The annulation lecture for Arslanian (pp. 573–574)
He says he’s toast if he can’t wrap his head around the concept of time in flux, conceptually. It jacklights him for the whole annular model overall. […] Lyle’s trying to walk him real slowly through the most basic kiddie-physical principles of the relativity of time in extreme organic environments. In between Booger’s trips back to the sauna. The irony for the Boogerman is you don’t really even have to know that much about the temporal-flux stuff, since Watson’s forehead gets all mottled and pruny-looking when he thinks about it himself.
Context
Behind the weight-room door, Anton "Booger" Doucette is weeping, half his face spasming, convinced the annular model's temporal physics will flunk him out of Watson's Energy survey and end his tennis career — and Lyle is talking him down through "the relativity of time in extreme organic environments." Comic proof that even the book's engineering curriculum runs on subjective time: the Concavity's time-flux is literally unendurable to think about.