The Eschaton debacle: eminence grise, the map/territory purist, the free-for-all

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When: Sunday 8 Nov YDAU (Interdependence Day)
What: At the year's Eschaton, Pemulis presides as "sort of eminence grise," in yachting cap, tallying by pencil-and-clipboard "à la deLint," on recent Tenuate. When eleven-year-old Evan Ingersoll fires a warhead at a live player (Ann Kittenplan) and game-master Otis Lord wavers over whether players can be targets, Pemulis erupts into a furious defense of the game's founding axiom — that the players are the map's apparatus, not the territory, so real snow and real bodies are out of play. He rages along the fence, jumping so hard his cap leaves his head; his "blue-collar Irish" comes out. When Lord dons the red Utter-Global-Crisis beanie and the game degenerates into a snow-blind brawl of thrown warheads and punches (Ingersoll, Lord, Possalthwaite, Penn all injured), Pemulis stays under cover, arms folded, and stops Troeltsch from intervening: "let them all lie in their own bed." He is "telling Hal he hates to say he told them so" as Lord goes headfirst through the game computer's monitor. This debacle triggers the disciplinary chain (events 16-18) that ultimately dooms his DMZ plan and his enrollment. That evening he wears the cap-and-braid to the I.-Day gala and clowns (maraschino on Mario's Bolex, scene 081).