I'm sad to say, Mike wasn't careful. He was rude, and he smacked Oompa-Loompas out of his way, and he did a thing that I think astounded Mr. Wonka as much as it impressed him, but not for reasons Mike would like.

By now, Mr. Wonka was used to us, and he was a lot less nervous. Turning into a real Chatty Cathy, he hadn't used any cue cards since the Inventing Room. You could tell he loved talking about his factory and his projects, because once he got going, it was hard to get a word in edgewise. He was chattier than ever in this room, and when Mike tried to tell Mr. Wonka that Mr. Wonka didn't know what he was talking about, Mr. Wonka got as close to angry as I'd seen him get.

"Mumbler!" Mr. Wonka said, with real bite, bending to be nearer Mike's face, and shaking his index finger at him. The gesture and the command in his raised voice did the trick, and Mike stopped talking. "Seriously," Mr. Wonka said as he stood straight again, his voice all back to normal. "I can not understand a single word you're saying."

I wanted to laugh at his way of getting Mike to be quiet, and I wondered if Mr. Wonka really meant he couldn't understand Mike's disbelief, instead of Mike's words, but if I did laugh, I'd lose the rest of what Mr. Wonka was saying, because he was about to show us how he could send a bar of chocolate across the room—which was pretty big—without us seeing it, and have it reappear inside the television set. This wasn't what I thought I'd see in the Television Room. I thought I'd see the room where Mr. Wonka watches television—and maybe he does watch it here, but not today—or maybe I'd see him making televisions out of chocolate here, or something like that, but I was wrong. This was better than that, because even if Mr. Wonka couldn't do what he was telling us he could do—and not much of what he had shown us today did work—this was a great idea!

Mr. Wonka seemed very confident, but that's what he was when he wasn't nervous, so I didn't take his being confident as a sign that this would work. To prepare, he had us all wearing round, dark goggles, like the ones he had on when we were outside, at the start of the tour. The room was as white as could be, and very bright, with lots of levels in it, and when we'd come in, Mr. Wonka had made us put on the dark goggles to protect our eyes.

"Here! Put these on quick, and don't take them off whatever you do!" Mr. Wonka told us, as he grabbed a pair for himself and gestured for us to do the same. "This light could burn your eyeballs right out of your skulls, and we certainly don't want that now, do we?"

I didn't want that, and I put the goggles on as quick as I could. So did everyone else. If Mr. Wonka was doing it, we'd do it.

There were six goggles on the racks by the door for the five of us, one more than we needed, but that made sense. The Oompa-Loompas would know how many we needed and have them ready for when we got here, including a spare, because you never know when you might need a spare. It wasn't a secret from the Oompa-Loompas that our group was shrinking, and that's what, well… Mr. Wonka had shuddered just the smallest bit when he got to the part about our eyeballs being burned out of our skulls, and I wondered if he was thinking about the puppets in the Puppet Hospital and Burn Center, and what had happened to them this morning. If he was, was that a flashback? Or was it a memory? I'd have to ask someone what the difference was, but not now, and not Mr. Wonka.

The Oompa-Loompas were bringing in a giant chocolate bar. It took six of them to carry it. That's a lot of chocolate. It was all wrapped up, ready for sale, but it wasn't my favorite. It was a Nutty Crunch Surprise. The best kind of prize is a sur-prize! Maybe Mr. Wonka was saying sir-prize when he said that. Sir Prize, like a knight or something. Mr. Wonka pressed a red button on the console where we were standing with Oompa-Loompas—wearing goggles and white uniforms—around us, and the chocolate bar began to rise off the stand it was on and be sucked up into a clear tube. The stand was rising, too, but not as fast. Augustus would have fit in this tube with no problem, and it occurred to me there was a lot of sucking up going on in this factory.

Oompa-Loompas controlled cameras suspended above us, sitting at them, and other cameras remotely, and when the tube and the stand formed a seal, with all the cameras pointed at it, there was the brightest flash of light ever, and the chocolate bar disappeared!

"It's gone!" I said. I couldn't help saying it, it was so sudden, and so gone.

Mr. Wonka was thrilled.

"Told ya."

He told us what was happening, and took off close to running, telling us to follow him to the television at the other end of the room. When we got there, an Oompa-Loompa was relaxing in a chair watching. He had a remote and he'd flipped through a channel or two when we first came in the room, but now he watching a sandy, rocky, landscape with apes running about.

Mr. Wonka was beside himself with anticipation, but the chocolate bar was already appearing as a column in the landscape, and the apes were dancing around it.

"Here it comes," Mr. Wonka said as he stopped. "Oh, look."

And we did. It was amazing! First the chocolate formed, and then as we watched the wrapper formed around it. In no time, the chocolate bar was right there, in its wrapper, way smaller, the way Mr. Wonka had said it would be, but now what? What good was a chocolate bar in a television set?

Mr. Wonka was bending over to see better. Now he jostled Mike's upper arm with the back of his hand and told Mike to reach into the television set and take the bar. What? Reach in and take the bar? Out of the television? That's crazy! Mike was on it.

"It's just a picture on a screen," said Mike, not moving.

"Scaredy-cat," said Mr. Wonka.

His tone said he was done with Mike, and with his eyes narrowing just that much, he turned to me, and when he did, I felt like I was under a microscope, and I felt my face flush, just that little bit, with nerves, because I got the feeling that this was it, and what I did now was going to decide who was going to win and who was going to lose.

"You take it," Mr. Wonka said to me.

Me take it? Me reach my hand in there? I hesitated. What should I do? If I put my hand in the television would it fall off? Would the glass slice my hand off at my wrist? Maybe my hand would get as small as the chocolate bar? Forever? My arm, too, up to the place where I stopped reaching in? I'd seen a lot of things happen in this factory today, and what I'd seen gave me my doubts. Mr. Wonka could tell. I don't think he blamed me.

"Go on," Mr. Wonka said. "Just reach out and grab it."

My Grandpa Joe and my Grandpa George would talk about grabbing the brass ring in life, and how they had missed grabbing it, and that they were sorry, because if they had been able to grab it, our lives would be different. Very different, and different for the better. Mr. Wonka was no dummy. He's heard about this brass ring, I'll bet, and the fact that he'd used that phrase—'reach out and grab it'—made me think that today, a chocolate bar inside a television was what the brass ring looked like. I pressed my lips together. I might be wrong. I took a breath. If this was the brass ring, I had better reach out and grab it. Should I? Really? Then I realized. Mr. Wonka was telling me to do it. He'd told all the others NOT to do what had got them in trouble.

That was it. I decided. I reached out. I put my hand against the screen, expecting it to stop me. It didn't. My fingers kept going. It felt weird, like my hand had static in it, all tingly, but it didn't hurt, and it was kind of pleasant—like a massage from inside—and I could see my hand, and I took the bar, and now my arm felt the way my hand felt, and I wondered if I should linger, and really feel how this felt, so I could remember it, but I decided against it, because it might be like being too near a fire, and first you feel warm, but then you feel burnt, and that's not a good feeling. I took my arm and the bar away.

It was as easy to leave the television as it had been to go into it. I was out, and the bar was in my hand. My Grandpa Joe couldn't believe it.

"Holy Buckets!" he said.

I smiled up at Mr. Wonka, the bar in my hand, heavy and real. Mr. Wonka told me to eat it, chattering away about its journey, and how good it would be. There was no reason not to. Mr. Wonka was telling me it was okay. I unwrapped it the way I do at home, a tiny bit at a time, and I bit off a piece the way I do at home, a tiny little nibble, because I can make one of Mr. Wonka's chocolate bars last a month or more, and it's such a habit, and it's hard to break, even here, where I could have a whole bar, right now, this minute.

I think Mr. Wonka thought I was a little weird, I guess because the unwrapping was taking me longer than Mr. Wonka thought it should take. He made biting motions at me with those perfect teeth of his to hurry me up. That was creepy. Nobody's teeth are that perfect. I bit. Mr. Wonka was right, the chocolate was as wonderful as ever. I could see he was waiting for my verdict. How odd was that?

"It's great," I said.

"It's a miracle," said my Grandpa Joe. If he'd been having any doubts about Mr. Wonka today, they were gone now, I could tell.

Mr. Wonka was tickled to death. He trotted off to where the Oompa-Loompa watching sat, back in his Chatty Cathy mode, telling us the details of his advertising plan. "How 'bout that?" Mr. Wonka finished, rocking on his heels once and waiting. He stood like a peacock finished preening, and he reminded me for all the world of a good dog, waiting for a pat on the head, for having completed a complex trick, and I thought it was strange that Mr. Wonka would care about what we thought about his wonderful accomplishment, but he obviously did. We had reached a 'praise Mr. Wonka' moment, and I for one thought he deserved some.

Mr. Teavee missed it, or didn't care. He skipped right to the 'tell us more about it' moment. He wanted to know if Mr. Wonka could send other things through to the television.

Mr. Wonka was irritated at skipping the praise part, and his answer showed it. He quibbled with Mr. Teavee's choice of what else should be sent: breakfast cereal. I hated to see Mr. Wonka lose his happy happiness, and I knew he'd find it again if he'd just answer the question.

"But could you send it by television if you wanted to?" I asked.

"'Course I could," he answered.

Hmm... I don't know if he'd found his happiness again, but he'd found his smugness. Mike spoke up.

"What about people?"

"Well, why would I want to send a person? They don't taste very good at all."

Mike lost it. Spitting mad, he told Mr. Wonka what he'd invented was a teleporter. 'It's the most important invention in the history of the world'.

That's pretty good praise, especially from Mike, and if he'd quit there, Mike would have done himself a lot of good. But he didn't. He kept going, saying mean things about chocolate and what Mr. Wonka spent his time thinking about. Mike's father asked him to calm down. He even said Mr. Wonka knew "what he was talking about," but that made Mike worse.

"No he doesn't. He has no idea. You think he's a genius, but he's an idiot."

That, I thought, is not the way to win the special prize, because if the special prize is getting to spend more time in the factory, Mr. Wonka is probably not going to give it to a person who tells him he's an idiot. I had to shake my head. But then I had to keep my heart from racing, because the next thing Mike did was declare that he's not an idiot, and race for the teleporter platform. He had to be nuttier than Veruca. He jumped the chair with the Oompa-Loompa sitting in it. Two Oompa-Loompas were about to get in his path, and Mike knocked them to the ground as he passed to stop them from interfering. Mr. Wonka stepped forward, angry.

"Hey, little boy," he started saying. Mike was to the control console. Mr. Wonka's voice had venom in it. "Don't push my button."

Too late. Mike had pushed it, and leapt from the console to the platform. It was impressive. Mike's an athletic guy for someone who plays video games all day. The Oompa-Loompas in the room looked astounded. The process had been put in motion, and they weren't doing anything to stop it. Maybe they knew it couldn't be stopped. Mike, rising in the chamber, looked happy for the first time, and by that I mean he looked like, for the first time in a long time, he wasn't bored. It must be cool, being held off the ground like that. I envied him a little. Wouldn't it be wonderful to float on air? Mike smiled. He waved at us. I guess it is wonderful.

The lights flashed, and Mike was gone.

Mr. Wonka came back to life. He'd been standing like a statue. I think he was like the Oompa-Loompas. Astounded.

"Let's go check the television and see what we get."

'See what we get?' That sounded like Mr. Wonka wasn't sure what that would be. He hadn't sent a person through the teleporter? I checked the Oompa-Loompas. They were as curious as Mr. Wonka, and heading our way. Wow. They hadn't sent a person through the teleporter! Mike was the first! I wondered if that was because no one wanted to wind up an inch or two high. It wouldn't be easy to be that height and live in a people world. Maybe a mouse world, but that didn't sound like fun. The warm fur would be nice, but all those fangs and claws! Maybe a doll house would do, but that seemed confining, and I was sure I wouldn't like it.

We got to the screen, and Mr. Wonka was up to his old tricks, winding people up.

"I sure hope no part of him gets left behind," said Mr. Wonka.

"What do you mean?" asked a panicky Mr. Teavee.

"Well, sometimes only half the little pieces find their way through."

Maybe Mr. Wonka wasn't up to his old tricks. If only half the little pieces come through… that would be a very good reason not to send a person through.

"If you had to choose only one half of your son, which one would it be?"

Now Mr. Wonka was up to his old tricks. That was a silly question, and Mr. Wonka didn't seem to me to be the sort of person who would ask a silly question at a serious time. Maybe it had been a long time since only half the little pieces had found their way through. Mike would be okay. But Mr. Wonka's question worked on Mr. Teavee. He was horrified.

"What kind of a question is that?"

"No need to snap," said Mr. Wonka. "It's just a question."

'Just a question', he'd said. I felt warmer towards Mr. Wonka. I like to ask questions, though I kept most of them to myself. He likes to ask questions, and with that ready answer, I guess he's been yelled at for asking questions when he should have kept quiet. When he should have kept quiet... I caught my lower lip in my teeth. I let it go. Mr. Wonka asks anyway. Like just now. Mr. Wonka is brave. If Mr. Wonka doesn't mind asking questions, maybe he wouldn't mind me asking questions. Maybe I could ask any question I wanted, any time I wanted. But no, I knew better than that, and if Mr. Wonka didn't know better than that, he should know.

"Try every channel, I'm starting to feel a little anxious."

Mr. Wonka was feeling anxious. I was feeling anxious, wondering about when it was okay to ask questions, and when it wasn't. Oh, yeah, Mr. Wonka is probably thinking about Mike. It had been awhile since the flash of light. The Oompa-Loompa changed the channels, and there was Mike, smaller than the Oompa-Loompa hosting the Willy Wonka news channel. A lot smaller. I decided it was a good thing it had taken awhile to find Mike, because if he came in the way the candy bar had, insides first, I don't know that I'd have liked to have seen Mike Teavee build himself out from his skeleton to his clothes. I gave a little shudder, but I covered it well by being helpful.

"There he is," I said, and nobody was the wiser that I had forgotten all about Mike for a minute.

The Oompa-Loompas started singing. The ones on TV and the ones in the room. They didn't like gum chewing, and they didn't like people watching too much TV. Mike Teavee watched too much TV in their opinion. The song was about that. But this song was different from the other songs. The Oompa-Loompas in this song wondered if they could fix what Mike had done to himself. They said if they couldn't, it would serve Mike right. I don't think they like Mike, but I don't know if I'd like a person who told me to back off and called me a freak, or who had knocked my friends to the ground to get them out of his way, either. Mike might live to regret burning bridges the way he liked to do.

The song ended, and Mr. Wonka told Mr. Teavee to grab Mike. He'd seen me do it, and my arm was okay, so Mr. Teavee got Mike. And then he got mad at Mr. Wonka, because Mr. Wonka said Mike was 'completely unharmed' and Mr. Teavee didn't think so. Mike was perfectly happy. In a voice higher and squeakier than Mr. Wonka's he said, "just put me back through the other way!"

Mr. Wonka shook his head. "There is no 'other way'. It's television, not telephone, it's quite different."

"What do you propose to do about it?" demanded Mr. Teavee.

"I don't know," said Mr. Wonka, like he meant it, and I knew Mike was the first person to be teleported. But Mr. Wonka could think fast, and he thought of a plan now. He'd stretch Mike out on the Taffy Puller.

"Taffy Puller!" said Mr. Teavee, alarmed.

"Hey! That was my idea," said Mr. Wonka back to him, and whatever Mr. Teavee might think, I knew for Mr. Wonka the problem was solved. I was glad I wasn't heading for a Taffy Puller. Mr. Wonka gave the instructions we knew were coming to the Oompa-Loompa who had sat watching this whole time, and he nodded, understanding, put down the remote, and took Mr. Teavee and Mike away.

Mr. Teavee almost hit Mr. Wonka in the cheek with tiny Mike when they turned to go, and I thought Mr. Wonka was going to fall over backwards to avoid that. But he didn't fall over backwards. He pulled his head out of the way, kept his balance, gave a puff of relief, and recovered his cheery self as if nothing had happened, all in the space of a second or two. He was good at doing that, and I wondered about it.

"On with the tour," said Mr. Wonka, saying the words as if they might be a question, the very same way he had said those very same words in the Chocolate Room, when we'd lost Augustus. It made me think he wasn't sure if my Grandpa Joe and I would want to continue, now that we were the only ones left, but we both figured we'd made it this far. Why not continue?

I put down the candy bar. He hadn't said, but it might be a secret Mr. Wonka didn't want taken out of this room. We followed him. He could hear our footsteps, I think, and that pleased him. The lights were being turned off, the Oompa-Loompas were leaving their posts, and Mr. Wonka, by the door, was taking off his goggles. I took the hand my Grandpa Joe held out to me and we hurried to catch up to him.

"There's still so much left to see," Mr. Wonka said, turning towards us, and I had no doubt there was. "Now, how many children are left?" he asked, in a voice as sweet as sweet, and I knew he already knew. It was our turn to be wound up.

But I didn't mind. My Grandpa Joe would answer, and then we'd know what would happen next. What would that be? I could hardly wait to find out.

Are these my characters? They are not. Is this purely for entertainment? It is.
Thanks for reading.
Is Chatty Cathy the name of a talking doll made by Mattel from the sixties? It is.
Have your reviews made my day? You betcha! Fav and Followers? You also, and I thank you, one and all.
As it ever is in my stories, direct quotes from the 2005 movie are in italics.