The Eschaton drive-by: "put a hat on"

pivotal · 8 Nov YDAU, I-Day afternoon

• When: 8 Nov YDAU, Interdependence Day afternoon, mid-Eschaton, as the game degenerates and real snow falls.
• What: As the Eschaton crisis escalates toward violence, "Girls 16's/18's prorector Mary Esther Thode" putts from left to right behind the pavilion on the long driveway, "halts her scooter and lifts her helmet's tinted visor and yells across for Kittenplan to put a hat on if she's going to play in the snow in a crew-cut." That is the entirety of her intervention — the one adult to pass the whole debacle registers only the hat — and the text underlines the officiousness: "This even though Kittenplan isn't even strictly in Ms. Thode's like umbrella of authority, Axford observes to Troeltsch, who relays this fact into his headset." The drive-by also settles a standing mystery from the spectators' side: Troeltsch broadcasts that there's always a queer vague vitaminish stink about her he can never place, and "Hal identifies Thode's ambient odor as the stink of thiamine, which for reasons best known to Thode she takes a lot of" — Troeltsch airs the datum, citing Hal as a "close source." The debacle proceeds to its casualties without her.