Having traced — through the strenuous technical interview of the sar-torially eccentric cranio-facial-pain-specialist, whom they had traced through the regrettably fatal technical interview of the young burglar[300] whose electrical-surge-tolerance proved considerably lower than that of his room’s computer’s machinery — having traced their best chances at a copy to the hapless Antitois’ establishment, it had taken the A.F.R. then several days to find it there, the real Entertainment.
A.F.R.’s U.S.A. cell’s leader, Fortier, the son of a Glen Almond glass-blower, had allowed none of the mirrors to be broken or dismantled. In all other respects, the search had been methodical and thorough. It was a neat search and also orderly, with time taken. Because the viewer of the shop was visually dysfunctional, a consumer TP had been purchased and set up for volunteer viewing in the room of storage off the shop’s back room. Each cartridge of the shop’s exhaustive shelves was sampled by a volunteer, then discarded in one of the huge metal coffre d’amas in the alley outside the shop’s rear door. A detail had been assigned to roll the extinguished Antitoi brothers in construction-plastic and place them in a room of storage off the back room. This was for hygienic purposes. A detail also had procured an oilskin windowshade for the front door’s glass, also some printed signs which read CLOSED, ROPAS, and RELACHE. No person had knocked at the door after the first hours, thus.
Quickly, on the first day, in a liquor box which was damp and smelled, they had found 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. And young Tassigny, with characteristic valor, volunteered to be rolled into the room of storage and strapped in, in order to verify this, and Fortier allowed this. All had drunk the gesture of a toast to Tassigny and promised to look after his aged father and fur-traps, and M. Fortier had embraced the young volunteer and kissed both his face’s cheeks as he was rolled in and fitted by M. Broullîme with EEG wires and strapped in before the viewer placed in the room of storage.
Then the cartridge of the street-display turned out to be blank, void. Then another from this box, also wet: also blank. Two blanks. Done. D’accord. Fortier, philosophical, counselled against disappointment or damage from a frustration — he 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 fact of the displays which featured wheelchairs, a smack to the testicles of A.F.R. — this was ignored. A.F.R. wanted only to repossess this copy of the Entertainment. As well, chiefly, now to determine: could this copy of DuPlessis itself be copied? This was the real objective: a Master cartridge.[301] Unlike the F.L.Q., les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents had no interest in blackmail or cartographic extortings for the Convexity’s return. Not in re-Reconfiguration of O.N.A.N. or even its charter’s dissolution. The A.F.R. were interested only in dealing the sort of testicular frappe to the underbelly of U.S.A. self-interests that would render Canada itself unwilling to face the U.S.A. retaliation for this — if A.F.R. could secure, copy, and disseminate the Entertainment, Quebec would be not so much allowed as required by Ottawa to secede, to face on its own the wrath of a neighbor struck down by its own inability to say ‘Now’ to fatal pleasures.[302]