At this hour in the morning any staff member but the one he was looking for might not have been there, but Walters could sense that the man was dedicated enough to show up this early. Either that or he had been on call the night before, but in either situation that made the man readily available. He realized that he did not know the doctors name, but when he asked for the asshole at the front desk the nurse knew instantly who to call down. Two people were paged on the loudspeaker, and two people appeared in the lobby. Only one of them was the doctor that Walters was looking for, and he pointed him out. The doctor identified himself as Doctor Marcus Reedy, otherwise known as Mark Reedy, Dr. Reedy, or Mr. Dr., the “Mr.” which came from his initials M and R. Walters chuckled and told the other doctor that his services were not needed.

Before Dr. Reedy could intervene by asking “Why the hell are you here?” as a derogatory statement for people he did not wish to make eye contact with, Walters made his move – “I’m not crazy, and I can prove it with this.” He pulled his right hand out of his pocket and prominently displayed the pin – a bold move for a man who was determined insane by the doctor standing in front of him. Dr. Reedy laughed.

“Now, old man, it takes a lot to make me laugh. I mean that it takes somewhere in the realm of, say, an insane man declaring that he’s entirely sane based on the fact that he has a lapel pin. But don’t you worry; I’ll fix you up right quick with this.” He took out a pad and began writing on it with a click-top pen, then handed the paper to Walters. It was a prescription, apparently for a drug called “NO.”

“What is this supposed to be?” Walters asked.

“The answer to any and every question you were about to ask me.” He looked at Walters, who was staring back, almost perplexed. Here he had come in total seriousness, hoping to be able to ask for some information, and truly hoping to get some information, yet not receiving it. It was a marvel, though Walters, that the man was still able to work as a doctor. He clearly had no respect for his patients at all, and his only goal was the paycheck that came in at the end of each and every week. Walters was suddenly thrust back, once again, into the horrible reality of society, and more specifically the horrible reality of the Hospiten. It was not a wounded animal, hopeless and crying for help and attention, but a cleverly disguised trap hiding beneath its surface a dozen doctors with the inability to fraternize with their patients. Doctors, who held a position in society and today’s world, chose to do the one thing that was wrong and ignore the patient. And Walter knew exactly why.

It was not Dr. Reedy’s fault that he cared mostly for patients who weren’t sick. Most of his patients therefore did not care who their doctor was, because they were not actually being treated for anything. All the patients cared for was a quick procedure and an even quicker exit. Speed was Dr. Reedy’s business, and he did it well and proper, so there he stood trying to get Walters to exist the Hospiten the same way he shooed away all of his other patients after they had “deformed” themselves. He enjoyed it so much that he considered making it into its own profession, albeit that it probably would not have picked up the way he hoped it would.

Walters fought Dr. Reedy, and Reedy resisted, ultimately stating that Walters was crazy no matter how many lapel pins he could pull out of his pocket and, if by chance he could pull out some sort of tangible evidence, Reedy may as well mark him as insane just for trying to prove a point to such a stubborn man. When Walters became fed up and left the Hospiten, Reedy resumed his normal work around the building – checking machines, checking patients who were recovering, telling recovered patients to leave even though it was early in the morning. And it was here that Reedy saw something, or someone, which proved Walters correct. Walters was outside experiencing the exact same phenomenon for the second time.  There they were – on the pedestrian road, on the second floor of the Hospiten – robbing the area of its supplies and taking it to the same back alley. Nobody dropped a pin this time. In fact, they seemed so cautious of dropping anything that they carried no more than half the amount they had the time before. Walters had no way of knowing whether or not this was the same group, but the mass of humans all trotting around performing the same acts, looking nearly the same, or even exactly the same, was enough to convince Walters that they were the same. They were the same group. They were the same people. They were the same everything going to the same back alley once again to deposit the material into the same cylinders.

And that’s when Walters knew what they were doing.

They were gathering material for the cylinders. What Walters could not figure out was why they needed fresh material when they could have used anything, and literally anything, as matter for the device. They could have very well fed each other into it if they wanted to add mass onto their bodies. Stealing items had seemingly no purpose in the face of this shapeshifting device, or rather devices, for there were ones that would repair bones, whole arms, change legs, heads, fingers, chests, and so on. The only type of machine they were missing was a full-body shapeshifter, which they would never be able to wrap their constantly morphing fingers around. He saw them, one by one, changing themselves in order to reappear and not be suspicious. He saw them, one by one, assisting each other, and saw them, one by one again and again taking more items for the only purpose of continuing the cycle. One must have seen him, for they charged at him – he was gone in an instant.

There he was on the spire again, looking down upon his subjects, only this time his subjects were ambiguous – he could not tell whether they were men or women, human or monstrosity. He continued to watch them for whatever reason. They were his subjects, and he was ever so proud to have them there – so proud indeed, that he should command them all! But what were they? He couldn’t determine, because they were so far down below his spire, his throne, his highness, whose vision could not perceive that which was so incredibly far away. And he knew that he would never be able to determine what they were, and he knew that nobody else was able to either, otherwise he, atop the spire, would have surely known…

He awoke in the Hospiten, in the same bed he had been in before. He checked his pocket anxiously – the lapel pin was still there. There also, however, was Dr. Reedy, looming precariously above him like the hawk he was. Walters sat bolt upright while Reedy began talking.

“Listen, Greg, as hard as this is for me to do,” he choked on his words for a moment, “I need to tell you that I’m sorry.” Walters sat even straighter upward in awe – what was the occasion for such a surprising phrase? “I saw the thieves taking a box of medical supplies and, well, I’m a believer if you’ve still got that pin, because they sure as hell were wearing one of them.” That explained it, in simple terms enough, but Walters didn’t believe the story. Reedy must have been lying, he supposed, because no man such as Reedy was ever so easily convinced of something even when it was placed in front of their own eyes. “I’m willing to just let you go without a fight. This is a one-time offer, and it stands for the next ten seconds until I decide to turn the sanity light in my head out. Make the decision quick.” Walters, however, could not make the decision quick. This decision was what stood between the thieves and discovering what the pin meant to them. Winston paused in his mind for a split second yet again to consider what the pin was, and came to the conclusion that it really was just a pin, and nothing more. It could not possibly have been anything else but proof of their existence, and even that was disputed because of people like Dr. Reedy. If Walters had not grabbed it the pin would have been broken down to its very foundation and implanted as shapeshifting material into one of those gruesome subhumans.

“They weren’t wearing the pins,” said Walters. “They were carrying them, or just one. I wasn’t entirely sure; all I did was pick this one up.” Reedy looked at him, turned the other direction, and walked away. Walters took this as an informal sign of being discharged from the hospital, but just in case yelled across the room, “101, NGSR!” Unsure about whether or not Reedy had heard him, he gave a message to the nurse at the front desk, and walked through the glass doors back out into society. He felt different, however. Something about him was different; he couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, nor did he truly want to investigate what it was that was making him feel different. He knew that it would only bring him into more trouble, make him look more insane than he already did, and ultimately push him back against the wall of steel that was Dr. Reedy.