The locker-room quiz (p. 97)
Hal shuts his eyes: he can see the page of text right there, all highlighted, all yellowed up. ‘He can scan the page, rotate it, fold the corner down and clean under his nails with it, all mentally.’ ‘Leave him alone,’ Pemulis says. Freer opens his eyes. ‘Do a dictionary-page for us, man, Inc.’
Context
The mechanism behind the quiz answers, seen from inside and out: Hal's eidetic page, and his peers' half-nasty party-trick request — "Do a dictionary-page for us" — the same act the disguised JOI got for free in scene 005, now performed (or declined) on demand in the locker room. The lexical gift as spectacle the group both mocks and vies for seats near.