can't even ask for the means of asking · S2
Without a pencil and notebook he couldn't even seem to get across a request for a notebook and pencil; it was like he was trapped inside his huge chattering head.
Context
The figurant condition at its most airtight: the notebook that would let Gately communicate has not come, and he can't request it, because requesting it is itself the thing he needs the notebook to do. The channel is locked behind the very channel it would open. His head is not empty — it is "chattering," teeming, wanting a dozen things — but the whole loud interior is sealed off with no aperture at all, and the word he reaches for is the wraith's: a figurant, mute and blank, human furniture no one can hear, indistinguishable from the catatonics he pictures himself joining. [sweep · shared-ground addiction-recovery]