Disclaimer: I am not one of the lucky copyright holders of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in its many forms. I don't own anything at all. But I do hope you find this just for fun, not for profit, perhaps elucidating, gentle parody, entertaining.

Happy Boxing Day!

dionne dance: How wonderful... I suspect the ice cream and the yacht share the ingredient that keeps the one from melting in the hot sun, and the other from melting in the hot river! Maybe. Thanks for all the other nuggets, as well!


Terence sat back on his stool, his fingers laced around his knees. "I find this tour exhausting, and I wasn't on it."

"Possibly because I found it exhausting, and I'm the one telling it. It exhausts me still," replied Willy. "But..." he continued, managing to muster up some gusto, "Onward! At this point, I was left with Mr. Teavee and his very angry, but intelligent, little boy. I wanted to increase the pace of the tour, show them more things quicker, and opted to use the Great Glass Elevator." Willy's voice was positively dripping with satisfaction. "It's by far the fastest way to get around the Factory."

"You mean the 'Great Glass..., ah, alternate transportation'?" cut in Terence.

Willy turned speculative, then contemplative eyes to Terence, the smile on his face not convincing. "You don't miss a trick, do you?"

"Not if I can help it," answered Terence, sincerely. "Though you'd be surprised by how many people don't bother to notice."

Willy laughed, accepting the compliment, while deciding keen awareness wasn't a bad trait in someone on the 'friend' side of the ledger. "Yup, you're right," he affirmed, "it is sometimes the 'alternate transportation', but it's always the fastest way to get around the factory."

"Elevators usually are, floor to floor."

Willy grinned smugly. Terence couldn't guess everything. "That's the beauty of it! It doesn't just go floor to floor, it goes from room to room, and it does it by going any old direction you can think of, not just up and down!" Willy beamed at Terence, but then looked pensive. "Turns out though, other people don't seem to appreciate the sometimes rapid, unexpected changes of direction it makes." Willy frowned as he thought this over. "I guess they get set going a certain way and can't roll with it when they need to make a change." He smiled brightly. "Preconceptions are a serious liability in the Great Glass Elevator! It helps if you keep your knees slightly bent, too. Ha! Yeah!"

Terence was happy to see that talking about his invention had restored Willy to his earlier, jovial mood. "Where did you go?" he asked.

"Here and there, no need to bore you with the details, but as we toured Exploding Candy…"

"Exploding Candy!"

"For your enemies," said Willy, very sweetly, "but that's off point. On point is, that after spending nearly all the tour reacting negatively to nearly everything he saw, and saying very little I wanted to hear, the little Teavee choose this moment to tell me he considers everything in the Factory 'pointless' and my work 'a waste of time'."

Terence grimaced as his eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. "I thought you said he was intelligent."

"He is, but that only takes you so far, and it's as far as my consideration of him went," said Willy, lost in thought.

"There it is again. Consideration for what?"

Still finding his way back from his thoughts, Willy answered, with glazed eyes, "Why, consideration for considering the considerate considerately, of course!"

Nonsense, thought Terence, barely able to resist rolling his eyes, but I guess there's no point trying to pull teeth here. Especially teeth as perfect as Willy's. Smiling at his little joke, he chuckled to himself, causing Willy to look at him quizzically. "So," he asked, before Willy could question him, "what did you say to him?"

"Nothing. Before I could say a word, he asked if he could pick a room. Isn't that wonderful?" Willy sat back with obvious delight. "I told him to go ahead. He did. He picked 'Television Chocolate'."

"Let me guess, televisions made of chocolate?"

"Of course not, silly," answered Willy, with a pout. "If I made televisions out of chocolate, the television would be gone before the program ended! After all, with the possible exception of Family Guy, nothing on television could be more enjoyable than eating the chocolate!"

"Good point," said Terence, wryly. "What was I thinking?"

"Yeah, what?" agreed Willy, amicably. "Anyway, to explain, it's where I'm testing sending a bar of chocolate into the TV so you can take it out of the TV and eat it. Pretty neat marketing, don't cha think? "

Terence sighed inwardly, finding himself back in the minefield. He was pretty sure what Willy had just described couldn't be done, but hesitated to say so. Willy had never been one to let reality interfere with his ideas, so if there was a chance, however minuscule, that it could be done, Willy Wonka would be the one to do it. Not to believe him would be an insult. Casting about for a suitable reply, he settled on, "Have you perfected that?"

Willy smiled. Terence could easily have been a diplomat, he thought. Come to think of it, what has Terence been doing all these years? Obviously not retail.

"Actually, no," Willy replied, setting his musings aside. "I have at least two problems with it. For one thing, I can't control the size of the result. The molecules pack during transfer. Something really big turns into something really small during the process. Unless I can solve that puzzle, I can't make it practical."

"What's the other problem?"

"Sometimes, you only get half of what you originally send."

"Oh," murmured Terence, happy again not to use his imagination, "that could be bad."

"You've got that right," said Willy, nodding. "This little experiment has shown me some pretty strange-looking things."

"But otherwise it works?"

"Of course it works, and I gave the Teavees a demonstration. Once I had transferred the chocolate from the other end of the room into the TV, I asked the little Teavee to fetch it out. But, it so happens, he was skeptical, and squeamish, and wouldn't take it. So I did."

"Right out of the television? That's amazing! They must have been so impressed!"

"Oh, yeah, they sure were! The little Teavee was so impressed, he described me as an 'idiot'." Willy rolled his eyes.

Terence followed suit, while he chuckled in disbelief. "An idiot for inventing a teleportation device?"

"No, an idiot for not trying it out myself."

"But wouldn't it shrink you?"

"You betcha, by golly, wow, it sure would!" Willy nodded emphatically. "But the little Teavee assured me he is not an idiot."

Terence waited for Willy to continue, but he didn't. Instead, he was still. Terence didn't need further help.

The quiet stretched out as Terence thought over the implications of what Willy had just said. Horrified with his conclusion, he leaned toward Willy and gasped, "You don't mean he used the machine on himself, do you?"

"I do and he did," sighed Willy, nodding gravely. "Fortunately, he was completely unharmed."

"You mean it didn't shrink him?"

Willy looked cross. "Of course it shrunk him! That's what it does! But otherwise he was completely unharmed, and I'm used to small people." There was a pause. "Although, I have to admit," he said, tapping an index finger against his cheek, "he was quite small, even by my standards. Still," he shrugged his shoulders, "I didn't see any reason not to leave him just the way he was."

"But the account I read in the paper said when Mike left the factory he was over ten feet tall!"

"And really skinny, yeah, but you know how the media exaggerates. He didn't look over seven feet to me."

"I'm still missing a piece here, small to tall?"

"The piece you're missing is Mr. Teavee insisting that I restore his…little boy," Willy smiled to himself, enjoying the irony, "to his original size, RIGHT AWAY. Really, I'd have maybe modified the Fizzy Lifting formula to increase the spaces between the boy's molecules again, but that would have taken time. No time for time for Mr. Teavee, though," said Willy, holding up an index finger, shaking it slightly, and tilting his head. "He was frantic; thought his little boy would get squished. So, I went with Plan B. I had him stretched back out with the Taffy-Puller."

Terence considered this bit of information and said, "That activity is one adventure you won't see on my 'bucket list'."

Willy lowered his hand. "'Bucket list'?" questioned Willy. "What's that?"

"Things you want to do before you die."

"Oh," said Willy, in a very small voice.

"I still don't understand how Mike came out so tall," pursued Terence.

"I had the Oompa-Loompas do the stretching. I'm afraid they rather over did it, much to my surprise. Very uncharacteristically careless of them, don't cha know. " Willy made a face, shifting his eyes from side to side.

"Why would they do that?"

"Probably because, in the Chocolate Room, he called them 'little freaks' and told them to 'back off'. I'd forgotten about that. The Oompa-Loompas are rather mischievous. Apparently, they can hold grudges as well." Willy smiled brightly. "Who knew?" he asked.

Terence said nothing, knowing a rhetorical question when he heard one.

Willy smiled for a minute longer, but then looked thoughtful. "I guess you just never know when the 'little freaks' you insult one minute will be the folks stretching you out the next! Ha!" Lapsing into silence, he pivoted on the stool to face the counter squarely. "'Kay then, tour's over," he said, dreamily. "Bye for now."

Terence noted Willy's movement and odd comment. Bye? For now? he thought. "Willy?" he asked.

There was no answer.

Terence watched as Willy started to pick up the great-coat he had draped across the counter earlier, and then watched with increasing surprise as Willy put the coat back down on the counter, following it with his upper body, burying himself in its folds. In just a few moments, his gentle, rhythmic breathing was the only sound or movement.

Yeah, okay, that tour wore me out, too, Terence thought, smiling gently. Rather than disturb Willy, Terence took this opportunity to go over in his mind the events he'd been listening to. Settling more comfortably on his own stool, his hands still clasped around his knees, he thought it over. Five tickets, but one ticket not found. Oops, my bad. So, four tickets, four kids. A tour of the Factory.

It struck Terence that it hadn't really been much of a tour - more like an elaborate calculation. That Factory is a big place. Willy said it had hundreds of rooms, but I've only really heard about four of them. Well, okay, and a river. A chocolate river! A chocolate river in a room where everything is eatable! And an elevator that goes in any, and every, direction!

Terence scowled to himself. His mind was wandering, with so much amazing information to digest. Alright, I'm getting off track here, he thought, but if the descriptions are any indication, those are four very impressive rooms. Terence glanced over at Willy. And there, he thought, is the genius who created them, asleep on the counter of my little shop! You just never know, do you? This is not how Terence had expected the day to end, when he had started out this morning. Smiling to himself, he shook his head softly in wonder.

Terence brought his mind back to the problem. First room, four kids, second room, three kids, third room, two kids. And then the Teavees are the only ones left. But they get to see a lot more of the factory, from the Great Glass Elevator. The tour's still on. And then Mike Teavee goes a couple of insufferable insults too far. And gets to pick a room. Gets to pick his fate, actually, Terence mused. The fourth room, one kid, and by the end of that room, every kid has made some serious mistake, and is off the tour. Out of the picture. Off the radar. Gone. Which brings us to now. Now the tour is over, no kids are left and Willy is unhappy. He's so unhappy, he's here in my shop, retrieving the last Golden Ticket. No more Golden Tickets, no more kids, no more… Terence's face lit up with sudden comprehension.

Willy took this moment to stir, settling more comfortably on the coat. "Are you asleep?" asked Terence quietly.

"Yes," came the muffled response from the otherwise unmoving figure. "I'm talking in my sleep."

Terence grinned. "I've figured it out. They thought it was a tour, but it was an audition. None of them seemed right, but a couple seemed promising, so you gave it a chance. Now, you don't like the plan."

With his head and torso still buried in the soft folds of the coat, Willy raised an arm, his hand forming an imaginary purple pistol, pointed at the ceiling. Making a clicking sound with his tongue, he pantomimed firing off a round. "Bull's eye!" came the still muffled response. "I knew you'd get it."

With that, Willy sat up, his face wreathed in a smile.


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