A Climate Fiction Story – And A Stark Warning Of A Very Possible & Terrible Future…

Fuel For The Fire…

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(There is a method to my madness. That method is in and of itself quite mad, but it is a method nonetheless.)Connoisseur of Knowledge. 179iq. 40-something human bean.Zenogender. CEO, Director, and Lead Developer.🇬🇧 🏳️‍🌈⚧ ♀️⚛️|🏳️‍⚧️|She/Her/They/Them.

© 2025. Cydonis Heavy Industries, (C.H.I), Ltd. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1: The Silence of Leeds

The morning Amanda Scott stepped out of the abandoned Marks & Spencer on Briggate, the temperature gauge on her salvaged weather station read 47.3°C. It was only March.

She adjusted the straps of her pack, heavy with the last of the tinned goods from the store’s stockroom, and looked down what had once been Leeds’ bustling shopping district. The silence was absolute. Not the peaceful quiet of a Sunday morning, but the profound absence of a world that had simply stopped breathing.

The physics of it all still fascinated her, even now. Even as the last CEO of what had been Northern England’s most successful renewable energy company, even as one of perhaps a dozen souls left wandering the Yorkshire Dales, she couldn’t help but calculate. Seven degrees of warming. The feedback loops had cascaded exactly as the models predicted, except faster. Always faster than anyone had dared to publish.

Amanda’s mind, that restless engine that had earned her three degrees by twenty-five and a company worth £200 million by thirty-five, now applied itself to simpler calculations. Water: enough for three days if rationed. Food: perhaps a week. The nearest settlement with any hope of survivors: Harrogate, thirty miles north through what had once been green countryside.

She began walking.

The streets told their story in layers. First, the obvious devastation of the Great Heat of 2053, when temperatures had spiked to 52°C for six consecutive days. Shop windows had cracked from thermal expansion. Tarmac had melted into sticky rivers that trapped the last fleeing cars. The bodies had long since been claimed by the heat and the storms that followed.

But beneath that immediate catastrophe lay the slower strangulation. The abandoned offices of 2051, when the insurance industry collapsed overnight. The boarded-up houses of 2050, when the last mortgages defaulted and the banks finally admitted the obvious: you cannot write thirty-year loans on property that will be underwater in ten.

Amanda had seen it all from her corner office in the Bridgewater Place tower. Her company, Pennine Renewables, had been one of the last to keep the lights on as the grid failed piece by piece. Solar panels cracked in unprecedented heat. Wind turbines designed for 40°C began failing at 45°C. The hydroelectric systems ran dry as the reservoirs turned to dust.

She had kept the company running even as her employees fled south, then west, then simply disappeared. The irony wasn’t lost on her: the woman who had spent her career trying to prevent exactly this catastrophe was now its most intimate witness.

The M621 motorway stretched ahead, its concrete surface buckled and split. Weeds pushed through the cracks—not the familiar Yorkshire flora of her childhood, but something more aggressive, more alien. Plants that had evolved in the heat of equatorial regions, carried north by the great migrations of 2052.

Amanda paused at the Holbeck interchange, consulting the paper map she’d salvaged from a petrol station. Digital navigation had become meaningless when the satellites failed and the cell towers fell silent. She traced her route with a finger already showing the early signs of heat exhaustion despite the electrolyte tablets she’d been rationing.

The landscape ahead shimmered with heat haze, transforming the familiar outline of Headingley into something from a fever dream. She had walked this route before, of course—driven it countless times in her old Tesla, back when charging stations still functioned and the roads were crowded with the desperate optimism of people who believed technology would save them.

Technology. The word felt almost quaint now. Amanda’s phone had died three days ago, not from lack of battery but from the heat. Even the hardened electronics she’d designed for her industrial clients couldn’t survive the new reality. The future belonged to paper maps and mechanical watches, to the pre-digital skills that her generation had spent their lives trying to transcend.

She walked on, her footsteps echoing off the empty apartment blocks that lined the route. Most were dark, their windows like dead eyes. But occasionally she caught a glimpse of movement—a flutter of curtain, a shadow crossing a doorway. She had learned not to investigate. The few survivors she’d encountered had been… changed. Not just by the heat and the hunger, but by something deeper. The social contract that held civilisation together had dissolved as completely as the polar ice caps.

The sun climbed higher, and Amanda sought shelter in the remains of a garden center. The greenhouses had long since shattered, their tropical plants withered despite the new climate. She found a patch of shade and consulted her notebook—a leather-bound journal that had become her most precious possession.

The pages were filled with observations, calculations, fragments of the scientific mind trying to make sense of the senseless. Temperature readings. Barometric pressure. Notes on the behaviour of the changed wildlife—the rats that had grown bold and strangely aggressive, the birds that flew in confused circles as their magnetic navigation systems failed in the planet’s shifting magnetic field.

But increasingly, the entries were personal. Memories of her transition, completed just as the world was beginning its own transformation. The support groups where she’d met other trans women, all of them now scattered to the winds or claimed by the heat. The autism support networks that had helped her understand herself, now as extinct as the Yorkshire Dales sheep.

She wrote:

*Day 47 since leaving Leeds. The irony persists—I spent my career building systems to prevent exactly this outcome. Now I’m perhaps the only person left who truly understands what went wrong. The feedback loops were always there in the data. The tipping points were clearly marked. But understanding a system and controlling it are different things entirely.*

*The transgender community understood this better than most. We knew what it meant to live in a body that was changing beyond recognition, to watch familiar systems fail and have to rebuild from scratch. The planet is transitioning now, and there are no hormones to ease the process.*

A sound made her look up—the distant rumble of an engine. Amanda felt her heart rate spike. In the past week, she’d learned to fear the sound of motors. The few vehicles still running belonged to the groups that had turned to scavenging, and their approach to resource allocation was brutally simple.

She packed quickly and slipped out the back of the garden centre, keeping to the shadows as she made her way north. The engine sound faded, but the anxiety remained. In the old world, she’d been a CEO, a respected figure at climate conferences, a woman who commanded rooms full of powerful men. Now she was prey.

The afternoon sun was merciless as she crested the hill overlooking Harrogate. The spa town spread below her like a mirage, its Victorian terraces shimmering in the heat. From this distance, it looked almost normal—until you noticed the absence of movement, the lack of smoke from chimneys, the terrible stillness that had settled over the world.

Amanda’s weather station beeped: 49.1°C. She made a note in her journal and began the descent into what had once been one of England’s most elegant towns. Behind her, the empty shell of Yorkshire stretched to the horizon, a monument to the hubris of a species that had believed it could burn the sky without consequence.

The sun was setting as she reached the outskirts of Harrogate, painting the abandoned houses in shades of amber and gold that almost made the devastation beautiful. Almost.

*Tomorrow,* she wrote in her journal, *I’ll search for survivors. Tonight, I’ll dream of a world where the temperature never exceeded 1.5°C of warming, where the feedback loops remained dormant, where the last CEO of Pennine Renewables was remembered for preventing catastrophe rather than witnessing it.*

*But when I wake, it will still be 2054, and I will still be alone with the mathematics of our failure. Against an oligarchy that caused the world to burn to ashes, all for the sake of another day’s shareholder dividends, and exorbitantly greedy profit margins…*

She closed the journal and prepared for another sleepless night in the furnace that had once been England.

—

Chapter 2: The Harrogate Mirage

Amanda woke, groggily at 4:17 AM to the sound of rain.

For a moment, lying in the dusty remains of what had been a boutique hotel on Parliament Street, she allowed herself the luxury of hope. Rain meant cooling. Rain meant the possibility of refilling her water bottles without having to venture to the toxic sludge that had replaced the River Nidd.

Then she stepped outside and felt the drops on her skin. They burned.

The rain was the colour of rust, thick with particulates from the dust storms that swept across what had been the Atlantic. Each drop carried the chemical signature of a dying ocean—acidic, laden with metals, hostile to life. Amanda retreated quickly, making a note in her journal: *Acid precipitation event. pH approximately 3.2 based on skin reaction. The oceanic conveyor has stopped entirely.*

She had predicted this in her final paper, published in Nature Climate Change just weeks before the journal ceased publication. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation—the great engine that had carried warm water north and cold water south for millennia—had simply switched off. Without it, the weather patterns that had sustained European civilisation for ten thousand years collapsed into chaos.

The rain hammered against the hotel windows as Amanda prepared her meagre breakfast: half a tin of beans, heated over a camping stove she’d salvaged from a sporting goods shop. The fuel cartridge was nearly empty—another countdown timer in a life now measured in rapidly diminishing resources.

As she ate, she studied the street map of Harrogate, marking the locations she would search today. The residential areas first, then the town centre, finally the spa buildings that had given the town its Victorian fame. Somewhere in this maze of abandoned streets, there might be others. Or there might be nothing but the elaborate silence that had settled over the world like a shroud.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, leaving the streets steaming in the morning heat. Amanda ventured out, her boots squelching through puddles that ate at the rubber soles. The acid rain had stripped the paint from cars, revealing the metal beneath like exposed bone.

She began her search systematically, as her autism demanded. Block by block, house by house, calling out in the peculiar way that had become her signature: “Hello! I’m Amanda Scott, from Pennine Renewables. I’m looking for survivors. I have medical supplies and water purification tablets.”

The responses, when they came, were rarely what she hoped for.

The first house that showed signs of recent habitation was a Victorian terrace on Dragon Avenue. The front door hung open, revealing a living room that had been methodically stripped of everything useful. Amanda called out her greeting and heard movement upstairs—the scrabbling of something that might once have been human.

She climbed the stairs cautiously, her multi-tool ready. The stairwell was thick with the smell of decay and something else—a sweet, cloying scent that made her gag. At the top, she found them.

The family had been dead for weeks, but they weren’t alone. The rats had found them first, and the rats had changed. They were larger than any she’d seen before, their fur patchy and strange, their eyes reflecting light in a way that spoke of genetic damage. They watched her with an intelligence that made her skin crawl.

One of them, easily the size of a small cat, rose on its hind legs and made a sound that was almost like speech. Almost.

Amanda backed away slowly, making another note: *Radiation exposure or chemical contamination accelerating mutation rates. Survivors may not be human in any recognizable sense.*

She left the house quickly, but the sound followed her—a chittering that seemed to carry meaning, as if the creatures were discussing her presence.

The next several houses revealed the same pattern: abandonment, decay, and the growing presence of things that had adapted to the new world faster than humanity ever could. By midday, as the temperature climbed past 50°C, Amanda had found no living people.

She took shelter in the Royal Pump Room, the grand Victorian building that had once been Harrogate’s proudest attraction. The famous sulphur springs had long since dried up, leaving only the ghost of their distinctive smell. Amanda sat in the ornate main hall, surrounded by the elegance of a bygone era, and contemplated the mathematics of extinction.

Her notebook was filling with observations that painted a picture of accelerating collapse. The large mammals were gone—no surprise there, as they couldn’t regulate their body temperature in the new heat. The birds were dying in massive numbers, their navigation systems scrambled by the planet’s shifting magnetic field. Even the insects were struggling, their life cycles disrupted by temperature fluctuations that could swing twenty degrees in a single day.

But some things were thriving. The rats, obviously. Strange new fungi that seemed to feed on the acid rain. Plants that looked like nothing she’d studied in botany, their leaves waxy and alien. The planet was being colonised by life forms that belonged to a different era, a different world.

Amanda opened her journal and began to write:

*Day 48. Harrogate appears to be completely uninhabited by humans. The ecosystem transformation is accelerating beyond my most pessimistic projections. We’re witnessing the Permian extinction event in real time—but compressed into decades rather than millennia.*

*I think about the conferences I attended, the papers I wrote, the warnings I issued. We knew this was coming. The tipping points were clearly marked in the data. But knowing and preventing are different things entirely.*

*There’s a parallel here to my own transition. I knew I was trans for years before I acted on it. The signs were clear, the science was settled, but the social and economic barriers seemed insurmountable. By the time I finally transitioned, I was already thirty-five—past the optimal window for some treatments, but not too late to live authentically.*

*The planet never got that chance. We waited too long, and now we’re watching it transition into something alien and hostile. The familiar climate I grew up with is gone forever, replaced by something that doesn’t recognise human life as relevant.*

A sound from outside interrupted her writing—the distant rumble of an engine. Amanda felt her pulse quicken. She’d heard that sound before, in the approach to Harrogate. This time, it was closer.

She moved to the window and peered through the grimy glass. A convoy of vehicles was moving slowly down Parliament Street—three cars and a truck, all heavily modified with armour plating and strange protrusions that might have been weapons. They moved with the casual predation of apex predators in a world where the food chain had collapsed.

Amanda had heard rumors of such groups. The Scavengers, some called them. Others used less polite terms. They were the humans who had adapted to the new reality not through cooperation or ingenuity, but through the simple expedient of taking what they needed from those too weak to resist.

The convoy stopped directly in front of the Pump Room.

Amanda gathered her belongings quickly, her mind racing through escape routes. The building had multiple exits, but she’d need to move fast. The acoustic properties of the Victorian architecture would carry sound, and these people would be listening.

She was halfway to the rear exit when she heard the chilling echoes of a voice:

“Amanda Scott! We know you’re in there. We’ve been tracking you since Leeds.”

The voice was cultured, educated—not what she’d expected from a group of post-apocalyptic raiders. Amanda froze, her hand on the door handle.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” the voice continued. “We’re here because we need your expertise. The world is ending, Dr. Scott, but it doesn’t have to end for everyone.”

Through the window, Amanda saw a figure emerge from the lead vehicle. A woman in her fifties, wearing what looked like a modified military uniform. She carried herself with the confidence of someone accustomed to command.

“My name is Colonel Sarah Blackwood,” the woman called out. “I represent the Northern Territories Collective. We’ve been monitoring your movements for weeks. We have a proposal.”

Amanda’s scientific curiosity warred with her survival instincts. She had heard whispers of the Collective—a group of survivors who had supposedly established a functioning settlement somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. If they were real, they might represent the last hope for organised human civilization.

If they were real.

“What kind of proposal?” Amanda called back, her voice carrying across the empty street.

“The kind that might save what’s left of our species,” Blackwood replied. “But we need to discuss it somewhere more private. Somewhere with proper cooling and clean water.”

Amanda made her decision. She stepped out of the Pump Room, her hands visible but her multi-tool within easy reach. The heat hit her like a physical blow, but she kept her expression neutral.

“I’m listening,” she said.

Colonel Blackwood smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Good. Because what we’re about to show you will change everything you think you know about the future of human civilization.”

The convoy’s engines rumbled to life, and Amanda Scott—the last CEO of Pennine Renewables, the woman who had spent her career trying to prevent the climate apocalypse—climbed into a vehicle that might carry her toward salvation or toward something far worse.

Behind them, the empty streets of Harrogate shimmered in the heat, and the changed rats watched from the shadows with their too-intelligent eyes.

—

Chapter 3: The Collective

The vehicle’s air conditioning was the first miracle Amanda had experienced in months. As they drove north through the ruins of North Yorkshire, she found herself fighting tears at the simple pleasure of cool air against her skin. The convoy’s lead vehicle was a modified Range Rover, its windows tinted black and its chassis reinforced with steel plating that spoke of careful engineering rather than hasty scavenging.

Colonel Blackwood sat opposite her, studying a tablet that somehow still functioned despite the electromagnetic chaos that had disabled most electronics. The woman’s uniform was crisp, military-precise, and bore insignia that Amanda didn’t recognize—a stylized tree within a circle, embroidered in silver thread.

“Tell me about the rats,” Blackwood said without preamble.

Amanda looked up from her own observations. Through the tinted windows, she could see the landscape rolling past—what had once been the Yorkshire Dales, now a wasteland of cracked earth and skeletal trees. The famous dry stone walls still stood, but they enclosed nothing but desolation.

“Radiation exposure,” Amanda replied. “Or chemical contamination. Possibly both. They’re showing signs of accelerated evolution—increased size, altered behavior patterns, what appears to be enhanced cognitive function.”

“How enhanced?”

“They seemed to be communicating about my presence. Coordinating their movements. I’ve seen similar patterns in dolphins and some primates, but never in rodents.”

Blackwood made notes on her tablet. “We’ve observed the same phenomenon across northern England. The rats, the surviving birds, even some of the plant life. It’s as if the environmental stressors are triggering rapid evolutionary adaptation.”

“That’s impossible,” Amanda said automatically. “Evolution doesn’t work that way. Natural selection requires multiple generations, genetic drift, reproductive isolation—”

“Dr. Scott,” Blackwood interrupted gently, “a great many things have become possible since the collapse. The rules we lived by are no longer applicable.”

The convoy turned onto what had once been the A1, the great north-south artery that had connected London to Edinburgh for centuries. Now it was a ribbon of cracked tarmac threading through emptiness. Occasionally they passed the skeletal remains of service stations, their fuel pumps standing like monuments to a vanished world.

“Where are we going?” Amanda asked.

“The Cheviot Hills,” Blackwood replied. “Just across the Scottish border. We’ve established a settlement there—fully self-sufficient, climate-controlled, with enough resources to sustain a population of approximately three thousand.”

Three thousand. Amanda tried to process the number. In the past two months, she’d encountered fewer than a dozen living humans, and half of those had been hostile or beyond help. The idea of a functioning community seemed as fantastical as the talking rats.

“How?” she asked.

“Preparation,” Blackwood said simply. “Some of us saw this coming earlier than others. We began construction in 2049, when the first cascade failures became apparent. Underground facilities, geothermal power, hydroponic agriculture, atmospheric processors. Everything necessary to maintain human civilization in a hostile environment.”

“You’re talking about bunkers.”

“I’m talking about survival,” Blackwood corrected. “The question is whether you want to be part of it.”

Amanda stared out the window at the passing desolation. In the distance, she could see smoke rising from what might have been a burning forest or simply the spontaneous combustion of overheated organic matter. The temperature gauge on the dashboard read 52°C.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.

“Your expertise. Your knowledge of renewable energy systems. Your understanding of climate dynamics.” Blackwood leaned forward. “Dr. Scott, you spent your career trying to prevent this catastrophe. Now we need you to help us survive it.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then we’ll return you to Harrogate with our thanks and our regrets. But I think you’re too intelligent to choose extinction over adaptation.”

The convoy crested a hill, and Amanda saw something that made her catch her breath. In the valley below, a small town clustered around what appeared to be a functioning railway station. Smoke rose from chimneys—not the black smoke of burning refuse, but the clean white smoke of controlled fires. People moved through the streets, tiny figures going about their daily business as if the world hadn’t ended.

“Wooler,” Blackwood said, following her gaze. “Population eight hundred and growing. We’ve managed to maintain a functioning community there by carefully managing resources and maintaining strict environmental controls.”

“How strict?”

“Everyone contributes according to their abilities. Everyone receives according to their needs. And everyone follows the protocols necessary to ensure our survival.”

Amanda heard the steel beneath the reasonable words. “And if someone doesn’t follow the protocols?”

“Then they’re no longer part of the collective.”

The convoy descended into the valley, and Amanda got her first close look at the new world Blackwood’s people had built. The buildings were a mixture of original structures and new construction, all connected by covered walkways that protected pedestrians from the brutal heat. Solar panels covered every available surface, but these weren’t the familiar blue rectangles of her old industry—they were sleek, almost organic-looking installations that seemed to track the sun’s movement with mechanical precision.

People stopped to watch the convoy pass, and Amanda noticed they all wore similar clothing—lightweight, reflective fabric that covered their skin completely. Their faces were hidden behind masks and goggles, making them look less like humans than like astronauts exploring an alien world.

Which, she supposed, they were.

The convoy stopped in front of a large building that had once been a community center. Now it bore the same tree-in-circle symbol as Blackwood’s uniform, carved into the stone lintel above the entrance. The Colonel climbed out and gestured for Amanda to follow.

“Welcome to humanity’s future,” Blackwood said.

Inside, the building was cool and surprisingly spacious. The walls were lined with screens showing data streams—temperature readings, atmospheric composition, power consumption, water usage. It looked like a cross between a corporate headquarters and a space mission control centre.

“Impressive,” Amanda admitted.

“It has to be. We’re not just maintaining a town, Dr. Scott. We’re maintaining a biosphere. Every variable has to be monitored, every resource carefully allocated. One mistake, one system failure, and eight hundred people die.”

They walked through corridors lined with hydroponic gardens, past workshops where people in clean-suits worked on equipment Amanda didn’t recognise. The air smelled of ozone and growing things, a sharp contrast to the stench of decay that had become the signature of the outside world.

“The question,” Blackwood continued, “is whether you want to help us expand this success or return to the wilderness to document our species’ extinction.”

They entered a large room dominated by a holographic display showing the British Isles. Most of the map was colored red, but there were small pockets of green scattered across Scotland and northern England. Each green zone pulsed with data—population, resources, sustainability metrics.

“Seventeen functioning settlements,” Blackwood explained. “Forty-three thousand survivors in total. It’s not much, but it’s a foundation.”

Amanda studied the display, her physicist’s mind automatically calculating logistics, resource flows, genetic diversity requirements. “How do you maintain contact between settlements?”

“Carefully. Radio when possible, courier when necessary. We’ve developed protocols for everything—trade, communication, genetic exchange to prevent inbreeding. We’re not just surviving, Dr. Scott. We’re building the framework for human civilization’s next phase.”

“And what role would I play in this next phase?”

“You would head our energy division. Your expertise in renewable systems, your understanding of grid management, your knowledge of storage technologies—we need all of it. The settlements are growing, and growth requires power.”

Amanda walked closer to the display, studying the data streams. The numbers were impressive—the settlements were not just surviving but actually thriving within their controlled environments. Population growth was positive, resource utilisation was efficient, and the technology appeared to be advancing rather than merely maintaining.

“What about the outside world?” she asked. “The people who aren’t part of your collective?”

“What about them?”

“Are you going to help them? Share your technology? Expand your settlements to include more survivors?”

Blackwood’s expression hardened slightly. “Dr. Scott, we’ve saved forty-three thousand people from extinction. We’ve preserved human knowledge, culture, and genetic diversity. We’ve created a sustainable model for post-climate civilization. I think that’s enough.”

“But there might be others—”

“There are others,” Blackwood said firmly. “And most of them are like the people you’ve encountered—desperate, dangerous, and dying. We can’t save everyone, Dr. Scott. We can only save ourselves.”

Amanda felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. “So you’re building a new world for the chosen few.”

“We’re building a new world for the survivors. For the people who were intelligent enough to prepare, disciplined enough to follow protocols, and useful enough to contribute. Natural selection, Dr. Scott. We’re not fighting it—we’re directing it.”

The holographic display pulsed with data, forty-three thousand lives reduced to numbers and metrics. Amanda thought of the rats in Harrogate, their too-intelligent eyes, their apparent ability to communicate and coordinate. Evolution in action, adaptation to a changed world.

“I need time to think,” she said.

“Of course. We’ve prepared quarters for you. Climate-controlled, private, with access to our library and research facilities. Take all the time you need.”

Blackwood gestured to a aide who materialized from the shadows. “Dr. Morrison will show you to your room. Dinner is at seven—we maintain normal social schedules here. It helps with morale.”

As Amanda followed Dr. Morrison through the corridors, she caught glimpses of the settlement’s inner workings. Children in a classroom, learning from holographic displays. Scientists in laboratories, working on projects she couldn’t identify. Engineers maintaining the complex systems that kept the entire facility running.

It was impressive. It was terrifying. And it might be humanity’s only hope.

Her quarters were spartanly furnished but comfortable—a bed, a desk, a small bathroom with running water that was actually clean. The walls were lined with screens showing external views of the settlement, and Amanda realised she was effectively underground, insulated from the hostile environment above.

She sat at the desk and opened her journal, but found herself staring at the blank page. How do you document the moment when you’re forced to choose between your principles and your survival? How do you weigh the lives of forty-three thousand against the lives of everyone left behind?

Outside, through the screens, she could see the sun setting over the Cheviot Hills. The sky was the color of blood, streaked with chemicals and particulates from the dying world above. But here, in this carefully controlled environment, life continued.

Amanda picked up her pen and began to write:

*Day 49. I have found the future of human civilization. The question is whether I want to be part of it.*

—

Chapter 4: The Strange Dying Days

Amanda woke at 3:47 AM, her body rigid with the familiar terror of remembered heat. The nightmare was always the same—Leeds, July 2052, the temperature climbing past 55°C for the third consecutive day. But this time it felt different, more vivid, as if her subconscious was forcing her to relive every detail with perfect clarity.

She sat up in the narrow bed, her skin slick with sweat despite the cool air cycling through the settlement’s climate control. The screens on the walls showed the pre-dawn darkness above ground, peaceful and empty. But behind her eyes, a different scene played out with merciless precision.

*July 15th, 2052. Day three of the Great Heat.*

Amanda had been in her office at Pennine Renewables when the first reports came through. The BBC was still broadcasting then, though their signal had become increasingly erratic as the power grid failed section by section. She remembered the newsreader’s voice, professionally calm even as the words described unthinkable catastrophe.

“The Prime Minister has announced the deployment of emergency military units to maintain order in major population centres. The death toll from the current heat wave now exceeds fifteen thousand across the UK, with Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham reporting complete breakdown of emergency services…”

Amanda had looked out her window at the city spreading below. Even from the thirty-second floor, she could see the signs of collapse. Abandoned cars dotted the streets, their metal too hot to touch. The usual urban hum had been replaced by an eerie silence, broken only by the distant sound of sirens and, increasingly, gunfire.

Her phone had buzzed with a text from her assistant: *Military roadblocks on all major routes. They’re not letting anyone leave the city.*

That was when she’d understood. The government wasn’t trying to maintain order—they were trying to contain the dying.

The memory shifted, kaleidoscoping through fragmented images. Amanda pressed her palms against her eyes, but the visions continued with ruthless clarity.

*July 16th, 2052. Day four of the Great Heat.*

She had ventured out that morning, driven by a combination of professional duty and morbid curiosity. The streets were chaos barely held in check by military presence. Soldiers in full environmental suits moved through the heat like figures from a science fiction nightmare, their faces hidden behind reflective visors.

At the corner of Boar Lane and Briggate, she had encountered her first mass grave.

They hadn’t bothered to dig deep. The ground was too hard, baked to the consistency of concrete by the relentless sun. Instead, they had simply cleared a space in what had been the city’s central shopping district and begun stacking bodies. The smell was indescribable—a mixture of decay, disinfectant, and something else that seemed to coat the inside of her nostrils.

A young soldier, barely out of his teens, had been standing guard. His name tag read “CORPORAL JENKINS,” and his hands shook as he held his rifle.

“You need to move along, miss,” he had said, his voice muffled by the breathing apparatus. “This is a restricted area.”

“I’m Dr. Amanda Scott,” she had replied, showing him her company ID. “I’m a physicist. I’m documenting the infrastructure failure patterns.”

The soldier had looked at her with eyes that seemed far too old for his face. “Doc, there ain’t no infrastructure left to document. It’s all gone.”

Behind him, a mechanical digger had rumbled to life, beginning work on what would become the second mass grave. Amanda had counted the bodies as they were loaded—forty-three men, women, and children who had died in the heat, their bodies swollen and darkened by the sun.

“How many?” she had asked.

“In this sector? Maybe three thousand so far. But the morgues filled up days ago. The crematoriums can’t keep up. We’re running out of space.”

The memory fractured again, jumping forward twelve hours.

*July 16th, 2052. 11:47 PM.*

Amanda had been making her way back to her apartment when she heard the gunfire. Not the scattered shots that had become background noise, but sustained automatic weapon fire. She had ducked into the doorway of a defunct electronics shop and watched as a military patrol rounded the corner.

They were pursuing a group of perhaps twenty people—men, women, some barely teenagers—who had been caught looting a supermarket. The patrol leader, a sergeant with the insignia of the Yorkshire Regiment, had been shouting orders through a megaphone.

“Stop where you are! By order of the Emergency Powers Act, looting is punishable by immediate execution!”

The looters had scattered, but the narrow streets offered little cover. Amanda had watched in horror as the soldiers systematically hunted them down. The executions were clinical, efficient. No trials, no appeals, no mercy.

She had found herself staring at the body of a girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen. The girl had been clutching a can of beans when the bullet found her. The can had rolled across the melting tarmac, its label cheerfully advertising “Nutritious Family Meals.”

*July 17th, 2052. Day five of the Great Heat.*

The government broadcasts had stopped during the night. The last official message had come from the Deputy Prime Minister, speaking from an undisclosed location: “Her Majesty’s Government continues to coordinate relief efforts. Citizens are advised to remain in their homes and await further instructions.”

There were no further instructions.

Amanda had been in the lobby of her apartment building when the police arrived. Not the local constabulary—they had abandoned their posts days earlier—but specialized units from London, officers trained in crowd control and civil disorder. They wore full riot gear despite the heat, their faces hidden behind masks and visors.

“Building evacuation,” their leader had announced. “All residents to report to the Leeds Arena for processing.”

“Processing for what?” Amanda had asked.

The officer had looked at her with the flat, emotionless stare of someone who had seen too much. “Resource allocation assessment. Some residents will be relocated to temporary shelters. Others will be… reassigned.”

Amanda had understood. The government was conducting triage on the population itself, deciding who was worth saving and who was expendable. The elderly, the sick, the socially undesirable—they would be the first to be “reassigned.”

She had slipped out the back exit while the police were herding other residents toward the waiting trucks. As she’d made her way through the service corridors, she had heard the shots. Execution squads, eliminating the “unfit” before they could consume resources needed by the survivors.

The memory blurred, becoming a montage of horror. Bodies in the streets, ignored by the dwindling number of living. Children crying over parents who would never wake up. The smell of death mixing with the acrid smoke of burning buildings.

And always, the heat. The merciless, killing heat that turned the familiar world into an alien landscape.

*July 18th, 2052. Day six of the Great Heat.*

Amanda had been hiding in the basement of her office building when she heard the explosion. The sound had been followed by a series of smaller detonations, then silence. When she’d finally ventured upstairs, she had found the city transformed.

The government forces were gone. The emergency broadcasts had ceased. The last vestiges of organised authority had simply evaporated, leaving behind only the essential truth: civilisation was not a permanent achievement but a temporary arrangement, as fragile as the climate that had sustained it.

From her office window, she had watched the last helicopters leaving the city, carrying the chosen few to safety while the rest were left to die. The Prime Minister’s helicopter had been among them, its ministerial markings still visible as it disappeared into the heat haze.

That night, she had written in her journal: *The government has abandoned us. The police have abandoned us. The military has abandoned us. We are alone with our mathematics and our mortality.*

*July 19th, 2052. Day seven of the Great Heat.*

The heat had broken that morning, dropping to a merely apocalyptic 48°C. Amanda had emerged from her basement refuge to find a city of ghosts. The bodies were everywhere—in the streets, in the buildings, in the abandoned cars that had become ovens for their occupants.

She had walked through the empty streets, documenting the failure of every system that had once sustained human life. The power grid had collapsed entirely. The water treatment plants had shut down. The hospitals had become morgues. The schools had become shelters for the few survivors who had nowhere else to go.

But it was the smaller failures that had stayed with her. The traffic lights that flickered uselessly over empty intersections. The automatic doors that tried to open for customers who would never come. The digital advertising boards that continued to loop their cheerful messages about summer sales and holiday destinations.

The last message she had seen, displayed on a screen outside what had been a travel agency, had read: “Escape to the Greek Islands! Book Now for Early Bird Discounts!”

Amanda had laughed until she cried.

*Present. Day 49. The Collective.*

Amanda opened her eyes, returning to the present with the familiar disorientation of the trauma survivor. The screens on the walls showed the same peaceful darkness, the same controlled environment. But now she understood why the Collective’s offer felt so familiar.

She had seen this before. The careful selection of the worthy. The abandonment of the unfit. The clinical efficiency of choosing who lived and who died.

The only difference was that this time, it might actually work.

She picked up her pen and began to write:

*The nightmares are getting worse. Or perhaps they’re getting clearer. I remember now why I survived when so many others died—not because I was stronger or smarter or more deserving, but because I was lucky enough to be in the right place when the sorting began.*

*Now I’m being sorted again. The question is whether I’ve learned anything from the last time humanity decided who was worth saving.*

*The answer may determine whether we deserve to survive at all.*

—

Chapter 5: The Choice

Amanda didn’t go to dinner.

Instead, she spent the evening exploring the Collective’s settlement through its internal network. Her quarters had been equipped with a terminal that provided access to an impressive array of databases—scientific journals, technical specifications, population records, and resource allocation reports. It was a digital library that represented thousands of years of human knowledge, carefully preserved for the survivors.

But it was the population records that held her attention.

She pulled up the admission criteria, expecting to find the usual metrics of education, skills, and health. What she found was far more sophisticated. The Collective didn’t just evaluate individuals—they evaluated entire genetic lineages, psychological profiles, and what they termed “adaptive potential.”

The categories were cold & clinical:

**Class A: Essential Personnel** – Scientists, engineers, medical professionals, agricultural specialists. Immediate admission with full resource allocation.

**Class B: Skilled Contributors** – Skilled trades, technical support, administrative personnel. Conditional admission based on resource availability.

**Class C: Genetic Diversity** – Individuals selected primarily for reproductive potential and genetic variation. Limited admission, restricted privileges.

**Class D: Probationary** – Individuals with useful skills but questionable loyalty or psychological stability. Temporary admission, subject to review.

**Class E: Refused** – Individuals deemed unsuitable for collective survival. No admission under any circumstances.

Amanda stared at the screen, feeling a familiar chill. She had seen this before—the careful categorisation of human worth, the bureaucratic language that transformed genocide into administrative procedure. The only difference was the efficiency of the system.

She pulled up her own file. **Class A: Essential Personnel. Specialisation: Renewable Energy Systems. Psychological Profile: Stable, focused, minimal social requirements. Genetic Profile: Acceptable despite trans status. Recommendation: Immediate integration as Division Head.**

*Despite trans status.* The phrase sat on the screen like a small wound. Even here, in humanity’s last refuge, her identity was considered a defect to be overlooked rather than simply accepted.

She closed the file and opened another database: rejected applications. The numbers were staggering. For every person accepted into the Collective’s network, fifteen had been refused. The reasons ranged from “insufficient skill specialisation” to “genetic predisposition to mental illness” to the catch-all “lacks adaptive potential.”

Amanda cross-referenced the rejection data with the settlement locations. The pattern was clear—the Collective had systematically recruited from the most educated, most affluent areas of pre-collapse Britain. The working-class neighbourhoods of Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham were barely represented. The refugee populations from the early climate migrations were almost entirely absent.

She was studying the psychological evaluation criteria when a soft chime indicated someone at her door. Amanda closed the terminal and opened the door to find Dr. Morrison, the aide who had shown her to her quarters.

“Dr. Scott? Colonel Blackwood requests your presence in the strategy centre. She said it was urgent.”

Amanda followed Morrison through corridors that had grown familiar during her brief stay. The settlement operated on a precise schedule—shifts changed every eight hours, meal times were coordinated to the minute, and every movement was tracked by the omnipresent surveillance system. It was efficient, organised, and utterly without spontaneity.

The strategy centre was a large room dominated by holographic displays showing the current status of all seventeen settlements. Amanda could see real-time data flowing across the screens—power consumption, food production, population health metrics, weather patterns. It was an impressive demonstration of technological capability.

Colonel Blackwood stood at the centre of it all, her uniform crisp despite the late hour. She was speaking quietly with a group of technicians, but looked up as Amanda entered.

“Dr. Scott. Thank you for coming. We have a situation that requires your expertise.”

One of the main displays shifted to show a map of northern England. A red zone was expanding outward from what had been Manchester, pulsing with data streams that indicated some kind of catastrophic event.

“What am I looking at?” Amanda asked.

“The Windscale facility,” Blackwood replied. “The old nuclear reprocessing plant. It’s been unstable since the cooling systems failed in 2053, but tonight it reached critical mass. We’re tracking a significant radiation release.”

Amanda studied the expanding red zone. “How significant?”

“Enough to make most of northern England uninhabitable for the next century. The fallout plume is moving northeast, directly toward several of our settlements.”

“Which settlements?”

“Harrogate, for one. Also Knaresborough, Ripon, and potentially Thirsk. That’s approximately eight hundred people who need to be evacuated immediately.”

Amanda felt something cold settle in her stomach. “What about the other survivors? The people who aren’t part of your network?”

Blackwood’s expression didn’t change. “What about them?”

“They’ll need to be warned. Evacuated. There could be thousands of people in the radiation path.”

“Dr. Scott, we don’t have resources to evacuate thousands of people. We barely have resources to evacuate our own settlements.”

“But you can’t just leave them to die.”

“We can’t save everyone,” Blackwood said quietly. “We’ve been through this before. Our responsibility is to our own people.”

Amanda stared at the display, watching the red zone expand with mathematical precision. In twelve hours, it would reach the southern edge of Harrogate. In eighteen hours, it would encompass the entire area where she had spent the last months searching for survivors.

“I need to go back,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“I need to go back to warn people. There might be survivors who can be saved if they’re warned in time.”

Blackwood’s expression hardened. “Dr. Scott, I’m afraid that’s not possible. The radiation levels are already approaching dangerous thresholds. Any rescue mission would be suicide.”

“Then give me protective equipment. Radiation suits, iodine tablets, a vehicle with adequate shielding.”

“I cannot authorise the use of Collective resources for external rescue operations.”

“Then I’ll go without them.”

The room fell silent. The technicians stopped their work, and Amanda became aware that everyone was staring at her. She had crossed some invisible line, violated some unspoken protocol.

“Dr. Scott,” Blackwood said carefully, “I think you’re suffering from emotional stress. It’s understandable—the transition from individual survival to collective responsibility can be difficult. Perhaps you should return to your quarters and rest.”

“I’m not suffering from stress,” Amanda replied. “I’m suffering from conscience.”

“Conscience is a luxury we can no longer afford.”

“Then what’s the point of survival?”

The question hung in the air like a challenge. Amanda looked around the room at the faces of the technicians, the administrators, the carefully selected survivors who had earned their place in humanity’s future. They were all staring at her with the same expression—a mixture of pity and bewilderment, as if she had suggested something profoundly irrational.

“The point,” Blackwood said slowly, “is the continuation of human civilisation. The preservation of knowledge, culture, and genetic diversity. The survival of our species.”

“At what cost?”

“At whatever cost is necessary.”

Amanda turned back to the display, watching the red zone expand. In her mind, she could see the faces of the people she had encountered during her wanderings—the frightened families hiding in abandoned buildings, the scavengers who had turned to violence out of desperation, even the changed rats with their too-intelligent eyes. All of them were about to die, and the people in this room were treating it as an acceptable loss.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Blackwood said. “You’re thinking about the government’s response to the Great Heat. The mass graves, the execution squads, the abandonment of the unfit. You’re thinking that we’re just another version of the same system.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No, Dr. Scott. We’re something entirely different. The government failed because they tried to save everyone and ended up saving no one. We’re succeeding because we understand that survival requires selection. Natural selection, directed by intelligence rather than left to chance.”

Amanda faced the Colonel directly. “And who decides who’s fit to survive?”

“The people with the knowledge, resources, and determination to actually save humanity. The people who saw this coming and prepared for it. The people who understood that the old world was ending and built something to replace it.”

“The people like you.”

“The people like us, Dr. Scott. You’re here because you passed the selection process. You’re here because you’re one of the chosen few who can help build humanity’s future.”

Amanda looked around the room again, at the screens full of data, at the faces of the survivors who had earned their place in tomorrow. They were all staring at her expectantly, waiting for her to make the rational choice, the survival choice, the choice that would preserve human civilisation at the cost of human decency.

She thought about the girl with the can of beans, gunned down in the streets of Leeds. She thought about the mass graves, the execution squads, the clinical efficiency of abandoning the unfit. She thought about the expanding red zone on the display, and all the people who would die because warning them just… wasn’t cost-effective.

“I need to think,” she said finally.

“Of course. But Dr. Scott—the evacuation of our settlements begins in six hours. If you’re going to be part of this organization, I need your commitment by dawn.”

Amanda nodded and left the strategy center, walking through corridors that suddenly felt like a prison. The settlement’s climate control whispered around her, maintaining the perfect temperature for human comfort while the world outside burned.

Back in her quarters, she opened her journal and wrote:

*Day 50. I have been offered a choice between survival and conscience. The rational decision is obvious—join the Collective, help save forty-three thousand people, contribute to humanity’s future. The moral decision is equally obvious—warn the people in the radiation zone, even if it costs me my life.*

*The question is whether there’s any meaningful difference between the two.*

*In twelve hours, the radiation will reach Harrogate. In six hours, the Collective will begin evacuating their settlements. And in some amount of time between now and dawn, I will have to decide whether the preservation of human civilisation justifies the abandonment of human compassion.*

*I used to think I was fighting to save the world. Now I realise I was fighting to save the idea that the world was worth saving.*

*The mathematics are simple. The ethics are impossible.*

*And somewhere in the darkness above, the changed rats are probably making the same calculation with their too-intelligent eyes.*

She closed the journal and sat in the darkness, listening to the whisper of the climate control and the distant hum of the settlement’s machinery. Outside, the radiation was spreading with the inexorable logic of physics, and forty-three thousand people slept peacefully in their controlled environment while the rest of the world prepared to die.

Amanda Scott, the last CEO of Pennine Renewables, the woman who had spent her career trying to prevent the climate apocalypse, sat in the darkness and tried to decide whether humanity deserved to survive its own success.

The irony wasn’t lost on her that she was living through what had once been entertainment.

She remembered the countless hours she’d spent playing Fallout 4 in her Leeds apartment, back when the world still functioned and post-apocalyptic survival was just a game. The Commonwealth Wasteland had been her escape from the mounting pressures of running a renewable energy company while watching the climate spiral toward collapse.

But it wasn’t the combat or exploration that had kept her coming back to the game—it was the moral choices. The moment when you had to decide whether to side with the Institute, the technologically advanced underground society that viewed surface dwellers as expendable test subjects. Or the Railroad, the idealistic faction that insisted on saving everyone, even artificial beings. Or the Brotherhood of Steel, the military organisation that believed in preserving technology and order at any cost.

Amanda had played through all the endings, exploring every moral permutation. She had sided with the Institute and watched them systematically replace surface dwellers with synthetic duplicates. She had joined the Railroad and helped them liberate artificial beings while the world burned around them. She had supported the Brotherhood and watched them impose technological authoritarianism on the wasteland.

Each choice had seemed reasonable in its own context. Each faction had compelling arguments. And each ending had left her feeling vaguely unsatisfied, as if the game’s designers had understood something about moral complexity that couldn’t be resolved with simple good and evil choices.

Now she was living it.

The Collective was the Institute—technologically superior, rationally organised, utterly convinced of their own righteousness. They had retreated underground and created a perfect society, but only for themselves. The surface world was full of what they considered inferior beings, unworthy of salvation.

The people dying in the radiation zone were the Commonwealth settlers—struggling to survive in a hostile world, abandoned by the very institutions that should have protected them. They weren’t sophisticated enough to deserve rescue, weren’t useful enough to merit resources, weren’t selected enough to qualify for the future.

And she was the Sole Survivor, the player character forced to choose between factions, each with their own compelling logic.

In the game, she had often chosen the Institute. Their technology was impressive, their arguments logical, their methods efficient. The greater good, they insisted, required difficult choices. You couldn’t save everyone, so you saved the people who mattered most.

But sitting in her climate-controlled quarters, listening to the hum of the Collective’s machinery, Amanda realised something that had eluded her during hundreds of hours of gameplay: the Institute’s mistake wasn’t their technology or their efficiency. It was their certainty that they were the ones who should decide who deserved to live.

In Fallout 4, the Institute’s scientists spoke with the same calm rationality as Colonel Blackwood. They used the same clinical language to describe human suffering, the same utilitarian calculus to justify abandonment. They were convinced that their advanced knowledge gave them the right to determine the future of the human race.

Amanda had always found their arguments compelling in the game. In reality, they made her sick.

She opened her journal and wrote:

*I spent years playing post-apocalyptic games, making moral choices in fictional wastelands. I thought I understood the complexity of survival ethics. I thought I was prepared for the hard decisions.*

*I was wrong.*

*In Fallout 4, when you side with the Institute, you can rationalise it as the greater good. Advanced technology, preserved knowledge, the continuation of human civilisation. The surface dwellers are expendable because they’re not contributing to humanity’s future.*

*But that’s the player’s perspective. You never see the game through the eyes of the settlers who are being abandoned. You never feel the weight of being classified as genetically inferior, socially undesirable, or simply inconvenient.*

*The Collective is the Institute, and I’m being recruited to be one of their scientists. The offer is seductive—join the advanced civilisation, help preserve human knowledge, be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.*

*But I remember something else from those games. In every ending, no matter which faction you choose, most of the Commonwealth remains a wasteland. The factions save themselves and call it victory. The real world continues to burn.*

*The Institute’s greatest sin wasn’t their technology or their isolation. It was their certainty that they were the ones who should decide who lives and who dies.*

*I’m not sure I want to be a part of that decision, even if refusing means joining the dead.*

Amanda closed the journal and stared at the screens showing the expanding radiation zone. The mathematics were simple—in less than twelve hours, thousands of people would begin dying from acute radiation poisoning. Most wouldn’t even know what was happening until it was too late.

But there was another calculation she hadn’t considered. If she warned the people in the radiation zone, some of them might survive. Not many, but some. And if some survived, they might find ways to help others survive. The network of mutual aid that had sustained human civilisation for millennia, one person helping another, one community supporting the next.

It wasn’t efficient. It wasn’t rational. It certainly wasn’t sustainable in the long term. But it was human in a way that the Collective’s careful selection process was not.

Amanda had never chosen the Railroad faction on her first play-through of Fallout 4. Their mission—saving artificial beings while the world burned—had seemed impossibly naive. But she had come to understand that their naive idealism was also their strength. They believed that every conscious being deserved a chance at survival, regardless of their utility or genetic profile.

The Railroad usually lost in the end. Their bases were destroyed, their members scattered or killed. But they kept fighting anyway, because they believed that how you fought was as important as whether you won.

Amanda stood up and began packing her few possessions. She wasn’t sure what she could accomplish by returning to the radiation zone. She wasn’t sure anyone would listen to her warnings. She wasn’t sure she would survive the attempt.

But she was sure of one thing: the people who decided who deserved to live were usually the ones who had never faced the prospect of being judged unworthy themselves.

The Collective would survive without her. Their technology was impressive, their organisation efficient, their selection process thorough. They would preserve human knowledge and genetic diversity in their underground sanctuaries. They would build a new civilisation from the ashes of the old one.

And in a few generations, when the surface world had recovered enough to be inhabitable again, they would emerge and claim it as their birthright. The inheritors of the earth, the chosen survivors, the ones who had been smart enough to prepare and disciplined enough to follow the protocols.

But they would also be the ones who had stood by and watched while the rest of humanity burned.

Amanda had spent her career trying to prevent the climate apocalypse. She had failed. But maybe she could still prevent the moral apocalypse that was following in its wake.

She picked up her radiation detector, her water purification tablets, and her journal. The Collective’s guards would try to stop her, but she had spent months learning how to move through hostile territory undetected. She had maps, skills, and something that the Collective’s perfect citizens lacked—the desperate determination of someone who had nothing left to lose.

Outside her quarters, the settlement hummed with activity as the evacuation preparations began. The chosen few were being saved, their lives carefully preserved for the future. The rest of humanity was being abandoned to the mathematics of radiation poisoning.

Amanda Scott, the last CEO of Pennine Renewables, the woman who had spent her career trying to save the world, opened her door and stepped into the corridor. She was going to try to save it one more time, one person at a time, even if it killed her.

Behind her, the screens continued to display the expanding radiation zone with clinical precision. The numbers were clear, the mathematics irrefutable. But somewhere in the darkness above, there were people who deserved to know that they were about to die, and that someone cared enough to warn them.

It wasn’t rational. It wasn’t efficient. It wasn’t sustainable.

But it was human.

—

*End of Chapter 5*

To Be Continued…