round-the-clock news coverage," Klanac stated. "Choice is pretty important to a person who has to ask permission to pee."
One of the most popular "rooms" is Chez Melvin, a four-star gourmet restaurant featuring the kind of fancy French cuisine political prisoners might be enjoying if they hadn't been so dead-set on defying the existing puppet regimes back home. Modeled after Maxim's in Paris, Chez Melvin features images of attractive MELVIN staffers and their dates laughing, eating and sharing stories before heading home for an evening of intimate fun. Viewers are allowed to chose from a number of interactive options, including 1) periodically coughing, 2) begging for food, 3) asking to be excused, and 4) picking up the check.
Despite the limited level of interactivity available, the MELVIN asylum is showing signs of being a strong success among the dissident and ex-patriate community. Applications for membership are arriving faster than they can be processed, and MELVIN's corporate bank accounts are bursting with freshly-cashed Amnesty International checks. General Manager Klanac, for one, is unsurprised by the sudden success. "Every human longs for freedom. You could even say they demand it," Klanac chuckled. "Simple economic theory tells us that anyone who can supply that demand can look forward to raking in some big-time bucks."
Currently, most applications are arriving from the Far East, with Central and South America running a close second, a fact that is surprising to most on the MELVIN sales staff. "We knew that our Virtual Bangkok would pull in the Asian demographic, but the interest from Central America has come as a shock," Klanac stated. "After all, as all Americans know, except for Cubans, the vast majority of so-called South American political refugees are actually fleeing economic hardship and not oppression."
