An app offers silence delivered in monthly installments. For a fee, it mutes inner monologues for an hour a day. At first, the quiet feels luxurious. Decisions arrive clean. But the invoices creep up. The app threatens to charge for unpaid silence. The subscriber negotiates: take my old anxieties as collateral. The app agrees, and the silence becomes permanent. Friends notice the newfound calm. Only the subscriber knows the cost: a voice locked behind a paywall, still whispering.
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