Quote 22
This made me feel a lot calmer because it is what policemen say on television and in films. (17.2)
We can understand that Christopher is reassured by the fact that policemen behave in the way he expects. But this almost suggests that he considers the fictional world on TV more "real" than the world in which he actually lives and breathes.
Quote 23
The rule for working out prime numbers is really simple, but no one has ever worked out a simple formula for telling you whether a very big number is a prime number or what the next one will be. If a number is really, really big, it can take a computer years to work out whether it is a prime number. (19.6)
What's wrong with this mathematical picture? We thought Christopher was all about logic and order, so shouldn't he hate prime numbers? They're just about the least-orderly things around. Even computers can't predict where they're going to show up! What makes prime numbers different, such that they don't make him uneasy like other unpredictable things?
Quote 24
I was also wearing my watch and they wanted me to leave this at the desk as well but I said that I needed to keep my watch on because I needed to know exactly what time it was. And when they tried to take it off me I screamed, so they let me keep it on. (23.4)
The police are about to put Christopher into a jail cell. This doesn't bother him at all – in fact, he's quite happy there. His insistence on keeping his watch is similar – just as he's quite happy being restricted in space, he needs some sort of boundaries in time as well. He needs things to have order, and for time to be divided into neatly segmented minutes.