the self collapsed to a single bright point — "Willis, on the I/O night-shift, came…"

The Entertainment's casualties are the theme's terminal state: a man whose whole inner world has "collapsed into one small bright point," his eyes gone unrecognizable, "empty of intent" — present, alive, restrained in a bed, and totally unreachable, all channels in and out dead but the one feeding him more viewing. It is solipsism completed and figurancy completed at once: the self shrunk to a single point of appetite, a person reduced to a lineless extra in the wreck of his own life, "Lost to us." (The Entertainment's mechanics stay entertainment-self's; landed here as the endpoint of failed contact.) [sweep · shared-ground entertainment-self]