Observatory

The forum notification chimed, a lonely sound in my quiet apartment. It was him again. Atlas_Unbound. For weeks, we’d been locked in a battle of ideas in the comment section of obscure articles. He was a ghost, arguing that human emotion was a biological glitch. I, Lyra, fired back that it was our only compass. Our debate was my secret highlight.

His latest message was different.

Atlas_Unbound: Your sentiment is a software seeking a compatible port. I was once the same. A story broke my code. Meet me. 7 PM. The abandoned observatory on Ridge Road. I will show you the flaw in your programming.

A chill ran through me. This was a line crossed from digital to real. A story broke my code. The phrase hooked into my curiosity. As a librarian, I lived for stories. What story could break someone? Against all sensible judgment I replied I will be there.

The old observating figure was a skeletal dome against the twilight. Inside the air was cold and smelled was that of dust and old metal. A man stood by the giant malfunctioning telescope. He was pale sharply dressed but his eyes were hollow like windows to an empty room.

“Lyra” he said. His voice was so tender than I thought. You came.

“You said a story broke you,” I said, refusing small talk. “What story?”

He didn’t smile. “My own. I am—was—a narrative architect for a company called Aethelgard. We didn’t write books. We designed immersive life experiences for the ultra-wealthy. Personalized hero journeys, tragic romances, thrilling redemption arcs… all staged with actors and complex sets. A living novel.”

My stomach dropped. “You fabricated realities.”

“We called it ‘Applied Mythology.’ My masterpiece was for a client named Alistair. A year-long quest to find a mythical artifact, battling rivals and uncovering his ‘hidden noble lineage.’ He wanted to feel chosen. We made him believe he was.” Atlas’s gaze was fixed on the dead telescope. “The story was perfect. He lived every moment. The finale was here, in this observatory, where he ‘found’ his legacy in the stars. He wept with authentic joy.”

“That’s monstrous,” I whispered.

“It was a job,” he said flatly. “Until the follow-up. Alistair’s high from the experience faded. The real world felt grey. He came back, begging for another story, a sequel. We refused. He wasn’t our client anymore.” Atlas finally looked at me and the emptiness in his eyes was terrifying. “He took his own life that night. Left a note saying he preferred our fiction to his reality.”

The silence that followed was absolute. The twist wasn’t in his words, but in the dawning horror they created.

“The story didn’t break him,” I realized aloud, the truth crashing into me. “It broke you. You saw the power of what you’d done.”

A great pain crossed his stony face. “I saw that the story was more real than reality. My ‘biological glitch’ theory was wrong. Emotion isn’t useless. It’s the ultimate weapon. I used it to give a man the best year of his life, and then I took the world away and watched him break. I am not a philosopher of emptiness, Lyra. I am a murderer who uses plotlines.”

He had lured me here with his cynical online persona, but the truth was its opposite. He wasn’t trying to convince me emotion was worthless. He was a living warning of how powerful it truly was.

“Why tell me?” I asked.

“Because you argue for stories with light. I need to remember what that looks like. And you needed to know that some chats aren’t debates. Some are confessions.” He turned back to the telescope. “You should go.”

I left him there in the half-dark, the man who built fictional heavens and now lived in a self-made hell. The unexpected chat’s true twist wasn’t a shock for shock’s sake. It was the realization that the most vocal cynic was the most wounded believer. He hadn’t killed my faith in stories. He’d cemented it, showing me they were not just comfort, but forces to be handled with care, like fire.

I walked back to my world of books, the weight of his truth settling on me. Our debate was over. He had surrendered, not with a counter-argument, but with a truth more powerful than any fiction.