Who he is: the thirteen-year-old calculus phenom who Wears the Beanie

texture · STANDING

• When: STANDING (background identity, true through the YDAU fall); the radio habit is tagged 4 Nov, the nerves taxonomy and Lung duty spoken 6 Nov (the latter prospective).
• What: "This year it's been Otis P. Lord, a thirteen-year-old baseliner and calculus phenom from Wilmington DE, who 'Wears the Beanie' as Eschaton's game-master and statistician of record" — the job selecting for "a special combination of tech-wonk and compulsive," and always subject to Pemulis's "kind of unofficial emeritus power of correction over Lord's calculations and mandate." Elsewhere he is tagged in passing as "E.T.A. stats-wienie and Eschaton game-master Otis P. Lord," one of exactly two E.T.A. devotees (with Mario Incandenza) who listen to Madame Psychosis's WYYY show "almost religiously." In Schacht's taxonomy of pre-match nerves he is a gut case — "Cisne, Yard-Guard, Lord, you: stomach men." — and at Lung-inflation time he heads the school's wonk caste: "Two TesTar guys'll supervise Otis P. Lord and all this year's conspicuous tech-wonks in mounting the heaters and stringing the lights" (Schacht's forward-looking reverie of the annual tradition; habitual expectation, not a dated act).