the AFR searches the Antitoi shop — "young Tassigny, with characteristic valor, volunteered…"
young Tassigny, with characteristic valor, volunteered to be rolled into the room of storage and strapped in, in order to verify this, and Fortier allowed this. All had drunk the gesture of a toast to Tassigny […] and M. Fortier had embraced the young volunteer and kissed both his face’s cheeks as he was rolled in and fitted by M. Broullîme with EEG wires and strapped in before the viewer placed in the room of storage.
Context
The AFR handles the act of watching a cartridge exactly the way a bomb squad handles fissile material — the viewer is expendable instrumentation, and the ritual around him is a soldier's send-off. Tassigny is toasted, kissed on both cheeks, his father and fur-traps pledged care, then strapped down and EEG-wired to sample a cartridge that might kill him, because in this world sitting in front of a screen is the most dangerous job there is. The scene inverts the theme's usual passivity into heroism without changing the mechanics: the viewer is still restrained, still wired, still fed the image, but here the surrender is a sacrifice knowingly made rather than a pleasure fallen into. Spectation as bomb-disposal.