the phone call that kills, playing on to a dead ear — "The advertisement, which was recorded, played…"
The advertisement, which was recorded, played its audible portion out upon the floor beside his father’s ear, audible between Marathe’s mother’s cries.
Context
The apparatus of contact turned lethal: Marathe's father answers a ringing phone and a videophonic pulse from a telephone-company ad stops his pacemaker, and then the recorded pitch keeps playing — a canned voice selling videophony on the floor beside the dead man's ear, over the widow's cries. Communication technology that kills the person it reaches and then goes on addressing his corpse, the recording indifferent to whether anyone is left alive to receive it. The theme's blackest single instance of a channel with no one on the other end.