We stood shoulder to shoulder, the ex-Ali'i and I, our noses millimeters from room 1905's picture window. None of the respectable media had said word one about the Corporate Court's scheduled demonstration, but the word had certainly gotten out nonetheless. Part of that was due to the fact that a media lockdown simply isn't possible when parties with a vested interest in getting the word out—in this case, the corporations—can beam their message directly down from the high ground of low Earth orbit. Ground-based pirate stations had done their part, too, gleefully reporting on the Hawaiian government's attempts to muzzle the commercial media outlets. Back in the Dark Ages—the nineteen-eighties and nineteen-nineties, for example—it might have been possible to keep this kind of genie in the bottle. These days? No fragging way, hoa, as the government was finding out.