Adjudicated uninjured — the bruised-skull footnote — and remanded to the tunnel detail

pivotal · 11 Nov YDAU, 1625h

• When: 11 Nov YDAU, the 1625h shift below the Hal/Stice match (the skull claim itself standing since the 8 Nov debacle).
• What: The post-Eschaton discipline sorts him onto the "semi-punitive shit detail" for players "judged to have been involved in the recent Eschaton nonstrategic-combat debacle, but who are uninjured" — and the endnote to "uninjured" singles McKenna out for adjudication: "(including K. McKenna, who claims to have a bruised skull but does not in fact have a bruised skull)." So despite having verifiably bled on the map three days earlier, he is "punitively remanded below ground" with "the bulk of the ambulatory sub-14 male Eschatonites," 26 meters under the Show Court, with trashbags and issued "B.P. low-diffusion compact mercuric flashlights." Down there he is in his element among "the Tunnel Club boys": when Traub keeps secretly tickling necks in the dark, it is McKenna who "captures Traub tickling Josh Gopnik in the bright beam of his P.B. light" (whereupon "Gopnik punches Traub in the radial nerve"); when Blott drops the microwave, he and Gopnik pronounce "that scanning for rodents with Blott is like fly-fishing with an epileptic"; and the scene's aside about the exterminators' "playing cards with naked girls in high-heeled shoes on the backs" is sourced to him — "(McKenna's claim)." He is on the detail through the maggoty-fridge discovery and the high-voiced rout that ends it.