Hal's DMZ nightmare: screaming for help, heard as an Ethel Merman show-tune

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pivotal · 12 Nov YDAU, 1930h

When: 12 Nov YDAU, 1930h, Rm. 204 Subdorm B
What: During a Pemulis calculus tutorial (Boards prep), Hal recounts a DMZ-triggered nightmare in which he was the Leavenworth convict/experimental soldier who took the massive DMZ dose: he appears to be belting out "There's No Business Like Show Business" but is really "screaming for help" while wardens and doctors snap their fingers and tap their feet — "It's me! It's me, screaming for help!" The defining horror is loneliness — "There was a quality of loneliness to it, though. Unlike anything." A concentrated instance of the not-being-heard/not-speaking motif (cf. JOI's silence-delusion, the Kevin Bain meeting). Pemulis relays Struck's intel that DMZ doesn't show on a G.C./M.S. and was designed to induce "transcendent experiences" in chronic alcoholics at Verdun Protestant Hospital, Montreal.