“So, Mr. Johnson,” Randy Bronson smiles, flashing white teeth and spectacled, squinted eyes. “How are you, today?”
Mr. Johnson, Don, to his friends, is bound to a steel chair, and the leather cuffs cause his ankles to sweat. He hates the questions. Always the same, and the all-convinced smug look on the professional asshole as they wait for his answers.

The Zion-Alpha: Human in appearance; however, all specimens are slightly taller, never over-weight, and completely symmetrical, compared to traditional humans; produced via an alteration of the 5th and 47th guanine molecule of the fetal DNA, either through microwave transmission or nano-implant; an as of yet undiscovered tag is surely in place, probably somewhere slightly below the dermis, but the cranial cavity is also a possibility—or genetic coding.
Don Johnson – “Unnatural Selection” 8/08

Randy has a copy of Mr. Johnson’s file as well as five thesis-length dribbles that were composed by the patient on waterlogged spiral notebook paper. Also included are the tape records of all sessions, all ordered and dated.

“No, I have no proof,” Mr. Johnson readily admits.

“Then why believe in such an absurdity?” Randy asks.

Mr. Johnson cannot answer. He watches the clock. Five minutes down, twenty-five to go.

Randy crosses his legs as he waits for an answer. He leans back, looks at the clock.

“Do you think a hunch is reason to kidnap and torture—looking for some tag?” He never breaks his monotone; his voice is like the steps of a zombie army closing towards civilization. “Does a hunch give you license to harm another man? How does rape fit in to your delusions of an engineered master race? --Your theories."
Mr. Johnson begins to weep. “I don’t know.” He thinks about the blond woman with the perfect calves. His chest restraints seem to tighten. His eyesight darkens at the edges, focusing his entire vision on the sterile clock, white with black notches and a red second hand ticking, frozen at forty-three seconds, forty-four, forty-five. He gasps.
“Mr. Johnson,” Randy says. As he takes one step and reduces the distance between them, Mr. Johnson begins to convulse. His arms pull upwards against the leather fastens. His eyes clamp shut, cheeks suck inward, as if trying to suck his face down into his stomach.
The clinician retreats to the phone, and two minutes later medical aid arrives, as well as two armed guards. The guards enter first and position themselves against the rear wall, as sentries posted on either side of the doctor’s desk with one hand gripping their Glock .9mms still holstered in their belts.
Randy can no longer offer assistance, and returns to his desk and switches off the tape recorder. He removes his cell phone from his pants’ pocket, where a message waits from his wife. “I need you to pick-up Charlene from school today.”
Mr. Johnson recovers from his fit, however he cannot resume treatments today.