OUTSIDE THE MAIN factory building, Mr Butter and Mr Kerr ushered Rose and Gus into the back seat of a golf cart.
“Now we are off!” Mr Butter shouted. “To the place where the magic happens!”
“Magic?” Rose repeated. Were there kitchen magicians here? No, that couldn’t be … could it?
“A figure of speech,” Mr Butter said. “I’m speaking, of course, of the magic of industry!”
“Oh,” Rose said, breathing a sigh of relief.
From her backpack, the cat whispered, “Spare me, please.”
Mr Kerr drove the cart past dozens of box-shaped warehouses, all painted a lifeless grey. Rose looked up the alleyways between the warehouses and all she could see were other warehouses, as if she’d entered a labyrinth of grey blocks from which there was no escape. The buildings were so tall and so close together that even the late-afternoon sun failed to penetrate to the ground below, and the streets of the Mostess Snack Cake Corporation were dark as night.
The sun would be setting in an hour or so, and she knew that her parents would have officially started worrying that she hadn’t returned. She considered hopping off the cart and making a run for it, but in which direction? The buildings seemed to go on forever.
“How many buildings are there?” Rose asked, trying to seem casual.
“More than one hundred and seventy-five units in this compound alone,” Mr Butter answered proudly. “Then there’s our other production facility in Canada. That one has only one hundred and twenty-five buildings.”
After what seemed like a long drive, Mr Kerr stopped the cart in front of a grey warehouse with a giant 67 painted on the side. He pulled a walkie-talkie from his suit jacket pocket and spoke softly into it. “Marge, FLCPC landing, over.”
Suddenly, a part of the warehouse wall lifted into the roof, like an automated garage door, and Mr Kerr drove the cart through the opening. The door closed behind them, locking the golf cart into a pitch-black, air-conditioned box.
When the floor underneath started rumbling, Rose realized they were in an elevator. After a minute, the car emerged on the floor of a giant kitchen with rust-colored linoleum tiles on the floor, stainless steel prep tables, and a row of top-of-the-line ovens.
The perimeter of the room was lined with every conceivable kitchen appliance: restaurant-sized stand mixers, deep fryers, toasters and blenders, salamanders and broilers, stainless steel pots and pans, and a rack containing twenty spatulas of various sizes and colours.
Rose gasped. She didn’t like being brought here against her will, but she certainly didn’t mind the kitchen itself. It was almost perfect – the only thing missing was a secret pantry of magical blue mason jars like they had back home.
“Quite something, isn’t it?” Mr Butter asked. “This is our test kitchen.”
He snapped his fingers, and a row of men and women in white lab coats, aprons, and chef’s toques marched in from a small door at the far corner of the room labelled BAKERS’ QUARTERS. In perfect unison, the six bakers filed in behind the row of metal prep tables and stood at attention.
The six bakers were all nearly the same height – that is, on the shorter side, just about as tall as Rose herself. And they were all round. You might not notice it if you were just looking at one of the bakers, but seeing them all together in a row, it was clear they all were alike in one way: they were all overweight.
Also, they were smiling. Not like genuinely happy men and women, but more like people whose mouths were being stretched up at the sides by invisible fish hooks.
“Why are they so round?” Gus whispered, cradled in Rose’s arms. “They look as though they might roll away with just one push.”
“Shh,” she replied. “I don’t know.”
Mr Butter sauntered over to the prep tables and leaned in close. “A spot.” He smiled, pointing at the perfectly clean stainless steel surface. “Someone missed a spot.”
Then he snapped his fingers.
One of the bakers gasped, ran to the back wall, and grabbed a fresh towel and some spray. He hurried back to the table and scrubbed vigorously at the spot.
Mr Butter pulled a magnifying glass out of his pocket and peered at the tabletop. “Better,” he said. Then he stood straight again, cleared his throat theatrically, and addressed Rose. “These are our very best bakers, specialists in every facet of the creation of our great line of products. They now all answer to you, Rosemary Bliss.”
“Um, OK,” Rose said. The bakers’ eyes swivelled from Mr Butter to Rose. One on the end farthest away from her audibly gulped.
“And this is our Head Baker, Marge.”
The woman standing closest to Rose had round pink cheeks and short brown hair that peeked out from beneath her chef’s toque. Her lips were as plump as maraschino cherries, and her nose was as round as a tiny cupcake. The pockets of her apron bulged with paper and recipe cards.
“I’m Marge, and I’m in charge,” she said. “Let me introduce you to our specialists. This is Ning, he’s our Icing Tech.”
Ning, a gentleman with a black crew cut, pointy eyebrows, and a large mole above his lip, gave Rose a salute.
“This is Jasmine, our CTM – Cake Texture Modifier,” Marge said, moving down the line. Jasmine, a woman with two long black braids, nodded, and the wide grin plastered across her face grew even wider. “The texture of a cake is, as I’m certain you know, the most important thing.”
“Next we have Gene, our VP of Fillings, both marshmallowy and fruity.” Gene had a brown mustache and long, curly hair that he wore tied back in a hairnet.
“And down at the end there,” said Marge, “we’ve got the twins, Melanie and Felanie. Nut Chunk and Sprinkle Maestros, respectively.”
At the end of the line stood two young women with short blonde hair and freckles. They waved to Rose and smiled so widely that Rose could see their gums.
These people are smiling, thought Rose, out of fear. They were all terrified of Mr Butter, she realized.
“That’s it,” said Marge. “That’s the gang.”
“And this,” announced Mr Butter with a flourish of his bony, fishy-white hand, “is Miss Rosemary Bliss, your new FLCP Director.”
“She’s a lot younger than the last one,” said Marge, then rushed to add, “but worthy of our respect all the same!”
Rose furrowed her brow. “FLCP? What’s that? It sounds like the noise Gus makes when he gets a hairball.”
The bakers began to titter good-naturedly.
“FLCPs,” said Mr Butter, “are the things we bake. The products. Dinkies, King Things, all of them – they are all different types of FLCPs: Food-Like Consumer Products.”
“Food-like?” Rose repeated.
“Because of the mix of preservatives and chemicals we use in our delicious treats, the government has classified them as Not Food, but Food-Like.” Mr Butter shrugged as though he were talking about a minor embarrassment. He winked at Rose. “But you and I both know that the government makes mistakes all the time, don’t we?”
Rose thought about the wrongheaded law that had closed down the Follow Your Bliss Bakery and nodded. “We sure do.”
Marge