Bucket- Slavery Perfected

The floor was boundless metal, and the stars shone brightly on the only attraction she could see. They were standing at the base of a tremendous chocolate tower.

A second guilty peek confirmed that the stars were moving. They were slowly being pulled towards a spot above the tower's peak.

"We're back to this," said Keerthi. "Like in the VIP Room. No ceiling, no walls."

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "The VIP Room is one small room that is designed to seem bigger than it is. The Down Rooms are many rooms stapled together in a way that makes them feel like they are only one. Down Tower itself is inside of thousands of different rooms, and it has hundreds of rooms inside of it. The four of us are standing inside of ten different rooms right now."

Keerthi sighed.

"Do not worry about architecture," said Mr. Bucket. "We are here for the slavery! Let's go inside."
...

"But what about the slavery?" asked Keerthi. "You didn't mix it with anything. You only pumped it through the Down Tower and pumped it back out."

"The pipes are porous. Not poorous like Chintzy was; they are economically secure, but they have little holes in them. The holes are too small for the chocolate to pass through, but they are big enough for the thrall muons to pass through, and I have stored those thrall muons in every floor in the Down Tower."

"And those thrall muons?" asked Tide. "You said you get them from slavery. Where's the slavery? Is it a trick, like with the leaves?"

Mr. Bucket smiled and reached for the stars. Keerthi in her exhaustion had not noticed how close they were.

In his hands, it was no bigger than an orange. He twisted it in the middle, and it made a clicking noise and went dark, separating into two halves. He allowed them to fall from his hands and hit the floor.

It was ugly and wore no clothes, much smaller than a mouse. It resembled a hybrid between a person and a severed finger, a little white cylinder of flesh with eyes, limbs, and hair.

It blinked, it breathed, and it whimpered at the four giants lording above it.

"They are human, in a way," said Mr. Bucket. "This is the pencil variation. There are six-thousand variations. Each is designed differently! Some of them look like noses, or geckos, or bones. They all have limbs and at least two senses, and one of them is always sight. They need to be able to see themselves."

"No," whispered Keerthi. "Is it…"

"Intelligent?" said Mr. Bucket. He laughed. "Very! It is smarter than all of you. Consider them to be CHOCOR-0. They spend their entire lives in those star-rooms, all alone. Only my voice is with them. For the ones who are deaf I provide Wonkabraille. I have a recording that tells them that they are my child, and they are a baby being transported from a place far away back home in a tiny capsule because of an emergency. I tell them that I love them, which is a lie, and that they need to learn everything they can about earth before they arrive. They spend the first ten years of their lives learning on a screen and being told that I love them and can't wait to see them, and then I turn on the light."

No one asked what the light was.

"The light," said Mr. Bucket. "It is always pressing down on them. It isn't real light. It is painful. If they do not constantly push against it, it burns their skin worse than any fire can. But it isn't hot. It is my own special Wonkasuffering and it is hard to describe. None of you have ever felt anything like it. I invented it."

"Keerthi," said Chetan.

"For one day, the light burns them. They learn that if they do not keep pushing it will kill them, and they always, because of the person I have taught them to be, do not give up. They are fighters! Then I turn off the light. It goes off and the pain ends. My recording comes on. It is my voice again. It tells them that I lied and that I own a chocolate factory and have no children. I show them a picture of what a real human looks like, and I show them a mirror. I tell them they only exist because their suffering produces thrall muons, which make chocolate tasty. They know what chocolate is but have never tasted it. The light turns on again. I tell them that if they live to be forty, I will set them free, and then I never speak to them again. The lights never stop."

He laughed.

"They never give up," he said. "And when they turn forty, they are successfully incinerated, so I know they deserved it all. This one here is thirty-nine. The thrall muons they have produced are stored in the Down Tower until they can be used. This method produces the most thrall muons, since it makes the most Wonkanucleons feel down."

"How many." Keerthi didn't need question marks anymore.

"Each star will make about seven-hundred thrall muons, which is enough for one cocoa bean. It takes five-hundred beans to make one pound of chocolate. I produce ten billion pounds of chocolate every year."

"Keerthi," said Chetan. "Please."

Keerthi looked at the stars. "I'm tired."

- Chapter 17, The Down Rooms