Telzap
“The kingdom of God is within us and all around us, not in mansions of wood or stone. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find Me”
Jesus of Nazareth.
“The power of the serpent shall end when the breach casts no shadow. If the opening occurs, light will flood the darkest corners, and the breach shall close forever. Balance shall once again be forged by the fragmentation of light turning east at dawn. But beware, for if the light withers, and the shadow cloaks the universe…”
Liora Olma
The world has changed. Since the looming threat of the Third World War, chaos had become inevitable.
But now, order reigns. Justice. And God.
When the ruler of one of the most powerful nations of the old world gave the order to launch five 4,000-megaton missiles across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Western Asia—allegedly to annihilate the so-called heretics of peace and the virus that had isolated us—the world descended into madness. The devastation obliterated over 50 million lives without warning, reason, or mercy.
Entire regions vanished. From Finland to Macedonia, from Hungary to Ukraine, across the Black Sea, from Kazakhstan to Sri Lanka—nothing remained. Estonia, Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia were wiped from the map. Western Russia and parts of the People’s Republic of China were ravaged, replaced by a toxic lake near the Dead Sea—now saltier, deadlier, and darker than ever before.
In the face of imminent threat, China’s people’s militia deployed their weapons in a desperate act of resistance. What followed was near extinction. A last, futile attempt to defy the West’s wrath.
It did not take long before the sky turned ashen and the earth became a graveyard. The once blue skies of the old world gave way to a constant grey mist—noxious, heavy with acidic water. The wind, saturated with sulphur, seared any skin it touched. Death lingered in the air.
The lush meadows that once adorned Chinese valleys and Europe’s green hills dissolved into arid deserts.
Military coups erupted across cities, towns, and villages. It was apocalypse upon apocalypse. Misery choked every corner of the planet.
Eradicating the threats posed by deranged and intolerant governments proved impossible. The global military had to take extreme measures to avoid complete extinction—of humanity and every living species.
There were 731 days of darkness. Of blood. Of pain. Of death.
The bombs were the symphony of the earth.
Tears, the water it produced.
And darkness—its only landscape.
Salvation came from the skies. The great Rome took hold of the crisis and proposed the unification of all world religions into one: Deidism. Every belief system merged into a single faith, a new order, a new humanity—with a new name, a new structure, and an unfamiliar kind of support.
Before the world even realised, Telzap was born.
It was governed by a council of eleven cardinals—figures of immense influence entrusted with decisions that shaped spiritual elevation and human preservation.
The Eleven drafted the commandments of the New Era of Salvation.
Breaking them meant imprisonment, or worse: soul purification—a process shrouded in silence, yet universally feared. Those who entered the Prison of God were never seen again. That was the only truth anyone could agree on.
To deserve such punishment meant committing a grave sin against God and His earthly representative—the Church.
The new world proudly proclaimed its values of humility and justice.
The reformation began with the renaming of the planet, the elimination of human borders, and the birth of a single, global nation: Telzap.
It was divided into 33 sectors—none supposedly superior to another. But the people knew the truth. The first ten sectors were home to the powerful: former politicians, the rich, and religious authorities. The rest housed those who had little to lose... except their lives.
Sector 1 was the most populated, arranged by citizen count.
Telzap was founded on October 7th, though months were now mere ghosts in the fractured memory of the past. Time no longer mattered—not when it had come to represent pain and ruin.
Once the Great Church declared itself the saviour of the world, it took only three days to eliminate all threats. Every religion—from Buddhism to Christianity—was absorbed. Even conservative branches of Islam and Catholicism bent to the will of the Church. And thus, to the horror and awe of a dying world, the Ten Commandments of the New Era were born:
·You shall respect and fear the word of the Lord.
·Women shall hold no political or religious authority.
·Homosexuality is sacrilege against God and Man.
·You shall speak no obscenities, cause no harm, and protest not against God or His representative, the Church.
·You shall show no public displays of affection, so as to avoid lust and sin.
·You shall not tamper with human or animal life. Any experimentation involving cloning, amplification, or biochemical manipulation shall be deemed sinful. We are not God, and to imitate Him condemns us.
·Weapons are strictly forbidden for all civilians.
·All civilians must attend the Sunday Mass of Salvation at 8:00 a.m. for the purification of sins.
·The image of God is Man. Therefore, Man holds power in work, home, and public life. Woman shall serve as faithful guardian of Man’s integrity.
·Any act of rebellion against the Church is an act of rebellion against God, and shall be punished by soul purification.
Praise be to God. Praise be to Telzap.
All commandments were broadcast daily at 3:00 p.m. on every screen in Telzap—on televisions, at Sunday Mass, and on the massive displays lining the streets.
Every citizen was required to greet others with “Blessed day” to express gratitude for being alive one more day—thanks to the will of God and His representative, the Church.
The world now spoke a single language—one tongue to express all thoughts. Only the Church was allowed to preserve knowledge of the ancient tongues, justified as follows:
“Only we are free from sin. Only we were untouched by the old world—past, present, and future.”
Humanity’s near-extinction was blamed on the serpent of temptation—Satan.
He had slithered into the mind of the advisor to the old ruler, a daughter of Eve corrupted by greed and darkness. She manipulated the leader into launching the bombs that brought the world to ruin.
Thus, women no longer spoke in the streets. They were reduced once again to mere matter—servants, not beings. Their lives were seen as sin, as temptation, as betrayal, as hell.
The remaining women supported these decisions.
How could they not?
Who would dare oppose the Church now?
Those who once resisted were burned in public squares.
Declared heretics, traitors, children of Satan, destroyers of peace.
And so, silence took hold.
There was nothing more to say—and if there was, it was best left unsaid.
In every house, in every sector, cameras watched around the clock.
Every home was under the gaze of God and His commandments.
They watched as you slept, as you ate.
The only place without surveillance was the bathroom—where the body expelled the filth that dwelled within.
Salvation had become slavery.
The saviour, an executioner.
And humanity, a machine of labour and silence.
So many things were forbidden that it was easier to list what remained allowed:
Sacred readings—those deemed appropriate for survival and fidelity to the Lord and His Church.
Classical music—permitted only on Sundays of Salvation and in the presence of the Church’s highest members.
Education, as once known, had vanished. No one spoke of science, history, or mathematics. Schools became temples of obedience—teaching nothing but the rules set by what was once the Vatican.
Why study science when Genesis was the only truth?
Why study history if the Church wanted it forgotten?
The past crumbled into dust, swept away by the wind.
Only the elderly remembered it.
The adults accepted its loss.
And the youth… never knew it existed.
The Church had saved the old world.
Now, it guarded Telzap.
