The Fackelmann scam; the wraith returns (pp. 929–930)
Sorkin’s in there working spreadsheets with his special monitor-screen-light-filtering goggles on. The goggles’ lenses on their long protruding barrels look like lobsters’ eyes on stalks. […] The goggles are often used in data-processing sweatshops and list for a deuce. […] Sorkin, massaging his temples, staring up at Fackelmann with his goggles like a crab in a tank
Context
The screen's first 175 catch, deep in the Fackelmann flashback: Whitey Sorkin, the cluster-headache bookmaker, works his spreadsheets through light-filtering goggles whose "lenses on their long protruding barrels" turn him into a sequence of tank creatures (lobster, then crab). It's the Gately-past thread's one piece of genuine optics apparatus, and it runs the theme's machinery in reverse: where the Entertainment is unfilterable lethal viewing, Sorkin — the book's great headache sufferer — can't look at a monitor at all except through protective barrels. The raw prices the rig flat ("often used in data-processing sweatshops and list for a deuce"): prosthetic spectation as commodity hardware.