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(transcript) Episode 111: "Summer 2017, Night Vale, USA"
🕑 Added 2020-06-02 21:28:31 +0000 UTC A friendly desert community, where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead, while we lay open eyed, watching it all. Welcome to Night Vale.The City Council reiterated for the 1,874th consecutive day that the Dog Park is off limits for both dogs and humans. The fence is electrified and highly dangerous etc. Hooded figures and all that. Since its construction we have shied from and feared the Dog Park. The Dog Park is neither a park nor for dogs, and so what does it even mean to call it a dog park? Why do we use language that means one thing to describe something that is entirely else? I don’t know what the word is for that place the City Council calls the dog park, but I do know it’s time to start searching for that word, and once found, to use it boldly.
The angels, who I can now say are angels, and will say are angels, because they are angels, held a memorial for Old Woman Josie in her house. Everyone in town came, overcome with a feeling that finally they could look at these beings and recognize them for what they were. Even the city council attended the memorial, but refused to make eye contact with anyone. Of course, this positive, concrete identification only led to more mysteries, for if these are angels, then where did they come from? And what does that mean for us? Even now we find that we cannot voice these questions. Not because we are not allowed. But because we cannot find the words to ask.
Instead we ate cake and drank coffee in the living room of Old Woman Josie, which was once just that, a place she lived. Now it is only a room. One by one, we laid our hand on the Angels’ hands, and in that moment of contact each of us, in turn, found ourselves weeping. As the party wound down, we all heard a soft pop outside. It was the lightbulb on Old Woman Josie’s porch, burning out.
A man who I know very well came into my house today, which is also his house. He laid his head, with its perfect and beautiful hair, upon my shoulder, and crossed his arms over his perfect and beautiful lab coat.
I embraced him. We are creatures of touch, humans, and we retrieve so much meaning and happiness from contact.
“I have become too complacent,” he said. “When I came here, I understood this town as scientifically fascinating. And then, gradually, it became my day to day life. I could no longer see the strangeness, but only my home.”
“We are all guilty of that,” I said.
“But I am a scientist,” he said.
“Well,” I said. “We have all been scientists at one point or another in our lives.”
Just a reminder to all the parents out there. Let’s talk about safety when taking your children out to play in the scrub lands and the sand wastes. You need to give them plenty of water, make sure there’s a shade tree in the area, and keep an eye on the helicopter colors. I asked my best friend and brother, Steve, to talk me through which helicopters belong to which organizations. Obviously the black helicopters belong to the World Government, although I had not realized, until Steve laid it out for me, how closely they are also associated with the Lizard People. The blue ones are Sheriff’s Secret Police, the pink ones are the new Double Secret Police, and the ones painted with complex murals depicting birds of prey diving? Well not even Steve knows what those helicopters are, nor what they want. On Steve’s chart, those are just labeled with the word RUN and then a few hundred exclamation points.
A commercial airliner flying through local airspace disappeared today, only to reappear at the fifth hole of the Sagebrook Pines Private Golf Club and Bulk Supplier. This disrupted all golf activities badly, as well as scaring a family of four who were perusing bulk paper towels offered at a discount price in a nearby sandtrap. I feel, for the first time, that I can articulate that this airliner had flown into some other universe, those divisions being particularly thin here in our quaint little community. This also is the cause of things like dead relatives occasionally joining us for breakfast, or the shimmering skyscrapers and crowded cities that appear for flashing moments in the sky. Of course, it also could be the handywork of the East Night Vale Cacti, the basketball team at the new East Night Vale Elementary School. Those scamps are always pulling pranks. Could they transport a large plane through multiple universes? Who am I to say? But probably yes. For shame, East Night Vale. For shame.
My husband, and our town’s friend and protector, Carlos, called a town meeting. He thought we hadn’t checked in with each other in awhile, and wanted us to have a moment where we came face to face, and saw those faces, and remembered that we are all real and all affect each other. Erika and Erika of the newly acknowledged angels brought corn muffins, which were inedibly salty. They explained that angels just can’t get enough salt.
Dana Cardinal was there, not as our mayor, but as a citizen, one who is so young for the responsibility that has been thrust on her. Tamika Flynn was there, not as a city council member, but as a citizen, one who is so young for the responsibility she has seized with an army of loyal and extremely well-armed teens. Please see my upcoming editorial on Why Millennials are Always Joining Armed Teen Militias. Ugh. Millennials.
Carlos reminded us that we are by far the most scientifically interesting town in the country, and we joined hands and nodded because boy, don’t we know it. We have clear eyes now. We see ourselves for who we are. But more importantly. We see each other. We are still a community.
The Night Vale Business Association is proud to announce the refurbishment of the Night Vale Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area. Now you might remember that these facilities have always been absolutely beautiful, eco-friendly and with a pedestrian focused design. However, they have suffered poor attendance due to the complete lack of water in the desert. But this is where things have changed, the Night Vale Business Association said, in a press release that they drunkenly sung in unison out in my yard last night.
The recent problems we had with other universes intruding on our own resulted in a great deal of pain and loss, but it has left us with an ocean. This ocean is only visible from the Waterfront Recreation Area’s boardwalk, and viewed from any other angle, the area still appears to just be the usual sagebrush and rocks. Carlos said that he doesn’t understand how this window into another world works and warned that no one should attempt to touch the ocean, for we do not know what lurks within it. But, he said, there could be no harm in a sunset stroll along the boardwalk, listening to the soft hiss of the retreating waves.
The local chapter of the NRA is selling bumper stickers as part of their fundraising week. The stickers are made from good, sturdy vinyl and they read “We genuinely do not value human life.” Cute!
Carlos and his scientists, like Luisa [note for cecil, Spanish name, not Lusia] and Nilanjana, are renewing their investigation into the house in the development of Desert Creek, out back of the elementary school. The house that doesn’t actually exist.
“It seems like it exists,” muttered Carlos. “Like it’s just right there when you look at it, and it’s between two other identical houses so it would make more sense for it to be there than not.” But he says, it is actually a doorway to another world. A world he himself was once stuck in for a year. There seem to be secrets about that year he is keeping to himself. Maybe someday we will learn what they are.
Lights, seen in the sky above the Arby’s. Not the glowing sign of Arby’s. Something higher and beyond that. One night, years ago, two people, scared and vulnerable and loving and ready, came together for a quiet moment under that sky. And I pretended at the time to understand the lights. But a big part of recognizing the world for what it is, is recognizing when you have no idea. Invaders from another world? Harbingers of future terror? A fragment of another universe, fading into our own above reasonably priced lunch meat? Maybe any. Maybe all. Maybe none. But here is what I do know. The lights are, among other things, a part of my memory, and a part of my marriage, and a part of my love. They are a piece of my past, and I don’t need to understand them to understand that. Ladies and gentlemen the past is here. And it’s about a hundred feet above the Arby’s.
Carlos and Luisa say that the monitoring station near Route 800 is recording wild seismic shifts even as our ground remains completely still. He suspects that this might be because multiple universe are colliding, creating earthquakes that are undetectable in the third dimension. Picture all worlds intertwining, he said. And here we are in the coil, the friction of every possibility coming into contact, shaking the very structure of chance and fortune, he said.
Well, submit an insurance claim anyway. See what you can get, right?
Listeners, the traffic.
Police are issuing warnings about the ghost cars out on the highways, those cars only visible in the distance, reaching unimaginable speeds, leaving destinations unknown for destinations more unknown. It seems that the ghost cars have taken to drag racing on weekends, which poses a hazard to both pedestrians and other drivers. The police indicate that they will be arresting whatever beings drive these cars as soon as they can figure out how to pull one over.
And now, the weather.
[weather]
The sun didn’t set at the correct time today, or any other day, Carlos and Nilanjana reported. They are quite certain about that. They checked several clocks. But, they said, the sunset was really beautiful, so at least there’s that. Carlos still does not have any explanations, but he did suggest that while time is especially weird in Night Vale, time is weird everywhere.
Mostly people don’t notice in the rest of the world, because while time is weird there, it’s always weird in the same way and so is mistaken for being remotely understandable.
It’s easy to forget in this hot, hot desert climate, but things would actually be slightly harder for us without the sun. We know this because there was a version of Night Vale in some other universe in which the sun did not exist, and that version of Night Vale was terrible. Ugh. Just no good at all. Their street plan didn’t make a lick of sense for one thing. There was no flow to any neighborhood. I’m glad I live in my sunny Night Vale, and not any other.
The City Council would like to remind you about the tiered heavens and the hierarchy of angels. The reminder is the Council is grumpy that all of this is not forbidden knowledge, but due to the new laws, they are required to inform you that the angels have made all of that information available. Stop by the house where the angels live if you want to pick up a free packet outlining exactly how all of that is organized. While the packet itself is free, it is likely the angels will ask to borrow five dollars. They tend to do that.
Over at the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex, Teddy Williams, its owner, reported the startling news that there is nothing under the pin retrieval area of lane 5. As you may remember, there has been a tiny city of warlike people under the bowling alley for several years now, which has caused some trouble, although not a lot of trouble, because they were very tiny people. But now there is just a hole in the earth under the pin retrieval area, an empty space containing only my own memories of a night that someone I loved almost died before I had a chance to truly love him. So good riddance to whatever that town was.
Carlos, perfect and beautiful, came into our studios during the break earlier, and we ate lunch together out of Tupperwares. He had some sort of blinking box in his hand covered with wires and tubes. When he put it close to the microphone, it sounded like, well, like a bunch of baby birds had just woken up. Really went crazy. He asked if I remembered it. He had brought it by on the first day we had met. He had told me that it tested for materials, but he wasn’t actually sure what materials it tested for. He had just wanted an excuse to come by and talk to me.
“Anyway,” he said, “I thought it was a nice memento. Back when we were fumbling awkwardly toward this life we share.”
“But,” he added, “it’s a real instrument that is detecting some actual materials of some kind, so there is a good chance that everything about this studio is deeply dangerous. Please be careful.”
Then we fed Khoshekh, the cat floating in one of the bathrooms here at the station. Carlos pointed out, “cats don’t float.” I stared at Khoshekh, having never really thought about that. After a bit, I said, “this one does.” Carlos smiled, petted Khoshekh between the eyes and went back to his work, and I went back to mine. This is my work, listeners. My work is to speak to you all. To talk you through the day. To murmur you into the night.
Settling in to be another clear and pretty evening here in Night Vale, this weird, weird town. I hope all of you out there have someone to sleep through it with. I know I do.
Good night, listeners. Good night.
