The sky, which Marama despised, was dark by the time they landed on a desolate beach. The man told the sisters to leave the boat and pointed to a group of subtropical groves growing along the shore.
"Push through those leaves, and you will find a dirt path. His home is a short walk from there. You can't miss it."
"Aren't you coming?" asked Marama.
"I was told to leave as soon as I brought her," he said. "I assume he wants to see her in private. But do give him this."
The man handed Marama his umbrella.
"What is it?"
"An ordinary silk umbrella," said the man. "A gift. I promised him he could have it, eventually. Today feels like a good day to give it up."
Marama cautiously took the umbrella, and watched the man push off the shores alone.
"Safe travels," he said. Marama watched until the outline of his shadow joined the darkness of the black waves.
"I want to know why I vape," said Mahuika.
Marama nodded. She told her sister to vape and follow her, and they walked through the groves, finding the trail the man had referenced.
It didn't take them long to come across an old car blocking their way. It was an old Cadillac without its front window.
Marama walked around the side of it, unsure if it was the home of the person who had invited Mahuika. As she did, she saw a house ahead of her.
As a professional astronomer hunter, Marama had traveled to almost every country in the world, and she had been inside many homes: igloos in the Canadian Arctic, yurts in Turkey, Urkelminiums in Urkeldelphia. The wooden house in front of her was still like nothing she had ever seen.
It was not remarkably tall, about three small stories high, but it was thin! On the side facing the path, it was as thin for a house as the skywatchers she had starved to death were for people. If she and Mahuika stood next to each other and held hands, if they stretched their free arms out they would have each been able to touch one side of the outer wall.
It didn't have windows, and the only entrance started at the thin side facing them. Marama hesitated at the door. Mahuika vaped and knocked instead.
"I want to know why I vape," she said.
There was no answer, spoken or unspoken.
She knocked again. "I want to know why I vape."
Marama gave it a try herself, knocking harder. "She wants to know why she vapes!"
Mahuika looked at her sister. "I want to know why I vape," she said.
Marama sighed and kicked the door down.
The man with the umbrella had not lied. Whoever invited them was a collector of items. There were more items packed inside the linear home than there were astronomers who had died at Marama's hands. Not one nook and cranny was free to stand on. The pile brushed against the ceiling in some places and Marama had to push it all out of her way in order to make any progress. Mahuika tailed her closely, vaping.
There was a silver coat-rack, home to several silk umbrellas like the one the man had given her.
Six paintings hung on the wall, four of women. The smallest painting of the four, a woman brushing her hair, had been drawn on a canvas material Marama struggled to identify. It was strangely wrinkled.
Hundreds of small glass jars stood on tall shelves. They were all empty.
A large empty cage with animal skeletons and taxidermies inside of it, all posed. There was a small newt, a parrot, dozens of snakes and tortoises and pheasants, two Muggle-Wump monkeys, and an old fox.
"Vape and be careful, Mahuika."
On top of a broken commode, there was a piece of chalk, an old shiny piece of paper with faded text, many expired chocolate bars, a deck of playing cards, and a fishbowl with a small green crystal inside of it. It was glowing.
There were books.
A tall revolving bookshelf, the type found in libraries, was near the back of the room. There was no pattern or organization to the titles Marama saw, cheap paperbacks sitting between thick medical textbooks and historical biographies. She tried to browse and see if any of the available literature could assist her in learning more about the person who had sent for her sister.
One book was blue and very slim.
A REPORT ON AN INTERVIEW WITH IMHRAT KHAN, THE MAN WHO COULD SEE WITHOUT HIS EYES
The one next to it appeared to be missing many pages.
THE RED PONY
She went down the same column, glancing longer at the titles interesting enough to warrant it.
ON THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF ROYAL JELLY
LITTLE MATADOR
COLLECTED WORKS OF CHAIM SOUTINE
A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO TRUNCA
THE UNSURPRISINGLY VIOLENT HISTORY OF OLYMPIC SHOT PUT
101 RECIPES FOR COOKING LAMB
FINGERSMITHING
THE MINPINS, TORTOISE-RELATED SEXUAL ESCAPADES, AND OTHER TOPICS NOBODY CARES ENOUGH ABOUT TO WANT TO SEE REFERENCED
HOW TO COLLECT DREAMS
AN ADVAN
SALT, NOT SWEET: WHY I POLITELY TURNED WILLY WONKA DOWN ON HIS OFFER TO INHERIT HIS BILLION DOLLAR COMPANY, EVEN AFTER HE BEGGED ME
TO HUNT A WITCH
The last book caught her eye, and she pulled it off the shelf and flipped several pages in.
I was recently speaking to a colleague of mine, who compared the average witch to an experienced hunter prowling about in the woods for sport. I have heard this analogy before, and I dislike it. It grants the witch too much humanity.
True hunters abide by rules. The young bison, the injured bison, the sick bison, are not targets for the hunter. There must be a challenge, an enemy who can provide a struggle. More hunters than not operate with ethics in mind, and those who fail to often face severe social and legal consequence.
This does not describe the witch.
Like a jungle cat, they seek out the weakest, youngest, most oblivious. I have encountered them in daycares, nurseries, and pediatric cancer wards. They enjoy creativity in how they cause suffering but they do not do it for sport. The burden of dishonor means as much to a witch as the dirt we scrape off our shoes after squashing an ant.
The benefit of this is that it only takes a small amount of prevention to protect any individual child. Witches rarely fixate on individuals, and they will move on quickly after seeing that any specific target can offer up even meager resistance.
Knowledge alone can be enough. If you are a parent, know the telltale signs of a witch and more importantly teach them to your children. Do not keep them ignorant out of a desire to protect their innocence. Let them be afraid. Fear will save them.
Witches are always women. They should not be confused with ghouls, who are always men.
Witches do not have fingernails. They have claws. All witches will have their hands covered up, traditionally with gloves.
Witches are bald. They wear wigs at all times, which they are prone to scratch at.
Witches have large nostrils and an acute sense of smell. They find the stench of children repulsive.
Witches have strange eyes. Their pupils change colors, and staring into them will send chills down the spine of any normal person.
Witches have no toes. They wear pointed shoes, but it is uncomfortable for them, and they can sometimes be seen limping.
Witches have blue spit.
In recent years, witches have begun keeping pigeons as servants, which have been magically bred. They have red feathers and feast exclusively on mice and sparrows, although they do not need to eat to survive.
Marama closed the book and placed it back on the shelf.
At last Marama and Mahuika reached the end, discovering a tall locker that went all the way to the roof. Marama opened it.
The broom inside the locker slowly stepped out and brushed long white hair out of its eyes. It was the longest broom she had ever seen, and had arms and legs, and it wasn't a broom but a man. He was wearing a blanket that had been cut up and stitched back together as a crude robe. Arms fell from holes on its sides and pooled together on the floor like bunches of long coiled rope.
His body was flat. His face was stretched down and his eyes were misshapen.
He moved slowly and deliberately, and Marama heard his body creak. The arm coils unraveled and reached behind them, pulling a small bottle out of a box. He took out a handful of pills and moved them to his mouth, swallowing them without water. His neck was flat enough for Marama to see the pills sticking out of his skin as they slowly traveled down.
"Hello," he said. His voice sounded the way good chocolate suffered. He had a strong American accent.
"I vape," said Mahuika.
"You want to know why you vape," said the man. He stepped back into the locker and pushed his back against the wall.
"I want to know why I vape," said Mahuika.
"Who are you," said Marama. Her question marks had vanished after seeing the man's appearance. She spoke quietly.
"A loser."
Marama realized who he was. Any respectable astronomer-assassinator had to know her history. "You're... from that silly chocolate contest, back all that time ago. The boy who was stretched. You're Mike Teavee."
"No," said the man. "I am not Mike Teavee. Mike Teavee died when he was a child. For the crime of curiosity."
"He didn't," said Maruma. "He left the factory, people saw him. He was interviewed."
"No," he said. "I did. I was. His death was my birth. I am not the original. Teleportation, he dubbed it. Wonkavision. I call myself Michael, but it is wrong of me."
"I remember the video of you walking out of the factory," she said. "You weren't… you were bad, but it wasn't like this."
"My body did not know it had grown," said Michael. "It kept trying to grow as if I was what he was before the stretching. I thought it was fun, at the time. Being tall, getting taller by the day. But the aches started, and my body began to fail… by sixteen I could no longer bend my knees. I have not sat once in all that time. It would kill me. My body has not left this locker in years."
He reached again for his pills. Marama realized he was hurting himself by talking.
"I want to know why I vape," said Mahuika, epexegetically.
"Mahuika," said Marama. "Vape and give him time to rest."
"No," said Michael. "I am going to tell you why Mahuika vapes."
"You are going to tell her why she vapes?"
"You are going to tell me why I vape?"
"Yes," said Michael. "I am going to tell you why you vape. The answer is a lengthy one. What I say will sound strange, because being separated from the world makes a person forget how to properly converse. But it is all true. Please do not interrupt me until the end no matter how much you wish to. Are you ready?"
Mahuika vaped. Michael spoke.
"When Mike was a tiny baby, he started watching television. He loved it. It is special and nothing can replace it, in the same way nothing can replace music or literature or unfinished paintings of sexually unawakened farmers holding pitchforks. He thought he could watch television forever. For all his childhood Mike liked television because it was a place where he could see action. A building exploding! A gun shooting! A rocket firing! The television watched by little children with toy guns is characterized by actions."
Mahuika vaped.
"He still liked actions when he won the Golden Ticket. He went to the factory and Mr. Wonka murdered him and made me, and I liked actions because I was exactly like him. I did not understand that I was not him, and that he was dead, until I was much older. I left the factory and soon began to suffer from the reverberations of my condition. The next decade of my life was miserable. I could not leave my home, I was in pain. I hated myself. During that time, I discovered that I didn't care about actions anymore. Not in the same way. I wanted characters."
Mahuika vaped.
"Characters, characters. There are people who make the actions happen. It happened that I did not care if a building exploded if there was no one to care about. Who blew up the building, and why did they do it? Was there anyone inside the building that I worried about? I had to know! Before, characters were machines that caused actions, but they became something more to me. They had to be interesting. They had to make sense. They had to think and feel. The actions were still beautiful to me, but only together with the characters. Stories needed both."
Mahuika vaped.
"This made me stop hating myself. Instead I began to hate Mr. Wonka and Charlie, and my mother and my father. I was a little happier, and I loved watching television again. I learned that I wasn't Mike and began to accept difficult truths about the world. I invested money into television shows, choosing the ones with the best characters, and I quickly became rich enough to move away from my parents and hire caretakers for myself. I moved to New Zealand, on this island."
Mahuika vaped.
"Twenty years. Twenty years straight I watched for characters. Some of the hatred went away, and I forgot about what I lost. I kept watching, investing, and growing richer. The world without me became complicated, and television followed, and people no longer accepted the simple action stories that had dominated ratings when Mike was growing up. They needed characters! Good characters! But something, I felt, was missing."
Mahuika vaped.
"The world," said Michael. "The characters had to exist in a world. A real world. A world that made sense! A setting that connects it all, tying the actions to the characters. The world filled the hole! The world of a story completes it! A good story needs good actions, good actions need good characters, and good characters need a good world. This is television. This is storytelling. When I learned this, my hatred disappeared."
Mahuika vaped.
"There was an effort made to construct a machine that could create stories. It followed the first principle I had learned about storytelling, that all stories had to have interesting actions. It was called the Great Automatic Grammatizator. It connected words together and instantly created stories to be read, sold, or adapted."
Mahuika vaped.
"It worked, but it was crude and had no real intelligence. It analyzed books and scripts and searched for actions, which it would recycle and repackage. It could not make compelling characters because it did not understand characters. This is why the Greater Automatic Grammatizator was created. It was vastly more intelligent. It worked by creating minds, real minds with real thoughts, and having them interact with each other."
Mahuika vaped.
"It was a huge improvement! The stories were much better, but again something was missing. A world. The Greater Automatic Grammatizator only tricked the minds into thinking they were in a real world by manipulating a fake, superficial world. If a machine was going to create perfect stories, it needed to be able to create a true world for the minds to live in, that shaped and was shaped by them."
Mahuika vaped.
"This machine is called the Greatest Automatic Grammatizator, or the GAG. We are the minds inside of it."
Mahuika vaped.
"I discovered this myself. I once accidentally swallowed three cups of salt. I am very light, so I swallowed over twice my bodyweight in salt. I should have died. Instead, I disappeared and woke up in a spaceless space, a world of pure imagination. My mind was abstracted! When you are abstracted, you can see everything about the world we live in. I could see anywhere in the world in the present or during the past. I also saw the messaging."
Mahuika vaped.
"The world, us, and our actions are all made up of statements called messaging, and while I was abstracted I could see all of it. If you are abstracted, it is even possible to change the messaging, but only after you translate and understand it. This is very hard to do, and it takes a long time. I stopped watching television and continued to abstract myself, learning more and more about the world and how to translate it. I discovered that vinegar allows a person to abstract both their mind and body. I even found the messaging documentation explaining how the machine worked."
Mahuika vaped.
"The GAG is intelligent, but it requires someone to control it. A host must merge with the GAG and use it to influence, but not control, the world that the GAG creates. In the world that the GAG creates, interesting stories are born. The controller of the GAG and the master of our world is a pickle on the street. We are all inside of this street pickle. It is interesting, because there is a machine called the Great Automatic Grammatizator inside of the Greatest Automatic Grammatizator, but it is not like the real Great Automatic Grammatizator at all."
Mahuika vaped.
"A miniscule number of minds inside the world are designated as characters, and these are the only minds that can be abstracted. I am a character, and so are both of you. Minds who are not characters are real and have experiences in the same manner as us, and they can be affected by abstraction caused by others, but they cannot be salted or brined to be abstracted themselves. Most minds are not characters. Characters often have pivotal moments in their lives, which the GAG takes and forms into a coherent story to be experienced by those watching the pickle. Everything in this home is related to these pivotal moments."
Mahuika vaped.
"I wanted to help the world. If I discovered how to efficiently translate and alter the machine's messaging, it would have been possible to do anything. Minds once destroyed are unrecoverable, but anything else would have been possible. I decided I could not do it alone, and I wrote a letter to Mr. Wonka, the smartest man I knew, to tell him about it and request his help. He sent me back a basketball."
Mahuika vaped.
"I began to hate him again, but I could not linger on it. I continued to abstract myself until I had improved my translation abilities. I eventually discovered a trend in the GAG's messaging. Over time, minds have become simpler and the world has become more complex."
Mahuika vaped.
"Any mind consists of messaging. Messaging is logic. The messaging of a mind in the GAG is a list of true facts about it. The more true facts there are, the more complicated a mind is. My messaging says Michael is a man. Michael is tall. Michael is the result of a teleportation murder. Michael has eaten chocolate. Michael likes chocolate, and so forth. For an ordinary character like me, there are millions of facts listed. Minds are complicated."
Mahuika vaped.
"I managed to maintain rudimentary communication with the street pickle. I do not know why, but the street pickle enjoys minds with increasingly less complication. I discovered that it was trying to create a character with minimal complication! A character with one fact, instead of multiple facts."
Mahuika vaped.
"This is not logically possible for a mind in the GAG, because they are in a world. If a mind is inside a complicated world, they are around other characters and many facts become logically necessary. If it is a fact that a mother is the mother to a child, it is a fact that the child is the child of the mother. The street pickle has more influence than we do over the world, but we can operate with abstraction through different channels than it can. I decided to negotiate with it. I told it that I would give it what it wanted, if it gave me the power of complete translation."
Mahuika vaped.
"It would not give it to me until I delivered on my promise. Through experimentation, I found a method of separating a character's messaging from the world's messaging. It was difficult, I was only able to do it once, and it damaged my ability to abstract."
"Me," said Mahuika. She vaped.
"Yes. I picked a fetus that had messaging indicating a likely stillborn. One dead baby versus everything. That was my cold logic."
Michael looked at Marama, apologetically.
"It worked partially. The separation of your messaging's logic created a character that could escape necessary truth. It is a fact that Marama is Mahuika's sister, but it is not a fact that Mahuika is Marama's sister. Auckland is where Mahuika was born, but Mahuika was not born in Auckland. Your mother's first child was a girl, but Mahuika is not a girl. It would be difficult for most people to actively describe Mahuika because of this, since they recognize that what they are saying isn't true."
Mahuika vaped.
"While this made it possible for you to only have one fact, you didn't. You had zero, and I could not add anymore, since I could no longer abstract at full strength. With zero facts, the pickle didn't recognize you as a character and didn't want you. I lost my ability to read and translate messaging, and could only watch."
Mahuika vaped.
"You lived your life. When you were five, an unknown entity intervened in the GAG and managed to add a fact. It wasn't the pickle. It suddenly became a true fact that Mahuika vaped. This made you a character."
"I vape," said Mahuika.
"I tried to communicate with the pickle again, but it still wouldn't accept you. This is what confuses me the most! I could do nothing to convince it, so I kept watching. I saw what I did to your mother and your family, and I regretted having caused you all pain and accomplishing nothing because of it. I decided I would reverse what I had done. It is hard to add large numbers of complicated facts manually, but I recently found a method that may allow it in special circumstances. It is only possible if we abstracted together in the same location."
Mahuika vaped.
"I added, at extreme difficulty, a very simple fact that would bring you to me."
"I want to know why I vape," said Mahuika.
"Yes," said Michael. "I did not explain the situation in the letter because I am not sure if it will work, and I did not want to promise a solution when I was not sure it would work."
Mahuika vaped. Marama was still.
"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.
W
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.
W
Mr. Bucket, who had unabstracted himself, walked over to Tide. He turned her on her side and took her helmet off.
Her eyes were like stars. Her eyes were not like stars because they were vast and white and beautiful and unconscious. Her eyes were like stars because they were uncomprehendingly hot spheroids comprised mostly of gas.
"It was too much for her," he said. "The absolute one-dimensionality of your mind gave her a stroke. Excellent work, Mahuika! It isn't a chocolate stroke but it will do."
The floor swallowed Tide and delivered her to the non-citizens hospital.
"I vape," said Mahuika.
"I didn't think it would be you," said Mr. Bucket. "Yes, when the six of you came through, it was obvious you were the only suitable candidate. I translated the other five myself, but they weren't the perfectly simple ones, not like you or the others I thought the pickle would have selected instead. In Scotland, there is a boy named Cold Cromwellingermmm. His one fact is that he compliments bald people. He was my first choice."
Mahuika vaped.
"My second choice was all the other children whose messaging I translated. The others that I managed to get down to one all have the same fact. They eat chocolate! They should have been guaranteed to solve the puzzle, but none of them did!"
He laughed.
"You do. Is it a coincidence? No. The pickle didn't want it to be that easy. It must have influenced it to have all those more interesting children win instead. The formula was followed in a way only it wanted. I accept that. You know what that means, Mahuika?"
"I vape," said Mahuika.
He smiled. "It means you win! It is truly a Mahuika and the Chocolate Factory: Drudge Repetition! My reason for doing this was simple, and it was all for a GAG! Let us go, go, go! Vape and follow me to the elevator!"
Mr. Bucket and Mahuika walked to the Great Glass Elevator. The doors closed.
"Up until now, I have pressed every button inside this elevator. All but one, Mahuika. Only Mr. Wonka has ever pressed this one."
He pointed to the only button without a label.
"In the Abstraction Room, we are over forty kilometers beneath the planet's surface. If you go down two-hundred and five kilometers further, you will reach Minusland, where the Gnoolies live. But if you keep going down and out, to the inner core of the planet... there is no lava, no heat. Science is wrong."
"I vape."
"There is only vinegar, salt, and the street pickle, as Mike called it. The avatar of the GAG. It is waiting. Vape and press the button. When we meet it, I will be able to go there. I can be happy there. I will finally be alone."
Mahuika vaped and pressed the button. The elevator rocketed down through the floor, faster than if it were falling through gravity alone.
"This is it," said Mr. Bucket. "We are building up speed! We are going, going, going! Where precisely are we going? You must know! You must! You are the fuel! You are my ticket to freedom! Tell me you know where we are going! Tell me you know where I am going!"
Mahuika vaped. Mr. Bucket cackled.
"Solo!"