Summary

In Chapter 26, Alice goes to Lack with the paintings, and Philip follows. He waits outside the lab while Alice tries to feed the paintings to Lack. After a while, Philip enters the lab and finds that Alice has left. Lack did not accept the self-portraits. Philip finds a lock of Alice’s hair, which Lack had also refused. In Chapter 27, Philip is at home, listening to Garth and Evan converse. Garth continues to talk about the possible connections between reality and perception. Philip finds himself growing irritated with Garth. In Chapter 28, Philip goes to the lab and sees that a group of graduate students have developed a probe composed only of objects that Lack has previously accepted. However, Lack does not accept the probe. Braxia had previously depicted that this experiment would not work, reasoning that the probe was something in and of itself...