The Last Flame

The year was 2097, and the planet was no longer the blue and green heaven that once existed. Twenty years before, the Yellowstone Supervolcano had exploded an eruption so massive that it clouded the skies of continents. In a matter of months, temperatures plummeted worldwide. Crops withered. Governments fell. Ash blanketed much of the Northern Hemisphere in a deep blanket of death.

What was left of civilization went underground or into defended, self-contained cities. One city Elaris was constructed within a mountain valley, geothermally powered and dome-protected. For 18 years, it survived as a flame of life, the Last Flame, because it was the sole powered and heated city remaining.

Now, even Elaris was perishing.

The aftershocks of the volcano had split the foundation of the geothermal plant under the city. Heat was dissipating within the dome, and individuals had started to freeze in their residences. Supplies of food were running low. And most frightening of all, the core reactor was unstable it might seize operation at any time or blow and destroy the entire city with it.

Among the people was 19 year old Rayan, a maintenance man who had lost his parents in a supply riot five years ago. He lived by himself, fixing heating pipes in the tunnels under Elaris. He didn't think of himself as brave or heroic he was simply trying to survive, like everyone else.

One morning, while inspecting a collapsed shaft, Rayan heard faint tapping from a sealed steel door that hadn’t been opened in over a decade. Curious and cautious he pried it open with a crowbar. Inside was an old control room, covered in ash and frozen wires. But it wasn’t empty.

A woman covered in soot, wearing an old engineer’s coat sat against the wall, weak but alive. “You’re… you’re not with Security?” she rasped.

Rayan wagged his head. "I'm a tech. Who're you?"

"Dr. Salma Ameen," she replied. "I was responsible for designing the geothermal core. They quarantined me in here after I told them it would fall."

Her tale was impossible, but the terror in her eyes was all too real. She spoke to him of the truth Elaris never was supposed to last 20 years. The dome was fissuring, and the core was leaking pressure already. If they didn't manually shut it down, it would explode.

“But there’s one chance,” she added. “We can reroute the heat into the emergency exhaust tunnels… but someone needs to crawl into the vent chamber and do it manually.”

That meant a near-suicidal mission.

Rayan hesitated. He had nothing left. No family. No future. But if this city fell, thousands of innocent people children, elders, his neighbors would be buried in flame and ash.

“I’ll do it,” he said quietly.

Hand in hand, he and Dr. Ameen walked into the center of the geothermal plant. Steam and heat hissed from all the pipes. Alarms flashed red. The control panel was melting from the inside out. Time was short.

As they approached the exhaust tunnels, the heat rose perilously. Rayan removed his outer suit and went into the cramped shaft. His hands blistered on the metal. His lungs seared. But inch by inch, he inched through the red-hot corridor until he came to the last valve.

With shaking arms, he yanked the lever.

Outside, the dome trembled. A great pillar of steam burst into the air. The city lights flashed and remained lit.

He had succeeded.

But Rayan never emerged again.

Elaris was saved for the time being. Dr. Ameen returned with word of his sacrifice, and the people grieved. They remembered him not as a warrior with guns, but as a laborer with a wrench who put others first.

Years afterward, a statue was erected close to the core entrance: a man in a thermal suit, arm raised toward a lever, with an inscription that said:

"The Last Flame burns because he did."

Moral:

Sometimes the least vocal people hold the most bravery and one sacrifice can illuminate generations.