FERN:

So, hold on...where is this? What happened to me?

MARCY:

I'm afraid you were, er, "terminated" again, dear. Another dolphin incident.

FERN:

Ugggh. What the hell is their deal?! What even is a dolphin?!

MARCY:

Just what you've been told already, I'm afraid. Malicious creatures. A fundamental bioconcept that attempts to manifest in many forms, in many zones and layers. I believe it has made several attempts to fully infiltrate your own, but has never fully awakened there. It likely never will. The reasons are probably beyond your capacity to understand.

FERN:

Wait...if a Dolphin got me....where's Willis and Isaac??

MARCY:

They're alright, don't worry; they've given that thing the slip, and the Recombinators should be able to handle it easily enough. I can fortunately return you to your usual respawn coordinates, where your little friends should be waiting to see if you'll return.

FERN:

Thank you...but HOLD UP, you're the concept of Medicine? And...that thing...is health? So, wait, what's Phage supposed to be?!

MARCY:

A doctor, of course! The concept of one who utilizes medical practices to heal others. That is why I do not inhabit the hospital myself. I am the medicine...not the medicine man.

FERN:

And the concept of "health" then?

MARCY:

Health is whatever can be considered a being's ideal state of functionality, Medicine is a means by which that functionality can be restored, and a doctor is the one who performs that restoration!

FERN:

Weird question...it feels like I'm increasingly "remembering" you. As if I already knew you. Have we...met?

MARCY:

Yes, and no. When neither you nor your little friends have known what to do, I have made my best effort to nudge you in the right direction. Not easy, mind you.

FERN:

...Little friends, you mean the buzzers? Just what are they?

MARCY:

Many take credit for "creating" buzzers, but in truth, it's impossible to place their origin, and it is more accurate to say that the voices you hear are not of buzzers, but delivered by buzzers. They themselves are mindless, non-matter entities of no solid concept, permeating all zones and layers simultaneously. The information that they ferry to you is not always accurate or clear, and may originate from virtually any beings of any zone. The medium by which these beings may be perceiving you and your actions varies similarly.

I can in fact answer a number of their more minor questions for you:

• Redbert is, like the rest of the parliament, a fragment of the Old Flesh. He takes the form that he does to better facilitate his tunneling through zonal boundaries.

• I do not know who has been terminating Hospital staff other than that blue fellow, whom you have long taken care of.

• What I know about the abyss? Interesting fact: an utter absence of concept is the one medium through which almost any life-form can most safely navigate, since there is no concept of anything that should impede them. There is not even the concept of suffocation, and therefore it is universally breathable. Unfortunately, this makes a conceptual void quite easy for bioforms to colonize, bringing with them concepts of hunger, life and death. The creatures of the abyss are like pockets of realness adrift in unrealness.

• Crash may be salvageable with the help of his progenitor, but I am afraid I do not know what has befallen her.

• Flair, like the Recombinators, is neither necessarily benign nor malevolent, but she is a predator of sorts. She exists to capitalize on a demand for a product. None who subsist in this fashion are ever quite trustworthy.

• Lexicovermus is a worm of a higher order than the worms you are more familiar with. As the worm of literature, he has a position comparable to that of Doctor Phage.

• Your "health potions" are an example of what pure health concept actually looks like, not like the Parliament's little scam. It is too difficult to synthesize and contain for its use to be especially widespread.

• Doctor Man is, I do believe, a human. I did say I do not witness everything that occurs within the Hospital, I'm afraid.

• I don't in fact resemble what you're calling a "plague doctor." It is more likely that the figures you are referring to subconsciously expresses my form.

• Magboils? Um...they were just sort of there once and then they never left.

• For MOST beings that possess them, bone quantity is preferable to quality.

• I was able to intercept and bring you here only thanks to the interruption of Fern's perpetuation - her "death" - while under the effects of the gas.

• Deliberately unexisting Hospital staff until the threat blows over is a nice idea, but even in their weakened state they are essential to what little strength the Hospital has left. Remove them and what remains of it would finish collapsing, hastening the Parliament's goals.

• I do not have any doritos left.

FERN:

Um...huh. That's a lot to take in...can I also ask if you're the one who pulled me out of that monster? Ora?

MARCY:

Hmmm...no. I can't physically intrude upon the Hospital either, and I do not perceive everything that occurs there, either. I am not in fact at all equivalent to what your friends call a "god," I am more like...mmm...like a very big grandmother.

And I suppose this looming over even I is a great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother. Or...maybe it's just a weird tree I fell out of this one time.

FERN:

Can "health" hear us too?

MARCY:

You may not particularly like this answer, but...I do not know. She does not speak to me, or to anything that I know of. I do not even know what, how, or if she perceives at all. For all intents and purposes she is, well...what you could refer to as a Blind Idiot Concept.

I mean that with the utmost reverence, I can assure you.

FERN:

That...that really isn't comforting. You're right. So, can I ask what you know about...

MARCY:

Your situation, yes. I am so sorry, Fern. None of this should have happened. The Old Flesh is a stubborn thing...the very nature of our existence is to be at odds with it.

FERN:

What do you mean? What is it really? I was told it was some sort of thing that existed before everything else, and then everything, even us, somehow came about when it...came apart? Died? That's what its, uh, "pieces" say anyway. Sounds like they're a little nutso if you ask me.

MARCY:

That's not terribly sensitive terminology, but I understand what you're expressing.

Their understanding of things is indeed not correct in the least. Not all of it, anyway. What is true is that the thing they call the Old Flesh manifested on a layer in which it was quite utterly alone, and it is also true that its decay facilitated an environment in which other concepts could take root and germinate cores of their own.

All of this is because of the concept the so-called "Old Flesh" actually manifested from. That is to say...

FERN:

...What the flesh actually belonged to.

MARCY:

Yes.

FERN:

Do I want to know?

MARCY:

I suppose you'll need to. It's not all that terrible, really...it's just death is all.

FERN:

What, really? Death?

MARCY:

Every concept has a being. The "old flesh" was the being associated with the concept of death.

As such...it only existed in a state of, well, dying. It existed for the sole purpose of ceasing to exist. With the concept of death came the concepts of sickness and decay, but with the concepts of sickness and decay there naturally came the concepts of health and growth. Things die, things rot, and new things grow. Something simply needed to exist to be the first fertilizer.

FERN:

But wouldn't that mean...if they do this thing they're trying to do...

MARCY:

They will reset existence as we know it back to what it was, and what they were.

A dying thing.

Alone.

And the cycle will start over again.

FERN:

They'd just be rebooting the universe, then?

MARCY:

Yes. But as with any reboot, nothing would be quite the same. There is no telling the course the new perception range may take, if indeed it even manifests as anything we can call a perception range again.

Most of us would not wish to be lost in the homogenity of this single, perfect being they wish to attain, but even that is a farce. It will begin to die at the same point it begins to exist. All of us would die permanently with it.

FERN:

Oh, okay, that's nice. How do we stop them.

MARCY:

As you have of course unraveled yourself...your child is the hub of their plan, though you are likely not quite clear yet on its mechanisms.

All they know is that the purest concept of illness returns conceptoids to something resembling the Old Flesh. They either do not understand or do not care why, but it is death, after all. That's as deep as the concept of being "unwell" can possibly go.

The Hospital is at present teeming with their failures. The red blight, the patients, the worm intrusions, dolphins, bogus medical products flooding countless zones, even the Hospital's integration with the Morgue and the Recombinators...it all comes back to their attempts at breaking down the concepts of Health and Medicine, to blur the lines between wellness and unwellness while their Ur-Sickness germinates.

Once it finally took root in one of their many test subjects - regrettably your child - the persistence of the malady all but guaranteed he would be taken in by the Hospital, precicely where he needs to be for his condition to spread, and furthermore ferried to their Problem Vault, the most difficult possible location from which to extricate him.

FERN:

Then...what do I do...

MARCY:

Precisely what you have wanted to do: take him home. As soon as you have access to the vault, as soon as you are back with your child, you must simply remove him. It sounds counter-intuitive, but returning him to the Grey will be the first step in repairing what has been done to the Hospital and to the concept of medical care across the range. Only then can he, too, begin healing.

FERN:

How much time...layers....whatever...do I have left?

MARCY:

I am afraid I do not have the ability to determine that. What I know is that you are presently in the best possible position to access the vault, but you will need to obtain security clearance that only Gynnie can give. I believe if you can set things right in the maternity ward, your path may open up to you.

FERN:

Alright. About that though...what's with Fleagood? Is he...alright?

MARCY:

He is...a Veterinarian. It is a difficult concept to nest within the conceptotaxonomy of medicine, as subjective as the concept of an "animal" can be from zone to zone and how broad an umbrella it is even on your dirt-ball alone. He truly means well, but he does not quite belong in the Hospital. Disconnecting him from it may be beneficial to us and to Fleagood himself, the poor dear.