Scene 084: stice bed lyle objects

• p. 394: "Do not underestimate objects! Lyle says he finds it impossible to overstress this" — the scene's keynote stated before the problem is even heard.
• p. 394: Stice's evidence, in escalating order: beefs with Coyle ruled out (Coyle's been in the infirmary two nights and the bed still moves); the Axford/Struck door-dickying theory defeated by the chair jammed under the knob, ball-cans stacked on it, and cans lined on all three window sills; this morning the bed was against the chair by the door "at an angle he didn't care for one bit" and the cans stood in a neat pyramid in the bed's dusty footprint.
• pp. 394-395: Stice's three hypotheses — (1) he's telekinetic in his sleep; (2) somebody else at E.T.A. is telekinetic and out to drive him batsoid; (3) he's a severe somnambulist — and the stakes: the Staff say he's got a legit shot at the Show, which he won't have messed up by "telekinetic or somnambulistical shenanigans."
• p. 395: Stice's offering and amends — his own personal black towel, his beautifully muscled freely-sweating torso, apologies for ignoring the pull-down advice and for last spring's Krazy-Glue job on Lyle's left buttock; "here he is, cap in hand, or rather calotte in hand."
• p. 395: Lyle waves bygones away "like a gnat you barely look at"; far-off Atlantic lightning strobes him weakly; "The world, after all, which is radically old, is made up mostly of objects."
• p. 395: the chair parable: the man who stands 100% on a chair and lifts it; bystanders hold bets; a dying oncologist moans about God granting this picayune power; the man pockets the money, jumps down (change spraying on impact), and walks off "leaving behind a dumbfounded crowd still staring up at an object he had not underestimated."

Backward

• Lyle's complete engagement here contrasts with his usual shrug-and-Remark mode (scene 082, p. 388) — flagging to the reader that this case is different in kind from fame-envy or moles.

Forward

• Direct seed of the Stice-wraith arc: the bed phenomena escalate to Stice's forehead frozen to the window (pp. 870-871, scene 167) and the whole-bed-bolted-to-the-ceiling business around the Hal-Stice exhibition match (pp. 942, scene 179 ff.); the wraith identifies itself to Gately in the hospital (pp. 829-845, scene 162), where JOI's posthumous ability to move objects ("Even a garden-variety wraith could move at the speed of quanta") retroactively solves Stice's puzzle.
• Stice is the wraith's chosen instrument on court: the Darkness's preternaturally aided play against Hal (pp. 652-682, scene 125, 127, 130) makes the "do not underestimate objects" advice quietly prophetic — racquets and beds alike.
• Lyle's link to JOI (he was Himself's confidant; cf. scene 085, p. 399, and the wraith's later account of talking with Lyle) gives his non-surprise an edge: the guru may know exactly whose work this is.
• The chair-lifting parable — a man standing on the object he lifts — is a bootstrap/self-transcendence emblem that resonates with Lyle's own levitation (revealed p. 700-701) and with Schtitt's transcend-the-self tennis metaphysics (scene 026 territory, pp. 79-85).
• Coyle's "suspicious discharge" and infirmary stay tie into the post-Eschaton/virus-season E.T.A. body-count running through the following weeks' scenes.

• p. 394: "Do not underestimate objects!" — the dictum; load-bearing for the whole wraith thread.
• p. 394: the ball-cans "arranged in a neat pyramid in the dusty rectangle where his bed was supposed to normally be" — the detail that rules out every natural explanation; pure poltergeist signature.
• pp. 394-395: Stice's three explanations "in ascending order of grimness" — comic taxonomy concealing the real (unlisted) fourth option.
• p. 395: "The world, after all, which is radically old, is made up mostly of objects." — Lyle's ontology; pairs with "the world is very old" refrain of scene 082.
• p. 395: the chair parable's close — "an object he had not underestimated" — parable as deferred answer.