Hal in V.R. 6 with Wave Bye-Bye — "You just never quite occurred out…"
‘You just never quite occurred out there, kid,’ deLint apprises him. He has regressed certain figures to back this up, this nonoccurrence. His choice of words chills Hal to the root.
Context
The evening after the Stice exhibition: Hal goes looking for Schtitt's read and gets deLint, prone over a ranking chart with no Hal anywhere on it. "Never quite occurred" — statistical nonexistence as coaching feedback — hands Hal the vocabulary of self-vanishing; it chills him because it names from outside what he's starting to feel from inside.