“He’s a good doctor and a great comedian,” agrees the men.

“He’s like me when I was younger,” said some others.

“You should come here more often!” cheered every old chap: every Joe, Roy and Fred.

For a split moment, Hilton forgets about Hershey—it’s been so many years since his last encore.

A few years after that memorable birthday, he had his first concert. Then, he knew his audience didn’t need any alterations with his piece. He knew that they were a force to take seriously, a looming force that looked down upon him. Perfectly, he played. The audience, in his eyes, roared like a crowd. His heart’s tempo, like his birthday concert, was raised. His encore was lovely.

But his first concert was not his last encore. Again, it was at a birthday party, his 18th. He found himself exaggerating the definitions of his selected piece; changing the tempo, switching the scales, giving a new harmony to the piece without being true to the original piece’s meaning—enhancing the symphony. His encore was ecstasy. 

The perpetual encore he relived slowly fades away as more of Hershey’s guests began to depart. The guests were replaced by the many butlers, servants and maids with brooms, mops and cleaning rags. Left sitting down at the same armrest, cigar lit out, is Mr. Bour. He tosses the cigar onto the ashtray before standing up slowly. 

“So Dr. Hirschstein,” Mr. Bour begins with a rasp. “Where is Mr. Hershey?”

“I’m quite unsure actually,” Dr. Hirschstein responded. “I believe—”

“He turned into chocolate didn’t he?” interrupts Mr. Bour with mutters.

“No Sir, he—”

Dr. Hirschstein pauses for a moment with partly blank eyes. It was a syncopation to his symphony.  

“How… how do you know?” he hesitates in a low voice as not to allow anyone else to hear.

Mr. Bour so casually responds, “He had… he has a tendency to do so… you are what you eat I suppose.”

“This has happened in the past?”

“Yes, many times, and I’ve been the one to fix it. Now, where is he?”

“Upstairs.”

The sheer volume of Mr. Bour’s words shook Dr. Hirschstein. His chance of fame and fortune had been stripped from him—his first chair taken—a coin’s value falls once its edges are clipped. What should the world-renowned Dr. Hirschstein do? The fate of his name being branded onto everyone’s brains next to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln was in limbo! What should he do?

Hilton brings Mr. Bour upstairs to Mr. Hershey’s room. Mr. Bour approaches the chocolate bar and pulls out a small notebook from his pockets.

“To fix him, you. . .” Mr. Bour then gives Dr. Hirschstein an intensely elaborate explanation of the procedure that needed to use many different rituals, including drawing stars in a circular line. “And when he wakes up, he won’t remember anything about being a chocolate bar. I think it would be best that it stays that way too.”

This, this has obviously never happened before —what should the Incredible Dr. Hirschstein do? Dr. Hirschstein’s hopes and dreams were held at gunpoint by a strange old man—so, like any man would to save his family he. . .

“God, Hilton, what is the matter with you?!” yells the red-faced Mr. Bour.

Dr. Hirschstein’s scalpel stood still in the old man’s eye. . . Mr. Bour laid on the floor, curled up, being stomped on by the great, heroic, doctor, Hirschstein. The intense passion Hirschstein showed can be inferred to as a starved eagle from above, bearing its knuckles to swoop down upon an ungraceful deer that wandered from the path, dying in a river as the eagle pecked on the hurting prey. He grabs the scalpel and runs his finger along its satisfyingly sharp blade. Looking down at the body, the doctor places his hands onto Bour’s notebook, ripping its pages from the cover then puts them into a folder as his own tenth symphony’s finishing cadenza. He takes a look at himself in a mirror. He realizes that he is unfit to do surgery in his current state—the great Dr. Hirschstein would never perform a surgery stained in blood. So, Dr. Hirschstein finds the shower room and returns to find a mouth-opened Thomas in the room.

“Dr. Hirschstein! What happened?”

“Dear God, what happened?!” the doctor responds, eyes widened.