Bucket- Chocolate and Slavery

Keerthi took the ladle from Mr. Bucket and took a bitty sip. She spit it out.

"What's wrong with it?" screamed Tide.

"It's awful!" Keerthi replied. "It tastes like frogskin and rotten fish! Like cockroaches and slime wanglers!"

"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "This is what chocolate tastes like before the slavery has been added. It is so bad that the Law of Sexdecuplentomy does not apply to it. Not even the sixteen percent will enjoy it without the slavery."

"You are lying," said Keerthi. "This has no sugar in it! I would have tasted it!"

"No," said Mr. Bucket. "I added sugar, but the natural flavor of cocoa without added slavery overpowers it. You could mix a single cocoa bean into a bowl of sugar, but if you forgot to add slavery, it would suddenly taste worse than rotten mouse guts."

"I know it isn't uncommon for people to eat plain cocoa beans," said Tide. "They say it has health benefits. They wouldn't do it if it tasted like that."

"Slavery can be added at anytime! The companies you can buy those from use traditional methods and add slavery during the growing process instead of at the end like I do. Those cocoa beans have not been fermented and roasted and sugared, but they certainly have slavery in them."

"Even if that was true," said Tide. "You could find a way to make chocolate without slavery."

"Chocolate without slavery? Chocolate without slavery? No," said Mr. Bucket. "That is like saying you could have the ocean without water! Children! There were people like you around before I had my monopoly! Little companies in the Netherlands that tried to go around making 'slavery-free chocolate'. They all went out of business because nobody wanted to buy it! It is not chocolate without the slavery! Chocolate is slavery!"

"If it is," said Keerthi. "I don't want it anymore. I don't care what you think. It's wrong. This is all wrong."

Mr. Bucket took a bite from his cane.

"You can have your morality, or you can have your chocolate. I cannot tell you which one to choose. I can only tell you which one tastes better."

- Chapter 17, The Down Rooms