The current Director, Dr. Arno Felzian, was in hopeless straits. Felzian had once enjoyed a modestly successful career in genetic research, but he had won his exalted post in the Collaboratory through assiduous attention to Senator Dougal’s commands. Puppet regimes might thrive as long as the empire held out, but once the alien oppressors were gone, their local allies would soon be despised as collaborators. Senator Dougal, the Collaboratory’s longtime patron and official puppetmaster, had gone down in flames. Felzian, abandoned, no longer knew what to do with himself. He was a jumpy, twitching yes-man with no one left to say yes to.