7 objects 7people have hallucinations

That's a very interesting question: why does the physicist-geek see beta when he hasn't been hallucinating about any past loss?? Is it because he's willing to see it without any emotional or intellectual filters of his own? Or because beta figures he's already ready for it/them because of his physicist's willingness to accept seeming absurdities as part of the fabric of the cosmos??? (there's a saying within the particle physics community that if you don't think quantum physics is completely absurd, you don't know enough about it; perhaps because the geek can hold at least three contradictory, absurd ideas in his head at once without losing his mind, he's considered evolved enough to pass by beta and its counterparts ...) After all, there's no other reason for the physicist to be there other than that beta wanted him there -- he didn't pass all the qualifications for being a mission specialist, yet he's still there.