The Antitoi shop — the real Entertainment found, but Read-Only not a Master; why copies can't be duped

pivotal · ~9-14 Nov YDAU

• When: ~9-14 Nov YDAU (the search runs several days; the samizdat verified by ~12-14 Nov)
• What: After a methodical shelf-by-shelf search of the Antitoi shop (each cartridge sampled by a strapped-in expendable volunteer), the A.F.R.'s first finds are decoys: "an example of the rival F.L.Q.'s tactical street-display cartridges, with its crudely stamped smiling face and the 'IL NE FAUT PLUS QU'ON PURSUIVE LE BONHEUR' embossed upon it" — young Tassigny volunteers to be strapped in with EEG wires to verify it, and it and a second such cartridge turn out "blank, void." Fortier and Marathe "had counselled all along that the F.L.Q. displays of the Entertainment and the wheelchaired man were probably the hoax, instilling of terror only" (the street displays of event 13). Then the real thing: "a third cartridge emblazed with the embossed smile," verified as the samizdat burgled from DuPlessis — at the cost of Desjardins and Joubet, locked in with it, declining food, water, and insulin. But on Fortier's return the news is that "the found copy was Read-Only," not a duplicable Master: "This was the real objective: a Master cartridge." The technical reason is InterLace's copy-protection — Noreen Lace-Forché engineered all consumer cartridges Read-Only, so a copyable Master needs "special OS-codes and special hardware" and must run at 585 rpm instead of a consumer's 450 (n301); and per n303 no Master would have lain unshelved in a damp box, since even the dim Antitois would have set aside "the unique case and slightly larger size of a Master." So Fortier pivots the cell fully to the indirect route (event 16) — securing the auteur's own buried Master, "the device for extending O.N.A.N.'s self-destructing logic to its final conclusion." See the AFR thread (event 9), event 11.