the V.R.5 collapse: the match-panic that jumped the net
It was some variant of the telescopically self-conscious panic that can be so devastating during a match. I’d never felt quite this way off-court before.
Context
The regimen's signature affliction leaks off the court for the first time. What hits Hal in the damp hall is diagnosed instantly in tennis terms — "the telescopically self-conscious panic that can be so devastating during a match" — the on-court fear E.T.A. spends years teaching its bodies to manage, now firing where there's no baseline to run to and no point to win. The academy trained him to feel this only inside the lines; here it has escaped the lines.