by Joseph Fink
“Who is doing this?” he had demanded.
“Doing what?” the City Council had said in many-voiced, multipitched, surround-sound unison. “We’ve been on vacation recently. We haven’t done anything. Just what are you accusing us of?”
“Ruining my experiments on the house that doesn’t exist. Preventing me from understanding what I need to understand.”
The council had hissed.
“You were told to drop this. Our patience is limited.”
“So you have been disrupting my experiments with this rumbling under the earth?”
“Foolish scientist. Seeker of truth. You think you are the only one interested in that house? There are many who seek to exploit the power it holds.”
“What power? What people?”
“We have said too much. We should devour you. But there are influential members of the media protecting you, and it wouldn’t be worth the grief we’d get from them. Flee while you have your life.”
“What is the power of the house? What do you know?”
The council had roared. A moist, spongy hand had slipped around his neck.
“The Wordsmith warned us of what is waiting to enter our city. You are peeking through doors that should not be opened. Cease your research or it will be ceased for you.”
The wet fingers had tightened. Carlos had backed away. The fingers had loosened as he stepped, letting him go. He was left with a smell like a leaking battery, an acid smell he tasted on the back of his tongue.
“The Wordsmith?” said Nilanjana. Despite herself, she was leaning on the desk, caught up in the story. “Who is that?”
“Have no idea,” said Carlos. “Never heard that phrase before. Yet another mystery. Mystery upon mystery upon mystery.”
He pulled a cord, and all three charts rolled themselves back up with a snap.
“It seems that these inquiries have hit a point at which I can no longer continue.”
“You can’t give up because the City Council says you have to.”
“I’m afraid, Nils, that that is exactly what I have to do.”
He sighed, and got up, looking out the window at the cracked asphalt of the strip mall where his laboratory was located. There were a few cars in the parking lot. Famished citizens stopping by for a slice from Big Rico’s Pizza next door. Teenagers looking for a quiet place to make out or to stare in mutual fear at the vastness of the night sky. The unmarked black sedans full of bland-faced besuited government agents listening to every word anyone said.
“Science is a quest for truth, without compromise. But science must be done within human life. And human life is entirely compromised. Especially life here, in our watchful little town.”
He tilted his head at the black sedans. He turned back to her. He mouthed, Do you understand?
She nodded.
“Nils, I would never ask you to help me continue this experiment. I would never ask you to try to find the source of the rumbling. It would be dangerous to push on this matter. If I did ask, you would have every right to walk out that door and go back to your bacteria.”
“Why would you ask me, and not one of the other scientists?” she asked. “I mean, if you were to actually continue this experiment, which you are clearly not.”
From outside his office, there was a sudden loud bang and a bright flash visible below the door. They could hear Luisa shout, “You’re such a disappointment!” It was unclear if that was directed at Mark or at a potato.
Carlos glanced briefly toward the door and then back at Nilanjana. He smiled at her and held out his hand. She took his hand and gave a knowing nod.
An experiment that was being prevented. On a house that did not exist. A mystery the City Council was afraid of. And a person or entity going by the name Wordsmith. It seemed opaque, impossible.
But the study of science had taught her how to handle the impossible. Collect data. Form hypotheses. Test the hypotheses. Use what you learn to collect more data. And soon, the impossible would reveal itself to be a thin and pliable barrier.
She would start with the most objective, measurable part of the story. The rumblings out in the desert.
“I’m afraid I cannot help you,” she said, going to the door. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get rid of my bacteria and go to the desert. I have some personal matters I need to attend to.”
Thank you, he mouthed.
She swept her useless, ruined experiment off her desk into the bin—Luisa throwing her a confused sideways glance, briefly breaking her frozen expression of disappointment—and went out to her car.
Nilanjana found herself laughing as she turned on the engine. She laughed with real joy, without understanding why she felt that joy.
What was she getting herself into? She laughed happily. She had no idea.
4
Darryl Ramirez told the barista who overfilled his Americano that it was totally fine. It could happen to anyone, and he shouldn’t beat himself up about it. But the barista glared at him and rolled his eyes, wiped away the coffee in a few quick, angry movements, and then thrust the cup at him. Darryl found himself apologizing even though it was his coffee that had been spilled.
Darryl was legitimately sorry. He had meant it all earnestly, but something in his demeanor made other people assume he was being sarcastic or false. What had been an honest attempt to make the barista feel better about his mistake had instead come across as a taunt about the barista’s inability to correctly do what is, despite Barista Local 485’s constant and loud insistences, a pretty simple job. He thanked the barista and then said, “Believe in a Smiling God, my friend,” while making a circling motion with his upright fist. But the barista was already making someone else’s drink.
It was his years in the church that had done it, Darryl thought. The church urged all its members to present a happy face to the world, which had the noble intention of spreading joy, but ultimately valued outside presentation over an honest connection to a person’s feelings. Which meant that even when he actually felt a positive feeling, it tended to come off false to anyone outside of the Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God. Or maybe, he thought, he was just bad at connecting with people. At least, in person. He had early on in his life taken to writing notes when he had something important to say, so that his inflection and facial expression wouldn’t affect the message he was conveying.
Nilanjana looked up when she heard his voice and, seeing the barista’s reaction, assumed that Darryl had been yelling at him. Yelling at baristas wasn’t uncommon in Night Vale. This was not because the baristas were bad at their jobs or unlikable people. Quite the opposite. Night Vale’s barista district was densely populated with talented coffee makers and aficionados. There was a single block of Galloway Road that had six coffee shops on it. For a desert community, people took their hot coffee quite seriously.
It was because of the general politeness and the talent of the baristas that customers were so hard on them. With so many coffee shops, it was a consumers’ market. Plus, it is basic human nature to treat polite people worse than rude people. It is easier to assert dominance over a person unlikely to fight back with much force. Rude people tend to fight hard, and it’s not worth stirring them up.
Nilanjana watched Darryl, whom she was pretty sure she had met before, put a single drop of cream into his coffee and then carefully stir. She related to his level of exactness and order. She resented him for it as well.
She had gone to the desert directly from the lab, but the location where Carlos had detected rumbling recently was crawling with agents from a vague yet menacing government agency. This wasn’t surprising. Agents from whatever agency it was tended to closely investigate and document any new activity in town. They would be done soon, and she would have the site to herself. In the meantime, she had gone to her favorite coffee shop, the Spikey Hammer, to get out of the heat and to sit doing nothing at a table so she wouldn’t have to sit doing nothing in her car.
Her coffee was huge,
a twenty-ounce filter coffee (espresso takes too long) with exactly two tablespoons of milk and three packets of sugar. Sometimes she would put in a half teaspoon of whatever spices the coffee shop had out: cinnamon, nutmeg, paprika, metal shavings, etc. She just wanted hot caffeine, and any extra flavors that could make the stuff drinkable were a bonus. She brought her own measuring spoons to coffee shops to ensure the precision of her routine.
The notes from this morning’s meeting with Carlos were neatly set out in front of her, her pen lying across her hand, which was lying across the page as if writing, but she was lost in no thought, staring at no one thing. She had been watching Darryl, trying to decide whether she knew him somehow. His intense awkwardness with the barista, but then his kindness, and then his apparent religious zeal. Thinking about the myriad ways she might have previously met a stranger, her mind drifted. She had been looking at him, but now she was staring at the empty space where he had been: a series of flyers pinned to a bulletin board.
One of them read: LEARN TO PLAY THE GUITAR! And then in smaller print: “According to City Ordinance 12.546B, enacted on August 1, the crime of not knowing how to play guitar is punishable by a maximum fine of $12,000 and 3 years in prison. Learn to play the guitar today!”
There was another that had a picture of a bike on it: “Have you seen this bike? It never existed in this universe, in this time line. If you have seen this bike, please contact me immediately. I need to return home.” There was no name or contact information.
She heard Darryl’s voice again. He was talking to another patron in the cafe. He was making that circling fist gesture and then handing them a small brochure. He was smiling meaningfully. The other person was smiling without meaning. They said, “Stop it,” and then covered their ears and shook their head until Darryl stopped talking and walked away.
He approached multiple people in the cafe, each time asking, “Do you know about the Smiling God?” and then doing the fist thing. One person made the fist gesture back to him. They made eye contact and hummed a single low note in unison for ten seconds before breaking off and continuing with their activities as if they had not seen each other at all. Darryl glanced at his watch and then started a conversation with another stranger.
The watch reminded Nilanjana of how she knew Darryl. About two years ago, she and a fellow scientist, Connie, were doing a study on time, examining clocks and watches they’d purchased at various stores across town. Darryl worked at one such store (Watch Yourself).
He had disagreed with her that time was weird. She had tried to explain the science to him, showing him charts and digital models which demonstrated that each unit of time stays the same, and that time moves forward for people in most of the world, but that in Night Vale, it was changing constantly, sometimes minutes going backward or skipping forward, moving differently for each person. Some people would stay nineteen years old for centuries without aging. Nilanjana and Connie had been studying a few such extreme cases, but Darryl was impervious to logic. He believed only what he felt was true: Time was totally normal.
She returned to her notes and plan of action for studying the rumbling in the desert, but she was still replaying those old, frustrating conversations about time in her mind. Distracted, she bumped her coffee reaching for her notes and let out a slight yelp.
People in the coffee shop looked at Nilanjana. She had been in this town four years. Or it had felt like four years. Time, despite Darryl’s insistence, was weird here, and so she had no idea exactly how long it had been since her arrival.
“Interloper!” cried one person. Another followed suit. They were pointing at her. “Interloper!” came another shout.
The fuss didn’t build much past that. It was a weekday morning. People had work, lots of things on their minds. Getting into a frenzied mob was not top of their list. Besides, a few of these people knew Nilanjana. She’d been to the Spikey Hammer many times. There was no way they hadn’t seen her in the years she’d lived in Night Vale.
Still, even if they had recognized her, they had pointed and shouted. She had come to this town for the same reason all scientists came here: because it was the most scientifically interesting place in America. And it had not disappointed in that regard. But there was also a real sense of community. People belonged here, and loved each other, and knew their neighbors. And it was on this count that she felt she was not getting the full experience. Even after four years, she found herself confused by simple things that longtime residents took for granted.
“But why are writing implements outlawed?” she would ask, and Michelle at Dark Owl Records or Frances Donaldson, who owned the Antiques Mall, or whomever she was talking to at the time would give her a funny look and say, “Because they’re illegal.”
Then Nilanjana would ask why all the road signs had been replaced by tired city workers waving traffic instructions using semaphore flags, and the person she was talking to would sigh and say, “Why is the sky blue? Why is the moon fake? Why anything?” or else would just point at her and start chanting, “Interloper!”
She’d asked Carlos about it. “You’re not from here either. You must get this interloper shit all the time. What’s these people’s deal?”
Carlos said he didn’t get the interloper stuff much since he’d started dating Cecil, and once they had gotten married it had stopped completely. “Guess I’m finally one of them,” he said, in an offhanded way that manifested in Nilanjana’s chest as a pang of jealousy. He had gone on to explain that the “interloper” thing was their form of a friendly greeting. He had once sneezed in an ice cream shop only to be surrounded by a dozen shouts of “Interloper” followed by the small crowd picking him up and carrying him through the streets. He had been terrified, but then they got tired and set him down several blocks away.
It was kind of the Night Vale equivalent of “bless you,” Carlos had told her. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’ll be settled down here soon enough.”
“It’s been four years!” she had said. He had stopped what he was doing and turned to her, considering her kindly over his glasses.
“Maybe it’s not about them accepting you. Maybe you have to accept them first.”
She did accept them. Why else would she move here to study them? But, if she was honest with herself, the messy strangeness of the town, where any explanation given for an unusual event would be immediately contradicted by some other unusual event, was an affront to her need for order and neatness.
“I think I accept them,” she had said. “It’s pretty weird here though, right?”
He had nodded gravely.
“It is superweird,” he had said, turning back to his work.
She was glad Carlos was so chipper about it. It must be easier, she thought, because men don’t feel as threatened by shouts on the street as women do. Also, he has a husband, and the security of a relationship can make you feel at home, like there’s someone who has your back. Carlos could have the worst day and still return home to Cecil. Someone would be there to at least hear you say, “Hey, I’m having a tough go of it. Can you just listen to me talk for a bit?”
That’s worth something, Nilanjana thought. She herself still didn’t even have a close friend in town. She and Connie had been on good terms when they were working together, but Connie had also been an outsider, and anyway later she had vanished while investigating a bizarre case involving plastic flamingos. Since then, Nilanjana hadn’t talked much with anyone while outside the lab. No wonder people pointed at her and shouted “Interloper!”
The coffee crowd had quieted down. A few were still pointing and staring at her, but without the same zeal as before. As she turned back to her notes, she felt someone next to her. She saw the shadow cast across her papers and heard a bright singsong voice: “Can I talk to you about the Smiling God?” She saw his shadow do that fist thing. There was something about the brightness in his voice that came off as false to her.
“Darryl, right?” She spoke quickly, hopin
g to derail his religious pitch.
He searched her face. He was still smiling, but it was all muscle memory.
“Yes, hi. I remember you,” he said, almost convincingly.
“Nila——”
“Nilanjana, yes!”
“Interloper,” someone else said.
“How nice to see you again.” There was a pause where people would normally hug or shake hands, but they didn’t do either of those things and so a couple of polite, empty beats passed.
“Anyone biting?” Nilanjana asked, indicating his pamphlets.
“Well, it’s not about bites. I don’t have a sales goal or anything. I just want to make sure people know about this great organization. Maybe it can save their lives like it did mine.”
“Cool. Fight the good fight. Say, what time is it?”
He looked at his watch. “It’s ten thirty. Am I keeping you?”
She wrote “10:30” in her notebook. “Not yet. So you come to coffee shops and hand out religious information for . . .”
“The Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God. Here.” He handed her a tract.
In one smooth gesture, she took the booklet from his hand and placed it straight into her bag, never breaking eye contact with Darryl. “I’ll give it a read.”
“My parents were in the Congregation. I didn’t like it much growing up. You know how it is when you’re a kid. I got impatient listening to sermons and going to church camp and all that. But when my parents died . . .”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“It’s fine. It’s been twelve years. But after their accident, everyone in the church really helped me. Some of my friends and their parents let me live with them while I got through high school. My parents didn’t leave behind much money, but the church got together to help pay for things like clothes and food and even college. I owe everything to that community. So I do what I can to help others find their way to it. It’s a good church. Good people.”
