Metropolitan Public Library
The London Annex
It was a chilly morning in late November, damp and raw, with a threat of snow in the air. Fortunately for Jenkins, he was snugly ensconced in the toasty Library, preparing to begin a new day's work. Humming quietly to himself—a popular Dixieland jazz tune that he heard last night on the wireless—he approached his desk. He stopped suddenly as his eyes fell on a strange box sitting on the blotter.
It was approximately seven by nine inches and made of cardboard. The lid of the box bore three black and white photographs depicting some sort of factory work, apparently involving peanuts. A printed inscription below the pictures proclaimed:
"Mars Confections contains only selected whole nuts".
Perplexed, he read further:
"Above are two scenes in the nut department of Mars Incorporated. At left is a view of one of the roasters where the nuts for immediate use are roasted fresh each day. The center view shows the inspection of all nuts before they go into the candies, so that only perfect whole ones are used…like those shown in the circle."
The words "confections" and "candies" caught his eye and piqued his curiosity. The sides of the short box were colored bright orange, and had a single word boldly stamped in black: "SNICKERS".
There was a small card propped against the box with his name on the envelope. Jenkins immediately recognized Charlene's tight, neat, accountant's hand.
"Dear Jenkins: I brought these back for you from New York City; they are all the rage in America. Thought you might enjoy them as well. They're named after the manufacturer's dead race horse. Happy Birthday! Best Wishes Always—Charlene"
Birthday? Frowning, Jenkins reached across for his desk calendar, which proclaimed today's date as being November 25, 1930. It was indeed his birthday today.
He had stopped celebrating it centuries ago. Birthdays had once been an occasion for happy celebration when he was a young man, he and his equally high-spirited comrades engaging in boisterous feasting and drinking, singing bawdy songs and flirting with pretty girls into the wee hours of the morning. After Camelot, though, it seemed frivolous and self-indulgent to continue to celebrate something as trivial as a birthday. Charlene was the only other person in the world who even remembered the date, though most years she respected his wish to let it go unobserved. Occasionally, though, she would send him a small gift to mark the day. The Caretaker smiled at her kindness.
How old was he now, exactly? He did some quick calculating and came up the number: He was 1,458 years old today. He shook his head in wonderment, tinged with a little sadness, at the figure.
With a sharp sigh he shook off the threatening melancholy and returned his attention to the cardboard box and the treats inside. Charlene knew he had a great fondness for sweets, and the Americans could be exceptionally inventive with sugar and chocolate, even if the name was a little off-putting. Only an American would name a food product after a dead horse.
Jenkins gingerly lifted the lid from the box. He was immediately rewarded with the heady smell of milk chocolate, and his mouth began to water in anticipation. Taking one of the twenty-four small paper-wrapped bars from the box he held it up to his nose and inhaled deeply with closed eyes—Divine!
The candy obviously contained peanuts, according to the box; Jenkins loved peanuts. He eagerly tore off the wrapping and bit into the bar.
There was a delightful, slightly crunchy burst of sweet and nutty on his tongue. The blended flavors of chocolate, peanut, caramel and something unidentifiable, like rich, whipped cream, bloomed richly in his mouth. He examined the bar in an effort to identify the creamy sweetness, and saw a layer of something on the bottom of the bar—what was that?
He popped the rest of the bar into his mouth as he grabbed the box and hurried off to his laboratory. He unwrapped one of the bars and placed it on a tray, then automatically slipped on his lab coat. Unwrapping a third bar, he munched on it as he pulled out a small case of dissection tools, selected a scalpel. He took another big bite and then set to work discovering the confection's secrets.
Over the next few hours Jenkins alternated between munching on Snickers bars and completely deconstructing the 'subject' bar of candy. In addition to a simple physical dissection, he also performed several chemical analyses. He produced several dozen pages of detailed, handwritten notes and illustrations for future reference. The puzzling element that he hadn't been able to identify by taste turned out to be a layer of nougat—peanut butter-flavored nougat. Those clever Yanks! The whole thing was a brilliant concoction of nougat, caramel, peanuts and chocolate, one ingredient balanced against the other to perfection.
Almost too perfect. Suspicions now raised, the Caretaker subjected the confection to several intricate magical tests. Much to his surprise, there was no sign at all of magic having been used. He could only shake his head at the ingenuity of the Americans; how did they manage to come up with so many different sublime kinds of tasty sweets? Despite the test results, he still wasn't completely convinced that magic wasn't involved somehow.
The clock struck the noon hour. Startled, Jenkins checked his watch—it truly was noon! He had spent the entire morning studying the Snickers bar. Chiding himself for getting so carried away with something so silly, he hurried over to collect the box of candy and head back to the workroom. He had a tremendous amount of work to do today, and now he was woefully behind. When he reached the box, he stopped and stared in disbelief, his hand covering his mouth. There were only two bars left, the nearly empty box gaping at him accusingly. He had eaten twenty-one of the twenty-four bars the box contained. He had even greedily gobbled up the remnants of the one he studied.
Irritated with himself and his lack of discipline, he took the two bars to his workroom desk and dropped them into a drawer. Out of sight, out of mind. Jenkins then settled in to get some real work done. He pulled out a fat Mayan codex describing the visit of interstellar aliens to the pre-Columbian Yucatan Peninsula, and began to study it carefully, convinced that the codex was a fake. Everyone knew that there was no such thing as interstellar visitors, after all.
But he couldn't concentrate. The candies seemed to call him as seductively as any wanton pair of sirens. The harder he tried to ignore their lure, the greater it became. He moved to the other side of the room, but to no avail. He moved to the second floor, but it did no good. He went to the kitchen and made tea, hoping it would distract him from the chocolate, but to no avail. He turned on the wireless, hoping some music would drown out the accursed Snickers twins, but he couldn't drown out the haunting memory of chocolate, peanuts, caramel and nougat.
He made a bargain with himself: After three hours of work, he would reward himself with one of the tempting chocolates. He checked his watch; to his horror he saw that it was only twenty minutes after twelve.
"Dammit, Charlene!" he muttered under his breath with exasperation as he stalked to his desk. "What new cacao-based demon have you loosed upon me, woman?"
He jerked the drawer open and clawed frantically for the bars until he had in hand. He ripped the paper off of one and took a big bite. He sank onto his chair in relief, sighing deeply with content as he slowly chewed, savoring the sweet, sticky, chocolaty delicacy. He was suddenly reminded of the opium smokers that could be found in Chinatown "kicking the gong", as they called it.
He furrowed his brow and dismissed the analogy. His liking for sweets wasn't nearly the same thing as smoking opium. After all, chocolate wasn't a drug, people didn't become addicted to it at all. He could give it up any time he wanted to, it was simply a matter of mind over matter, of willpower.
He glanced over at the last Snickers bar. It sat on his desk blotter, mocking Jenkins and his delusion of temperance.
"Well, it IS my birthday," he reasoned to himself, his hand creeping slowly towards the sweet treat. "And it HAS been years since I last celebrated it. One IS permitted to indulge a little..."