Bucket- Killing Michael

"That is it," said Michael. "The sad story. I am sorry, Mahuika. I am sorry, Marama. I will try and fix it, but I can make no promises."

Marama disappeared. ...

Marama had disappeared. Michael was confused.

He remembered that she was a professional astronomer hunter. She had likely hidden herself, and was going to kill him and take revenge for what he had done to Mahuika.

"Marama," he said. "Please let me fix her, before you do what you may do."

Mahuika disappeared. Michael was more confused.

Everything in Michael's house disappeared. A man replaced them. He had changed, but Michael still recognized him.

"Mike," said the man. "I cannot believe it! Marama has been paused for twenty minutes, and you did not notice!"

"Charlie," said Michael.

"You did not take Mr. Wonka's advice. You would have been an excellent basketball player! Now you will only be a mediocre corpse."

"I had my suspicions," he said. "It was you who made her vape."

Charlie laughed. "Mike, you don't know anything. I didn't do anything to Mahuika."

"I am not Mike."

"You are right!" exclaimed Charlie. "You are a sad loser who loses losingly. Mr. Wonka and I laughed together at your letter. We never thought someone else would ever discover abstraction, let alone translation and execution! Not you! Never you, Mike."

"He broke you," said Michael.

"We have translated the messaging of millions of minds, Mike. We have hundreds with only one fact! Thousands with less than ten. Mr. Wonka and I tried your way, years ago. He died because of it. You cannot offer a one fact character to the pickle directly! It is a fickle pickle! You must use a formula. The street pickle will reject it without the formula."

"Formula?"

"See? You don't even know about formulas. You call it a street pickle! You don't even know the name. You can only watch, Mike! So watch and learn!"

Michael's face burst into balls of cancer, and he fell forward and hit the floor. He was shattered like a broken vase.

"Now I will have to delete the assassin's memories! We still have years until the second contest, corpse! Years! The formula must be recreated! The one-dimensionality cannot be presented without a formula. Mr. Wonka knew that! If only the five of us had been as simple as he needed us to be, back then..."

He poked at the head with his cane. Michael was still alive, somehow.

"Please," he said. "When you learn how to translate everything, help people. The world has too much pain. It could have none."

Charlie's laugh sounded the way good chocolate tasted when it was tired of talking to a deformed man's dying head.

"Mike! I do not care about this world, or the people in it, who deserve misery if it is happening to them. I want what Mr. Wonka wanted. To leave. I only want to leave."

Charlie vanished. Michael's head stopped worrying about him.

- Chapter 20, Nothingface, Violence, Track 11