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John finds his mother in the last bed on Ward 81 of the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying. She's staring incomprehensibly at the television box at the foot of the bed, drifting in and out of sleep. The nurse, who's amazed John should cast such importance on a single person, leaves him to sit at the side of the bed. There, John remembers all the moments of his childhood—Linda singing to him, her strange and childish rhymes and her stories of the beautiful and wondrous Other Place, so far from the actual reality of Civilization. His thoughts are interrupted by the intrusion of a bunch of eight-year-old twins dressed in khaki. They swarm around the bed, horrified and fascinated by the flabby, bloated woman in the bed. They point and make fun until John seizes the nearest one by the collar and boxes him on the ears. The child runs away howling. The nurse hurries to the bed, demanding to know what John's done to the child. John wants to know what the little brats are doing here—it's disgraceful. Indignantly, she tells him they're being death-conditioned, and she won't have any more of his interference. If he can't behave appropriately, she'll send him away. Although the nurse has rounded up the children for a game, John has trouble reclaiming his thoughts. Linda opens her eyes, smiles and cries, "Popé!" and John asks imploringly if she doesn't know him. But Linda continues to say Popé's name, transforming John's grief to rage. He catches her by the shoulder and tells her he's John. She recognizes him, but has placed him in the context of her imaginary world on the Reservation, the soma-paradise she's been inhabiting. Confused, she tells him everyone belongs to everyone else, and then her voice suddenly dies and she gasps for air. Her face turns blue, her expression transforms to one of terror and John runs for the nurse. By the time they get back to the bed, Linda is dead. John falls to his knees and sobs. The nurse watches the scandalous exhibition and wonders if she should remind John that he's destroying the twins' death-conditioning, as though death were something terrible, as though anyone matters that much! Finally, she hurries back and distracts the twins with chocolate éclairs. Meanwhile, John is repeating "God" in remorse and grief. He starts violently when a khaki twin—one of five to have suddenly appeared—asks him what that is. The twins are each holding the stump of a chocolate éclair, which one now points at Linda while asking if she's dead. John pushes him away and walks out. John is filled with grief as he relives moments with his dying mother. But these normal emotions are unacceptable in a world that has eliminated familial bonds and reduced death to an anonymous and pleasant event. The swarming sameness of the twins who defile the mystery of death enrages him. Their casual questions and messy chocolate, accompanied by the warnings of the nurse against displaying grief, reduce his mother to simply another body without identity or significance. John's own memories are erased by the distraction, and he's unable to recapture them, or reclaim his own identity. In Linda's soma-filled final moments, John is again unwanted and alone, and his grief turns to rage.
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