Return: the Entertainment secured Read-Only at the cost of two men; the pivot to the Master-hunt

pivotal · ~12-14 Nov YDAU

• When: ~12-14 November YDAU — Fortier's return to the dismantled shop from the Southwest, and the days of the new phase
• What: A third smile-embossed cartridge has been found and verified as the samizdat burgled from DuPlessis — at the price of young Desjardins and the diabetic workhorse Joubet, who watched it and would not stop, and were "made comfortable": locked in with the Entertainment to view it to death, declining food, water, and insulin. Fortier's whole eulogy is "Bôf" and an accepting shrug — all viewing details had taken their chances. The copy is Read-Only; so, philosophical, he reframes the mission upward: the Entertainment's lethal power is now proven, and the cell must undertake the harder task of technical-interviewing persons associated with the auteur to find the original duplicable Master. He gives numerous orders — F.L.Q. surveillance suspended, the cell concentrated in the shop, attention focused on the cartridge's veiled performer and the auteur's Tennis Academy — and the acquired radio engineer, his information verified past debriefing-levels incompatible with existence, becomes the first Subject of Broullîme's digit-per-viewing field-test of the cartridge's motivational range. Fortier himself, with the better-English A.F.R., canvasses every rehab, psychiatric, and demi-maison facility in a 25-km radius: a Somerville Phoenix House administrator hears his delivery with compassion and rejects him (no addicts for whom English is secondary), and no veiled face shows among the residents — c'est ça. The event closes on the southbound bus, Fortier's ghost-reflection in the window, imagining the city struck down.