Hal supine in V.R.5; Pemulis and the lab (pp. 909–910)

The dead father is everywhere in this room as leftover infrastructure. Hal sends Pemulis to the entertainment-case — "They've got all Himself's stuff together on the third shelf" — to cue up the last five minutes of one of the films, and Pemulis, who's been running the DMZ synthesis out of Himself's old lab, tosses off the line that names the whole condition: the son and his friend are still living inside the apparatus the father left behind, watching his cartridges, working his equipment, sorting his mislabeled diskettes. Seeking the father through his work isn't a metaphor here; it's literal real estate. Hal can't reach Himself, so he reaches for the shelf where Himself has been alphabetized, the nearest thing to the man that survives — and even that comes mediated through Pemulis, because Hal can't rouse himself to get up off the floor and fetch his own father's film.