The locker room and the Loach saga (p. 966)
Traub and Whale, also on the wrap-bench, later said Hal was being weird. Like they said asking Loach if the pre-match locker room ever gave him a weird feeling, occluded, electric, as if all this had been done and said so many times before it made you feel it was recorded, they all in here existed basically as Fourier Transforms of postures and little routines, locked down and stored and call-uppable for rebroadcast at specified times. What Traub heard as Fourier Transforms Whale heard as Furrier Transforms. But also, as a consequence, erasable, Hal had said. By whom? […] Traub also says he also heard Hal use the word moribund, but Whale couldn’t confirm.
Context
The novel's last E.T.A. day, and the wraith's vocabulary surfaces in Hal's mouth on the wrap-bench: the whole company as cartridge-content — recorded figurants, stored, call-uppable for rebroadcast, and therefore erasable. "By whom?" is the arc's terminal question, asked by the wraith's son on the novel's last E.T.A. day — and it arrives garbled through hearsay (Fourier/Furrier), the figurant condition operating even on the report of the question.