Grandma Poppy reiterates her need for taking over the rest of the town. She tells a Lowertown tough-girl and her friend Petrina that the hospital's basement "holds the key Solomon's River." Grandma Poppy flashes back to her childhood when her father, who worked at the hospital, introduced her to smoking. The girls are instructed to bring back opiates, but not before they search the hospital basement.
Doris the secretary, her neural net still plagued by H.A.L., pleads with Dr. Scarlett to help her remove the evil hologram. Dr. Scarlett is skeptical of H.A.L.'s abilities until H.A.L. himself appears and confronts the doctor! H.A.L. demands Dr. Scarlett's help to get a body (so he may do the things he cannot do as a hologram.) H.A.L. disappears and Doris returns, enlisting Dr. Scarlett's help to get rid of H.A.L.
Meanwhile, far below the hospital, McShane has yet to find any secret or avenge any death. He has wandered so deeply into the sub-basement, it is now more cavern-like than basementy.
Detective Schmiggly mans the police department alone. The Commissioner forces the detective to abandon the station for a meeting.
A distraught couple searches desperately for their steroid-riddled breeding ferret, Luke. Hugely disproportioned, Luke appears and gobbles up his steroid treat.
- Will Princess Lakshmi find Rojav in The Velvet Elvis Museum basement? Is it even the right museum?
- What will the Lowertown girls find in the basement of the hospital? Will they have better luck than the still-wandering McShane?
- Can Dr. Scarlett help Doris? Will Dr. Scarlett help H.A.L.?
- What does the Commissioner want with Detective Schmiggly?
- Don't ferrets experience the same testicular shrinkage that humans do when exposed to that much steroids? How will Luke breed?
