…Minus 056 and COUNTING… Two days passed. Richards playe

For two days in Manchester, Ben Richards maintains the disguise Bradley created for him, living as the nearly blind priest Ogden Grassner at the Winthrop House. Richards eats in his room, reads a Bible in the lobby, and leaves each morning for supposed meetings, while the hotel staff treats him with dismissive politeness because Richards appears harmless and pays his bill.

Richards spends those morning “meetings” locked in a rented library cubicle, reading about pollution. The available information is limited, especially after 2002, and newer material contradicts older material in ways that suggest government suppression. On the way to the library Richards mails four film clips, and the forwarding arrangement from Boston appears to be working.

In the evenings, Richards watches The Running Man and sees that the producers have changed tactics. Because Richards keeps trying to communicate Bradley’s pollution revelations, the show now uses a roaring crowd to drown out Richards’s voice with jeers and abuse, though Richards hopes lip-readers can still understand him. The censorship confirms that the Network is actively trying to kill the message.

During his long afternoons alone, Richards recognizes that the experience with Bradley and Bradley’s sick daughter has changed his purpose. Richards no longer thinks only of himself, Sheila, and Cathy; Richards now thinks of the poor masses who are being poisoned by the air. This shift leads Richards to reflect on his own solitary life: his father’s disappearance, his mother’s death, his brother Todd’s death, his harsh work history, his blackballing after defying General Atomics, and the birth of Cathy after years of hardship.

With the chase temporarily distant, Richards’s anger turns toward the Games Federation and its immense power to communicate with and manipulate the world. Richards cannot see a clear way to attack it, but Richards begins thinking about the possibility, grinning with the same savage defiance he once felt after striking a rich man who tried to humiliate him.