Mario’s birth and defects — "He calls him Booboo but fears…"

The sibling bond as the system's one uncoerced relation — and even it runs on a hierarchy of regard. Hal, "younger and way more externally impressive," secretly "almost idealizes Mario": the brother burned past anything fair who "floats" instead of curling up in his fire. Hal calls him Booboo and yet fears his opinion "more than probably anybody except their Moms's" — the damaged, unrankable brother installed, alongside the mother, as one of the two people whose judgment can actually reach him. It is the counter-image to Hal's creaky-machine blankness about the rest of his kin (102): the one sibling tie in the family that carries real weight, and it weighs most where the family's achievement-metrics have nothing to measure. Distinct from Avril's half of the coda — this is the brothers' own axis, sibling dynamics as the system's least-defended product.