The orthopedic-saw satiation experiment

pivotal · ?/12-14 Nov YDAU

• When: The commandeered Antitoi shop and its room of storage, Inman Square, in the days after the samizdat copy is secured.
• What: When the actual Entertainment surfaces in the viewing rotation, the cell's losses begin — Desjardins, then Joubet the red-bearded workhorse, who rolled in against orders — and someone thinks to wake up Broullîme, whom Fortier had briefed with care on procedures for exactly this event. Broullîme's clinical read is immediate: he estimates a matter of hours for Joubet — who was diabétique, and declining to come out for insulin — perhaps one day or two for Desjardins. He verifies the captured U.S.A. student radio-engineering person's statements of the Subject's whereabouts "to within +/− (.35) of assurance well before debriefing-levels incompatible with physical existence." Then the signature act: with the engineer installed as the first field-test Subject, head immobilized with straps, Broullîme rolls himself blindfolded into the room of storage holding an orthopedic saw, informs the Subject that each subsequent reviewing of the Entertainment now costs one digit from his extremities — and hands him the saw. His stated aim is a matrix computing the statistical relation between (n) replays and (t) the time taken to decide and remove a digit for the next one, to confirm the Subject's desire as incapable of satiation: for the samizdat to be macro-politically lethal, "the ninth digit of extremities had to come off as quickly and willingly as the second." And the narration hands him his character in one line — personally, he has some skepticism about this; that is his function: expertise plus doubt.