Freedom Pass Puns

An emperor decided his population was rising too fast and decided to decrease the numbest. Bunches of generous birth and death control methods did he come up with, but the most dastardly scheme was the Neat Edict. His subjects, however, bitterly called it The Press Test.

The emperor, you see, founded a law that anyone found wearing rumpled clothing, after being fined, would find a rock, then use his or her (or their) own forehead(s) as an iron...to press and press to reduce the crinkles in the clothes to half, then half of that, then half of that... As the victims wept, the soldiers jeered at the poor souls and mocked them: "Press! Press! They were halving a bawl.

To the despot's calculated glee, no one could pass The Press Test. As sure as waking up with a sniffle, everyone starts off with a crumple in the blouse and more get added as the day goes by. So there was no shortage of victims squirted into The Press Test arena.

First it was 12 creases legislated, then 5. It soon became Three and then One, before ending in none. By slowly reducing the number of creases permitted in clothing, the whole population was soon caught up in the Emperor's net. It was most unfair, but no matter how hard they pressed for freedom from The Press, the population steadily dwindled.

The approximately equally wicked emperor of the next fiefdom, taking sadistic note, invited his neighbour over to congratulate him. "How did you achieve that?", Vile asked Evil over a poisoned lunch.

Clutching at the tablecloth as he went down writhing, he nevertheless had a last grasp answer:

"By gradual decrees"

In the not too distant future, web censorship is pervasive; speech and freedom are strangers to one another; while pirates sail the seas with impunity, digital pirates are incarcerated by the busload.

Anyone who speaks out against this ban on open-dialogue or the free-sharing-of-ideas is ground down and hidden away, and the resistance is loosing its will.

A small group of contributors to reddit, huddled together in a bunker beneath barely-waving flags of Snoo, worked tirelessly to repost new ideas from around the internet, to release ideas from their chains, and make speech free ... again!

But it was not to be - a gang of the governments anti-piracy enforcers descended on this, the last bastion of humankind's will to share-freely. Arriving in an armored bus, ten shock-troopers breached the bunker and it looked like the day was lost.

Fortunately for us all, one brave redditor led the collective out a back entrance and they circled to the driveway. This leader told the other redditors to wait in the bushes while he overpowered the one soldier left guarding the transport. There was a flash of movement, a crack from a fallen branch as it struck the guard, and then, stolen keys in hand, the hero revved the engine and told the redditors to pile in.

He had to will himself ignore the gas gauge as he floored the accelerator on the 25,000 pound ticket to freedom - there was only survival or defeat, and nothing in between. Sirens came alive behind him as he rushed for the border to the promised land, to the Free-North.

As the engine begins to cough, the titanic weight of the transport cleaves the barricades asunder and the pursuing vehichles have to hard-brake to avoid skidding beyond their corrupt jurisdiction. Both exhausted and elated, the redditors follow their hero to the freedom promised by their new surroundings ... but their peril is not yet passed.

Though most of the pirate-hunters glower from the south-side of the border, one special agent has crossed over and is speaking with the border guards. The tension is thick. A long-faced guard turns to the newcomers, clearly troubled by what he must do.

"Folks," he says, a pained look on his kindly face, "I'm sorry, to do this, don't cha' know, but I got no choice, eh!"

Confused, the redditors look to one another, and tremble as they notice the agent's smug expression, greedy eyes fixed on the leader of the exodus.

"Look here, now, you are all welcome here, of course, and since speech is free here, we are