," said Lim.

"But if you don't have Oompa Loompas, who runs your factory?" asked Keerthi.

"It runs itself," answered Mr. Bucket.

"It can't possibly," said Keerthi. "Is this place managed entirely by robots?"

"Robots? What? No," said Mr. Bucket. "You don't understand. Watch!"

Mr. Bucket walked over to Roy's pedestal, picked up his cane, and swung it at the sugar glass. It broke, and Roy's body fell to the floor in a pile. The pedestal snapped in half. The children screamed.

Mr. Bucket ignored them and pointed.

"Do not look at Roy! Look at the floor, children! The floor!"

The floor began to liquify, in the spot where Roy, the pedestal he had been on, and the broken sugar glass had landed. It all sank like quicksand into the floor and disappeared. The floor stopped wiggling and became hard again.

"Where did he go?" asked JUROR.

"I vape," said Mahuika.

"Contain your excitement," said Mr. Bucket. "There! There it is!"

At the same spot as before, the ground turned to liquid sand again, and a new pedestal began to lift out of the ground, along with Roy and a repaired glass case. Soon they were back where they had been originally in restored condition.

"All the floors and walls and ceilings in my factory can do this," said Mr. Bucket. "When they need to operate or fix something, they turn into a special gel, drag it into themselves and work on it and bring it back out. Everything is designed so that it can be operated through this method."

"Is it automatic?" asked Lim.

"Not fully," said Mr. Bucket. "I have a chip in my brain that issues commands. Most of them are scheduled but some are from when I need them to do something special, like fixing up Roy here. When I tell it what to do, the chip sends that command to the Control Center, and the Center Controller decides how to go about using the walls to do what I need it to do."

"Is that where the remaining Oompa Loompas work?" asked Keerthi.

"No," said Mr. Bucket.

"Then who does it?" she asked.

"Let me answer your question with a question," said Mr. Bucket. "This goes to all of you. What do you think should happen to people who are lazy?"

Mr. Bucket's cane rang.

"Oh!" he said. "My alarm. The time! The time! Where does it go? We must be moving along! Our next room awaits!"

He began to usher them all towards the next door. As they walked, Keerthi spoke.

"Mr. Bucket?" asked Keerthi. "Can I ask you one more question?"

"Go ahead," he said.

"I don't know if this is true, but I read that last time Mr. Wonka started the tour with a room with a chocolate river. Do you still have that?"

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "We now mix chocolate via hurricane. But I wouldn't take you there even if we did."

"Why not?" asked JUROR.

"Because it would be boring," said Mr. Bucket. "It's been done. Tours must be changed and updated! Modernization is a must! Young people today have shorter attention spans than ever."

"No we," said JUROR.