Endnote 332 (from page 795)

E.T.A., Ennet House, and the A.F.R., cross-cut · first-time reader guide · all scenes

You were sent here from page 795 — when you're done, head back to pages 787–795.

When you've finished these pages: three things worth a second look, at the bottom.

You've just been sent to endnote 332 from p. 795, and it picks up the cliffhanger endnote 324 left you on — "Troeltsch's got Wayne on the air and Wayne's lost his mind." Same day, 17 November, a little after the administrators "shut their soundproof doors at 1435h.": the Dean of Academic Affairs' office, where Pemulis sits across from deLint, flanked by Nwangi and Watson, holding his own crossed ankle "to keep the foot from joggling." Unusually, this endnote is narrated — and the narration wears Pemulis's own idiom ("aghastly," "recryptographilated"), so the voice telling you the scene is the one being destroyed in it.

Terms, in order of appearance

cyanosis (p. 1073) — real: bluish skin from low oxygen; Lateral Alice's chronic condition.
Clippertonizing (p. 1074) — E.T.A. slang: destroying yourself; from the Clipperton legend of pp. 398–410 and 430–34.
Visine bottles (p. 1075) — the clean-urine retail enterprise you've known about since pp. 151–56, confiscated wholesale.
"may the road rise up to meet you" (p. 1075) — real Irish blessing; here a relayed farewell.
recryptographilated (p. 1076) — Pemulis-coinage: re-encrypted.
Plastic Wood (p. 1076) — real brand of wood filler; what the mirror-frames are sealed with.
the Shit Fairy (p. 1076) — Pemulis's own coinage from endnote 321: the bringer of unearned catastrophe.
incubus (p. 1076) — real: a demon that settles on the sleeper; how he pictures the Fairy, wearing "the Da's saggy frown."

After you read: three things

1. What Wayne actually said, and to whom it matters. Dosed unknowingly with Pemulis's Tenuates out of Troeltsch's Seldane bottle, Wayne broadcast academy-wide: a virtuoso imitation of Tavis's candor-as-seduction (which Pemulis privately clocks as one of Orin's top-five Strategies), then capsule judgments of half of E.T.A. Two land hardest: the late Founder, "so full of himself he could have shit limbs," and Hal — "by all appearances addicted to everything that is not tied down" (p. 1074). The word Hal couldn't say behind Pemulis's closed door in endnote 321 has now been said over the PA, days into his abstinence.

2. The trap's geometry: the truth is the one unaffordable thing. The dosing really was an accident — "if anybody's Troeltsch's" — but explaining that means admitting to holding a 'drine, post-Eschaton, inside the urine window from pp. 508–27: "tantamount to Clippertonizing himself" (p. 1074). So both sides perform a statement everyone knows is horseshit, the evidence comes out from under Nwangi's chair, and Troeltsch, absent, has "eaten some enormous wedge of putrid deal-cutting cheese" (p. 1075).

3. The Dean never appears — and wins every exchange. Avril executes by relay: her regards, an Irish blessing, and the countermeasure list that burns Pemulis's blackmail card item by item — doorknobs "rubberized and grounded," files "recryptographilated," mirrors "reanodized and sealed with Plastic Wood, Mrs. Inc said to tell you" (p. 1076). Against all of it, Pemulis's entire code is one question, asked twice: "And this affects the WhataBurger, my chances?"

Written only from this endnote and pages before its callout on p. 795. Safe to read before you start.