Welcome to Night Vale

by Joseph Fink

  One of the station interns picked up, promising to take a message, but who knew if the poor kid would even survive long enough to deliver it?

  “That’s okay,” Jackie said. “Hey, listen, I think the Arby’s is hiring. Have you considered that? Their death rate is really low for the area.”

  But the kid was already hanging up. Oh well, not Jackie’s job to worry about the life of someone foolhardy enough to be a community radio intern.

  The shop was well and truly closed. At this point if she waited any longer she might as well lay out a sleeping bag and spend the night. Which, nope. So she stepped out into the parking lot, jumpy for sure.

  There was a black sedan with tinted windows at the end of the lot—the windows cracked down enough for her to see two sunglassed agents of a vague yet menacing government agency watching her intently. One of them had a camera that kept going off, but the agent didn’t seem to know how to deactivate the flash. The light against the tinted windows made the shots worthless, and the agent cursed and tried again and it flashed again. Jackie waved good night to them, as she always did.

  Maybe she would take the Mercedes home. Drive with the roof down, see how fast she could make it go before the Sheriff’s Secret Police stopped her. But she wouldn’t, of course. She walked to her car, a blue Mazda coupe with double red stripes that had been washed, presumably, at some point before she owned it.

  “King City,” she said. The paper in her hand agreed.

  It had been a mistake to accept what the man in the tan jacket had offered her. She didn’t know what it was, or what it meant, or what information it was trying to convey and to whom. But she knew that it had changed something. The world was slipping into her life. And she had to push it out, starting with this slip of paper, and the man in the tan jacket.

  She announced her intentions, as all Night Vale citizens must.

  “I will find the man in the tan jacket, and I will make him take this piece of paper back,” she announced. “If I could do that without having to learn anything about him or about what the paper means, that would be just ideal.” The agents in the car, holding index fingers to earpieces, dutifully wrote this down.

  Out in the desert, bubbles of light, low to the ground. The echo of a crowd arguing and then cheering. For a moment, a tall building, all glass and angles and business, where there had definitely been nothing but sand, and then it was gone, and there were more lights, shifting, warping the air around them. And the echo of crowds. And the lights.

  She put the car in reverse, and pulled onto the highway, tossing the slip of paper out the window and watching with satisfaction as it fluttered into the night behind her, and then, snapping her fingers, caught the paper between them, where it was, where it had always been.

  THE VOICE OF NIGHT VALE

  CECIL: Hello, listeners, Cecil here, your voice from the darkness, the quiet whisperer in your empty night, speaking to you now from a booth at the Night Vale Community Radio station. Here to bring you all the news and community goings-on that you need to know, and hide from you all forbidden and dangerous knowledge.

  Now, the news.

  There are lights above our town, Night Vale. I am not talking here about the stars. No one knows what the stars are or what they intend, but they have remained in mostly the same order and have indicated no harm for as long as anyone around here can remember. Astronomers keep trying to explain that stars are distant suns in distant galaxies, but, of course, you have to take everything astronomers say with a grain of salt.

  But these new lights are not stars. They are low bubbles of light coming and going overhead. They are not the same lights that sometimes hover hundreds of feet above the Arby’s. Those lights are different. We understand those lights. The new lights, however, are concerning.

  Witnesses reported the lights changed colors when commented on. Some people would say things like “Oh, look at those orange lights,” and then point. And suddenly the lights would be yellow, and those people’s friends would then respond, “No, that’s definitely a yellow,” but then they’d go back to being orange. And so on.

  That was one such witness account, given by Chris Brady and Stuart Robinson of Old Town Night Vale. Chris added, “What do you think? They’re orange, right?” The lights then turned yellow again, and Stuart concluded with “Why is it so important for you to always be right, Christopher?” before storming off, followed by a very apologetic Chris.

  So far the lights seem harmless, unless you’re directly under them, in which case, they’re the opposite of harmless, whatever that means to you.

  Last night, at a press conference, the City Council reminded everyone that the Dog Park is there for our community enjoyment and use, and so it is important that no one enter, look at, or think about the Dog Park. They are adding a new advanced camera system to keep an eye on the great black walls of the Dog Park at all times, and if anyone is caught trying to enter it, they will be forced to enter it, and will never be heard from again. If you see hooded figures in the Dog Park, no you didn’t. The hooded figures are perfectly safe, and should not be approached at any costs. The City Council ended the conference by devouring a raw potato in quick, small bites of their sharp teeth and rough tongues. No follow-up questions were asked, although there were a few follow-up screams.

  We have also received word via encrypted radio pulses about the opening of a new store: Lenny’s Bargain House of Gardenwares and Machine Parts, which until recently was that abandoned warehouse the government was using for the highly classified and completely secret tests I was telling you about last week. Lenny’s will serve as a helpful new source for all needs involving landscaping and lawn-decorating materials and also as a way for the government to unload all the machines and failed tests and dangerous substances that otherwise would be wasted on things like “safe disposal” or “burying in a concrete tomb until the sun goes out.”

  Get out to Lenny’s for their big grand opening sale. Find eight government secrets and get a free kidnapping and personality reassignment so that you’ll forget you found them!

  And now, it’s time for the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner.

  Here is what we know about sentience. Sand is sentient. The desert is sentient. The sky is not sentient. Plants are intermittently sentient. Dogs are the most sentient. We are not sentient. The planet as a whole is sentient. The parts that make up that whole are not sentient. Holes are sentient. We are not sentient. Gift cards are sentient until they expire. States in which it is illegal for gift cards to expire have created immortal sentience. Money is not sentient. The concept of private property is sentient. Sand is sentient. The desert is sentient. We are not sentient.

  This has been the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner.

  Is your identity safe, listeners? With so much information being stored in databases these days, it’s uncertain how we can feel secure that our identities are our own. There are scams galore to try to steal your credit card numbers, social security numbers, city citizen personal numbers, neighborhood resident tracking numbers, and so on.

  Not a week goes by where we don’t hear of some database being cracked open like a fresh egg on a granite countertop and personal information spilling everywhere, for identity thieves to just lap up like a dog who’s allowed to be on a kitchen counter and who likes raw eggs.

  Here are some tips for protecting your identity, Night Vale. Change your computer passwords often. Most of us are not legally allowed to use a computer, but change them anyway, just in case you suddenly are allowed to use one someday. Also, wear a mask when in public, and black out your house number with spray paint.

  Finally, most identity thefts occur when databases are not securely managed. So, my advice? Don’t ever end up in a database.

  This has been Tech News.

  Coming up after this break, some exclusive clips from my recent three-hour interview with myself, in which I interrogated myself on my motivations, where I am in life, why I’m not in a diff
erent place in life, whose fault that is, and why I said that one embarrassing thing once.

  4

  Diane had not seen Evan or Dawn at the office for a while. Days really.

  Diane rarely talked to Evan. She sometimes talked to Dawn. They were not friends. They liked each other just fine. Dawn worked in marketing. Diane technically worked in marketing too, but she just ran a database.

  The database was a list of names. It was also a list of personal details associated with names. It was also a series of personalized photos and histories connected to each name. It was fun to take each life and compact it to a single numerical ID and set of subtables. Because while hugely impersonal and reductive, when combined with tens of thousands of other numerical IDs and their hundreds of thousands of sets of subtables, a database could tell you a lot about how people behave.

  Sometimes when she had a little extra time—she often had some extra time at work—Diane would look up information about people in her database. She would do research to find photos or stories or videos about them and index those data in their files. This wasn’t necessarily helpful to anyone so much as it was a good way to get to know people. Between her work and raising Josh, she had limited time to make new friends or go on dates.

  When the marketing department needed data from Diane’s database, they could use extremely personal information in their mailings to not only customize a sales pitch to that person but also let them know “we care about you so much that we looked up everything we could find about you in real life.” Customers were often so flattered by this gesture that they would send thank-you notes like “How did you find all this out?” or “Who are you people?” or “I have never told anyone this fact, so how did you know?”

  Diane’s boss, Catharine, read these letters and would sometimes let Diane know how happy everyone was to receive their marketing mailings and what a valuable asset Diane was to their company. Sometimes Diane wanted to ask Catharine what their company actually sold, but she knew it was not her place to ask a question like that.

  Most people in Night Vale know there is information that is forbidden or unavailable, which is almost all information. Most people in Night Vale get by with a cobbled-together framework of lies and assumptions and conspiracy theories. Diane was like most people. Most people are.

  Her desk was not in the same set of cubicles as the rest of the staff. Her desk was down the hall next to the server room. Her office outsourced their IT help, so it was just Diane alone near the constant hum of the servers.

  This was nice because Diane could do personal work or make personal calls when she wanted. She rarely did this, but it is certainly nice to have the freedom to do what you want, when you want, especially if you are not the type to abuse this freedom.

  Diane was not the type to abuse this freedom.

  But because her desk was far away from everyone else, she often felt out of the loop. She certainly was invited to participate in regular office activities, like low-stakes betting pools on major sporting events (the Super Bowl, the Absurd Bowl, knifeball, poetry, et cetera), or birthday cake, or going-away parties where the exiting staffers would take swings at a piñata filled with bees.

  But she was not part of the normal casual conversation of office life. She did not discuss the latest news topic each morning. Diane did not experience this camaraderie with her co-workers. She knew Martellus had a baby last year. She knew Tina liked to cross-stitch prayers written in long-forgotten languages. She knew Ricardo distrusted birds. But her interactions were limited by office geography.

  She could have made an effort, over the years, to leave her desk and engage with her co-workers, but she had not done this. She was not shy, but maybe lazy socially. Not willing to seek out situations and connections that were not already part of her routine. Or maybe she was shy. How does a person discover whether they are shy if they never have the time to meet new people?

  She worried often that, without another parent to provide a different example, Josh would learn only her shyness, and in fact he seemed to have trouble making and relating to friends. But better, she supposed, that he learn awkwardness from her than learn anything at all from his father.

  Diane took the job six years ago because her job at the counter of Big Rico’s Pizza was not making enough money to raise Josh on her own. The company took Diane because they needed someone who understood databases. Diane did not understand databases, but she figures things out quickly, so she lied to get the job.

  The job market in Night Vale is difficult, what with mysterious hooded figures already doing many tasks (parking attendant, cartographer, dog watcher) that are more traditionally done in other towns by humans for pay. Like most citizens of Night Vale, Diane found this situation frustrating, but was also gripped with an unspeakable, trembling terror that kept her from complaining about it.

  Her first weeks on the job involved taking her work home and teaching herself database management. This was difficult because she did not yet have a license to turn on her computer at home, plus it took her attention away from Josh. Josh had tried to talk to her during those early days of her work, something about a concert he wanted to go to, and she had told him she was busy and to go away. She needed the job more than she needed Josh to like her.

  Later she understood databases, having become the person she’d lied about being, and could get all of her work done during work hours.

  When people asked what she did for a living, Diane would say, “I work in an office. What do you do?” And then she would guide interesting conversations about their lives, or she would talk about Josh. Raising Josh was what she did for a living, and the office work just allowed her to do that.

  Diane never really spoke to Evan at work. She had seen him many times. They had shared comments at birthday and piñata parties like “Good cake, right?” or “Champagne at work! Great!” or “The sky seemed especially vast and unending this morning.” The usual chitchat.

  She didn’t even notice right away that Evan was not at work. Same with Dawn. But as days passed, their absence overtook the mundane humdrum of office talk. Some thought Evan and Dawn had run off together. Diane was not comfortable enough with her co-workers to shame them for their gossiping.

  Some speculated that Evan had left his family, that he had a secret life. Some thought he might just be going through personal issues. Some thought he had died and no one had caught the body yet.

  Catharine, the division head, called a meeting to discuss the pair’s absence. It was mostly practical, as they had work that needed to get done. Someone offered to drive over to their homes to check on them. Catharine said that would be fine.

  Diane almost never thought of Evan. But she was thinking of Evan a lot one morning. Evan was thinking of her too.

  Diane looked up that morning. Evan stood a few feet from the front of her desk. He was wearing a tan jacket. His belt was a darker brown than his shoes. His hair was recently cut. His face was clean and smooth. He was smiling, silent.

  He was not smiling like one smiles at a co-worker or friend. He was smiling like one smiles for a photo in front of a touristy monument.

  His teeth were white. Or, they were almost white. One, his left upper bicuspid, was a little farther forward than any other tooth. His teeth were not white, but they were close.

  He was looking toward Diane. He was not looking at Diane, but in her vicinity. She could see his pupils. They were not dilated. They were dots. He was looking toward Diane, but his glance seemed to stop just short of where Diane was. He was smiling.

  Diane said good morning to Evan. Evan turned his head slightly.

  “It’s good to be back,” he said.

  “Where is Dawn?” Diane asked, emphasizing the noun.

  “Where is Dawn?” Evan asked, emphasizing the verb. His teeth were stained and crooked.

  “Is everything okay, Evan?” Diane asked.

  Evan stopped smiling and moved his left foot toward her without putting his weight o
n it.

  Diane’s phone rang.

  Evan extended his left arm without bending his elbow. He kept his eyes on the point just in front of Diane.

  Diane’s phone rang.

  Evan extended his fingers. He bent his right knee still without putting any weight on his left foot.

  Diane’s phone rang.

  In his fingers was a slip of paper. A small bead of sweat formed along his upper lip. He was not looking at her.

  Diane’s phone rang.

  Between rings, Diane could hear Evan’s belabored breathing. His whole body was vibrating from the muscular strain. Evan set the small slip of paper on the desk. There was writing on it.

  Diane’s phone rang. She grabbed the receiver, interrupting its full ring.

  “Diane Crayton,” she shouted into the phone.

  “Hi, Diane. It’s me, Evan,” said the tinny voice in her ear.

  “Evan?”

  Evan kept smiling, unspeaking. He released the paper.

  “I can’t make it into work today, Diane,” Evan’s voice on the phone said. “Can you tell Catharine that I can’t make it into work today?”

  “Evan,” Diane repeated.

  Evan stood up, breathed deeply in through his nose and deeply out through his mouth.

  “I am not able to come to work today, Diane. Do you understand me?” said the voice on the phone.

  “Yes. I think.”

  Evan smiled again. He looked at Diane. She saw the slip of paper on her desk. She could not read what it said.

  “Am I being clear, Diane?”

  “Evan, I don’t know. Where are you? Where are you right now?”

  “I can’t make it in today.”

  Diane stared at the slip of paper on her desk. Evan looked toward Diane, smiling. Then he turned, no longer looking toward Diane, but likely still smiling. He walked quickly away from her desk, turning the corner and heading down the hall, out of sight.

  “Evan. Hello?”

  “Tell Catharine.”