Author's note: I watched this scene so many times in preparation for this chapter – and cos it's my fave scene! – whereupon I actually noticed a few things that I've never noticed before! Like, when Wonka says "for my very latest and greatest invention", Mike shoves Charlie out of the way – some classic, subtle, Burton-style characterisation there, although if Mike's hand had gone any lower, I think the film would have had to have been raised to a certificate 12A (PG-13, for all you American readers :D). There are a few other things, too, but I've decided to just include them in the chapter – you'll have to look out for them yourselves – but I just had to mention the shove, cos it's SO adorable for any Mike or Charlie fans!
Anyway, this is obviously the last chapter where I have a nice script to cling onto for my safety-net – er, I mean, dialogue – but it's not the last that's "at the factory"; there are a couple more before we get back to Colorado, Daniel and Claire. And I'm dreading it…

13

The elevator doors opened with a pleasant 'ding'. Mike was fairly relieved to be let out. A set of doors in front of him opened to reveal…well, whiteness. That was the only word Mike could come up with to describe the room. White. The second word that sprung to his attention was 'bright'. Too bright. He squinted.
"Here," Wonka instructed, taking a pair of weird, tinted goggles and very rapidly shoving them on his eyes, "Put these on quick and don't take them off whatever you do."
Mike had already taken a pair from the other side of the doorframe and looked around whilst his dad and the Fraily family put theirs on. He felt like a bug.
"This light could burn your eyeballs right out of your skulls, and we certainly don't want that, now, do we?"
Wonka's sight flickered between Mike and Charlie for a bit, as though daring one of them to take their goggles off. Mike smiled a little; he wasn't going to give up that easily. Wonka turned away, slightly dejected, and began walking down a ramp. Mike followed a second later. Wonka began to talk about something, but the room was so damned echoey he couldn't hear a word. He needed to hear this; he needed to know what to do to prove himself right. He picked up his pace and overtook Scruffy, giving him a casual shove as he went. It felt good to let a little of his anger out. He hadn't been able to do so since the candy pumpkin in the Chocolate Room.
He caught up with Wonka in enough time to hear him say two words he hated hearing in the same sentence: "Television Chocolate."
Mike almost tripped.
Please, he begged to no one in particular, please tell me he's kidding…
"One day it occurred to me. Hey! If television can break up a photograph into millions and millions of tiny little pieces and send it whizzing through the air, and reassemble it on the other end, why can't I do the same thing with chocolate? Why can't I send a real bar of chocolate through the television all ready to be eaten?"

By now they had reached a solitary television set being watched by a solitary Oompa-Loompa.
Is that ALL he does? Mike pondered, Just sits around and watches TV all day? What a geek!
A second voice piped up in Mike's head, one he'd hardly ever heard before: You're criticizing yourself, you moron!
What? Asked the first voice. Mike could sense that an inter-conscience battle was about to break out in his own mind, so he tried to shut himself off.
What do YOU do all day?
"Sounds impossible," Mr. Teavee said.
"It is impossible," Mike said, trying to ignore the heated argument in his brain.
I don't just watch TV – I play video games and make websites, too!
"You don't understand anything about science."
How does that make a difference?
"First off, there's a difference between wavesand particles."
Of course it makes a difference!
"Duh!"
Mike was raising his own voice purely to drown out the ones in his head.
I really can't see how. No, he's every bit as sad as that Oompa-Loompa over there.
"Second," he tried to continue, "the amount of power it'd take to convert energy in matter…"
Shut up! Shut UP!
He was almost shouting, now, "…would be like nine atomic bombs!"
"MUMBLER!" Wonka yelled, thrusting his face right into Mike's, "Seriously, I cannot understand a single word you're saying!"
Mike glared at him, though in a way he was relieved; his loud shout had cut off the argument.

"Okey-dokey," Wonka said calmly, whilst Mike pulled a face which – had anyone been looking at him at the time – would clearly have said 'someone has just severely pissed me off; come near me or try to talk to me right now, and you shall die'. He sighed resignedly and tried to pay attention to what Wonka was saying. He still had a point to prove. He closed his eyes for just a second – so many things to think about; so much to remember; so many conflicting emotions.
He thought about Augustus and Violet and Veruca.
"I shall now send a bar of chocolate from one end of the room…"
He thought about Claire and Daniel.
"…to the other…"
He thought about his obsession with TV and technology.
"…by television."
He wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.
"Bring in the chocolate!"
He followed the six Oompa-Loompas with his eyes as they brought out the massive bar of chocolate and placed it on the platform, but he was distracted. He was out in the real world, now, he realized. There were no extra lives anywhere. It wasn't possible to save at a good point and come back to it later. He was thirteen years old; he wasn't exactly a kid any more. He had to deal with problems as and when they came at him, and his biggest problem shouldn't be that 'Death Warriors VII' won't load on his machine. He promised himself that the second he got out of this damn factory – if he ever got out of this damn factory – he would sort his life out. Properly.

But first thing was first: let Wonka get his comeuppance.

"It's gotta be real big," he was explaining. Mike looked up, "'Cos you know how on TV you can film a regular-sized man and he comes out looking this tall?" he held up his thumb and index finger a few inches apart, "Same basic principle."
He hit a big red button and the chocolate started to elevate. Mike watched in disbelief, his mouth slightly open, his eyes as wide as they would go. He couldn't see strings anywhere…but it had to be a hoax, right? Up and up the candy went, higher and higher. The glass cylinder closed around it. Lights flared, cameras moved into position. Still the candy bar stayed suspended in mid-air.
This defies all logic – he's breaking the laws of physics!
Even with the goggles on, the flash was bright enough to leave him with little dark spots in front of his eyes.
"It's gone!" Scruffy shouted.
Mike looked around frantically; objects didn't just disappear like that!
"Told ya!" Wonka said. He was talking to Scruffy, but Mike was pretty sure it was aimed more at him, "That bar of chocolate is now rushing through the air above our heads in a million tiny little pieces. Come over here! Come on!"

Mike, along with the others, ran over to the television set. He surprised himself with how quickly he could run. He didn't exercise often; his excuse was that he barely ate. Thinking about it, that was probably why he felt so dizzy.
He stared intently at the screen, almost daring the chocolate bar to appear (although he knew it was impossible). So many of the theories that Mike had grown up with had been shot down in one day by one man; he was determined to be right about something. After all, it was him – Mike Teavee was never wrong.
"Watch the screen!"
Mike didn't even blink.
"Here it comes...oh, look!"
There it was. A little fuzzy, but it was there. A candy bar.
It's a trick! It's gotta be!
Wonka poked Mike's arm, "Take it!"
"It's just a picture on a screen," he said, almost determinedly.
Wonka tutted, "Scaredy-cat! You take it," he repeated to Scruffy. He hesitated – the first sensible thing he'd done for the whole tour.
"Go on! Just reach out and grab it."
After a short pause, he stepped forward and, to Mike's total shock and horror, plunged his hand through the screen of the television and lifted the candy bar from its rut. Mike felt a mixture of incredulity and anger as Scruffy stood there, just holding it.
"Holy buckets…" Fraily McFrailson said; Mike didn't even speculate on what the hell he was on about.
"Eat it," Wonka instructed, "Go on! It'll be delicious." Scruffy started to open the wrapper, "It's the same bar; it's just gotten a little smaller on the journey, that's all."
Mike felt sick for a number of reasons. The top one was probably that none of this was happening to him. If it was, he could try to find a fault in it somewhere. Why had he refused to take the candy from the screen?
"It's great!" Scruffy said, chewing on the chocolate.
"It's a miracle," his grandfather whispered.
Mike had to admit, if what he was seeing was genuine…it was pretty cool. But he was still pissed off that he wasn't a part of it. After all, his surname was 'Teavee'; surely this was a match made in heaven?
"So, imagine," Wonka said, walking round to the Oompa-Loompa and indicating to it, "you're sitting at home watching television, and suddenly a commercial will flash onto the screen. And a voice will say: 'Wonka's chocolates are the best in the world. If you don't believe us, try one for yourself.' And you simply reach out...and take it!"
Mike dipped his head a little. Although he liked what he saw, he still had the concentration of a hamster.
"So can you send other things?" his dad asked, "Say, like, breakfast cereal?"
"Do you even know what breakfast cereal is made of?" Wonka replied, "It's those little curly wooden shavings that you find in pencil sharpeners."
Ha! I knew it!
Scruffy piped up, "But could you send it by television if you wanted to?"
"Course I could."
Bam.
A golden opportunity to prove Wonka was a nutcase.
"What about people?" Mike asked, mock-casually.
"Why would I wanna send a person, they don't taste very good at all."

Mike smiled for a nano-second. He had seen mutilation, he had seen murder, he had seen concrete theories being shattered, he had seen slavery, he had seen trained un-trainable animals, he had seen lies, and he had certainly seen stupidity, even from himself. But this was one occasion on which he wasn't going to let it go or screw it up.
"Don't you realize what you've invented?" he ranted, "It's a teleporter! It's the most important invention in the history of the world! And all you think about is chocolate."
His flow was interrupted by his father, as per usual, who turned round to coolly say, "Calm down, Mike, I think Mr. Wonka knows what he's talking about."
If Mike hated anything more than chocolate, or Wonka, or Oompa-Loompas, or being called dumb, or losing a life, or power failures, or retards, or music homework, or people getting in his way, or his hair not spiking up, or imbeciles, or wearing any colour except black or red, or being sent to bed before midnight, it was his father telling him to "calm down". His anger swelled.
"No he doesn't! He has no idea!"
His anger intensified.
"You think he's a genius but he's an idiot!"
His point was lost.
There was only one way he could recover. He looked over at the teleporter that a few short minutes ago had contained a humungous candy bar.
"But I'm not…"

He dashed off quickly; he knew his dad would try to stop him. He was just that bit too quick and he managed to slip through his fingers. He jumped stylishly over the Oompa-Loompa, landed, stumbled a little but managed to regain himself, knocked two of the damned irritating Oompa-Loompas out of the way…
"Hey, li'l boy?" Wonka called.
'Li'l boy' has a name…
He continued to run, ducking a camera as he went.
"Don't push my button!"
Try and stop me!
He pelted over to the panel and slammed his palm down on the shiny, red button. It was at this point he realised that he hadn't said anything in his preamble to this exhibition. He hadn't mentioned anything about Wonka being a deranged psychopath, or the attempted murders, or the successful murders, or the coincidences that were just too coincidental. He had, in a fit of rage and foolishness, just sentenced himself to being the fourth of Wonka's victims. But there was no turning back now. He had already leapt from the control panel to the transporter's platform, which was slowly rising. His dad ran round for no reason Mike could fathom – if he was going to try to save Mike, he was going to have to get a hell of a lot closer than that.
The coward.

Lights flared.
Mike's feet lifted from the ground. He looked down at them in surprise. Even though the glass tube was enclosing him, he felt freer than he'd ever felt in his life. He looked back up, a look of superiority all over his face. He was better than every other person in that room. He really was. And this new height proved it in a weird, metaphorical way. The strange flying sensation finally tipped him off-balance and he waved his arms in an attempt to right himself. Half of him was enjoying the wild movements that were forced upon him; the other half longed for the control he thrived on. Eventually he regained that control, and was able to move his own body again. He decided to have some fun. After all, from the length of time it took to transport that chocolate bar, it looked like he had some time to kill. He threw out some air guitar movements, then some disco poses, waved gleefully at his dad – who looked the most scared Mike had ever seen him – and finally, as the glass tube made contact with the platform, he flung a funky, John Travolta-style finishing pose.
Lights flared.
Darkness caved in.

A/n: I've also just noticed that in the shot of Mike's upper body, just after his feet have lifted off the platform, you can actually see the shape of the harness under his t-shirt (where it has ridden up a bit and creased). I couldn't exactly put that in the chapter, cos it's more of a goof than a plot-line.
One more thing (the last, I swear) loads of people have probably already noticed, but I hadn't – in the scene where Mike gets interviewed, his pyjamas show yet another picture of a skull, this time with some sort of bullet or stab wound to the head that's spewing blood quite violently. I'm positive that Mike alone made this film a PG rather than a U, lol.