Bucket- Center Controller

Mr. Bucket laughed. "No! I do not make those. I am not crazy! The Center Controller is over there in the middle of the room."

He pointed with his cane to a statue in the middle of the room. It was black and mostly featureless as far as Keerthi saw from a glance, aside from the face, which resembled an old man's. About twenty copper wires, each thicker than Mr. Bucket's cane, fed from the statue's eyes, ears, neck, stomach, and back, leading to holes in the floor near the screens.

"The Center Controller is named J," said Mr. Bucket.

"What is it?"

Mr. Bucket smiled. "You remind me! I asked a question earlier. Children, what do you think should happen to lazy people?"

"Oh my Ocean," said Tide. "No."
...

"I will tell you! One day I was having an argument with a lazy person after I fired all of the Oompa Loompas. I told them that they should let me put a special chip in their brain so I can issue them commands and have them control the factory for me and they told me no. I said why not! They gave me an answer, but it was a lie, since they were lazy and wanted to lie around all day. They did not care if it hurt me. They only wanted to sit and watch everyone around them work. I waited until they were asleep and gave them the chip."

"Mr. Bucket is a horrible person," said Chetan.

"Yes," said Keerthi.

"They woke up and they were not happy! I asked them why they weren't happy, it was only one little chip! They said it was less the chip and more the twenty heavy copper wires tying them to the wall and the voices in their head. I told them to try working for once in their life to forget about it and they refused. So! I started burning."

"You incinerated someone because they didn't want to be your robot slave?" asked Tide.

"No! I did not want them to be my slave. I wanted them to be a Center Controller. And I did not incinerate them. I replaced their skin with an unbreakable chocolate coating that makes it feel like their skin is always on fire. The only way it stops feeling on fire is if they follow my commands and make the walls move the way I want to when I tell them to but only for a second."

"You said there was not a person in there," said Lim.

"There is not! There were people in there."

"People?" asked Keerthi. She ran around to the other side of the statue and looked closely at the sections where the wires fed into it. There were frozen faces burnt into the torso and back of the body, five in total. Two men, three women.

"Do not worry!" said Mr. Bucket. "They were all terrible people. Much worse than JUROR and Chili. They defended a man who let a child starve because he wanted to chew tobacco and sleep all day. Do not feel bad for them! I have scanned their brains. They do not think anymore. They are not people anymore. They are machines that work because they do not want to feel pain. Like clams! Happy chocolate clams that are always on fire forever."

"Leave the factory," said Chetan. "Leave the factory leave the factory leave the factory."

- Chapter 14, The Control Center