Master copies and the temptation — "Tom Flatto’s personal theory is the…"
‘Tom Flatto’s personal theory is the appeal’s got something to do with density. The visual compulsion. Theory’s that with a really sophisticated piece of holography you’d get the neural density of an actual stage play without losing the selective realism of the viewer-screen. That the density plus the realism might be too much to take. Dick Desai in Data Production wants to go in with ALGOL and see if there are Fourier Equations in the root code’s ALGOL, which would signify holo-grammatical activity going on.’
Context
The density theory: holography as the way to combine a stage play's "neural density" with the screen's "selective realism," the combination itself being what's "too much to take" — the closest the book has yet come to a mechanism for the lethal cartridge, complete with a falsifiable test (Fourier equations in the root code). Marathe's reply — ‘M. Fortier finds the theories of content irrelevant.’ — closes the installment as an auteur-theory debate in spook clothing: the Americans keep theorizing the film, the A.F.R. only cares that it works.