We continue to move through the storage area. Wonka does turns that clearly indicate that he wants to get as close to the edge as possible, and eventually, we hit a wall. Of course. Then, we go along the wall, and I can't think of anything good about walls, so that's that.
Finally, we're met with a good ol' friend. Turns out, the wall we were walking along has a hole in it, and in the hole is none other than the Great Glass Elevator, which I have never stepped into because - you guessed it - I am Violet, and I was taken out of the tour before it reached this point. The Elevator has little space, and we're all sort of crowded, but that's okay, since Wonka tells us that it's the best way to travel around his factory.
We all thus crowd in, and he presses a button which says:
The Inventing Room.
Ah, my old nemesis, we meet again.
The Elevator shakes us left and right, and we keep falling onto each other. There is nothing to hold on to, so we have to endure, at least for a little while. Then, the Elevator finally stops at its destination and we all step out. The familiar tubes and machines greet me again, and I sigh.
"So, once upon a time I was thinking." Wonka begins talking, and I immediately sigh. "What is it about a human that makes them human? I mean, there is something I can feel about myself that is clearly not part of who I am. It's as if my senses are channeled to something that is separate from this world.
So, naturally, I began experimenting." Wonka continues, as we all are clearly not listening-
Well, we clearly are listening, but with an entirely different purpose - to find anything that can be made into a joke and, well, make it into a joke. Just listen to what is going to happen now.
"I had some success in replicating real life patterns with some of my inventions. Chocolate birds chirp as if they were real birds, and Square Candies that Look Round look cute, but-"
"Square Candies that Look Round?" Veruca chimes in.
"Yes." Wonka responds, as if it was self-explanatory.
"How can something be square while not looking square?" Veruca is clearly not satisfied with a simple yes.
"I don't know, ask Marrissa." I respond to the best of my abilities.
"Well, I wold supposay that they look around... and glance at you..." The guy of doom clearly knows that he responds to "Marrissa", and has something to add to the joke. What a surprise for me.
"See? That's one person who gets it!" Wonka suddenly exclaims, and we all get to think.
While we are thinking back to the moment it was disclosed to all of us that the guy of doom worked for the factory, though, I decide to interrupt the awkward silence. "You know, that doesn't answer how a candy can look both round and cute..." I am immediately caught inside the flaw in my own logic, and trail off.
Wonka, though, ignores me and continues as if nothing happened. "So, as I was saying, both chocolate birds and Square Candies that Look Round were great experiments, but they lacked the human essence, and with that in mind, I went to what did have the human essence - that is, humans themselves." You are paying attention, right?
"That lead to a formula for a candy which could extract what is human inside of a human and store it in a simple candy. It wouldn't integrate with the candy itself, meaning that the candy wouldn't gain a personality, but the human would lose it.
Unfortunately, for a human, to lose consciousness and all memories is essentially to die, so I revised my formula to include two candies instead. Then, each candy would store the information of the person who ate it, then swap it with the other candy and put it back. Simple as that, and nobody gets to die.
Knowing that, I devised a prototype for the candies. Unfortunately, before I got to test it on the Oompa-Loompas, I lost one of the pieces to my shipping machines. It was a busy time in the Factory, after all. It was the Golden Ticket frenzy, and the Oompa-Loompas were working twice as hard as they usually do, and one of them must have made a mistake."
"Would have been really interesting if you showed off the candy during the tour." I say.
"Yeah, it would. But looks like someone ate the first candy before I could plan for it." Wonka replies.
"Did not." I answer, knowing my own history.
"So that was the first, let's call it "body swap candy" lost." Wonka continues, ignoring me. "But then I thought - hey, if the second candy is never eaten, the swap should never happen, right? So I kept it in a safe place for a long time. But then, come 2013, I lost the second body swap candy as well. This time, though, Charlie was around, and he had insisted that there should be security cameras in my factory. So, thanks to him, we got to track the candy and discovered that it was shipped to Lithuania."
At this part, lasting for less than a second, I would expect Mike's father to say "There's no such place", like he did with Loompaland. Unfortunately for me, though, Mike's father is not on this tour, and it's time for me to shine.
"Lithuania! That's where I'm from!" I exclaim without second thinking, and then have that second thinking, and then correct myself: "I mean, that's where the fake Violet is from. Well, actually, that's where the fake Violet used to be from, before... he? She? Got to live with my mother. No, wait, that would still make her - well, him, from Lithuania..." And before I know it, I'm lost in my own thoughts with no way of recovering.
"The fake Violet?" Veruca repeats what I said.
"Oh man, that was my most liked... I mean... fever-ate part of Spectators of the Host!" The guy of doom suddenly knows where my mannerisms come from, but I already know that he assumes I'm "Business Man", so that's no news for me.
Wonka, though, continues his little tirade as if there was absolutely nothing fishy going on, and I applaud his efforts. "And when I saw the news of that region about some Lithuanian kid pretending to be Violet Beauregarde, I knew how badly I messed up."
"You still haven't seen Violet Beauregarde pretending to be some Lithuanian kid, so you can't prove anything." I answer, trying my best to salvage my routine.
"Did too." Wonka answers.
"Did not." I answer just as concisely as he did.
"In fact, it was right on this second tour. You did say that Lithuania is where you are from. Ergo, you are some Lithuanian kid in Violet Beauregarde's body. And you," Wonka says while turning to the fake Violet, "are Violet Beauregarde in some Lithuanian kid's body."
"See? That's what I've wanted to prove all this time!" The fake Violet acts up.
Mike, however, has had enough of us discussing as he notices something amiss. "Wait, so am I supposed to believe that Violet ate the candy during the Golden Ticket frenzy, while the Lithu... the kid ate it in 2013, and they still got to swap bodies?"
"Excellently put, Mike." Wonka answers.
"So, one of them experienced the period from 2005 to 2013 twice, and the other skipped it?" Mike continues his conclusion.
"Perfectly described. I was in such shock to discover that I had skipped through eight and a half years." The fake Violet adds to the conversation, and I know that if I say anything that is against this conclusion, I would be called a liar, so I stay quiet.
"So what you are telling me is that you invented time travel, and your first thought is "Oh my god, how can I turn that into candy?"." Mike concludes.
"Well, you know Wonka." I answer, according to my own routine which is still going on, despite being brutally disproven. "He looks at the laws of physics and is like, "Um, I know you're just a piece of hypothetical paper, but-""
"Could you stop mumbling, please?" Wonka and I simultaneously say, and in that moment, I know I've hit the jackpot.
"See? Exactly!" I say.
"So, that's it. Some Lithuanian kid and Violet Beauregarde have swapped bodies, and now that they're both right here with us in the Inventing Room, I can reverse it. Since then, I've perfected the prototype, so that nothing out of hand would happen, and kept it safe, with the security cameras ready to react when it's actually stolen, rather than when it's already being shipped to Loompaland or something." Wonka walks over to a glass cage, where two candies are stored. I vaguely remember eating something like this, but you know my memory can't be trusted anymore.
He unlocks the cage, and loud sirens begin emitting a sound. That sound, however, immediately stops once Wonka clicks on something on his cane, and the two so-called "body swap candies" can be shown to us without any interruptions. There is also something on top of the glass cage, which looks like a spray with some sort of candy water, which Wonka picks up.
"So, there you go! You both now have to eat one candy each, then I will spray on you to put you to sleep, and when you wake up, you will be back in your own bodies." Wonka explains to us.
"Alright! I've missed my own body so much, you can't believe it." The fake Violet says, then swipes one of the candies and eats it without even chewing it. (That's an out of character moment if you ask me. If I had to guess, Violet is all about chewing.)
"Ugh." I groan. "None of you believe me anyway, so I might as well shut up and accept my fate." I take the other candy, then make sure to chew it exactly once before swallowing it.
Then, Wonka sprays us both, and I immediately feel dizzy and collapse on the Inventing Room floor. "Sweet dreams, Violet and... not Violet." Wonka says.
"Business Man." The guy of doom corrects Wonka, and that is the last thing I hear before I fall asleep.