Hal is uniquely fascinated by the #5 "Shed" chronic catatonics

texture · YDAU, recurring

• When: YDAU (2009); recurring at The Unexamined Life
• What: At The Unexamined Life tavern (where Hal drinks, less often than Axford/Struck/Troeltsch), two Enfield Marine cops regale the E.T.A.s with anecdotes about the chronic catatonics ("objay darts") stored in E.M.'s Unit #5, "The Shed" — and "Hal is the only E.T.A. who seems truly interested." A key one: a "Debilitatingly Phobic" woman who keeps her eyes shut and body motionless out of terror of blindness/paralysis; the cops' refrain is that "a terror so terrifying it makes the object of the terror come true." Arc-resonant: Hal's magnetic interest in the catatonics eerily prefigures his own YG catatonia and the terror-becomes-real logic of his collapse.