The Antitoi storefront raid; the shop taken as the A.F.R.'s Cambridge headquarters

pivotal · ~9 Nov YDAU

• When: ~9 Nov YDAU (the raid unfolds the same twilight as scene 097's Ennet-House cooking frame; the occupation continues c. 9-14 Nov)
• What: Tracing DuPlessis's copy through the pawned café-au-lait maker (n300) to a young burglar — his "regrettably fatal technical interview" the trail's first casualty (145) — and a cranio-facial-pain specialist and thence to the Antitoi brothers' Inman Square shop, the A.F.R. raids "Antitoi Entertainent" — the borderline-incompetent two-man insurgent cell orphaned by DuPlessis's death. Bertraund is already dead with a rusty railroad spike through his eye; the smily-face-masked leader (probably Fortier) politely demands the "Copy-Capable" Master item and a 585-rpm player; mute, French-less Lucien — unable to produce the words demanded — is executed by his own whittled broom driven down his throat to the wearily repeated "In-U-Tile." The cell then squats in the shop (mirrors preserved on Fortier's orders — a glass-blower's son), rolling the brothers in construction plastic "for hygienic purposes," and searches every cartridge on the shelves via strapped-in expendable volunteers. The looted F.L.Q. street-display cartridges — embossed with a smile and "IL NE FAUT PLUS QU'ON PURSUIVE LE BONHEUR" — read blank on a 450-rpm player (per n205, a cartridge reading blank on a consumer 450-rpm drive is not necessarily blank — Copy-Capable Masters give off nothing on a 450 and need a 585-rpm drive, n301) — as had "the old rude person's bartered tapes": cartridges an aged long-haired peddler in salmon-lensed spectacles had bartered to Bertraund, "in a jumble of West-Swiss-accented French," together with lozenges he claimed were "650 mg. of a trop-formidable harmful pharmaceutical no longer available" — the custody thread both the master-copy and DMZ questions pull on, recorded as written. See Marathe's timeline (event 17) (Marathe as the "technical interviewer" who wielded the broom — a fact disclosed only later).