The Entertainment found — but Read-Only, not a Master; the pivot to the indirect route

pivotal · ~12-14 Nov YDAU

• When: ~12-14 Nov YDAU (Desjardins's fatal viewing shift in "the hours of early morning," ~12-13 Nov; the WYYY engineer acquired "on the day of Fortier's return," ~14 Nov)
• What: A third smiley-embossed cartridge from the Antitoi dregs is "secured and verified" as the real Entertainment — at the cost of Desjardins and Joubet, locked in the storage room with it, declining food, water, and insulin and crying out only for the rewinder (Tassigny survives only by leaving to change his colostomy bag). But the found copy is Read-Only, not a duplicable Master (n303: Broullîme and Fortier had expected this, believing a Master's unique case would have made even the dim Antitois set it aside and be lost); whether a Master was ever in the shop is not settled. So Fortier pivots the cell fully to the indirect route — striving "to secure the original Master, the auteur's own cartridge" — "the device for extending O.N.A.N.'s self-destructing logic to its final conclusion." The Master's whereabouts (rumored buried with the dead auteur) is now the operation's object and the thread's open crux.