Liam was surrounded by darkness and falling, or maybe more accurately sliding? It was hard to tell, but he was headed somewhere. A distant beacon of light was quickly expanding and before Liam could try to slow down or do anything, he was ejected onto something soft. As he hit whatever broke his fall, a buzzer went off and a panicked Liam quickly scrambled to orient himself and get to his feet.
He only had a few seconds before a cheery, tiny, pointy eared creature, half his size, clad in festive colors which Liam could only consider a Christmas elf, came along and asked him for his name and age. "Liam Turner, age 10." Liam said as the elf entered the information into a gizmo.
"Hmm, our records as of midday yesterday show you're only 93% naughty, we will need a reevaluation. Please follow me."
"Where am I? How did I get here? I want to go home!" Liam cried out, but sensing no direct danger from the elf before him, took a second to look around, he had landed in a pile of Christmas themed pillows. everything was brightly colored and Christmas or candy themed, other elves were all around, working on various machines or moving about. "What is this place?"
The elf had already begun walking, "Oh yes, sorry. It's been a busy night. You can call me Freddy, keep up. Welcome to the Christmas Magic Generation Facility. Here, we create and send Christmas magic to all the places in the north pole that need it, all to ensure that Christmas happens each year."
The pair passed another elf and human pair going the opposite direction, the human was a clothed man, wearing dress pants and a dress shirt. He had a dazed look on his face, "I don't understand what's going on, did something happen to me? I don't feel right." He caught a glimpse of Liam and looked horrified, "Something's really wrong here. Why am I so much taller than him?" The elf woman leading him quickly turned and blasted him in the face with a powder saying, "Sir, you half to calm down." when his eyes opened they were vacant and calm. A bemused smile crossed his face, "Sir, nobody calls me that, Sir is what they call my... uh... someone ... an adult." By now Liam was looking back to watch the strange man, the elf replied, "Yes, now follow me."
"What was that guy's deal?" Liam asked growing concerned. "Not to worry, he will be 100% by tomorrow. They were headed to the Education Center and after that he will be sent home." They went into what looked like an office labeled "Determination Center" and Freddy spoke to another elf who was working on a computer. "Hey, we got an unscheduled in receiving marked as a 93, I need a determination done to move forward with processing. Can you help me out?" Freddie handed over the gizmo he had entered Liam's data into.
Liam had almost forgotten he was naked until the female elf grabbed Freddy's gizmo, plugged it into a device off the table and walked up to him. The elf pointed the device at Liam and scanned his whole body, a few seconds later commenting, "118%, wow, the big guy is on the top of his game. This was all in the last 12 hours!"
"As always." Freddy said with a chuckle. "Any way you can start the assignment process?"
"Gimme three stirs of the hot cocoa."
"Thanks Andrea, you're great!"
"Ain't I though?" She asked with a smirk. "Yer all good to proceed. The file is locked and loaded!"
"Alright Liam, Next stop!"
"No! This is weird, I'm tired, and I want to go home! This place is fun looking and all but Santa kidnapped me and stole my pajamas! If you take me back now, I won't tell my parents on you."
Freddy turned to Liam looking irritated, which you hardly ever see on a Christmas elf. "You don't get it do you?" He rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh, "Of course not, you're just a human kid. Alright, alright. I'll show you how it works and explain everything to you but we are on a tight schedule and have to hurry."
"Freddy, are you sure?" Andrea asked, knowing the rules of the fey kept all their kind from being able to fib.
"Something tells me Liam here is different, I think he'll be excited for the opportunity." Freddy eyed Liam up and down with a smirk. "But if you want me to explain it you have to move quickly, keep questions to a minimum, behave, and do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it, while you're here, do you agree?"
"Yeah" Liam replied unaware he just made a deal with a fey creature.
"I'm holding you to that." Freddy gave Andrea a wink. "Now come with me."
Freddy began moving quickly and Liam instinctually followed. "Now you may think Christmas magic is a thing in and of itself but really its a culmination of other magics carefully blended into its most potent form. Its main ingredients are unconditional love, hope, ambition, determination, and innocence. As you can see, the right mix of those things in the right places could change the world, and that's exactly what we do. We make this stuff and give a little bit of all those things out to everyone. Here's the mixing vats." Liam looked through a window at giant steel drums painted as a winter wonderland.
"Now all that magic can be used for nice things, or naughty things and we work hard to make it nice things because the world is better that way. You might be wondering where all the magic comes from, and the answer is naughty children. Mothers imbue their children with love in the womb, and children are full of hope, ambition, determination, and innocence unless we let them grow up into naughty, selfish adults. So we don't." Liam was alarmed and confused but couldn't seem to get the words out or stop following Freddy as he continued.
"All the magic dumped into those naughty kids gets extracted and redistributed into good things. You were a naughty kid Liam, that is why you're here. You were so naughty that being around others made them worse, that's what your score of 118 meant." Liam tried to scream, and run, and fight, but he couldn't misbehave per the terms of his deal.
"So when Santa caught you being naughty, you were erased from your family's memories, right now, you're just a kid nobody knows, but we won't leave you that way, because that would be mean, being mean is naughty, add we like being nice."
"The extraction of your innocence specifically turns children into young adults. We use some of the magic to recreate a space in the world for you... A simple job, a place to live, basic knowledge, and then you are set free, no longer naughty. You see, without ambition, hope, or determination you won't want to do anything that would be considered mean, because you won't have goals or passion, so you can't be selfish. Don't worry, you won't remember any of this or your former life. Please step inside the extractor." Liam couldn't resist the command.
"With any luck, you may have children of your own in a few years, and hopefully they will be nice, but if not, well, you won't remember them either. See you soon."