Scene 147: afr finds entertainment

• p. 724: the third embossed cartridge, "after some regretful losses," now "secured and verified"; the find narrated — Desjardins sampling kitchen-waste-bag dregs in early morning, having "just moments before complained of the wasted time" of the discard-pile; Tassigny "saved by the need to leave this room to change the bag of his partial colostomy."
• pp. 724-725: the losses — Joubet rolls in against orders to see why no tapes are coming out; both "made comfortable since their loss," locked in with the cartridge, "silent behind the door except... cries of impatience at the player's rewinder"; Joubet the wheelie-popping diabetic given hours, Desjardins (still feeling phantom pains in his stumps) a day or two; Fortier's "Bôf" and accepting shrug.
• p. 725: the bad news — the copy is Read-Only (n.303: expected, since even the dim Antitois would have set aside a Master's unique case and been "already lost"); the pivot to "securing the original Master, the auteur's own cartridge"; "the device for extending O.N.A.N.'s self-destructing logic to its final conclusion lay within their arduous grasp."
• p. 725: orders — F.L.Q. surveillance on Rue de Brainerd suspended; the cell consolidated behind the "lingual window shade"; the surveillance map: an E.T.A. employee recruited to join "the Canadian instructor and student already inside"; Luria P—— "winning necessary confidences with her usual alacrity" in the Desert.
• pp. 725-726: the M.I.T. source IDs the performer's last employment — "the small Cambridge radio station which Marathe and Beausoleil had pronounced Weee," where she wears the U.H.I.D. veil; attention focused on the performer and the Academy; the Québec junior squad's visit noted as an exploitable vector (if only the A.F.R. "possessed a tennis player of talent and lower extremities").
• p. 726: the WYYY technical engineer acquired "in a public but low-risk operation"; he divulges everything at the mere description of technical-interview procedures; interviewed formally anyway "to verify" — consistent "two levels past average U.S.A. endurance," except curious claims that M.I.T. "was defensive in bed."
• pp. 726-727: the digit experiment — the engineer, head strapped, gets two free viewings; then blindfolded Broullîme hands him an orthopedic saw: each further viewing costs one self-amputated digit; the (n)-viewings-vs.-(t)-decision-time matrix; "the ninth digit... had to come off as quickly and willingly as the second"; Broullîme's professional skepticism — "expertise in combination with skepticism de coeur."
• pp. 727-728: Fortier's rounds of rehab facilities with the better-English squad (Marathe, Balbalis, Ossowiecke); Phoenix House's compassionate refusal (no E.S.L. admits); no veils visible among its residents, "c'est ça"; four teams out in the Antitoi district "acquiring additional Subjects" — required to be "passively undefended enough to be acquired publicly with quiet."
• p. 728: the bus vision — Fortier smelling snow, imagining NNE "inert, sybaritically entranced... fouling their divans"; business towers with two of three floors dark, blue TP-flicker; Tine holding Gentle's pen-hand signing a declaration of war; Ottawa's trembling teacups; he smooths his hair and watches the driver's neck.

Backward

• The WYYY engineer is Madame Psychosis's longtime studio engineer (scene 053, pp. 181-193; her show's whole staging) — his "acquisition" quietly erases the last institutional trace of Joelle's radio life.
• Fortier's divan-fouling vision literalizes the medical attaché tableau (scenes 007/011/014/025/028) at metropolitan scale; cf. Steeply's father's MAS*H decline (pp. 638-648) as the U.S.-side mirror.

Forward

• Completes the search begun in scenes 143/145; the smiley-embossed brown cases Marathe spots in Pat Montesian's cabinet hours later (scene 151, pp. 749-750, brought down from E.T.A. by Clenette per scene 153) raise the possibility that more copies — perhaps even the Master from JOI's grave-adjacent cache — are sitting at Ennet House.
• "The Canadian instructor and student already inside" E.T.A.: the book's strongest pointer that Poutrincourt (cf. her steno-watching in the Steeply scenes) and John Wayne are A.F.R. assets; bears on Wayne's late-book behavior and n.332's broadcast fallout (see scene n332).
• Luria P—— in the Desert + n.307's "Swiss hand-model" (scene 150) close the trap on Orin, paying off scene 145's "relative... an athlete" and prefiguring Orin's glass-cage fate (pp. 971-972).
• The four Subject-acquisition teams rolling the Antitoi district intersect the same night's street scenes: Lenz (142/148) and Poor Tony (144) are both in their net's radius — the splice is the point.

• pp. 724-725: Desjardins and Joubet "made comfortable since their loss... cries of impatience at the player's rewinder, to rewind" — the Entertainment's victims rendered as casualties-of-war; devastating litotes.
• p. 725: "the device for extending O.N.A.N.'s self-destructing logic to its final conclusion" — thesis sentence for the whole samizdat plot.
• pp. 726-727: the orthopedic-saw protocol and "the ninth digit of extremities had to come off as quickly and willingly as the second" — the book's most explicit formalization of addiction's economics.
• p. 728: Fortier's vision — "two-thirds of NNE's largest urban city inert, sybaritically entranced... fouling their divans" — the Entertainment apocalypse imagined in full; pairs with Gentle/Tine puppetry from Mario's ONANtiad (scene 081).