the supine morning: the machine declines its function
It occurred to me then with some force that I didn’t want to play this afternoon, even if some sort of indoor exhibition-meet came off. Not even neutral, I realized. I would on the whole have preferred not to play.
Context
The body-instrument refuses. Not fatigue, not fear of losing — a flat, Bartleby-clean preference: "I would on the whole have preferred not to play." Hal registers it as a datum about the two poles of E.T.A. doctrine, wondering "what Schtitt might have to say to that, v. what Lyle would say" — the sacrifice-creed against the fear-attention creed — and can't hold either long enough to imagine Himself's verdict. The machine has, for the first time, no wish to run.