The Brandon p-terminal program — the pleasure-electrode precedent U.S.O.U.S. reads onto the samizdat

texture · late B.S. 1970s (historical precedent)

• When: late B.S. 1970s (an Anglo-Canadian neuro-program at the Brandon Psychiatric Center, Manitoba); recalled by Steeply on the mountainside, pre-dawn 1 May YDAU
• What: Steeply reconstructs, as an analogy Fortier ought to heed, the Canadian neurologist "Olders/Elder/Older" (the name drifts within the scene — as printed) program at Brandon — originally an epilepsy-treatment stereotaxy experiment that implanted hair-thin Briggs electrodes and stumbled onto the brain's pleasure-tissue ("p-terminals," the "Rivers of Reward"). Rats and higher animals pressed the auto-stimulation lever thousands of times an hour until they died of dehydration; when word leaked, able-bodied young Canadians lined up around the block, trampling each other to volunteer, their psych-profiles "chillingly average." Ottawa informed the U.S. (Turner/Bush/Casey era), Langley "bit their knuckle in horror," and both governments went in with guns drawn, dismantled the labs, and buried the technology — the C.I.A. wanting it developed and Classified for military use. Steeply's point: the Entertainment is the optical version of the same lever, "a precedent in your own nation." U.S.O.U.S. (via B.S.S. lineage) is an heir to that suppression.