Gosh this man is energetic.

"They are!" They go kaCHUNKaCHUNKaCHUNKaCHUNKA and spin, what's not to like? "What happens if one of the corncobs gets turned sideways in there? Does it get stuck?"

"What a clever question! They will get horribly, confoundingly stuck, yes! Absolutely! If you take no precautions. But in this factory we keep nesting pairs of corn cobs and corn pens, so when one of them gets stuck, the other will come along and rescue it. It's simply the best way to do it!"

Yes, clever. Sharp. Observant. Hmm!

"May I have the pleasure of an introduction?"

"I'm Kevin. Kevin McAllister. And if you're not Willy Wonka then that's too bad, because you act like him."

"The very same!" Mr. Wonka chortles, eyes twinkling. "What brings you to the Pushcorn Room? A zest for reverse agriculture? In need of a listening ear, perhaps?"

CLUNK. An odd sound draws Mr. Wonka's quick attention back toward the recombobulator. It is supposed to go kaCHUNKaCHUNKaCHUNK, but that last one sounded like kaCHUNKa-CLUNK. He adjusts some wheeled dials on the wall, peering at the pressure readings. They seem satisfactory!

"Well, the rest of the tour was here, and I liked the sound, and." He probably shouldn't admit that he's been kind of wanting to see a corncob get stuck and cause some kind of huge mechanical problem. Not in a way where he would actually do anything to cause that, just in a way where if any mechanical problems are going to happen today he wants to be around to see them. "I guess I forgot to leave when everyone else did." If he had noticed them leaving he would probably have gone with them, but he didn't. 

He liked the sound! Mr. Wonka notices himself feeling rather fond of this factory foundling.

"Ah! Then you are doubly in luck! First, your tour group will be miles away by now, so there's absolutely no prospect of catching up, none at all, and therefore no need to bother about them anymore: you are, however briefly, the captain of your soul!

And on that point—well, of course you may stay and watch the pushcorn getting re-corn-cob-ulated if you prefer! But if you are amenable, I should be delighted to have you along for my remaining duties, where I will give you a personal guided tour of some of the factory's most interesting and obscure experiments. I suspect you will find it splendiferously fun."

He peers eagerly at Kevin.

This is not how most grownups would react to this situation and Kevin approves. "That sounds totally awesome!"

Mr. Wonka claps his hands together. "I'm so very glad!"

He then pulls out his pocketwatch and leaps straight up as if stung. "Nearly twelve o'clock already! Well, not to worry, at least Shortwave Lollies are just down the hall. If you will please follow me, dear boy!" And without further fanfare, he trots rapidly out the door, the tails of his velvet coat flapping behind him.

Kevin follows, trying to guess what it means for a lollie to be shortwave. Lolly is British for lollipop, probably, so maybe it's those spirally ones that look sort of like a wave. Or maybe they actively move and have ripples! There's no telling around here.

The Shortwave Lollies room has a magnificent domed skylight which shines down on a crowd of busy Oompa-Loompas at various workstations. Some are folding great glossy lumps of colorful molten candy. Some are pouring molten candy into copper molds, or wrapping them in a strange blue-green metallic foil. At a few workstations, Oompa-Loompas wear large earphones, fiddling with metal consoles with dozens of knobs and lights and little display gauges. A deep spacious hum fills the space.

"The lollies started as lucky accident!" Mr. Wonka cries, dashing from station to station and inspecting them like a hummingbird among flowers. "We had been making a new kind of shortbread biscuit, only one of the batches turned out rather more wavy than breadlike, and when you took a bite of them— oh, no! I won't spoil the surprise. But to recreate the effect, we needed a form factor that was less crumbly, and then when I hit on the ingenious idea of using lolly sticks— well, see for yourself!"

And he hefts a large copper bowl full of the foil-wrapped lollies and offers it to Kevin.

"The trick is to clamp the candy between your teeth."

Well that's an easy instruction to follow! CHOMP. (He takes the wrapper off first, he's not a feral badger except when he is.)

And what a lolly it is. First comes the flavor — a mouthwateringly delicious fizz of sweet citrus. It coats the tongue, the bright juice tingling and crackling like fireworks. But oh! There's more: the moment you put it in your mouth, you feel it buzzing and vibrating and thrumming softly of its own accord. When you bite down, every one of those vibrations is conducted through your teeth and into your skull where you can hear—well, in Kevin's case, the tinny but unmistakable sound of music. It is, in fact, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra being broadcast from a local radio station.

"Isn't it fantastic?" Mr. Wonka beams. "The stick acts like a little antenna— there's actually a little strip of metal in every one! If you move your tongue around just right, you can probably get the knack for changing the station! Just think— no more being bored in class! No more confiscated radios! With my new Shortwave Lollies, tuning into the wireless is as easy as eating candy!"

"Grsh thrs"--remove candy from mouth. "Gosh, that's neat! And it tastes good too!" Candy back in mouth. This time it's a commercial. He fiddles around for a bit in search of a baseball game and then remembers they probably don't play baseball in Britain and goes back to the orchestra.

Mr. Wonka practically dances with glee, hurrying with the bowl of sweets to the far side of the room. "But here is the best part of all!" he squeaks in his high, flutey voice. "Now which flavor was it?"

"Lemon." 

"Lemon!" He fishes around until he finds a lemon lolly, plucks off the wrapper, and sticks it in his own mouth. His jaw seems to be moving.

<Come in, come in! You can read me loud and clear, can't you?>

The sound is—remarkably clear, given the inherent mouth-position and amplification challenges one might expect when talking over two-way candy radio.

"Wrrrf?" He makes the "wait wait don't tell me" gesture and twiddles the candy around in his mouth for a minute. <Am I [static] this right? Can you [unintelligible] me?>

<Yes! Yes! You'# a natu#al! And you see the principle is so si#ple— you can talk with a#yone nearby with the same flavor as you, and I've made sure the#e are plenty of f#avors to choose from! I'm sure you can t#ink of a dozen things to do with them!>

He totally can but at least the first three involve pretending to be a ghost haunting his brothers and the fourth one is cheating on tests. <Yeah!> Hmm what's something he feels like confessing to. <Like t#ing in the movie thea# wi##t get# in trouble!>

<Quite right; you can tell yo#r friends exactly what you think of The Man in the White Suit and how you'd have gotten away with it. Refreshment stalls are going to be keen as mustard for this stuff. But somehow, dear boy, keeping out of trouble seems like a waste of a good sweet—or don't you agree?>

His eyes twinkle watchfully, though perhaps only the Oompa-Loompas are close enough to see.

Two seconds of assessing stare.<Also it would be funny to give these to my older brothers and pretend to be a ghost and scare them.> 

Now that's a funny image. Mr. Wonka can't help laughing. Another test passed, too.

"Ohohoho—"

<— yes! Now there's a real hair-curling idea. I was sure you could do it! Many don't know how, I'm sorry to tell you. Comes from parents following them around saying ‘Don't get any ideas’. Can you imagine such a tragedy? ‘Don't get any ideas?’ That's what heads are for!>

Kevin laughs too, gets a bit of lollipop spit on his chin and wipes it with his sleeve. <Yeah!> His enthusiasm for everything that's going on right now is rapidly shrinking his lollipop. <Where do you get your ideas? You have so many!>

<Special Wonka pencils, of course. Have you ever seen people gnawing at their erasers? Disgusting habit; I recommend it. My pencils all have chewing gum erasers that give you good ideas as you chew them over.>

<Though I admit it's possible the chewing gum isn't doing all the clever work there. Well, where does a robin get his songs? And where do your best ideas come from, anyways?>

<Hmm. Good question. From the things around me, I guess. I look at a thing and see what things can be done with it, or look at two things and see what you get if you combine them. I guess being around candy all the time probably helps with inventing more candy, then, huh?> He attempts to grind his teeth thoughtfully and compromises the structural integrity of his lollipop. "Oopsh."

"Not to worry!" laughs Mr. Wonka from across the room. "There will be plenty of—"

A curly-haired Oompa-Loompa discreetly lets herself in a side door and hurries over to Mr. Wonka. In her hands is an ornate glass jewelry box. She whispers urgently in Mr. Wonka's ear.

"Oh dear, the whole batch? Yes, perhaps we are heating it too quickly. Mmm. What's the salt source this round? The sea breeze at dawn, mm-hmm, yes. Which batch number? Really? Why didn't you get here sooner? Oh, for heaven's sake; I didn't realise. I'll repair it this week if it's such a priority. No, of course. Thank you."

He opens the glittery glass case and eyes its contents morosely.

Kevin attempts to shoulder-surf unobtrusively. He's short enough that it ends up being more of an elbow-surf, but he's very quiet and stealthy about it.

An array of eight rose-colored chocolates in an elegant keycap wedge shape, stamped with the famous Wonka W and flecked with gold and glittering salt, is what Mr. Wonka would like to have seen.

These, however, are a haggard bunch. They're dusty-looking and cracked. Some have split, gently oozing their honey-colored interior.

He is initially lost in thought about this and muttering to himself. However, some combination of showmanship and a lingering obsession with espionage reminds him that Kevin exists. He twirls in place, fixes Kevin with a dazzling grin, and cries "Where are my manners? Of course you'll want to know all about these."

"Uh-huh. Did they dry out or something?"

"Yes, actually, I suspect so! They've got a nasty temper; I'd watch out if I were you." Mr. Wonka's eyes twinkle.

"Still, I am so proud of them. The Bon-bon Voyage—an end to boring, wasted Sunday afternoons for children everywhere. Sitting around hoping for something to do? Eat just one, and you're bound to discover a marvelous adventure full of friends, and heroism, and danger!"

He considers the glass case thoughtfully. "This batch is nowhere near up to snuff—I insist on the highest standards for my chocolates— but looks aside, I admit they're probably acceptable to eat if you'd care to try one. It's quite the experience."

He's not gonna turn down chocolate just 'cuz it looks weird! "Thank you!" Nomf.

"Wai, wha was tha abou dayger?" he adds around the mouthful of chocolate.

From the moment the taste of chocolate and decadent caramel hits your tongue, flared with an unexpected, invigorating burst of sea breeze, you feel the world calling to you. The colors around you seem suddenly richer, the smells brighter, everyday objects gleaming with useful application, crowds of possibilities unfolding like flowers after rain:

"I could just—"
"I always wanted to—"
"Wouldn't it be fun to—"
"At last, it's time to—"
"What if I—"

It is potential and camaraderie and bravery and fun. It tastes, simply put, like the concentrated essence of a fine day dawning.

A shimmering glowy feeling settles into your stomach and begins to build outward. In moments, you feel as if its power could shoot out of the tips of your fingers and toes. The lines of fate are drawing taut—something marvelous is bound to happen. A jubilee. A wish. A miracle.

And yet...it doesn't! Despite the initially smooth mouthfeel, this particular batch is more than a little off—greasier and grittier than one would like. The glowy, shimmery feeling fizzles quite unexpectedly, dropping the world out of its technicolor splendor and leaving behind a foul aftertaste like pickled boot leather, jet lag, and a hint of coconut.

Mr. Wonka, confectioner extraordinaire, having managed to swallow his own Bon-bon Voyage, does a fairly convincing imitation of a person who is not Suffering.

"I liked the lollipop better."

"So it goes. Negative results—hngh, pardon me—are bricks in the cathedral of knowledge." he explains hoarsely. "Great building material, but you'd hate to have one dropped on you."

He shuts the glass case with conviction.

Kevin giggles. "What're you going to change in the next batch?"

Failure nonwithstanding, Mr. Wonka now has a rather pleased smile. "Well, I had better see to it anyways before the next batch goes out. If you're interested, I'll show you exactly what I'll do. Follow me then, quickly please!"

And with a burst of renewed enthusiasm, he zips out of the room.

Kevin runs after him, and does a pretty good job of keeping up despite his disadvantage in the leg-length department.

Mr. Wonka hurries down the corridor. Left, right, right, left again.
Every twenty paces along the wall are fine, neatly labeled doors like these:

Dread Nougat — Frighten Your Enemies
Mulliganeer's Gum—Replace your family's vile supper
Gender Snaps — Impress and Amaze Your Friends
Esper Candy — Sweets that Know What You're Thinking

"So, the next batch! It's stultifyingly simple to make good chocolate by hand." he calls over his shoulder. "You could make Bon-bons Voyage in your own kitchen if you had a mind to! And would your chocolate be mixed by waterfall? Would you have the freshest sprigs of wondermint plucked from a scenic mountain peak? No! But with good ingredients and a watchful eye on the temperature, it would be fine chocolate. The trouble is scale! I make an enormous amount of chocolate in this factory. An eye-watering amount. The Oompa-Loompas are terrifically clever and hard workers, but I've got to make machines that can do what I do a thousand times faster. A million times faster. And machines can be temperamental temperers. They need to be tuned to do the job exactly right, with ingredients to match, and therein lies the problem. Oh, dear, we really are running terribly behind."

Perhaps...

He glances backward. Is Kevin following? That is, not just on foot, but on mind? Does he appreciate the grandeur of what this factory can do? There are ways of making up for lost time and giving an extraordinary tour besides, but Mr. Wonka needs to be sure that it's worth it.

"A million times faster? That's so many! You should put secret passages in here so you can get places in a hurry."

Kevin is:

- totally unaware that he's being evaluated

- having a great time 

- eagerly anticipating an engineering info dump

- very into the whole concept of machinery and especially Huge machinery 

- definitely also hoping for more candy to become available 

- not out of breath yet

Oh, yes, there will be more candy, and types of candy, and marvelous explanations about candy, than Kevin has ever dreamed of.

"Secret passages?" Mr. Wonka stops, his expression thoughtful. Mischievous, even.

"You know, I really shouldn't suggest this. It's not at all showroom ready. And I'm certain the Oompa-Loompas would be very annoyed with me. But it also happens to be the finest and most efficient method of transport ever devised. Oh but do I really dare? We are later than a white rabbit losing a footrace to the Red Queen's own tortoise. And there are simply so many wonderful things to see and do. Hmmm."

"I wanna see it! I won't tell anyone." Secret passage secret passage through the mountains secret secret secret secret passage Avatar hasn't come out yet and Kevin can't make that reference.

He presses an innocuous square of corridor wall, which slides away to reveal a strange arrangement indeed. The biggest part by far is an enormous gold-framed floor-to-ceiling mirror. Inset into the wall next to it is a slot, perhaps for some kind of access card. Next to that is a toaster-sized oven compartment so full of roiling flames that any contents are completely obscured.

Mr. Wonka, noting his reflection in the enormous mirror, takes a moment to adjust his bowtie. "Now where did I put my key?"

Emblazoned in bright red letters above the oven are the words

IN CASE OF FIRE. USE FIRE ESCARP.

"Ah, right. The case of fire." Mr. Wonka snaps his fingers. He opens the oven—there is a blast of heat— fishes around inside with one grey-gloved hand, and retrieves a seemingly unharmed bar of solid chocolate, which he proceeds to bite the end off of before sliding it into the slot. "Through the looking glass at last!" he crows.

The mirror recedes into the floor, revealing a startlingly white passageway beyond. "Mind you, there's a bit of a jump down the fire escarp. After you, Kevin, my dear boy."

Kevin doesn't speak that language and is about to ask what that meant but then SECRET DOOR. And a fire! And--

"Are you immune to fire? I wanna learn how to be immune to fire! And why's it called an escarp, I don't see any fish." But he steps down into the corridor as directed.

"It's all in the gloves, actually. I insist on being fireproof at all times." Mr. Wonka says, hopping down after him.

This brilliantly white corridor is much narrower and more bare than the grand thoroughfares of the factory. Mr. Wonka leads them down several tricky and twisty passages, across a catwalk spanning a vat of fragrant bubblegum-pink slime, and down a cramped metal stairwell.

Finally, they veer into a cordoned-off side passage which is garlanded with bumblebee-striped streamers and bedecked with cheerful neon-yellow signs and furnished with attractive traffic barriers every few paces. Mr. Wonka gleefully steps around these without breaking speed.

Kevin gets distracted by the vat of pink slime but drags himself away and keeps going. Does he have time to read the signs? It's not that he's going to heed the warnings or anything; he just wants to know what they're warning against.

The signs convey no useful information, just increasingly impolite kibbitzing about their current plan of action.

TRANSPORT OUT OF SERVICE

NO ENTRANCE

DEAD END

WRONG WAY

EMPLOYEES ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT

ABSOLUTELY NO ONE BEYOND THIS POINT

CONDEMNED (THIS MEANS YOU)

WOE BETIDE YE WHO TRESPASS HERE

HAVE IT YOUR WAY THEN

WONKA NO

And sure enough, there it sits in the lobby at the end of the corridor, its glass doors stuck ominously in the open position. Its every surface is covered in gleaming push-buttons—not just all the walls, but the floor and ceiling as well. And there's one final blazing yellow sign, this one alleging that this beautiful, miraculous machine is "OUT OF ORDER".

As a consequence of Mr Wonka's extraordinary genius, he had never met a system so complex that he couldn't hold every part of it in his brain at once. Naturally, this meant that every large system he built himself tended to mean absolute hopscotching gibberish to anyone else, because he simply had zero survival instinct for simplicity.

The Great Glass Elevator had been temperamental ever since Mr. Wonka's project to make it show up before you pushed the button to call it, and to bring you to your destination earlier than you had even left. This had been back in March, and after several Oompa-Loompas had gotten horribly lost somewhere in mid February, they had declared it entirely unsuitable. Mr. Wonka, however, found it "a perfectly expedient, if headstrong, mode of conveyance" and thought nothing more about it.

He had assumed the Oompa-Loompas would tinker with it if it bothered them. But what he hadn't appreciated until that very morning is that the Oompa-Loompas were entirely incapable of remediating the frankly perverse and arcane engineering abuses he had visited upon the machine in order to contort it into its current mode of functioning. They lacked his head for systems or, what is more likely, his diabolical willingness to commit any heinous kludge whatsoever to bend the machine to his will.

Anyways, the point is it was an ingenious, shiny death trap. Like so much else in the factory. And, as Mr. Wonka would have it, like most fun things that are worth trying.

"If it's OUT of order," Mr. Wonka is just now explaining, "we'll just have to top it off with some more order." And he pulls open a chamber in the side of the lift. "Let me see..."

He nimbly searches his various pockets. No to the rubber fried egg and the snake-in-a-can. Yes to the (unshuffled) deck of playing cards, which he tosses into the chamber.

Ooh, a squashy cellophane bag of toffees. "My delectable dialect-ical tongue-toffees! Fluently understand and speak any language whatsoever! It'd change the world tomorrow if only I knew how to manage the strix visitations. Nonetheless!" And he places them back carefully into his coat pocket.

In goes a shiny medal award with a crown on it. In goes a handwritten signed receipt for 800 tonnes each of jelly beans, jumping beans, and has-beans. Finally, he bellows into the chute, "GENTLEMEN, READY. AIM. FIRE."

With that, orders have been restored. It is time to leave. Will Kevin be coming along? He can have the honour of pressing the shiny black button labelled Bon-Bon Voyage, which is down there at around knee height for him.

This is absolutely mcfreaking bonkers but at least the buttons in the floor are recessed so he can walk into the elevator without pushing six of them.

You bet he's coming along! Button Poke!

As anyone who has operated a defective telephone-charging cable knows, jiggling a faulty circuit can sometimes make it work again. You sit there bending and fiddling, and suddenly—the spark of life!

Magic, it turns out, works on much the same principle.

So Kevin pokes the button for Bon-bon Voyage, the pokèd button closes a tiny loop, and some unseen force jiggles into alignment. Suddenly the world bursts, once again, into technicolor glory. Stepping out beyond one's gate with boots on — soaring to a place out of time — the sights and smells of distant shores.

The threads of fate, which as you know have been hanging slack around the Elevator's occupants all the while, snap taut and begin to tighten. And tighten! And tighten still further! There is a vague ontological creaking as reality distends to the very limits of imagination—like taffy pulled apart until it is ready to snap. Something has got to give!

Something does!

*WONK!*

There is nothing 

And then there is everything 

And then there is sunlight streaming into the unshafted elevator, and the sound of birds chirping and the wind in the trees.

"Is this part of the factory? It doesn't look like part of the factory."

Mr. Wonka's face turns alertly every which way. "Any fool could tell you that it must be, logically speaking." he says thoughtfully. "However, being rather well-travelled and also not a fool, I suspect we are actually somewhere subtropical— perhaps Alpharetta, Lemuria, or Argentina."

He releases the elevator doors and dashes out. He simply must have a look around.

They're just off to one side of a little trail running through the woods. It's clearly an old-growth forest; many of the trees (mostly deciduous-looking, with rough bark and broad diamond-shaped leaves) are too big for even Wonka to get his arms around. The ground is underbrush over fallen leaves over thick dark topsoil. It smells like damp moss and the slow passage of time.

What a neat place! Kevin starts trying to climb a tree.

Mr. Wonka, on the other hand, begins examining the local flora at ground level—crouching down to look, gently inspecting leaves and flowers, moss and stems. His botanist senses are tingling—rich soil suggests biodiversity which suggests potential sources of new ingredients. Also perhaps a clue to their current whereabouts.

Does he know this place? Will he see anything he recognizes—or better yet, doesn't? He has a feeling that Kevin will be interested in his findings in either case.

Some of the plants are familiar; some are decidedly not! There's bamboo; that might be an unusually tall and skinny Japanese maple. There are mosses with blue-tinged tendrils and shrubs with heptagonal leaves and a creeping vine that zigzags back and forth up a tree trunk at oddly sharp and regular angles.

The tree Kevin is climbing contains a weird bug! It's bigger than his head!

"Woah!"

It's as surprised to see him has he is to see it! It says "Parasparasparas!" and snaps its claws at him.

Kevin absconds (downward, at about 9.2 meters per second squared minus air resistance) and lands on his butt. "There are ENORMOUS bugs here!"

Enormous bugs, you say? An island effect, perhaps. Or even…well, Mr. Wonka would like to judge the size of the bug himself.

So he'll stop trying to rank which of these lovely exotic plants he wants to sample a small and ideally non-lethal amount of first, and instead try to see if he can spot this bug. That is, if it hasn't flown off somewhere.

It skitters around the tree trunk and comes into view of Wonka, eyeing them both curiously with its giant bug eyes. "Par?"

Oh, it's…beautiful? That shiny segmented form, the gently working mandibles, and of course those enormous limpid eyes.

It also, yes, immediately makes his personal list of largest (?)bugs.

Although he is quite keen to inspect it more closely, those pincers do look a little businesslike. So he will perhaps use a stick to gently evaluate the creature's current disposition and level of interest in interspecies diplomacy.

Now that it's no longer surprising him in a tree, it's a really neat bug! Buzz would be so jealous. 

It pinches the stick. The stick breaks.

"What does a bug that big even eat? Smaller bugs? Plants?"

"An excellent ecological question!" Mr. Wonka whispers excitedly. "There's a chance we've found the creature's midafternoon lunch spot and can see for ourselves—if we have the patience to look! Look closely—do you notice any signs of nibbling on the bark of this tree, or the roots, or the leaves? Is the creature interested in any littler bugs nearby?"

There is, now that one mentions it, a strange lack of smaller bugs. There are, however, several nibbled-on mushrooms of a similar appearance to the mushrooms attached to the critter's back. 

"Maybe it eats these. Or, attaches them? To itself? Look, here's a gap where one's been pulled out." Better it than him, mushrooms are GROSS and should NOT go in food especially pizza.

(mushrooms are the tastiest and best actually)

"Hmm! I see. Then perhaps we can tempt it..."

And Mr. Wonka, moving very carefully, twists a single mushroom from the loamy earth and holds it out to the strange bug for inspection.

It chitters thoughtfully, then snatches the mushroom in a blur of dextrous claws and scuttlescuttles up the tree and out of sight to inspect its prize in privacy.

"I bet if I put all the mushrooms around here in a pile it'd come check out the pile eventually." It'd be kind of cool to catch it but 1) he doesn't have any containers and digging a pit trap it couldn't just climb out of sounds tedious, and 2) he's on an alien planet and can't show it off to Buzz and gloat, so he'd just let it go again immediately anyway.

"It just might!" And then he'd be able to observe the creature more closely— how he adores beautifully made things, and nature frequently offers such such tip-top examples. "Borrow my pocketknife, if you'd like."

The pocketknife's handle is elegant purple nacre, emblazoned with WW.

"Meanwhile, I had better poke around to see what other dangers and delights this forest has to offer. I shan't go far."

The species of mushroom under the tree is not a species he's quite confident he can identify, and what with mushrooms being such tempestuous little vegetables, it is best not to treat with them if one has other options. On the other hand, he hopes to find some edible plants he can positively identify, in case they get peckish on their outing. And running water, in case they need to set up a double-boiler or what-have-you. And perhaps a broader picture of the local terrain and wildlife— he does not want to get caught unawares by another slavering whangdoodle. Not after what happened last time.

There are a few fruit-bearing trees around here, with the most unambiguously edible being nearly indistinguishable from an apple tree. There's the sound of a creek out of sight and below them, off that way. 

Oh sweet, a knife! Kevin sets about assembling a mushroom-pile.

Unless he's much mistaken, he has found some sort of apple tree! The fruit looks small, tender, and rosy-pale. And if the fragrance of fallen fruit is anything to go by, rather flavorful. He picks one off the branch, weighs it in hand, inspects the coloring, inhales its scent, and takes a cautious bite.

Ooh, good crunch. And what a unique flavor. Almost like a dry sherry—human cultivar? Light sweetness—but enough to use as a sugar source in a pinch. Malic acid—sour candies, fruit pies though perhaps the texture is too tender to hold up. Bark, leaves, roots, flowers, teas—pollinators? Compotes, jams, herbs, vinegar. Punch up the floral notes, honey(?), maple, roses, orchids—vanilla(?). Cider, mulling, cinnamon, cardamon, nuts. Pâte de fruit, ropes, chewing gum, fizzing sodas, cereals, tarts, slicing, grating, reducing, frying, browning, pickling, freezing, syrups, glazing, hmm. Take it another direction—frothing, charring, spritzing, antifreeze, piquancy, could you wed it to chocolate, coffee, tannins, bitters. Shipping overseas, harvesting, humidity, soil acidity, grafting, yield per acre, greenhouse eight. Hmm hmm hmm.

The Paras notices Kevin's antics, scuttles back down the tree, and attempts to mug him for the mushroom pile with intimidating claw-snaps.

Kevin points the knife at it, not because he wants to stab the little (unreasonably large) guy so much as to prevent it from getting any ideas about jumping onto his face.

The unreasonably large little guy . . . bounces up and down in obvious excitement like a dog expecting a game of fetch, and grabs at the knife.

"Hey!" That's his Wonka's knife! He jerks it away and then waves it at the bug in a go-away sort of fashion.

Wheeeee, knife fight! Enthusiastic flynning ensues.

Kevin doesn't have any experience with the activity "knife fights with giant bugs" and definitely wasn't expecting it to be this much fun. Stab stab stab, aiming to miss because he doesn't want to actually skewer it.

It's fast enough that some of his misses accidentally connect, but it also has a smooth and sturdy carapace; his hits glance off with barely a scratch left for evidence.

Well in that case, stab stabbity stab! He overextends, gets pinched on the wrist hard enough to bruise, and switches hands.

"Para par!" says the bug, and it so obviously means "Ha, I got you good there didn't I!" But also its grabs are slowing down as it starts to get tired.

Mr. Wonka is having Apple Thoughts right now—the nearby knife fight between a colossal insect and a small child has entirely escaped his attention.

He has swept off his elegant top hat to use as a makeshift picnic basket, and while gleefully filling it with fruit, has begun to form strong opinions about how to judge which of these specimens are likely to be best. There is something so splendid about discovering an unknown apple varietal— a piece of vernacular history, a hidden jewel in the ecological web. If these are as non-toxic as he expects, their unique flavor could be the foundation for countless new experiments.

Kevin notices the bug getting tired and then notices he's getting tired himself. He gets a couple more scratches in, takes another himself and switches back to his good right hand, lets the tempo of the sparring slow a bit and then a bit more.

Neither of them is really in control of things at this point; they're both being purely reactive, carried along by momentum and each other's enthusiasm, like a pair of dancers who can't imagine stopping mid-song.

Stab, stab, dodge, stab, he's been on his knees this whole time and putting his entire body into it and he's definitely going to be feeling it tomorrow.  . . . stab.

And eventually the bug backs up a few steps and flops to the ground, exhausted. "Parasssss."

And Kevin immediately flops onto his back with a hysterical giggle. "Hi Paras. I'm Kevin." He pries his fingers off the knife with his other hand and rubs the sensation back into it.

Mr. Wonka skips and hops back at their landing site with a hatful of the choicest fruit in his arms, whereupon he is greeted by the sight of a pair of scuffed, bruised, and battered combatants lying winded and giddy on the wet and leaf-strewn ground. Apparently, the boy Kevin and the strange colossal (intelligent??) bug engaged in a duel (??) in the brief interval he was away and have now become friends (??) as a result.

"Ah, what an unexpected and dare I say scientifically fascinating development! Specifically, I am delighted to report that I found apple trees nearby! Quite likely to be a previously-unknown varietal, to boot!"

Kevin extends a weary thumbs-up Wonkaward. "Congrats! I, uh. Paras likes to fight. He's Paras because he calls himself that."

"Paras."

He crouches down closer to bug height. Good heavens, the way the little plated segments fit together perfectly like armor. And are those mushrooms growing in its back, he wonders?

"Oh, I am absolutely charmed! Delighted! Honoured! I call myself Willy Wonka. What a surprising creature you are—and redoubtable duelists both, it would seem."

The Paras selects a particularly large and healthy-looking specimen from the mushroom pile, then climbs onto Kevin's leg and starts eating it (the mushroom, not the leg).

Kevin giggles. "I'm a bench. So do you have any idea how to get back to the factory or do we just live here now?"

"Not a clue, dear boy!" he says happily. "We're on a proper adventure, myself included. I told you my Bon-Bons Voyage were something, didn't I!"

He frowns. "Now I suppose I could invent a sweet that puts us back safe and sound in our own boring beds, certainly I could, but what would be the use of that? It's a dreadful way to live—and a terrible thing to do to a confection in any case. No, I think for the moment we find ourselves in the thick of life, and we should do all we can with it. We'll find our way in time."

You know what Kevin doesn't see any of around here? School. No homework either, unless it's hiding in the trees.

"I'm definitely having fun so far! You're not gonna miss all your machines and stuff?"

"They are marvelous machines! But the factory is, in the end, an extension of my own mind, which I've still got, and most importantly, there is so much more for me to do and see here than there.

Actually, I've been meaning to go on holiday for some time now. Charlie Bucket deserves a chance to helm the factory on his own, and the Oompa-Loompas can take care of—"

He closes his eyes in sudden exasperation.

Mayday! Mayday! And S.O.S.!
We find ourselves in some distress!
The boss has had an accident,
and we're quite puzzled where he went!

Perhaps he's in a better place,
like Panama or outer space,
or fallen far enough to see
the backrooms of reality?

Or maybe not! He may be dead.
We'll have to manage in his stead.
And what a shame for such a gent
to perish in an incident
forewarned by signs so bright and wide
a fish could read them if it tried!

For all he loved to ogle books,
he never spared such longing looks
for Rules—perhaps their prose lacked wit;
Perhaps he was a hypocrite
who thought as boss he was exempt,
and viewed such guidelines with contempt?

With due respect (we'll say it nice)
We have some pertinent advice:
You cannot be too high to fall!
The posted signs include us all!
So if you see them, don't be daft—
Avoid the elevator shaft!

Mr. Wonka will try his best not to imagine it.

"Er...and the Oompa-Loompas can take care of the rest. They're terrifically efficient. Not to mention inventive."

Kevin was the first person in his tour group to succumb to shenanigans and remains blissfully unaware of the Oompa Loompa Greek Chorus. 

"I wonder where we are. Do you think we could be in the Amazon? I've heard there's giant bugs there. But it's not wet enough."

"Oho, now that's an interesting riddle, isn't it? I have, at this point, only the vaguest speculation. Somewhere in the subtropics seems likely. Perhaps an island—as you may already know, what with the ecological vacancies, island species often become larger (or smaller) than their mainland cousins ordinarily find tractable.

But I sense deeper mysteries afoot here—for one thing, that insects are not normally so...playfully intelligent. I'm curious what you make of that. I have some half-baked theories, of course, but I shall be keeping them private for a little while longer. If we're lucky, perhaps our situation will become easier to see after dark, hm?" Twinkling smile.

"Do you think we're in outer space?!"

"That would be the coolest thing ever."

"I'm so glad you think so." Approving chuckle. "It wouldn't explain why there are apparently apples and bamboo here—or, for that matter, us—but it would certainly be a start. And it would add a real touch of intrepid wilderness to our outing, I'd say."

"It sure would." Kevin looks down at the Paras, which climbed off him when he stood up and is now perched decadently atop the mushroom pile. "Are you a space alien?"

"Par par?"

"It's too bad we don't have saws and stuff so we could build a treehouse. I guess we can sleep in the elevator."

"Well, if the long view of history teaches us anything about human nature, it is that we are born without hammers, and that this absence is invariably highly temporary. But in the meantime: yes! My lovely glass Elevator will be a safe and starry place to lay our heads."

Tender sidelong glance at the Elevator, shot through with dappled light.

Kevin gets distracted mulling over what order things must have been invented in. He knows some things from school about what technology the native Americans had, but not what order they got any of it in. There was something called a stone age that was a really long time ago, but doing anything with stone seems like it would require more tools than doing anything with wood . . . 

A small leafy plant a meter or so away from them wiggles and shifts at no apparent provocation.

How odd. But Mr. Wonka is mulling over a great many other extraordinary things that have happened that day, and it does not obtrude on his train of thought. He selects one of the small rosy fruits from his upturned hat and takes a contemplative bite.

"Would you care for a bite of apple?" He proffers a second apple from the hat. "It certainly seems edible, though of course it can take time to learn which plants are dangerous, and sometimes they do surprise you."

"I'll risk it. They look tasty." Nomf.

The plant wiggles again, then pops out of the ground to reveal that it has a little face with beady read eyes. It yells "Oddoddodd!" then bounds over towards Kevin and bites his ankle.

"Ow ow ow!" Kevin attempts to kick the thing off but it's grabbed on pretty hard and seems to be . . . sucking on him?

NO that's MY human! Not yours!

The plant critter gets pinched off and flung.

Oh it is ON.

How extraordinary—a plant with a taste for pugilism! He hasn't seen anything quite like that since Calcutta.

Brief gleeful glance at the boy Kevin. Any injury a stiff butter gin wouldn't solve, by the way?

Just bruised and slightly dizzy; he's sitting down rubbing his ankle and watching the pugilism.

The plant puffs out a cloud of spores that get in the Paras's face and impede its movement somehow; Paras stumbles.

"Go Paras! Kick that plant's butt!"

Paras seems to take this encouragement to heart and wrestles the plant-creature more aggressively.

"Hey, now! Queensberry rules! No low blows!"

But how curious it is to see these fantastical creatures having at it! In the wild, many species often politely ignore one another unless they are conspecifics or engaged in predator-prey negotiations. Even then, out-and-out brawling is a costly method of last resort.

Why do they fight so readily? Is the insect—Paras— being protective of its new ward? And does this beady-eyed ambusher truly have the vegetable nature, or is it merely a skilled mimic like a stick insect or an oat-and-raisin biscuit?

No rules only clawing!

And biting!

And whacking!

Aaaaaaand running away. It darts off into the underbrush.

Kevin does his best wrestling announcer voice. "The winnah, and still champeen!"

Aw yeah who's the best I'm the best

Paras waves its claws triumphantly.

He claps vigorously. "Such panache! Such ripostes! Oh, well fought, indeed!"

And—he can't help but notice—a fairly rapid recovery from the spores' intoxicating effect! Sharply peaked, like horseradish. Hmmm. Well, in his experience, most biological neurotoxins are too heat-sensitive for sweets anyways, even if they'd survive the digestive tract. But if he sprinkled the spores on some sort of pastry, an ataxia beignet, perhaps—he will file the idea away for later.

Instead, Mr. Wonka will crouch down and experimentally try petting Paras's chitinous head. How's that?

Paras scoots back a step, claws raised.

"Aww, don't worry. Wonka's nice."

Suspicious squint but the claws do come down.

Ah, well, what's a few fingers risked among friends?

Pat .... pat?

Gentle friendly fingerpinch.

... remarkable.

"And you know, I do believe Paras understands you!" he whispers excitedly. He is whispering because terrifically important moments like these are easily frightened off by noise!

"Hey Paras, click twice if you're a space alien!"

"Para par?"

"I guess if this isn't Earth that makes us the space aliens."

"So it does! But I believe you're onto something."

Hmm, fundamentals...
"Paras, can you understand me? Clack twice if you can."

. . . Click clack.

In-teresting.

"Oh, well done, thank you! And could you oblige me with three? Now three clacks if you understand me, please?"

Click click clack. Click.

"I'm not sure I caught that, actually. I meant to ask for three clacks, please—"

Gloves off for the moment.

"—like this?" Clap, clap, clap. Three deliberate little claps by way of demonstration.

Click click click!

"Good!" And surprisingly co-operative for what is ostensibly a wild animal. A humble bug, even.

He'll toss Paras a bit of mushroom as a reward, although he wishes he had a more inspiring treat—ah, for good measure, he'll bite off a bit of apple and experimentally toss that over as well.

The mushroom is more exciting but the apple does also get examined and then munched.

"You're a smart little critter, Paras."

"And how are you at patterns?"

Clap-clap. Clap. Clap-clap-clap.