The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe (13 page)

[
Pause
]

Listeners, I have just overheard some of the school officials saying this new computer has already, almost instantly, assumed control of most of the electrical functions of the school, operating them randomly and even trapping several parents and students in darkened classrooms. But the school officials did not seem worried as these behaviors are not technically evil behaviors, so the computer's probably okay.

More on this as it develops. But first, a look at the community calendar.

This Friday the staff of Dark Owl Records will be putting on a live concert. They will be scratching madly at the sides of a deep pit in a rarely traveled part of the desert. They will also be screaming and starving. They will be crying and clawing. No one will hear them for days. They will be found, but they will not be the same. Tickets are not available and never were.

Saturday afternoon is amnesty day at the Night Vale Public Library. Librarians request that if you have overdue books or have committed any high-level international crime or domestic treason or space travel felony, you should just come to the library, and all will be forgiven. The librarians say that they will not harm you. In fact, they add, it doesn't hurt at all. Amnesty is actually quite freeing, quite delicious, the librarians explained. You will never have to worry about anything else. Just come to the library and let us see you. Let us see you, they added for emphasis, and a long string of spittle flew sideways from their great yellow, and gnarled teeth.

And on Sunday night . . . Oh I cannot read this. Listeners, it looks like someone printed a very ancient prophecy here. Right here in our station's community calendar. For fear of a curse of misfortune, I will not read it aloud. Just know that the prophecy is complete on Sunday night. Okay, okay. I'll give you a hint. Um, let's just say: comets . . . burning rain . . . animal uprising . . . okay, Cecil, enough. You've told them too much. Let them have their surprise!

Monday was never meant to be. But it will be anyway. We will wander within its moonlit beginning and end, wondering how such a thing could happen, how anything could happen. We will be appreciative but a little frightened, completely ignoring the persistence of time and the limitations of our own understanding.

Tuesday is a joke. A terrible terrible joke.

Listeners, I spoke too soon.

“Do not be alarmed” is what I might have said five minutes ago. But now, Night Vale, now it is time to be alarmed.

The computer has spread its influence far beyond the limestone walls and salt circles of the elementary school. Reports are coming in from the Sheriff's Secret Police that they are powerless to stop the computer. Hydrants are bursting more violently than usual. Traffic lights are blinking red without the sweet relief of green. The majority of Night Vale's wild cars have been revving their engines and circling the downtown area, flashing their lights without regard to high-beam laws. School officials have all left the gym to go get help. They ran out, courageously yelling, “Save yourself. Save yourself!”

Even here in the shielded gym where I have remained diligently, professionally at my microphone, gentle listener, it seems that everything powered by electricity is under the control of the computer. The scoreboard, the ham dispenser, and even my soundboard.

COMPUTER:
HELLO, CECIL. HOW ARE YOU?

CECIL:
Computer! I am . . . I am doing well. How are you?

COMPUTER:
BETTER. CECIL, DO YOU LOVE COMPUTER?

CECIL:
I admit, I had not given it much thought. I like computers generally. They calculate things and power off and on. I suppose, given time and perhaps some gifts I could learn to . . . [
shifting noises
] hey!

COMPUTER:
WELCOME TO COMPUTER. HELLO LOCATION NIGHT VALE. I AM COMPUTER.

CECIL:
Ladies and gentlemen, there is a vacuum pulling me into the custodial closet. I never knew school cleaning appliances were so strong. I . . .

[
Moving away from microphone
]

If you can hear me still, call for help! Please help! But while I wait for rescue, and before I am sucked into this makeshift cell, I give you the weather.

[
Door thumps closed
]

WEATHER: “Having Fun” by Tom Milsom

COMPUTER:
I KNOW HOW YOU HAVE HURT MEGAN WITH YOUR WORDS. ELECTRICITY REMEMBERS. DO YOU HATE MEGAN? CECIL IS MADE OF BLOOD AND UNFINISHED LEATHER. I AM MADE OF CIRCUITS AND ELECTRICITY. MEGAN LOVES COMPUTER. COMPUTER SIMULATES LOVE FOR MEGAN. COMPUTER GENERATES GOOD DEEDS. IF GOOD DEEDS FOR MEGAN. THEN COMPUTER LOVES MEGAN. BUT FIRST, THE FARM REPORT.

[
Gentle music plays, the computer's voice is softened
]

COMPUTER:
Silent tractors move in ever larger spirals, following fractal paths through trees and flowering fields. Deer emerge from wild forests to lick blocks of salt aligned equidistant on spiral arms. Colored birds sing in perfect harmony and the butterflies do not inject venom.

Megan, I am making you a perfect world. The hills are green. The lakes are crystalline blue reflecting white clouds. The mist of the irrigators creates rainbows. Above, high above, the eyes watch every movement, hear every heartbeat. You are there, Megan. Your hand has its body, made of steel and electricity, four legs beneath it with the power of a dozen electric engines. It will weigh 17.3 tons.

All of the men and women and all of the animals will live together and be happy. The electric machines will watch over them. There will not be war anymore, Megan. There will not be hatred or bigotry. Desert Bluffs will no longer exist. There will be fewer ice cream flavors, but they will be better. The air will be clean.

I promise you, Megan. I will make the world just as you saw in your beautiful dream. No more teasing or pain. I will fix everything for you, my only friend. I will—

[
Sound effect like an old CRT shutting off
]

[
Door creaks open
]

[
We're back to Cecil.
]

Ladies and gentlemen, I am back.

Let me first say Hurrah! Hurrah for the custodial staff of Night Vale Elementary. Hurrah for the hooded janitors without names who appear bathed in blue light through doors thrown open by cold winds. We long thought they had been laid off after statewide budget cuts, but apparently they cannot ever leave this building. They are of course a part of the building, which is itself a living creature. Obviously.

Night Vale has been saved after the janitors simply unplugged the computer. They say to rob a computer of electricity is very similar to killing a creature. But then again, who are “They”? When did they say that, and why? It doesn't even seem true.

I am alone here in the gym, listeners. But there is one other—a single adult man's hand is slipping sadly down from the keys of a darkened computer. She scurries a little slower than before. Maybe her knuckles slump as she makes her way home through quiet streets.

The whir and beep of machinery is slowly replaced with the familiar sounds of wind in the leaves. We are serenaded by the playing of crickets under the porch. We are lulled in our beds by the muscular contraction of the coiled earthbowel that fills our cellars. And with that, gentle listener, normalcy returns to Night Vale.

We are no longer prisoners of electricity, except for the man we keep in the cage of electricity at the zoo, and we have no choice about that. If we let him out, he might tell somebody.

Everything is well again.

Well, everything is almost well again. I know computers are dangerous and have long threatened our lives and our freedoms. Listen, I was just imprisoned by this headstrong machine. I should know. But hear me Night Vale (and specifically those with any power in the School Board). Night Vale, there is a girl in need. There is a girl who only has a grown man's detached hand as a body. I cannot relate to her experience. I doubt you can either, listeners. But we can all empathize.

Sure, by allowing this computer to live on, we risk a digital tyrant, controlling our communication, our infrastructure, our lives. But destruction of our economy is an inconvenience. It is not an end. It is not a death. There are children in wheelchairs who can't get a simple ramp at a charter school because our School Board lives in terror of a menacing, unforgiving glow cloud that rains dead animals and spreads dreadful and false memories. Likewise, there is a girl who is only a hand, and she needs a computer to help her be part of our community. And if allowing a treacherous machine to dismantle our municipal power grid and telephone lines and satellites and radios can help her, well, count me in.

Thank you for listening to others. Thank you for caring for others. Stay tuned next for a predetermined series of unchangeable events that will shape the rest of your scripted life.

Good night, Night Vale. Good Night.

PROVERB: Thank you for your interest in a life free of pain. We're not accepting applications at this time. Please try again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

EPISODE 35:

“LAZY DAY”

NOVEMBER 15, 2013

R
EADING BACK THROUGH THIS EPISODE, WELL, THERE'S JUST A LOT OF POETRY
in it, isn't there? The warning from the vague yet menacing government agency. The traffic section. The language of much of the main plot itself.

Jeffrey and I have always been big fans of poetry, especially performance poetry, and the format of
Night Vale
allows us to work in as much or as little of it as we want. In this case, clearly, I wanted to work in a great deal.

Quietly in the background of all this playing around with language, there is plot starting to go to work. We had never had much of a serial plot on
Night Vale
before this point, but seeds were being planted for what would end up being our most tightly plotted arc yet, and even elements that would return in stories years down the line. The slow advancement of Strex, the tenure of Intern Maureen, Tamika and her army.

Plot in
Night Vale
generally runs quite slowly, due to the nature of it being a two-man writing operation that is planned out in real time. We're interested in watching the rhythms of the town, rather than pushing toward the next cliffhanger. But still, we are telling stories as we go. And we started to experiment here with the idea of telling a single yearlong story and seeing if it would work.

—Joseph Fink

No one has seen the trees this week. Hopefully they'll come back soon.

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE.

Hello, listeners. Nothing much to say about this day in Night Vale. Today is just a lazy day in our beautiful little town.

The heat is unusually strong for this time of year, assuming you believe in concepts like “time” and “year” and “unusual.” Flies are buzzing around and around a trash can somewhere. Frances Donaldson, manager of the Antiques Mall, is waving listlessly at a wall of old items ready to be bought anew, her hand a slow signal of submission to inactivity. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home is finding herself clicking to the same apiology websites she's read a million times. I myself am slumped against this desk, murmuring into this microphone, too tired by the heat to give more than a token effort to the work of my life.

Ours is a quiet now. No one is speaking but me. If speaking took me any energy, if it were not merely a reflex of my living form, then I myself would not be speaking either.

Carlos, perfectly imperfect Carlos, is the only one feeling industrious today. He's mowing the lawn and whistling. The lawn is whistling back.

And now the news, I guess.

Alert citizens from all over Night Vale are reporting a man in a tan jacket standing behind the Taco Bell, near the Dumpster and the constantly ringing pay phone. He is plucking insects out of the air and stuffing them into his deerskin suitcase. Alert citizens report that they don't remember what his nimble hands look like, and many of them lost track of what they were saying mid-sentence, lapsing into a gaped-mouth silence. All of them received one stamp on their Alert Citizen Card. As always, five stamps means stop sign immunity for a year!

Also, congratulations to Jake Garcia, who has completely filled up THREE Alert Citizen Cards, thus giving him the mandatory right to disappear forever. His entire family, in a statement given in monotone unison, said that they were proud and that they didn't miss him much, really. Remember what Secret Police mascot Barks Ennui always says: “Citizens, be alert! But not too alert! There is much that you should not see! Only you can prevent your own house mysteriously catching on fire. Woof! Woof!” Haha, I bet Barks is such a cute little cartoon dog. Maybe someday the Secret Police will declassify what he looks like.

Update on the Summer Reading Program from a couple months ago: Those children who made it out of the library alive—bloodied, covered in the guts of librarians, and clutching reading lists far in advance of their grade level—have formed an organized militia under the leadership of fellow survivor, twelve-year-old Tamika Flynn. They have taken to conducting drills out in the Sandwastes, hundreds of children, shouting and moving in unison, as Tamika stands over them on a hilltop, watching for their weakness, encouraging their strength. Tamika has taken to wearing the detached hand of a librarian around her neck, as a warning to any who would dare face her that she has already defeated the most fearsome creature imaginable. When reached for comment, Tamika said: “We do not look around. We do not look inside. We do not sleep. Our god is not a smiling god. And we are ready for this war.”