Scene 101: entertainment casualties

• p. 507: Steeply: "We've lost a couple already" — the Data Analysis intern who used Tom Flatto's I/O-lab clearance card and viewed one of the Read-Only copies.
• p. 507: Marathe coolly recites Hoyne's dossier — "Hoyne, Henri or pronounce 'Henry,' middle initial of F., with the wife, with his adult diabetes he controls" — a flash of how deeply the A.F.R. has penetrated B.S.S. personnel files.
• p. 507: Hoyne's condition: four-point restraints, nourishment through a tube, will for nothing but more viewing; Steeply's failed visit ("with your sleeveless skirt and different breasts," Marathe needles) — Hoyne begging for "a trailer, a snatch of soundtrack, anything," eyes "wobbling around like some drug-addicted newborn."
• p. 507: the argument-turning testimony: Hoyne put down all sugar and treats at diagnosis "and walked away. Not even a whimper or backward glance... An American adult of exemplary self-control and discretion" — iron will is no defense.
• p. 507: Marathe: "The samizdat is not to be played crazily about with, so. We too have lost persons. It is serious."
• p. 508: the legs of Perseus "amputated by the earth's horizon," Castor and Pollux over legless Marathe's shoulder; Steeply asks whether Marathe ever fantasizes about viewing; Marathe: "we think of what ends the Entertainment may serve... You and we are tempted in different ways."
• p. 508: Steeply, kneading a bare shoulder: as much terrified as intrigued; Hoyne "an empty shell," his world "collapsed into one small bright point"; Willis's memo-phrase for the victims' eyes: "Empty of intent."
• p. 508: Marathe: "Terror seems part of the temptation for you"; the A.F.R. respects the weapon's power and does not "fool crazily about"; the stars pale toward false dawn, U.S. insects whirring jaggedly past, "making Marathe think of many windblown sparks."

Backward

• Direct, surely deliberate juxtaposition with scene 100: Roy Tony's "We done motherfucking surrendered our wills" (p. 506) against Hoyne's exemplary autonomous will (p. 507) — the book's two anthropologies of will side by side; self-control cannot do what surrender does.

Forward

• Continues scene 098 (pp. 489-491: the copies inventory, Flatto's density/holography theories) without a break; the serial resumes at scene 103 (pp. 528-530, the lethal-pleasure myths) — all one night of 30 Apr – 1 May YDAU.
• Hoyne's terminal viewing matches the medical attaché's household (scenes 007, 011, 014, 025, 028: the widening circle of viewers around the cartridge) and prefigures the federal dossier's own testing casualties — the penal-system "volunteers" lost to viewing attempts, and the Leavenworth Lance Corporal reporting the opening shot under near-lethal voltage (pp. 548-549, scene 107); the A.F.R.'s mirror program later prices each re-viewing at "one digit from the Subject's extremities" (scene 147, p. 727) — and his own father's MAS*H spiral (pp. 638ff).
• "Empty of intent" resonates forward to the narration's verdict on Hal — "inside Hal there's pretty much nothing at all, he knows" (p. 694, scene 135) — and the figurant/empty-eyes cluster, and backward to JOI's project of making an entertainment so compelling it would reverse Hal's retreat into blankness (the wraith's confession, pp. 838-839, scene 162).
• Marathe's "tempted in different ways" continues the serial's master argument (choosing one's temple, pp. 107-108; the spoon-fed death of pleasure, p. 318) and sets up his Gertraud confession in scene 103.

• p. 507: "He's in four-point restraints now. Nourishment through a tube. No desire or even basic survival-type will for anything other than more viewing." — the Entertainment's clinical end-state in three sentences.
• p. 507: "I watched this man put down all sugar and treats when he first got diagnosed. Just put them down and walked away... An American adult of exemplary self-control and discretion." — the will-of-steel case; anchor passage for entertainment-self.
• p. 508: "His world's as if it has collapsed into one small bright point. Inner world. Lost to us." — solipsism-by-pleasure.
• p. 508: Willis's coinage "'Empty of intent.' This appeared in a memo." — bureaucratic language meeting metaphysical horror.