Hal in V.R. 6: Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat (pp. 686–687)
Hal sits alone up in Viewing Room 6, […] his expression neutral, watching some cartridges of his late father’s entertainments. Anyone else looking at him in there tonight would call Hal depressed. He watches several cartridges all in a row. He watches The American Century as Seen Through a Brick and Pre-Nuptial Agreement of Heaven and Hell and then part of Valuable Coupon Has Been Removed […] He watches parts of Death in Scarsdale and Union of Publicly Hidden in Lynn and Various Small Flames and Kinds of Pain.
Context
Hours after deLint tells him "You just never quite occurred out there" — a choice of words that "chills Hal to the root" — Hal skips mandatory Study Period and runs the father's filmography end to end in soundproof V.R. 6. The plan's séance-chamber reading holds with restraint: what the raw gives is a son medicating nonoccurrence with the only version of Himself still on the shelf, seven-plus titles in a row, watched with "expression neutral" by a boy anyone else "would call Hal depressed."