Marathe and Steeply on the p-terminal experiments

The screen's catch, at the pivot of the whole electrode-experiment excursus: after four pages of Steeply narrating the old Canadian p-terminal program — implanted electrodes, lever-pressing rats, human volunteers lining up to be wireheads — Marathe is the one who says the analogy out loud, and in doing so states the anthology's only explicit mechanical hypothesis for how the lethal cartridge works: optical stimulation of the pleasure-terminals, the eye as a bypass for the electrode. The Entertainment as optics in the strictest sense — a film that reaches the brain's reward tissue through the lens of the eye, no surgery required. Steeply neither confirms nor denies ("All I'm saying is analogy"); the theory stands as the scene's last word on mechanism. Feeds the roster's technical-theory scenes (098 master-copies holography, 178 Joelle's auto-wobble account).