The A.F.R. raid on Antitoi Entertainent (p. 487)
A few legless thick-armed men climb the shelves by hand and hang up near the drop-ceiling by special climbing equipment and suction-cups fitted to their stumps, brown arms busy in the upper shelving, dismantling and searching upside-down like obscene industrious bugs.
Context
The A.F.R. system's anchor image: the amputated body not compensated but tooled — suction-cups fitted to stumps, climbing equipment, "thick-armed" from a physiology built entirely above the waist (cf. 103's "All A.F.R.s have enormous arms"). The simile's dehumanization ("obscene industrious bugs") runs through Lucien's terrified focalization: the disabled body as the thing the abled gaze cannot process except as insect.