Welcome back to the Atlas, friends. The Architect’s first judgment has shocked the world, proving the prophecy is not just real, but watching.
As Eleanor and Brodie, now united by a shared, terrifying purpose, race to decipher the rules of this new reality, Liam leans in the opposite direction. He embraces the chaos, gathering his own troops for an “end of the world” rave, a final, hedonistic blaze of glory.
But the Architect isn’t waiting for the party to start. An unnatural, violent storm is bearing down on Edinburgh, and hidden in the data, Eleanor is about to discover a terrifying new rule to this game, one that makes Liam’s defiant celebration more dangerous than he could ever imagine.
Previously:
The Prophecy Looms
Liam arrived in Dean village with his bags and greeted his new colleagues. He had brought together this small group of people with the singular purpose of throwing the greatest end of the world party Edinburgh would ever need. The combined group represented all the essential ingredients needed for this particular evening. There was Dev, the music technician. He had been working at the Arcade bar for a few years now and had slowly built up an incredible array of speakers designed specifically to deal with the extreme bass and high frequencies that classic EDM thrived on. He had already shipped them to the Port of Leith and would be installing them in a few hours. There were two different caterers here, one guy was selling Mexican food, a bit of a delicacy these days, and the other would be selling 90s style junk food. This included all the stuff that the government had basically banned or pushed everyone away from. Burgers, chicken nugs, chips covered in gravy or curry sauce, hot dogs, and deep pan pizzas.
For the music, there was the DJ, Thick Jimmy. His name, he claimed, was to detract people from paying too much attention to what he was doing. His friends knew it was just his school nickname, but either way, it tended to give him an air of indifference. The impression of a guy who didn’t care for titles, and instead let the music do the talking. The group was rounded out by a mixture of Liam’s enthusiastic friends, and a couple of the other organisers. There were a few changes in the group composition Liam noted. A couple of his older friends had gotten jealous of his overnight success and were miffed to find themselves in his shadow. Looking around at the assembled group, he decided he didn’t mind too much.
Reaching down into his duffle bag, he brought out a stack of paper cups, and handed them around, and then reaching in again, produced a bottle of his dad’s old whisky. He had been waiting for a special occasion for this, and tonight seemed like the perfect opportunity.
“Right, troops. Tonight’s gonna be fuckin’ mental. It’s the end of the world as we know it, ‘cos we’re about to throw the maddest rave Embra has ever seen. To kick things off, I’ve brought a wee something. This, lads, is Aberfeldy 21. They don’t even make this shite anymore. It was my auld man’s; he proper treasured it. So, I want to raise a dram. First, to my dad... for giving me the sense to actually do something, and for... well, the bottle. And second, to us. For getting together and starting something pure class.”
Holding the bottle by the neck, Liam took a massive swig of the Whisky, surprised and delighted by its intensity, and then, with a glint of fire in his eyes, he spread it around pouring it carelessly into people’s cups.
***
Brodie was in the kitchen with Eleanor taking a break from the research. The news about Dr. Lund had shocked them both, but it had also given them a valuable direction into studying the underlying mechanics of how the prophet worked. In the meantime, he had decided they still needed to eat.
Scooping out the pumpkin was a catharsis in and of itself. This squash didn’t need peeling to eat it, as long as it was thoroughly cooked. He had taken off the top and scooped out the seeds, saving some of them diligently on a piece of tissue paper to dry for sowing next year. He had prepared a mix of wheat grains and spiced them with some chillies he had grown indoors and dried earlier in the autumn, alongside a blend of herbs that breathed aromas of the Mediterranean around the room. The knife as it cut through the herbs released all of their oily phenolics and the air was now a cacophony of flavour. He then stuffed the blend inside the hollow of the pumpkin, gave it a good drizzle of oil, and then popped the whole thing on a sheet of baking parchment and popped it in the oven. The whole process left him quite content, as if the world wasn’t suddenly getting more surreal by the day. The illusion, however, was swiftly shattered.
An alarm sound came over the radio and the gentle music they had been listening to was replaced with a news bulletin. Eleanor looked up, both miffed and full of trepidation at the same time. She had been busy working away updating her models with some of their newer findings, and seemed to resent the distraction.
“This is the BBC news, reports are coming in globally that extreme weather has started to ground all flights, and unprecedented atmospheric conditions are affecting all travel. You are advised to stay indoors and not use any vehicles. Please stay tuned for localised updates from your regional governing body”.
Brodie walked over to the window that surrounded the kitchen and looked out. It was overcast as usual, but as he looked more carefully he noticed a strangeness.
“Eleanor, come over here, look.” She huffed indignantly. “Brodie, just a few more minutes, I think I’m on to something!” She looked over at him to make sure he had understood, but her eyes missed him and looked past his shoulders instead to the sky beyond the roof garden.
“Brodie, are… Are the clouds always like that?”
Putting down her pad, she walked over and gripped his hand. Brodie liked the feeling of it, and smiled, despite the scene outside. As they stood and watched, clouds started to roll in over the city, thick and broiling. But worse than the impending gloom they inevitably cast over the city was their colour. The sky was growing in intensity, and the clouds were touched with dark violet and greens that made it look like a surreal painting. The wind was picking up as well, shaking the trees in the distance and causing the plants in Brodie’s garden to start bowing towards the house like subjects before an emperor. As they looked, sheets of rain started to fall and hastened towards them at speed, eventually splattering thickly against the glass of the window, drowning out the sound of the radio completely. A flash of lightning illuminated the clouds like a stage show, closely followed by the dense rumble of thunder.
“Eleanor, are you okay?”
She was gripping his arm tightly now. He looked to her and saw she was growing smaller in the face of this onslaught. The leaves falling off the trees, the Dr. and her persecution, and now this. It really seemed like they were animals slowly being lured into a trap.
“Mmhmm,” she nodded unconvincingly. “I just… sometimes I find it hard to believe this is really happening. It feels like I am trapped in a nightmare. And I am scared for my Mum too, and Liam. I have been following him on socials, he shouldn’t be out in this weather; party or no.”
“We just need to focus on what we can do. Look, the pumpkins in the oven, and you said you had something you were nearly finished with, right? Let’s get back to it.”
She suddenly perked up, and bustled back over to her pad, where it was now showing a long table of results. To Brodie’s eyes it looked like code, or a long maths equation, but he watched as Eleanor studied it for meaning, reading it as if it was as simple as a children’s book.
“Brodie, my god, I knew it!” Brodie hurried over and tried to find some meaning in any of it.
“I can’t understand what I am looking at Eleanor, you are going to have to explain it.” Eleanor was seemingly not listening though. She had grown quiet and still.
“Eleanor?” Brodie gripped her shoulder reassuringly. She was not looking at him and was staring at the pad. Suddenly she turned, desperation flashed across her like the lightning outside had flashed across the sky.
“Brodie, we have to go find Liam.”
“Wait, what, no Eleanor, that’s mental. Have you not just seen what it looks like out there?”
She stood up and grabbed him by the shoulders, a possession in her eyes that were both determined and intense.
“Brodie, im going, if you can come, I want your help, but I am leaving either way”. She made towards the door. “Eleanor, just quickly, explain to me what has happened?” Brodie held her hand, as if trying to slow her down.
“Brodie, there is no time,” she nearly shouted, pulling her hand away and heading to the door. “If you are coming, I can explain on the way”.
***
Liam and his friends were having a pre-rave sesh by the river in Dean Village. The rain came down in sheets so thick that they could barely see a few meters away. The sound of the thunder was intense and went straight through their bodies.
“Turn that shite up man,” Liam shouted through it all. He was delighted by every part of this. The music on their portable speaker grew louder and seemed to blend with the sounds of car alarms, and the percussion of the rain against the stones and the water of the river below. He had moved on from the whisky now and was enjoying the slow come-on of his favourite molly. The environment around him felt almost like a part of a show. A concert that the world had put on just for him. It was almost like the weather wanted to out do his party, with its flashing lights, its rolling drums, its colourful display, the swelling of the river below.
“Not a fukin chance man”. He shouted to the clouds in general. “Ma party will knock the socks off ya!”
Liam held out his arms and grinned manically as he let the icy rain prickle over him and the sharp smell of ozone stab at the back of his nose.
***
Brodie kept up with her stride, still tugging at his raincoat’s zip trying desperately to keep out the rain. They were heading to Dean Village, where Liam had posted his last video from, and they walked dangerously fast over the now slick cobbles.
“Eleanor, slow down, this is getting silly. What has happened!”
Eleanor didn’t slow, but she started talking, loudly so as to be heard over the storm.
“Brodie, Liam is in more trouble than we thought. I knew already that he was probably going to be deciduous, but there is more. He is in so much more trouble. There is a recency bias! It’s literally written in your book, and I didn’t see it! I was so stupid.”
Brodie cast his mind back over the book. They had been going through it desperately last night after the announcement about the Dr. and one passage had seemed more prescient.
‘When we analyse the cadence of the original message, we see a corresponding pattern in certain natural systems. All of these systems tend towards a final crescendo, increasing in energy and devastation until they falter and fall quiet. Tsunamis being the most clear example.’
“I got the idea when the Dr. was judged. We couldn’t believe it, but we should have. I started digging around online and looking up reports on her. She was good once, but according to more recent articles from the last ten years, she had grown jaded, resentful, and had started to ostracise herself. She kept up public appearances, and wore her earlier reputation as a mask. But she had turned into a hypocrite. So when I put all this new data into my model, it showed that there is a Tsunami effect. In short, what you do, how you live as you get closer to the judgement. It matters Brodie! It measures you by the most present version of yourself, weighting your past as exponentially less important”.
Brodie listened intently, and thought of Liam. It started to make more and more sense. Liam hadn’t always been a bad guy. But in the last few years he had really changed, and now he was about to do the most hedonistic thing yet. He was literally digging his own grave.
“Fuck!” Brodie whispered. Eleanor caught it and grew even more grimly determined. “Fuck exactly!” She shouted through the thunder that rumbled, boulder-like, down the street.
***
Liam was ready, he was more than ready. Gathering up his speaker and his hoody, he stuffed it in his shoulder bag and zipped it shut, defiant of the rain. His friends were gathered, he had just heard word from one of his new colleagues that things at the warehouse were going well. Now for the walk. He had even planned this, a long walk along the river to the abandoned maritime quarter near the Forth Lock by Leith. Along the way, he had arranged multiple pit-stops where revellers would join him so they could walk together, partying as they go, to the rave of the century. Little PR moments that he knew would make for amazing content on social media, encouraging even the most reticent out of their homes, despite the crazy storm swirling about him. He was just about to leave with the group when he heard his name carried on the wind from behind him.
“LIAM!”
He stopped and turned around. His friends muttered in the background. ‘Hey, see her? Isn’t that Liam’s sister, tae one who was on the TV?’ ‘Who are these radges? What do they even want with Liam?’
One cut through and made Liam blush, just as things were going so well.
“Oi, Liam! Your sister’s here. What’s up, is your maw wanting you home for your tea?”
As he looked across the bridge, there, soaked and looking angry, was his sister, Eleanor. She was with someone else, and at first he couldn’t quite make them out, but as he walked onto the bridge himself, he noticed the shy posture, the red hair. It was Brodie too. He rolled his eyes, and met them in the middle of the bridge, rain swirling around them, bruised clouds ominous in the sky, and lightning flashing in the distance.
Eleanor was breathless, having half jogged the last part in desperation, hoping that she had caught him before he left. The most recent social post had her scared that he was already gone, and that he had started that journey he was advertising, to pull pilgrims to the party. With Brodie beside her, she felt stronger than she believed she actually was, and walked up to him ready to tell him everything. To plead with him to come back, but he spoke first.
“Sis,” He said, in a mocked raised voice so his friends could hear him above the roar of the gushing river below. “So, ye made it. Were ye worried ye were gonnae miss it, aye?”
“Liam, what? No! Liam, look you need to listen, we,” She gestured with her eyes to Brodie. Liam looked him up and down, displeasure etched across his face. They hadn’t spoken in years, why was he here now? Perhaps, as he had always suspected, he had always wanted to hook up with his sister, now the end of the world was happening, here he was.
“We have found something, and you… you are in real danger Liam, come home with me. I can tell you everything.” Eleanor held out her hand to him, pleading.
The roar of the water below swelled as Liam looked at her hand, and then looked behind him to the opposite bank where his friends waited. The river felt angry, guttural. Its sound was almost like a wild animal. It even sprayed up over the bridge, despite the thundering rain, and spattered Liam’s cheeks with cold little blades. He could feel anger, like the rivers, washing up through him as well.
Brodie spoke next, putting his arm around Eleanor’s shoulder, confirming Liam’s suspicions.
“Come on, Liam, look, ya know the prophet, the one my Grandmother used to tell us stories about, it’s all real… and here, it focuses its judgement more on what happens nearer the time. This party Liam, its… It’s like you are painting a massive target on your back and inviting judgement. Come with us instead, we can face the night together, don’t do it alone” Liam was surprised to see that Eleanor didn’t flinch at this nonsense. Usually she would have been one of the first to shut prophet chats down. But instead the anger took over.
“Aye, ‘alone’? Does it look like I’m alone? Have ye not seen what I’ve been doing? There’s hundreds of folk coming to my rave. Does that sound lonely tae ye?” He winked mockingly at the pair of them. “And hey, looks like you finally got what you wanted. Always knew ye had a thing for my sister. Ye widnae want me acting like a third wheel, wid ye?”
Eleanor stepped up and slapped him across the cheek. Liam stumbled back shocked, while his friends in the distance cat-called. Making exaggerated ‘Oooh’s and then laughing amongst themselves.
“Liam, will ye wake the fuck up!” The sudden tinge of Scottish accent coming from her was just as shocking as her anger and frustration. “I didn’t run half way across town to be spoken to like that. I am here because I CARE about you. Can the same be said for any of them?” She threw her hand accusingly at the group gathered on the other side of the bridge. They made mock pleas of horror and fright, seemingly unaffected. “Do ye remember when I was wee, and the three of us were up that hill and I fell, twisting my ankle. You carried me all the way home with Brodie, it took us nearly an hour, but you didn’t give up on me. You carried me, when I was hurting. Liam, I know… since Da died, you have been hurting. Let me carry you home now too, this… this rave, this ‘end of the world party’. It’s not gonnae help. It will make things so much worse. Please.”
Liam touched his cheek where she had hit him. He wasn’t sure whether to be shocked or impressed. But the sudden mention of their Da was the final straw. They had hit a sore bone, and he couldn’t let anyone see that. The river swelled beneath him, and a wash of water splashed over the bridge wall, landing between them like a line in the soil.
“So ye’ve got it all figured out, have ye?” he spat, his voice full of venom. “The scientist and the prophet, here tae save my soul, aye? The world’s fuckin’ ending! For once in my life, I’m gonnae have some fun! Wi’ my REAL mates!” His eyes were wide, and his voice was cracking as every word was forced out of him. He looked like a trapped animal watching a cage slide over him.
Liam turned his back on them, and walked over to his nearest friend on the opposite bank, and grabbed a bottle out of his hand taking a massive swig of the hard alcohol inside. His whole attitude was manic.
“LIAM, PLEASE, FOR GOD’S SAKE”. Eleanor shouted from across the bridge. He turned to her, wild and carefree, and with a quick vault up, he leapt onto the wall of the bridge, arms outspread. He stood tall, with the bottle in his hand, silhouetted against the bruised-apple, stormy sky, a tragic Shakespearean figure in the dark light. He raised the bottle to them in a mock toast as sheets of rain and wind threatened repeatedly to drag him into the churning waters below, and then drained it. Wet hair slicked back against his scalp as he drank the whole bottle, and threw the empty glass in the river. Then, he jumped down on the other side, with his friends. Grabbed up his shoulder bags and walked away.
Eleanor and Brodie stood there in shock.
“Come on, Eleanor, let’s go. He’s made his choice,” Brodie whispered, delicately tugging at her arm as he looped his arm under hers.
A note from the atlas: This scene was so hard, but so necessary, to write. It’s the raw, messy collision of three people’s pain. Eleanor finally breaks out of her logical shell (with a literal slap!) and uses the one thing she has left: their shared past. But for Liam, that same past is a landmine.
That’s the tragedy, isn’t it? The very thing Eleanor uses as a life raft, Liam experiences as an anchor. It’s the moment their shared history becomes a weapon, and the divide between them becomes real. This is the “why” of the whole story for me.
And there, on the bridge, the choice is made.
Liam, goaded by his own pain and the mention of his father, violently rejects the past. He turns his back on the only two people trying to save him, choosing instead the defiant, nihilistic “fun” of the present. Eleanor’s chilling discovery, the “Tsunami Effect”, makes this moment a true tragedy. The Architect, it seems, judges the most recent version of ourselves, weighting our present actions exponentially more than our past.
Liam isn’t just planning a party; he’s actively, joyfully painting a target on his back, and Eleanor and Brodie are forced to watch him walk away.
Now, I turn to you. This “Tsunami Effect” is a terrifying concept. It suggests our past good deeds can be erased by our present failings. Do you believe we are the sum of our entire lives, or are we defined by the choices we are making right now?
I’m fascinated to hear your thoughts in the comments.
For me personally, I do think that I weight things that are more present. If we judged every person by who they have been, every iteration of themselves, whether they were happy, sad, angry, or whatever. We deny the fact that as we live, we grow and learn. In this sense, I do think the Architect is behaving a bit more fairly. (Relatively speaking).