Disclaimer: Hurray for editing process Prototype 1! Oh, remember that first scene of Chapter One? I believe Sonny Salt was looking around the outside of the factory or something? Well, that part was very confusing so I'll be cutting it out; can't be confusing you all, now can I? And I will try and not make Sonny so much as a Mary Sue anymore, really make her a fitted real person, y'know?

Chapter One

Alison's life was very exceptional, even though she was living with two culturally sophisticated people as her legal guardians. Although that was the least of troubles, as anybody would wish to have her parents; they let her do whatever she pleases because to them, nothing was too dangerous, too expensive, or downright wrong for her. Her life was pretty much very wondrous, very privileged, and yet it was all boiled down to a fruitless mush. Her little sister, Veruca, would tell you otherwise; she loves the privileged life and as we all know, nothing good comes from spoiling a child and that was what happened exactly to Veruca. She went sour, by the age of four, before that Alison used to call her Sweet Pea but now - all she does is want, want, want. When she doesn't get what she wants, she cries or threatens to run away when Mother tries to calm her down. The only time she ever squealed with delight was when her Father got her another pony. She was every snotty rich person's dream and what gave Super Nanny her show.

In spite of everything, Alison couldn't help but wonder if she happened to be placed in the wrong family, speculating about just what happened in the delivery room or what kind of backroom-deal went down. She knew that she was born to Angie Salt right in Buckinghamshire Starr Hospital (for the wealthies like us) and yet sometimes she wondered if her real parents should have been some cool bohemian artist-types with perhaps a loft in New York or maybe even San Francisco. Then again, she was probably just daydreaming to get her mind off of how pointless life was becoming.

It was all repetitive, over and over, as though she was trapped in this grayness, swallowing her alive and she couldn't do anything. It was this complete nothing-space, as though something should have been there but wasn't. She hated that, and she desperately wanted to claw herself out. She hated this grey area, this nothing-space, just living life because it was there. If you were in that space long enough you got comfortable, and then clawing your way out didn't mean anything, it wasn't important.

So, you might as well know that just because that my name is Alison doesn't mean she enjoyed being addressed to as so. Sometimes, just saying it loud made her want to retch; Alison really was a lovely name, but it just gave the wrong message. It meant "noble kind" making it a very WASP-like name and while it was nice to feel noble, the name began to quietly make her head spin, so she went by the nickname of Sonny. Obviously, her Mother was expecting a prudish, socially devout, waltzing ray of sunshine when she was looking through baby names. Instead she got her - surprise. No waltzing and certainly no sunshine.

Sonny was not usually this foreboding, but this was what happened in this grayness. You lose interest in things, this grayness devours your soul and gnaws at your ingenuity, it impedes her expression. She avoided now what before she enjoyed - confused, she tried to think it led her back to nowhere again, that nothing seems to help, it limited her conversations. If she wasn't so skilled in drawing, she could been a really good poet.

Drawing, though, was one of the few things that seem to have a little purpose; one of the things she didn't avoid. It was something that started out as a shape or a piece of fruit could turn into an image that peered into your soul. Another thing had to be my friend Tory. Despite the staggering odds against her, she managed to find the best friend a sad rich girl like herself can ever hope for: the one, the only, Tory Smeath, she was the one who nursed her back to social health.

Her head hurt, and she was all alone in her room. Mother was most likely by the minibar, chatting idly with the hired help, Father was still at that Salt Peanuts' meeting, and Veruca had lacrosse practice now - it wouldn't be long before she whacked one of the teachers in the head with her stick. All alone, scrunched up in the middle of her cushy bed, the air was still permeated with heavy gloom. The telly was blaring with some obnoxious jingle about spring and waiting for the flowers to bloom. Sonny slipped off the heels she'd worn last night - Tory had invited her to go one of her lower-class neighborhoods, West Egg, for some party - and wondered if her parents had noticed at all why their eldest daughter looked so exhausted and hollow-cheeked.

It was early out, and there was a lot of sunlight bouncing off the walls. What is wrong with me? That question just kept echoing in her ears, as she was trying with every strength she had not to cry, so instead she let quiet sobs shake my whole body; no tears, just ragged sobbing noises. It just makes no sense, I mean, my life is practically perfect, I'm talented, I have a great friend among other great, amazing things about my life - so why have I fallen into this abyss and going quietly insane? Nothing was going to matter anymore.

So she might as well go have some chocolate while she waited for the sobs to go away. That was another of the few things she didn't avoid: chocolate. It was the best medicine and it seemed as though she was in desperate withdrawal right now.

. . .

(Disclaimer: I know some of you are probably go "WTF?" right about now. Well, get this, my mom was going through all the documents on Sweetest Taboo I saved and she asked me, "Why is this Sonny chick acting all Emo? Is she depressed?" You could imagine how offended I was, I mean, Sonny was not Emo - or was she? Because I enjoy being right, I did some research and you won't believe this but all of those feelings Sonny is feeling, about her life and all the pressure she's been feeling are actually some symptoms of depression. Sonny Salt is depressed - yeah, I know, shocking. What could make someone so depressed, so grasping for any little bit of happiness, you ask? Well, I'll say this, little things, no matter how little, can add up. Even a greeting can change someone's day from horrible to OK, or one little negative comment can change someone's day from OK to horrible. Horrible to terrible, terrible to unbearable, unbearable to the point that you can't take it anymore and go over the edge. It is really sad. Anyway. Back to the story.)

. . .

She really thought that the young man behind the counter wanted to kiss her chocolate-tasting lips; when she first came into the candy store - Sweet Haven, right down Cherry Street in a town that was a bus ride away from Buckinghamshire - and told him her name, he gave her what Tory called an "I'd tap that," nod. Now personally she didn't enjoy thinking that every guy she met thought of me as a potential one-night stand but somehow it was flattering. I mean, if this man finds me attractive, then who else wouldn't?

She found Sweet Haven a couple of nights back, driving around with Tory in her Ford, occasionally pulling up into a parking lot to drink American beer. "The best kind," she said as she watched Sonny take hers in small sips. "Try not to hold your breath so much like drinking it, the smell only gets worse." Before you ask, they did not drive drunkenly home; after drinking - or this case, sipping - they had just sat there in the car, quietly ruffled by the fact that life was really going slow and that they couldn't have fun anymore.

Now the young man smiled at Sonny broadly, "Glad to see you returned to our services." There he goes again, acting all suggestive, blinking his goo-goo hues again. "You never fail to show up." Sonny didn't want to admit that the reason she only began to show up was because of Willy Wonka's factory that was just a few streets down; it was pleasant to look at every once in a blue moon, even if its Modern Gothic structure just made Sonny's stomach turn. She didn't want to find anything depressing to say about Wonka's factory, after all, recently it was starting to give her a sense of not hope but what was beginning to feel like joy.

She pointed towards a row of dice-shaped lollipops with patterns of white on each face behind the glass container of the counter; she liked to relish chocolate in the privacy of her home so the lollies would do. "That one, please?" She tried not to let some impatience seep through, leaning slightly on the glass counter.

The young man gave her the lollies without ease.

"Say, is it true that Willy Wonka's factory is really the biggest one in the world? Really?" She asked this for both the sake of conversation and because she just didn't feel like going home to sit quietly in her room, wracked with boredom and growingly meaninglessness.

"Good heavens, Miss Salt, whoever told you that wasn't deceiving you! It's about fifty times as big as any other!" He couldn't help but exaggerate to add to the effect, but it was true, that factory was that big, he demonstrated with his stringy arms, earning a smile from Sonny and her saying, "Aren't you the memoir weaver?" Goodness, who ever thought a factory could be that big; the place must have about seventy or more rooms.

"I'll tell you," The young man took a rag from his pocket and started to wipe down the spotless counter. "He's the most ingeniously, spectacular, remarkable man in the world - the universe. Don't you know no other?" He teased, leaning a little to close for comfort towards Sonny.

"Don't you?" Asked a little boy coming inside sporting a cap backwards, popping a bubble before he stood beside Sonny, on his tip toes as he had his elbows on the counter. "Ease off the lady, man!" He wrinkled his nose at how the guy was leaning at Sonny and with a flush he leaned back, scrubbing the counter with more force, probably from the embarrassment he felt.

Sonny held herself straight, having been taught to try and set a good example for the little ones around her.

"He's the most inordinate man ever." The little boy said suddenly. "That's what my mum says but she doesn't understand genius when she sees it." The young man had a small bar of fresh gum in his hand as the little boy counted and handed him two quarters before taking the gum. "My mum says she is observant, that she sees everything perfectly with her own two eyes. But she can't! She can't say that Willy Wonka is magic! That he could make a new flavor out of thin air and that's a fact, girlie!"

Sonny hoped the little boy would keep talking, it'd give her more of an excuse to stay, that way, should one of the hired help ask where she was, she could say that a friend was jabbering on and because she'd been taught that it was rude to interrupt long-winded people she stayed through the jabbering til the friend finished.

The young man nodded. "My grandpa says that Willy Wonka makes chocolate bars more creamer, more marvelous, more greatly sweeter, and more delectable than any other chocolate company! Lord wishes he knew what went on in that man's head!"

"My friend Blake says he sends all of his delicious chocolates to all ends of the entire world and each time you'd bite into it, it's like making a home-run with the crowd cheering!" Said the boy.

"It's like every time you feel the gooeyness sink into your teeth, a new baby is born," remarked the young man.

"He's made jellybeans taste like petunias!" Added the boy.

"He's made ice cream that never melts even on the hottest day of the summer!"

"He's made a blue bird's egg candy for you to suck on till it's smaller and then all that's left after it dissolves is a baby bird on your tongue!"

"He's made gum that never loses its flavor no matter how long you chew it!"

"With his gum, you could blow bubbles the size of your house that'll lift you up till someone has the decency to pop it and let you devour it so you can make another bubble hoping to lift you up to where the clouds are!"

"My Grandmum told me," the little boy said, "That a silly, silly prince of Indian asked him to make him a chocolate palace once," Sonny glazed by the counter in wonder as the boy went on. "This is before he didn't even give the Queen of England the time of the day, of course and -"

"Oh yeah," the young man interrupted, "Something or another Pondicherry, right? That man was the silliest of billies, he was!"

The little boy glared at the young man, but he took an external breath and went back to look at the enthralled Sonny.

"He was foolish, that prince. He had written a letter to Willy Wonka asking him to build him a ginormous palace! Not only that but one made of chocolate that was dark or light chocolate, with bricks that would be also chocolate with windows, walls, ceilings, furniture, bathrooms, rooms - all chocolate being held together by chocolate cement entirely! Even the pip-lines that connected to the many sinks and faucets in the palace would gush out hot chocolate.

"What made the foolish prince the foolish prince was, that he intended to not eat the palace but live in it, ignoring Mr. Wonka's words that said it wouldn't last long.

"He got what he deserved for not heeding the words because a day where the sun was boiling came and - the prince and his princess had to grab onto each other frantically while they tried to escape the palace that was literally melting at their feet!"

The boy laughed along with the young man. Sonny, however, was too engrossed in the image her mind had already pictured out for her. To make an entire small model volcano of chocolate was thing - something one of her little male cousins did to frighten Veruca back then - but to make a life-sized, fit for a prince palace of the sweet stuff she worshipped as chocolate! It was doing the impossible, certainly, but she couldn't help but wonder what happened when the prince realized he had no home now.

When she asked just that, the young man scoffed, "He wrote an urgent letter asking Mr. Wonka to build him another one. I'm not too sure if he just refused or simply believed the prince didn't deserve it, but Mr. Wonka was too busy dealing with his own problems."

The little boy smacked his gum along the roof of his mouth, "About the same time that Pondicherry's palace came to its end, Mr. Wonka was having a demise of his own! At that time, smugglers disguised as workers or even worse - once loyal worker promised with greed by rivaling companies - disguised themselves as spies to try and sell his recipes!"

"They didn't just try," said the young man, "They did. That's why he closed up his factory, he said it would be closed forever after he saw that rivals like Slugworth was making ice cream that never melted if you placed on the pavement hot enough to boil an egg."

The little boy swallowed spit loudly, "Ew, who would buy candy from a bloke named Slugworth?" Sonny wrinkled her nose slightly, the name did have the sort of ring that customers might be dissatisfied with; it sounded like a name a boy might give his pet slug or a slug-based disease or a greasy, wealthy git that spat on the poor.

"Exactly!" The young man agreed. "But there's something I don't really understand. He said he closed the factory forever, but you still see smoke coming out of the chimneys."

The boy popped a new piece of gum into his mouth. "My mum says that when adults say 'forever' they don't mean 'forever, forever' just for a very long time."

The young man rolled his eyes, "Not only that, but who are the workers? Most important, where are the workers?"

Sonny always saw her Father's workers leaving the factory at odd hours in the evening, mostly at the same time. "Maybe Mr. Wonka makes it so that they have quarters indoors?"

"Really? Does your father do that with his workers?" The boy asked with a tone dripping with sarcasm. The young man pinched his cheek:

"Don't be snarky," he scolded, "But Miss Salt does have a point. What would be the odds that that the factory is as big as it looks on the outside? He could have a million rooms for all he know, enough to maybe even fit all the people who live in the flats where I live."

The boy swatted the hand away, "But that isn't the case, obviously. You never see anyone come in or go out,"

"He could have hidden passages,"

"I find that likely but no," the little boy rolled his eyes, "Mr. Wonka never seemed he was in touch with the world despite making candy that the world treasures very much. Why would he make hidden passages just to venture out in a world where the people who called themselves loyal workers betrayed him?"

"They must be people working there," Sonny insisted. "Not ordinary people but people, at least."

"People that can disappear and reappear at work from thin air," the little boy mused.

"People who just add to Mr. Wonka's brilliant mind," remarked the young man with a mock sigh of a school-girl in love that made Sonny smile. "But people used to work there, that's true. Real people if the people who work there now are not ordinary, that is."

Sonny ripped open her lollipop, popping it into her mouth watching intently while the young man went on. "Once Ficklegruber started making gum that never lost its flavor and that Mr. Prognose started making sugar balloons that you could blow into incredible but plagiarizing sizes, Mr. Wonka told his thousands of workers to go home and never come back, because of the factory closing down."

"Wasn't your grandpa one of the workers?" The little boy asked him with a nod as a reply.

"But then one day, when people saw smoke from the chimneys, they expected Mr. Wonka to welcome back his workers. He didn't. Nobody got their job back."

"Does he do all the work himself? Hasn't he got any help?"

"He must," reported the little boy. "Blake said that his father once saw weird shadows in the windows. It's weird, 'cos Mr. Wonka never comes out. Just the candy that's already packed and addressed."

"But Blake did say one thing," the young man concluded. "Whoever these workers are, they are teeny tiny. Maybe people no taller than my knee,"

"Nobody knows," the little boy added.

Sonny sucked on the lollipop, able to hear the paper sound the other lollipops were making in the pocket of her coat. She was heading back from the store, after the work she made pushing and shoving, as that conversation was over a week ago since the news came out. As she crossed a lane, she could still see the sign stapled to a wooden lamp pole:

Dear people of the world,

I, Willy Wonka, have decided to allow five children to visit my factory this year. In addition, one of these children shall receive a special prize beyond anything you could ever imagine. Five Golden tickets have been hidden underneath the ordinary wrapping paper of five ordinary Wonka bars. The five candy bars may be anywhere, in any shop, in any street, in any town, in any country in the world. So watch out for the Golden Tickets! The five lucky finders of these Golden Tickets will be the ones who will be allowed to visit my factory. Good luck to you all, and happy hunting!

Willy Wonka

I have as much of chance of meeting Willy Wonka as I have a chance of getting Daddy to say I'm not fat. She sucked on the candy harder. Passing the factory with smoke curling out of its towers, she couldn't help but think.

Being able to meet Willy Wonka would have been an even better prize beyond anything she could ever dream of, and yet there was a less likeness of her finding that Golden ticket…

. . .

End Disclaimer: And there you have it, the end of Prototype 1 Chapter One.