GENTLE AT LARGE: touring the new border's Lucite walls

texture · early Subsidized, post-Reconfiguration

• When: after the Reconfiguration is effected and the walls are up; before the pay-for-it meeting (event 7), per the montage's placement
• What: With the territory transferred, the montage shows the President in triumph and quarantine at once: Gentle had promised a skeptical Cub Scout convention "'YOU'LL BE ABLE TO EAT RIGHT OFF' TERRITORIAL U.S. BY END OF TERM'S FIRST YEAR," and now tours the new "New-New England" border amid tight security, whacking champagne bottles against the massive Lucite walls south of what used to be Syracuse, Concord NH, and Salem MA — then watches a bowl game from inside an oxygenated portabubble ("GENTLE MORE OR LESS AT LARGE"). The christening-a-ship gesture aimed at a national amputation, performed by a man who can no longer touch the country he tidied, is the era's founding image in miniature.