The authority figure at JOI's suicide: "irreproachably brisk and efficient and sensible"

texture · 1 Apr YTSDB (2004), recalled 5 Nov YDAU

• When: 1 April YTSDB (2004), the day of JOI's suicide (per the archive's suicide-dating ruling); recalled by Hal in the 5 Nov YDAU phone call with Orin
• What: On finding his father's body, thirteen-year-old Hal ran for an adult — "went to get the Moms, then changed my mind and went to get C.T., then changed my mind and went to get Lyle, but the first authority figure I ran into was Schtitt. Who was irreproachably brisk and efficient and sensible about everything and turned out to be just the authority figure to go get in the first place." Schtitt is thus the E.T.A. adult who managed the immediate aftermath of his founding partner's suicide — a small dated event tying him to the Academy's central catastrophe, and of a piece with the front-line steadiness of the '98-blizzard flare (event 20). The same call carries a doctrine echo in the brothers' idiom: "The whole difference was this time you were walking on-court oriented, with a sense of where the lines were, Schtitt would say" (p. 0255).