The Silence After Fire

It was the year 2079 when Earth was no longer the cradle of existence it was now its own grave. The world war had begun with satellites flashing out of existence and ended in burning continents. The world superpowers, each in a race to create the most sophisticated weapons of AI and quantum bombs, ultimately unleashed what they had feared for decades: The Cinder Protocol.

It was a secret encoded in the deep levels of the defensive mechanisms of all large countries activated if there was detection of simultaneous nuclear attack. Nobody is aware who opened first. It may have been an error for some. For others, it may have been by design. Yet, in just three hours, more than 80% of the world had engulfed flames, ash, and deadly atomic silence.

Cities disappeared. Blood red skies turned. Seas seethed in areas. It was remembered by survivors as The Firefall.

Very few subterranean safehouses had succeeded in engaging their doors of sealing life within sufficient time. Such a refuge existed deep below one formerly known as Istanbul. In this place of shelter lived perhaps 200 or so individuals researchers, physicians, several civilians, and a youth barely 16 named Rafiq.

Rafiq had been at his aunt's house when the alarms sounded. He never saw his parents again. The last thing he remembered on the surface was the sky aflame like paper held to flame, and humans screaming in a language no longer spoken in a dead world.

They spent five years down there. Five years of artificial lighting, nutrient paste, and recycled air. The older crowd struggled to keep things together. But as the systems started to break down, hope perished quicker than the stored food.

One day, a weak but genuine signal came through a broken radio old news that nonetheless seemed real:

"Echo Station online Western Alps safe zone survivors welcome"

Rafiq, aged 21, addressed the council and proclaimed, "We have to leave. If there's even the slightest possibility anyone else is here, we can't die here in this tomb."

Most of them disagreed. Too risky. Too remote. Radiation zones, dust storms, and wandering renegade bots intended for war still seemed to hang over them. But a few volunteers stepped forward: ten men and women, a former combat medic named Leena, a blind musician named Sameer, and Rafiq, now their de facto leader.

They moved into an almost alien world. Buildings lay in ruins to ash. Trees stood like burnt bones. The sun was a red, dull disk behind clouds of poisonous gas. They wore rebreathers and radiation suits and moved through cities where not even the crows survived.

In a town reduced to rubble, they found just one girl alive barefoot, speechless, clinging to a battered stuffed rabbit. She had been living on rainwater and fungi, her voice lost to shock. Rafiq hiked for miles with her on his back.

Each day was another fight: acid rain, broken drones continuing to attack "enemy combatants," and the silence of a dying Earth. Leena was killed defending the group from a falling bridge. Sameer, blind but not sightless, played music at night on a solar charged instrument a reminder they were still human.

And then, finally, after weeks of walking through the devastation of Europe, they arrived at the Alps. A drone buzzed above. Guns at the ready, expecting death. But instead, the drone scanned them and blinked green.

A secret door swung open in the side of the mountain.

Within was Echo Station a haven of greenhouses, living water, and survivors. Real people. Children. Laughter. The world hadn't ended completely. Just started over smaller, humbler, wiser.

Rafiq glanced over one time at the ruin they had escaped. He did not weep. He could weep no more. But when the little girl tightened her grip on his hand and smiled for the first time, he whispered, "We are the silence after fire. And now, we speak again."

Moral:

In a world scarred by its own blunders, those who bear hope become the seeds of something new.