Mostly Void, Partially Stars: Welcome to Night Vale Episodes, Volume 1

by Joseph Fink

  CECIL: No, I knew that. Obviously I knew that. I’m very into science. But listen, I’m in the middle of a show.

  CARLOS: Yes, I know. You’re covering the story about the condos. That’s why I called.

  CECIL: I . . . I . . . didn’t know you listened to my show.

  CARLOS: Every time you’re on.

  CECIL: I . . . sorry listeners, I’ll be right with you. So, those condos, right? They’re . . . very exciting, right?

  CARLOS: Everything is exciting, particularly existence. Existence is the most thrilling fact of all.

  CECIL: Right . . . So are you doing okay? I’m getting reports that it’s even more fatal outside than usual.

  CARLOS: By nineteen standard fatality units, I know. I have a Danger Meter in front of me. Listen, Cecil, I called to talk with you about something important. But now I don’t think I have time.

  CECIL: But time . .

  CARLOS: Isn’t real, I know. Neither is anything else. That is the most scientific fact of all. But they’re calling my name and I don’t want to lose my place in line. This is important. Because . . . oh. Oh, I have to go. I’m sorry. I’ll call you back later. Probably. Everything is some level of probably. Nothing is a promise. It is most likely we’ll survive to talk again. Hey listen, I lov—

  CECIL: [Overlapping with hey listen] I understand, I lov— Oh, sorry, you go.

  CARLOS: They’re calling my name. I have to— I’ll call back when I can. Good-bye!

  CECIL: Oh, okay. Good-bye! Sorry listeners. Where was I?

  Let’s talk about your health for a moment. Let’s concentrate on your health. Let’s think about your health. Do you feel healthy? Pay close attention to your body and see if you feel as healthy as you thought? Oh! Was that a slight twinge in the muscle of your arm? That’s a bad sign. That’s a symptom of all sorts of diseases. Was that a slight sniffle as you breathed in? Sure, it could just be allergies, or a mild cold, but it also could be the start of tuberculosis. Does tuberculosis even start with a sniffle? You don’t know. And so it might very well. Listen to your heart beating. Hear that heart beat. Feel it. Feel the one thing keeping you alive. Feel your heart beat. Are you healthy? Are you healthy?

  This has been a public health announcement by the Greater Night Vale Medical Community. Their lines are open for appointments now. Please have a credit card ready.

  Ladies and gentlemen, the condos are here. They arrived silently in the night. They are thoroughly modern in their design. They are so modern, it is postulated they might actually be from a few centuries in the future, which is the most modern a thing can be.

  The condos are featureless black cubes. They are standing, perfect dark forms, where the ramshackle homes and dust-worn strip malls of Night Vale once stood. There are so many of them. They are a majestic cityscape. They are a nightmare and they are beautiful.

  Carlos has hauled out his science equipment, of course, and is testing the cubes. The cubes emit a low level of radiation, and some sort of strange pulsing energy. This energy is difficult to describe in scientific terms, but if he had to give it language he would probably use the scientific terms “pulsing” and “strange.”

  The cubes do not appear to have any entrance or windows, so they are similar to many of the old tract homes built around here in the ’50s, but they also do not appear to have any roof or foundation or yard or terrace or patio or any other vestige of a home. They only have their sleek lines, their contours, their corners, the sheerness of their featureless walls.

  We do not yet know if these condos mean us harm or well. We only know of their presence, and so let us know that. Let us all hold on to that knowledge. The condos, black cubes of enormous size, are here. And we know it.

  And now—

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: Cecil? Cecil?

  CECIL: Listeners, there is a voice, but I can see no one in my studio. It is a familiar voice. Also, my coffee cup appears to be three inches to the left of where it was.

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: It’s me. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home. Also, I put your coffee cup where it was supposed to be. For reasons of fate.

  CECIL: Ah, I see. Well, while I have you here . . .

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: It is terrible, what the condos will do to you. Not to you, as in you, but to you as in all of us. But not to me. Nothing ever really happens to me. I am completely safe from harm, and this is a great burden.

  Oh, while you were out this morning, I made your dining room table half a foot shorter. I thought it looked better that way. I hope you like it. It took me an hour with a hacksaw and a level.

  CECIL: I’m sure that lower meals means faster digestion. Or not sure, but I’m saying it, and in saying it I am instantly believing it and then I’m going from believing it to being violently certain about it against all evidence to the contrary.

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: Thanks, that means a lot. Not to me, but your words hold a lot of meaning intrinsically. Almost everything we say does. If you looked at any single word in the English language close enough, you would see within the great glowing coils of the universe unwinding.

  CECIL: Right.

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: Our language holds the key to it. The key to the unraveling of all things. I think that one day this world will simply talk itself to death and I will be left to flit about in the void. I will be the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives Nowhere.

  CECIL: You mentioned the condos. Let me ask you: What do you think it means when Carlos says he is looking at condos? Did he mean that he wanted us both to look at condos? Together? Or was he communicating independence? Like: You stay here, I’m going off to look at condos alone!

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: Beware the condos, Cecil.

  CECIL: Do you think that he’s looking to just buy one for himself? Is that what you’re saying?

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: Beware the unraveling of all things.

  CECIL: Or is he looking for a shared condo? Hello? Hello? I can no longer see a fleeting image of someone just over my shoulder, no flicker of movement in the corner of my eye. I guess she’s gone.

  Also, there are three slow-walking gray roaches climbing out of my coffee cup. Also, I’m out of coffee.

  And now traffic.

  Picture a car. No, you’re picturing it wrong. Try again. Picture a car. Really? That’s what you picture when you picture a car? All right, look, we’ll go with that. I’m not happy about it, but we’ll go with your idea of a car for now. So picture that car and now picture a road. Are you picturing it? Close your eyes if you have to. If you need to, gently remove your eyes and slip them into your bag for now. Do you see the car driving on the road? Good. Now picture a destination. Any destination you want. No, that was incorrect. The correct destination was a clear and placid lake. So all of you out there picture the car. Picture the road. Picture the clear and placid lake. And what I want you to do now is put the car in the lake. It’s very simple, just imagine the car leaving the road and now entering the lake. Leaving the road and entering the lake. Great. Are we all picturing the car in the lake? Okay. City Council is notifying me that the test worked perfectly, and that we successfully murdered a lone driver somewhere using the collective willpower of our minds. Wow, the human mind is a powerful thing.

  This has been traffic.

  Reports are in that the first condo buyers nervously approached their acquisitions, those black cubes, giant, where once stood other places. The buyers edged toward them. They reached out their hands, trembling. They touched the smooth, cold walls of the cubes. And they saw. They saw.

  Janice Rio, from down the street, saw a city, a lost city, a dead city nestled in a jungle, the kind of jungle that only ever existed in books written by people who had never seen a jungle. The city stood, and Janice stood, in perfect dread. Its doors were open jaws. Its windows were open jaws. Its roads and avenues were gaping mouths and open jaws. That dead city teetered, it rotted in its jungle tomb, but it was not empty. And she started to run, run through the thick
foliage of that absurd place, she shouted and ran. And then her hand slipped away from the condo and it was all gone. She fell to her knees, weeping, as though she had lost something, although of course she’d never had anything at all.

  Roger Singh—who had been able to buy a condo with the spine—saw a cave underwater, in an ocean, far to the north. The water around him was dark, so dark that he wasn’t sure even which way led to the surface, to life, and which led down only to the deep silent. He gasped but found he had no breath, no need to breathe. And there was this cave that smoldered with a light, a light that was charged and alive. Shadows moved against the light, cast by . . . what? . . . within the cave. He swam toward it, uncertain whether he was guest or sacrifice or invulnerable dreamer. He heard a song from the cave and he knew it and it was perfect and he sang along but at the same time he had never heard that song before in his life. And what was his life? What made it his? It all seemed so small, part of a world that didn’t exist anymore. Then he went backwards from the face of the condo and the ocean and the cave vanished and he stared up at the blue sky, as awash with light as the water around him had been dark. “Was that a condo?” he asked. “Was that what one is?”

  Another, Samantha Guzman, only screamed, eyes bulging wider and wider, her hand clamped to the surface of the cube.

  So it seems that move-in day is going smoothly so far.

  Today’s show is brought to you by the generous support of the following sponsors:

  • The sun

  • All other suns, with their own planets, and own possibilities

  • A trail winding its way into a thick wood

  • This gesture: [makes a gesture]

  • This bit of melody: [hums a quick melody]

  • A&W root beer

  • The slow disintegration of your body

  • Light in every form, visible, invisible, deadly, hidden

  Please help our show by supporting these sponsors, using chants and simple offerings.

  More now on the condo story.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Excuse me.

  CECIL: Excuse me?

  HIRAM-GOLD: Sorry to interrupt, but . . .

  HIRAM-GREEN: CEASE SPEAKING AND TURN YOUR AMUSINGLY SHAPED EARS TO HEED MY BOOMING AND IMPRESSIVE VOICE.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Yes, thank you Green Head. Hi listeners, Hiram McDaniels here. Mayoral candidate, noted five-headed dragon, and completely innocent of any trumped-up insurance-fraud charges.

  CECIL: Hello, Hiram. It’s great to have you live in the studio, and also you and you and you and you.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Great. Yes. We couldn’t help but notice that you had the Faceless Old Woman on just a bit ago. That hardly seems fair.

  HIRAM-BLUE: Candidates must be given equal time on community radio, it says that in section 12, clause 3 of the Fairness Code we all are born with imprinted on our hearts.

  CECIL: My apologies, you’re perfectly right. That was my failing as a community radio host, but it’s just, I’m a little distracted. Hey, can I ask you a sort of . . . relationship question?

  HIRAM-GREEN: NO, YOU BARELY SENTIENT SACK OF FLESH AND FLUID.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Oh, sorry there, Cecil buddy. But we just don’t have the time right now. Anyway, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to exercise my right as a mayoral candidate by talking about the important subject of my favorite memory. Now, my favorite memory was when I was just thirty years old, and hardly half as big as I am today.

  HIRAM-BLUE: We were forty-three percent of our current stature, give or take a decimal.

  HIRAM-PURPLE: Give it or take it, blue head. Give it or take it. That’s your natural right.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Great. Thanks, Purple. So there I was, standing on a street in a city. Not this city. I hadn’t heard of Night Vale yet. And I asked a man walking by on the street where a good place to eat was. And do you know what he said?

  CECIL: I know very little.

  HIRAM-GREEN: HE HOWLED IN FEAR AND SCRAMBLED TO THE FRAGILE SHELTER OF THE NEAREST BUILDING. I ROARED, FILLED WITH SHAME AT THE EFFECT MY FORM HAD ON THESE JUDGING INSECTS.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Yeah, it was a real bummer.

  HIRAM-GRAY: We cried and we were still hungry as we cried.

  [Pause]

  CECIL: That’s . . . well, that’s a nice favorite memory.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Oh, ha ha, no. No that wasn’t my favorite memory. That was just, what do you call it?

  HIRAM-GREEN: CONTEXT.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Yeah, thanks Green, context. No, my favorite memory was when I was standing in a city. This city. I was standing in Night Vale. I had heard of it by then.

  HIRAM-PURPLE: Whispers. Rumors. Flying through the night on hot updrafts with vague directions in my mind and nothing but miles of flat darkness all around me.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Oh right, this place was real hard to find. So I was standing on the street and I asked a man walking by where a good place to eat was. And do you know what he said?

  CECIL: Again, knowledge is very limited here.

  HIRAM-GOLD: He said . . . well, he said . . .

  HIRAM-GRAY: He didn’t say anything.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Right, gray head, he didn’t say anything. He just opened his mouth wider than a human is physically able to, let out a loud hoot, and pointed at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner. Then he went about his day. No screaming. No fear.

  HIRAM-GREEN: IT WAS VERY DISAPPOINTING.

  HIRAM-GOLD: No Green, it was magical. Finally, a place where what I looked like didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter that I have trouble controlling my fire breathing. Or that the diner looked a bit far and so I just ate the man instead. None of that mattered. I had found my home.

  HIRAM-BLUE: We had found our home.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Yes. Exactly yes. And that is why I want to be mayor. Mayor of the first city that ever made me feel normal. Night Vale. As my campaign slogan says: “I am literally a five-headed dragon. Who cares?” Well, many, many people care, all over the world. But no one here. And that’s all that matters to me.

  HIRAM-PURPLE: And me.

  HIRAM-BLUE: And me.

  HIRAM-GRAY: And me.

  HIRAM-GREEN: AND ME.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Thank you, listeners. And thank you, Cecil.

  CECIL: Thank you, Hiram. That was a very nice story, even if I did my best to learn nothing from it.

  HIRAM-GREEN: GOOD-BYE, BITE-SIZED CREATURE.

  CECIL: Good-bye! Wow, what a striking and charismatic dragon.

  Where was I? Oh yes. More now on the condo story.

  Those people who had been given terrible visions by the condos are saying that they feel they must go back, go back to their condo. That something felt unfinished about what they saw, and that even as they feel terrified, they must go back to see what it is will happen next.

  The Sheriff’s Secret Police are attempting to stop the condo owners by sending passive-aggressive messages via helicopter-borne loudspeaker. “Sure,” they are saying. “Go ahead and touch the cube again, I guess. I mean, if you don’t care about your community and your fellow citizens, then I guess you probably should. We won’t miss you anyway. Like no big deal. Touch the cube if you want.”

  And they are. Roger, Samantha, Janice Rio from down the street. They are touching the great black walls of the condo cubes and the walls are rippling and bubbling as though liquid, like a pot of boiling squid ink, with darting light like distant, dying stars. The hands of the people are pushing through into the space within, whatever that space is. And they are, one by one, and with varying degrees of hesitancy, entering their condos.

  Bystanders say that once inside, the human forms are going limp and floating up into the center of the cubes, where they stay, paralyzed, faces slack, eyes glazed.

  A small sign has appeared outside of each cube that contains a person. The sign is red and says in simple white lettering: CONDOS: A PERFECT KIND OF HUMAN. A PERFECT KIND OF LIFE. GET YOURS TODAY.

  Listeners, I cannot advise getting yours today. Not until we understand fully what these
condos are. And given our track record, we will likely never fully understand what they are, so best just stay away.

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

  This Friday, the staff of Dark Owl Records will be holding a clearance sale. “Everything must go,” they will declare on a bright banner with a thick font. “Music is old. It is ancient. It cannot tell the stories of our lives, our souls, our societies any longer,” the banner will read. “It cannot mean anything. It cannot give you what you need. Buy this music and eat this music,” the banner will say in bright yellows and blues. “Tear it into plastic shards and swallow it. It knows not what it has wrought on our world,” the banner will exclaim to excited music lovers. “Let it shred you from within as we laugh from without,” the banner will announce. Forty percent off all CDs. Seventy percent off all posters. Friday only.

  Saturday afternoon is the opening of the new Kids Unlearning Wing at the Museum of Forbidden Technologies. This wing has been built, but no one is certain where. The museum staff says that kids interested in unlearning all about forbidden technologies, as well as those kids who are uninterested—in fact, all children, the museum says—will eventually be chosen during sleep. They will wake up one late night in this new wing experiencing all the magic and wonder of Unlearning.

  Sunday morning the Night Vale PTA will be holding a raffle. Tickets are only $2 each, and the winner, as usual, will never be heard from again.

  Monday has been rescheduled to Wednesday, and Wednesday has been doubled.

  Tuesday—oh man, you don’t even want to know. Or, you do want to know, but the powers that be don’t even want you to know, so you can all be properly . . . surprised.

  This has been the community calendar.

  [Phone rings]

  [He answers the phone]

  Hello?

  CARLOS: Hello, Cecil, are you there?

  CECIL: Carlos! Hi. Yes. I’m on the air. I’m still doing the show.

  CARLOS: Right. No, I know. It’s just . . . I got a condo. A condo for us. I was thinking that maybe we could . . .