The locker-room quiz (Memory and Forgetting)
Struck says ‘We’ll be like vying for the seats all around Inc tomorrow.’ 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.’ […] Freer opens his eyes. ‘Do a dictionary-page for us, man, Inc.’
Context
The eidetic gift stated and demonstrated in one beat: Hal shuts his eyes and reads the highlighted page off the inside of his head while his teammates theorize it as a manipulable mental object and then demand it as a party trick. Memory as faculty and performance in the same breath — the thread the book audits under withdrawal at p. 797 and buries at p. 952.