The red box with papers was free… daily. Especially before sunrise, when it flew uptown to meet the other free boxes for a little chat and also to refill on papers. Once the dangerous sun came out, the dangerous scorching star, the destroyer of all living things, the thief of red and red boxes, once the sun came out, the box had to be back at its post, and it had to be secured. It had to be protected. A friendly man was the protector of the box. He made sure the sun could not steal it, burn it, destroy it. He protected the red box by using a magic chain. This magic chain, used by the man with the key, was what actually ensured the freedom of the red box. Without the chain, the box would be swallowed by the sun, the scary sun, bringer of death and destruction.
The man was a real blessing. And the chain was good. The chain was the ultimate protection. It was very necessary to keep the red box free. Daily.
But the chain was not cheap, of course. Only a very special magic chain was good enough to ensure freedom from sun-destruction and so freedom by chain had a certain price. Doesn’t everything have a certain price? Exactly. And so freedom also had a price.
Red boxes usually do not have a lot of savings or anything of real value, really, and so the red box, in order to be able to afford the protection from the sun, which was provided by the friendly man with the key to the lock on the magic chain, in order to be able to afford all this, the box had to work.
The box had to sell papers, which were free as well, of course, but it had to bring the papers to the people, it had to be empty by the end of the day, so it could be free in the morning, before the sun arrived, the dangerous, killer sun.
Aside from the fact that the sun was a real threat, and that the box was exposed to this dangerous star with its killer UV rays all day… this was a beautiful, urban, cultured, educated, interesting, free life.

The question someone asked (and it might have been that stinky subway ventilation pilar on the corner,) was, how free the box really was… after all it knew exactly that it would be chained down again and that it would have to return to the same sign after the so called “free” time with the other free boxes before sunrise… so the box was probably free, but not free of its habits…
and then the paper… always the same paper… the corner… always the same corner… these were all choices made by the box. It was maybe free, but these habits made this freedom completely worthless… what would be next? The box would choose to sell its body to advertising, just so it could afford to have the papers delivered, so it would not have to leave the corner and never be removed from the magic chain? So it would never have to meet with the other boxes ever again?

All in all things turned very confusing from here on. Nothing changed physically really; the box still flew to meet the others in the morning, it would still come back to be chained down, there would still be new ideas in its belly every day…
But nothing felt as perfectly right as before… the whole world seemed to be trapped by its evil habits… and nothing and nobody seemed very free at all…
hmm… at least there was the magic chain… because of the sun… oh, and rumor was that some cars were also out to destroy the red boxes (somebody near a video store had seen recorded evidence) and that…
oh, these were incredibly dangerous times for the free world… and not just the red boxes…