"Hey, psst, no, over here, yeah -- I got what you want.

"You're a corporate elite, aren't you? Maybe, maybe not? Maybe you think you're just a safe corporate drone? Just a working stiff? Pretty nice life, though, yeah? Safe from want? Safe from fear? Nothing but a hickup since the terror-wars of '02?

"Sure. Sure -- safe as houses. 2020 is the year of the techno marvel. Blissful advancement under our corporate masters. I mean, you never hear a dissenting voice, right? Am I right?

"No. I'm wrong. Yeah, I can see it in your eyes.

"You know it. There's dissenters all right. Angry ranting dissenters. People who are fed up with it all. What? You think the corporations wouldn't stand for it?

"Well, you're right. They don't.

"Which is why you don't hear them. No angry voices to bother your perfect little drone life.

"How do they do it? How you ask?

"Well... That's the trick. I mean, they own your voice, don't they? They own the information super-highway. And they own everything you cruise the highway with. Every browser, every client, every kiosk.. the whole galactic nutball.

"Take you, for instance -- a fine upstanding member of the community. But what if you started to have a fondness for one of those rebel products. Say an old Linux nostalgia, or maybe some Netscape preferences... and you started to post about your anti-mainstream rhetoric... it's all free speech, right?

"Yeah, but there's nothing to guarantee they'll show it to anyone. What if some corporate manager judges you a subversive? Suddenly every message you send is invisibly tagged as subversive. No corporate browser will render it, no corporate mail program will sort it. Your voice is suddenly lost.

"Oh? You think it doesn't happen? It does. They're a little more tricky than just not delivering it. They let you send to your closer connections, your family, or your co-workers, but they got databases on databases on who you do and don't frequently talk to. Everyone else, poof, you're gone. Virtual jail time. Think about it... how many of your old chums do you speak to in person any more? How many of them have just faded into the background? How do you know they aren't sending mail and it's just not rendering on your reader?

"They own your voice, man. They can stick you in the digital oubliette and you're suddenly one of the unseen.

"Peeked your interest, haven't I? Curious to see if anyone's sending you stuff and you're just not seeing it? Want to rip off those corporate blinders? I got what you need. Fnordware -- see what you're missing. It's no corporate browser, no sir. You get 100% of the packets, you get 100% of the message. We even redflag those messages that have been marked subversive. Yes sir. Some people aren't up for it -- want to live in their safe little corporate world; but you, sir, I can tell you're made of sterner stuff.

"Still skeptical? Uh huh? Why don't they just stop your messages at the source, you ask?

"It's not worth the effort. Less than a fraction of a percent of the populace could see the invisible messages... no one bothers. They just take their corporate browsers & readers and they like it. Besides, the very people that mark the unseen invisible want to know what's up. It pays to know what the disenfranchised are saying.

"What? You think people realize they've been silenced? Ha! Man, there are people who've fallen off the net years ago and they're still going strong. They get a trickle of responses from family and co-workers and they think the whole world's listening. Why piss off the captives by letting them see they're in a jail? Just let 'em rant at the wind and make 'em think they're getting more than their fare share of those fifteen minutes of fame. The poor bastards...

"But you're no poor bastard, are you? No you aren't. Here, check it out... only 75 credits."