having to touch your own face to read it · S1
For a brief moment that Hal will later regard as completely and uncomfortably bizarre, Hal feels at his own face to see whether he is wincing.
Context
The severance of scene 001 in its earliest overt form: Hal has become so detached from his own outward expression that he has to reach up and palpate his face to learn what it is doing. The self and its broadcast have come apart far enough that his own face is now external data he has to read from the outside, like anyone else in the room — the exact condition that will pin him to the admissions-office floor a year later.