IJ study archive

Fackelmann's scam, the wraith returns (p. 926)

quote

Gately lies there pop-eyed with guilt and anxiety in the hiss and click of resumed sleet, in the twilit St. E.’s room, next to the glittering back-brace-and-skull-halo thing clamped exoskeletally to the empty next bed and gleaming dully at selected welds, Gately trying to Abide, remembering.

Context

The frame surfacing mid-flashback: between installments of the Fackelmann memory the prose checks the present — twilight now, sleet resumed, the halo rig gleaming on the next bed — and restates the practice in three words, "trying to Abide, remembering." The sentence's structure is the scene's temporal method: memory as the raft the present is ridden out on.

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