The shaggy head in V.R.5's doorway — then the Petropulator tips Pemulis off

pivotal · 20 Nov YDAU (morning)

• When: 20 Nov YDAU, early morning into mid-A.M. (blizzard/Gaudeamus day).
• What: With Hal supine on the floor of Viewing Room 5 (the scene's own prose names it — "V.R.5's heating duct's grille gave off a sterile hiss"), "Petropolis Kahn put his large shaggy head in and asked what was all this brooha upstairs, the thumps and cryings-out. He asked whether I was going to breakfast. The scuttlebutt on breakfast was sausage-analog and OJ with palpable pulp, he said." Getting no rise, "Kahn went away. I could feel his head's withdrawal from the doorway: a very slight suction in the room's air." The visit has a consequence: when Pemulis appears in the same doorway later that morning and Hal says he's just been lying there, Pemulis answers "'So I just got told,' he said. 'The Petropulator mentioned hysterics.'" Kahn, that is, is the relay by which Pemulis learns of Hal's state — the small hinge that delivers Pemulis to Hal for their last, failed interfacing. What exactly the "hysterics" were is left where the text leaves it (see Dating notes).