How to Annoy an Oppressive Regime in Thirty Seconds
(short version)

Based on Luke 21:5-19 – A call to endure persecution, deception, and chaos

The first siren broke across the city just after dawn. Mara heard it from her apartment window as she tightened her boots. The sirens had become the soundtrack of New Aurelia. They screamed whenever someone had spoken too loudly, asked the wrong question, or been caught hesitating at a checkpoint. The sirens were not warnings. They were announcements. Someone, somewhere, had refused the easy lie.

Mara slipped her worn satchel over her shoulder and headed for the stairs. The building trembled slightly as the sirens wound down. She paused at the landing, listening for the heavy footsteps that usually followed, but none came. Good. Not her turn today.

She stepped out into the street, joining the river of workers shuffling toward the transport stations. Each carried the same grey identity token, the same ration card, the same blank expression. A network of screens glowed overhead, streaming today’s message in bright, confident letters.

TRUTH IS CLARITY
CLARITY IS PEACE
SPEAK WITH ONE VOICE

Continue reading the full story here.

How to Annoy an Oppressive Regime in Thirty Seconds

Based on Luke 21:5-19 – A call to endure persecution, deception, and chaos.

The first siren broke across the city just after dawn. Mara heard it from her apartment window as she tightened her boots. The sirens had become the soundtrack of New Aurelia. They screamed whenever someone had spoken too loudly, asked the wrong question, or been caught hesitating at a checkpoint. The sirens were not warnings. They were announcements. Someone, somewhere, had refused the easy lie.

Mara slipped her worn satchel over her shoulder and headed for the stairs. The building trembled slightly as the sirens wound down. She paused at the landing, listening for the heavy footsteps that usually followed, but none came. Good. Not her turn today.

She stepped out into the street, joining the river of workers shuffling toward the transport stations. Each carried the same grey identity token, the same ration card, the same blank expression. A network of screens glowed overhead, streaming today’s message in bright, confident letters.

TRUTH IS CLARITY
CLARITY IS PEACE
SPEAK WITH ONE VOICE

Mara had once designed those screens. Back when she believed she was helping a troubled nation steady itself. Back when the government spoke of unity rather than uniformity. That was before the Purity Office was created. Before the checkpoints multiplied. Before silence became the safest language.

She kept walking until she reached the old viaduct, a part of the city most people avoided. There, behind a cracked pillar, a hand tapped twice. Mara responded with two taps of her own. A figure stepped out.

Kesh. Former teacher. Forever troublemaker.

“You are late,” he whispered.

“You are impatient,” she replied.

Kesh smirked. “You brought it?”

Mara took a small metal capsule from her satchel. “The transmitter. Miniaturised. Encrypted. It should cut through the Office’s filters.”

Kesh weighed it in his hand. “This could get a message to every screen in the city.”

“Exactly. One message that is not theirs.”

“And you are sure it will work?”

“No,” Mara said. “But their lie is too easy. People swallow it because it is soft. We need something solid.”

Kesh nodded. “Then tonight we go.”

They parted quickly, taking separate routes through abandoned alleys. Mara kept her head down, but the air felt restless. Patrol drones zipped overhead in tight patterns, their lights sweeping the walls. Something was going on.

By mid-afternoon, the screens changed. New text flickered across every street corner, every building face, every transit tunnel.

COUNTERVOICE DETECTED
REPORT ALL SUSPICIOUS COMMUNICATION
TRUTH IS SAFETY

Mara’s pulse raced. The Office must have intercepted fragments of the Resistance chatter. She hurried back toward her apartment, moving with the crowds so as not to stand out. A drone slowed above her. Its lens focused. She kept her gaze on the ground and walked steadily. After a tense moment, it zipped away.

Inside her apartment, she bolted the door and pulled out the small device she used to scan for surveillance. The scan came up clean. For now.

She paced the room. If the purge sweep started early, tonight’s plan would collapse. They might lose everything. Kesh might already be compromised.

At dusk, a coded alert flashed on her wristband. Three short pulses. Two long ones.

Go.

Her fear quietened. There was only the mission now.

Mara moved through the back streets until she reached the service tunnel beneath Broadcast Tower Three. The tunnel stank of old water and rust, but it was unpatrolled. She crawled through the narrow gap under the grid and emerged in the central maintenance corridor. Kesh was already there.

“You made it,” he whispered.

“So far.”

They approached the central conduit where the citywide network cable ran. A single feed point connected to the entire system. If they could link the transmitter, the city would hear a different voice for the first time in years.

Kesh knelt beside the junction box and opened it. “Fifteen seconds,” he said. “Once I attach this, we only have fifteen seconds before the breach alarm triggers.”

Mara took her position at the next panel and drew out a short wire. Her fingers trembled. Not with fear. With adrenaline.

“Ready,” she said.

Kesh attached the transmitter. Immediately, a shrill tone echoed through the corridor. They had fifteen seconds. Mara connected her wire, rerouting the feed. The transmitter pulsed with a soft blue light.

Then lights burst on at the far end of the corridor. Security units stormed in.

“Time’s up,” Kesh muttered.

Mara smashed the manual override button. The transmitter activated. A spark ran through the conduit. The city’s entire network flickered.

At the same moment, the security team charged.

Kesh grabbed Mara’s arm. “Go.”

“What about you?”

“I will slow them down. You must disappear into the tunnels.”

She hesitated. Leaving him felt wrong. But he shoved her toward the drainage shaft.

“Endurance,” he said. “Not bravado.”

Mara dove into the shaft just as the first stun bolts hit the wall beside her. She slid into the water below, cold and shocking. She resurfaced in darkness and swam for the next opening. When she pulled herself onto a narrow ledge, her lungs ached.

Above her, the city screens flickered violently. Static. Colour. Then a simple message appeared on every wall.

DO NOT BE AFRAID
THE TRUTH HAS BEEN SILENCED
NOT LOST

The words did not last long. Within thirty seconds, the Purity Office shut down the system. Every screen went black. But thirty seconds had been enough. People saw it. People talked. People questioned.

By midnight, the sirens were everywhere again. But Mara heard something else carried on the wind, weaving through the chaos like a thread of hope.

People whispering the message to each other.

Not lost.

She crouched in the shadows beneath the viaduct, soaked, bruised, unsure whether Kesh had survived. But for the first time in years, she felt the city breathing differently.

New Aurelia had heard another voice. A harder one. A truer one.

The easy lie had finally cracked.

And endurance, she realised, was not passive at all. It was a fight. A quiet, relentless refusal to bow.

She stood up, tightened her boots, and disappeared into the night. The work had only begun.