After a night of drinking, Philip comes back to his apartment to see that Dr. Soft has brought Alice there. She is asleep but Dr. Soft suspects that she may have tried to enter Lack and that she is no longer capable of running experiments on Lack. This causes Dr. Soft to divide Lack's time up among capable people. He does not want to interrupt Alice's research so he gives her time but asks Philip to monitor her. He also claims a portion of Lack's time for himself, his graduate students, and an Italian physics team headed by Carmo Braxia.