community issued as medicine

The one form of togetherness available at E.T.A. turns out to be manufactured: the staff calibrate the cruelty, aim it just past the breaking point, and hand the players a common enemy so the sealed interiors will, however briefly, produce "a community voice." Connection here is not achieved between people but administered to them from above, a gift and a medicine, which means the loneliness it treats is never actually crossed, only anesthetized on a schedule. Landed here on the connection-by-design mechanics; the loneliness/community register is irony-sincerity's. [sweep · shared-ground irony-sincerity]