Hal horizontal in V.R.5 (Film and Optics)
I was going to go back up to see about Stice’s defenestration, to check on Mario and change my socks and examine my expression in the mirror for unintentional hilarity, to listen to Orin’s phone-messages and then the protracted-death aria from Tosca once or twice.
Context
The catalogued mirror check, first item on Hal's morning agenda: after Kenkle's "hilarity-face" verdict and the failed window-check that closes 167, Hal plans to "examine my expression in the mirror for unintentional hilarity" — the face now an instrument that must be audited with optical equipment because its owner has no interior read-out for what it's doing. The panic attack in the hallway intercepts him; the mirror check never happens on-page, which is its own datum: the audit is deferred into the Year-of-Glad opening (scene 001), where other people read Hal's face for him.