tracing the source without looking
Attempts to trace the matrix of the samizdat without viewing it—from induction on postal codes, e-microscopies on the brown padded mailers, immolation and chromatography on the unlabelled cartridge-cases, extensive and maddening interviews of those civilians exposed
Context
Here the hunt shows its method: an intelligence operation to locate a dissemination-point by forensics alone, because the object of the search kills anyone who looks at it directly. Postal-code induction, electron-microscopy of mailers, chromatography of the cases, and the "maddening interviews of those civilians exposed" triangulate a source "someplace along the U.S. north border" — pure source-tracing tradecraft, the manhunt conducted through evidence because the evidence cannot be examined the ordinary way. The samizdat's lethal contents and its casualties belong to entertainment-self; what is ours is the shape of the investigation built around not being able to watch.