The Buying of Lot 37

by Joseph Fink

  There is a good, old-fashioned, sound-effect joke in this episode. This is a bit where the entire punchline is a series of sound effects taken from open source libraries on the internet. We used to do this pretty often and then kind of stopped because other kinds of jokes caught our attention, but it’s a fun thing to do, both to write and to source and put together when it comes time to edit the episode. Maybe I’ll do another sound effect joke soon.

  There are often little inside jokes in Night Vale. References to experiences on our live tour or conversations the writers and performers have had over dinner. Mostly these are buried in story elements or into jokes that also have a broader reach, so that you would never notice them unless they were pointed out to you, which I will mostly not do.

  But the word from our sponsors in this episode is an inside joke between my wife and I that is transplanted more or less intact and whole into the episode, which is why I brought her in to provide a voice for that moment. Like most inside jokes, there’s not a great deal of explanation that can be made other than that we started reciting this ad exactly as it is here to each other occasionally. We found it very funny. Hopefully some listeners also enjoyed it.

  Without giving it away, this episode’s punch line is a bit of Night Vale absurdity that, like a lot of Night Vale absurdity, has some deeply unsettling implications if thought about for very long. How well do you know yourself? Is it possible that the purpose you are serving and the role you are playing are very different than the ones you think you are? How well, ultimately, is it possible to know oneself?

  There’s only one way to find out. BRINY DEPTHS.

  —Joseph Fink

  There’s nothing under your bed. Nothing in your closet. Nothing waiting in the hall. You are surrounded by nothing. You cannot escape it.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE

  I have received several urgent Facebook messages and Twitter DMs from a vague yet menacing government agency, asking me to deliver the following message: BRINY DEPTHS. They said that there was nothing secret or important about the message, and it was certainly not related to any ongoing deep undercover operations that they can only communicate with using code words subtly buried in local radio broadcasts. It wasn’t anything crazy like that. They just think it would be cool to hear me say BRINY DEPTHS. Do your deepest, smoothest voice, they said. Really sell it. Really give it your all. It would make us so happy. Please, it’s our birthday. Oh, did we not mention? It’s totally our birthday. All right, in your best voice, say it:

  BRINY DEPTHS.

  Well, there you go, vague yet menacing government agency. Happy birthday.

  The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home and Hiram McDaniels, who is literally a five-headed dragon, both former candidates for the mayoral role now filled by Dana Cardinal, were seen muttering together in a booth at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner. Or Hiram was seen. No one has ever actually seen the Faceless Old Woman, but we all know that she is there.

  When reached for comment by a nosy person sitting in the booth next to them, Hiram explained that they were just chatting, and were not involved in any sort of plans or schemes at all. He then held a conversation with himself about this matter, each head providing a different viewpoint in five different voices, the gist of which was that no, they were not planning anything.

  “Definitely not,” the Faceless Old Woman scratched with what seemed to be a long, jagged fingernail into the sole of my shoe this morning. “That’s ludicrous,” she suggested with a flickering shadow in the corner of my eye as I walked to work. “We would never,” she whispered from behind me just now.

  CECIL:Moving on, another installment of what I imagine is our listeners’ favorite segment, “Cooking Stuff with Earl Harlan.” As the name implies, we have my childhood friend and current sous-chef at Night Vale’s hottest restaurant, Tourniquet, with us here in the studio. Earl?

  EARL:That’s me, yes.

  CECIL:Well, Earl. Just a few weeks ago you showed us how to cook tiramisu, and that was delightful.

  EARL:Please don’t cook that recipe. It is extraordinarily poisonous.

  CECIL:Haha, oh Earl, you’re very funny.

  EARL:It will kill you. It is actually poisonous. Don’t cook that.

  CECIL:So, tell our listeners, and me, of course, what you’ve been up to since we last spoke.

  EARL:Mostly I’ve been working. Mostly living. I’ve been spending time with my son, trying to remember when I had a son. I’ve been trying to understand the flow of my life and how I don’t remember going from being nineteen to the middle-aged adult I am now. I was nineteen for so long.

  CECIL:Well, sure, that sounds fun. I’ll tell you, lately, I’ve been getting into crosswords. Just can’t stop doing them. Doesn’t even feel like it’s me doing them, like it’s someone else compelling me to do them. Sometimes, I pick up a crossword I’ve never seen before only to find it’s been completely filled in with my own handwriting. I’m glad we’ve both been up to such fun things.

  EARL:Cecil, think. What year were you born?

  CECIL:[quickly, overlapping] So what are we cooking up today, Earl?

  EARL:Okay. Well. Today we are making pulled pork.

  CECIL:Mmm, sounds yummy.

  EARL:It is. And pulled pork could not be simpler to make. To start off with, you will need to kill a pig. You will need to find a living pig and kill that pig. You will probably need to hold down the pig. The pig will struggle. There will be blood and pain. Some of that pain will be physical. The pig will want to live, but you will need to make it die. That pig will need to die.

  CECIL:Sure.

  EARL:Then you will need to dismember the pig. The pig will be a whole being, but you will not be able to eat it like that, so you will need to take it apart. There will be knives and hacking. The skin will have to go. Peel back that skin and take the muscles and subcutaneous fat, which is the part you will consume. Leave the bones and skin behind to rot.

  CECIL:Mmmm!

  EARL:Then you just slow cook it with some vinegar, some sugar, and some chili. Put it on a bun and there you go. Pulled pork!

  CECIL:Oh, I can’t wait to try that. It seems so easy. I’ll just use one of the pigs I have at home.

  EARL:I’m sorry if I seem down at all, Cecil. I’ve been going through a lot.

  CECIL:I understand. This has been a difficult time for me, too. Carlos is away and we talk regularly, but it’s not the same as the physical presence of someone you love, you know?

  EARL:I know. But that’s what we do when we have someone special enough to merit special effort. I’m proud of you for working through this.

  CECIL:And I’m proud of you for dealing with how weird time is. And for raising a son, somehow. What’s your son’s name?

  EARL:I . . . I wish I knew.

  CECIL:Well it’s been great catching up. We’ll see you again soon, Earl!

  I received another flurry of messages from a vague yet menacing government agency, saying that, well thanks for saying those words for us, that was great of you, but it looks like maybe it didn’t work. “What didn’t work?” they rhetorically asked. Not important, they replied to themselves. As we said, that was certainly not a code word for an undercover agent who apparently wasn’t listening to the radio when they were supposed to be, which is by the way their only job and their duty and their life’s mission to be listening to instructions from headquarters, so no biggie, but maybe just do something as simple as listen to the radio at the time we tell you to, anyway, none of that is important, the agency continued, and there is no particular reason we’re asking you, but could you say BRINY DEPTHS again? It’s for a friend’s birthday. It’s also our friend’s birthday, we forgot to mention that. Please say it again.

  So . . . okay. Here goes. BRINY DEPTHS. Happy birthday to your friend. I hope you enjoyed that but I really can’t keep interrupting my broadcast with this stuff.

  Little League Coach Betty Lucero is reporting that there are strange goings on near the hau
nted baseball diamond her team uses for practices and league games.

  “No, no, I know it’s haunted,” she said. “I get that. You don’t have to explain that to me. I’m saying that there is other weird stuff going on besides the usual ghosts.”

  She went on to describe anguished howls coming from a neighborhood nearby, and a red glow at night that made her skin feel loose and itchy when she looked directly at it. She also said that the baseball diamond has started to smell of rotten eggs, which is a detriment to her team’s performance.

  As we spoke, an apparition of a gray-skinned young woman in a tattered dress appeared hovering on the baseline between second and third. I may have yelped a little, maybe scrambled backwards a bit, but Coach Lucero laughed and said, “Oh that’s just Lusia, our third-base coach. She died in 1843. Say hi, Lusia.” The young woman flickered out of view then reappeared suddenly inches from my face, her pupil-less eyes staring directly into mine. I responded in a professional and calm manner, and Coach Lucero laughed for unrelated reasons, not anything to do with how I may have reacted, and said “That’s our Lusia.”

  She then went on to say that she had a bad feeling about the weird goings on near the baseball field, and she probably said some other things but I was running away so I didn’t hear her super well.

  Listeners, this is exciting. I received mail today. I didn’t think mail was still being delivered, not after what happened at the post office. But here it is, an envelope addressed to one Cecil Palmer in neat handwriting, with the address of the station right underneath. If you want to send us any mail, since apparently that is a thing which exists and is working now, our address is

  [the sound of waves crashing]

  [a horn being blown]

  [a crowd laughing]

  Night Vale, [the sound of a paper shredder].

  Please do send stuff in, it’s always nice to hear from fans.

  But back to this envelope. Maybe this is silly but I waited to open it until I was on the air. It seemed more fun if we could find out together what was inside. I’m opening it now. Here we go.

  It’s . . . hm . . . it’s a greeting card. It says THANKS SO MUCH on the front and it has a picture of a cat playing with a ball of yarn. Well, that’s just the cutest, although I can’t imagine why someone sent me this card. I’m opening it. Oh, a photo fell out, and—Dang it! It fell behind the desk. The inside of the card just has the words THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU DID printed and then it’s signed Erika over and over in multiple handwritings. Huh. Let me try to grab that photo. I’m going to have to crawl under the desk. While I do that, here’s a word from our sponsors.

  Today’s broadcast is sponsored by Kobe beef.

  FEMALE VOICE:Kobe beef!

  SINGING VOICES:The beef that makes you fresh.

  All right listeners, I [grunt] I got the photo, and it’s . . . it’s a photo of me. At City Hall. I’m fighting off a pack of antiques in front of the mayor’s door. But that wasn’t me. Intern Hector did that. Last month. He came back with that bite. I don’t remember ever leaving my desk when the antiques attacked our mayor. What is this photo? It must be fake. It doesn’t look fake. It must be fake. Right?

  Why would I not remember saving the mayor?

  More on this later, as I face my fragile self and try to understand my own reality.

  Okay, now this is getting out of hand. The vague yet menacing government agency sent me a Snapchat and several anonymous asks on Tumblr saying that they were happy about me doing that whole broadcasting their secret code word thing before, but that the message didn’t seem to be getting through. Or it’s not a message. That was poor phrasing on their part. Sorry, they’re just flustered talking to their favorite radio host. (Aww . . . ) They meant to say that they haven’t had the best birthday ever yet. And neither has their friend. Plus, they forgot to mention, millions and millions of people have the same birthday as them. Think of how many people have their birthday today and all of them, the agency is sure, just want you to say that little thing again. Just once more. In your smoothest, deepest voice. They say that they’ve made it so our station is currently broadcasting on every single radio frequency, so no one could possibly miss these special birthday greetings, and it will finally be the best birthday ever.

  This is the last time, Okay? I’m doing it just once more. Here I go, and really try to enjoy this, because I’m not doing it again: BRINY DEPTHS.

  Whoa, what’s going on? There’s shouting coming from the break room. It sounds like a scuffle. There’s also shouting coming from outside. A lot of shouting. A roar of voices, the stomping feet of a crowd. These birthday greetings were apparently very special. I need to go see what this commotion is about. I’ll be back soon. In the meantime, those with birthdays and those who were never born, I take you to the weather.

  WEATHER: “The Bends” by Doomtree

  I’ll tell you, that was quite a scene. I will tell you right now.

  It seems that BRINY DEPTHS was in fact a code word (wish they had warned me about that) for an undercover agent in the field. Unfortunately, it seems that it was the code word for every secret agent in the field, the signal for all of them to do every nefarious action that they had been planted years ago to perform.

  All over town, people we thought of as friends and family revealed themselves to be carefully planted agents. Adam Bair, weekday shift manager at the Ralphs, grabbed the discount soup display and carried it to an unmarked van that had been sitting in the parking lot as long as anyone could remember and then drove wildly away. Hundreds of bushes and trees leapt into action, revealing themselves to be suit- and sunglass-wearing agents in disguise, using clever costumes that fooled all of us for years, such as holding a handwritten sign that says “I AM A TREE.” Larry Leroy, out on the edge of town, lit his refrigerator on fire, but he said that wasn’t because of any secret agent stuff. He just wanted to do that. Someone had suggested it to him once, although he could not remember who.

  In fact it seems that every single person in Night Vale was actually a secret agent waiting to be activated. We had all been implanted with the exact same code phrase, which is the kind of sloppy organization that is just what our government is coming to, or whatever. And such.

  [pause, sigh perhaps?]

  You know, look. Honestly, my heart isn’t in this reporting. Blah, blah, everyone we’ve ever known is secretly an agent. Because here I am, listeners. Secretly a hero. Secret even from myself.

  It was not Hector who saved Dana, but me. Me acting without memory or agency. What is happening to me? How do I not remember something so huge?

  I need to talk to Carlos. Perhaps science can help me. Science so rarely applies to the real world, but once in a while it provides a nice metaphor or turn of phrase that makes you think about real things differently. I’m hoping Carlos can do that for me.

  Now that everyone has been activated as a secret agent and did the one thing they were secretly supposed to do for years, everyone has just gone right back to doing what they had been doing before. Everything is back to normal, except that we all know we are all secretly undercover planted agents, here to spy on each other, and since we all know it, we are no longer secret agents. We are just ourselves, secretly.

  Listen, I know it’s confusing, but I didn’t invent logic. Our extraterrestrial ancestors did.

  Stay tuned next for all the air being sucked out of the room you’re in we’re sorry we’re so sorry but this is the only way.

  Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

  PROVERB:I let my haters be my motivators. Mostly they tell me I suck and then I get sad. This was a terrible idea.

  Episode 62:

  “Hatchets”

  FEBRUARY 15, 2015

  WHEN I FIRST STARTED WRITING THE CHARACTER OF LEANN HART, I was interested in the changing landscape of journalism. In the 1980s, television was destroying print. In the 1990s, cable television was. In the 2000s, it was blogs and free access to news online. In the early 2010s, social
media accelerated this.

  But listening back to older Night Vale episodes featuring Leann and the Night Vale Daily Journal, I can’t help but notice that my satire seems pointed more at print media being somewhat at fault. Leann, the executive editor of the Daily Journal, takes a fairly defensive approach to the failure of her own paper.

  Like most newspapers, the Daily Journal feels like something has been taken from them. That this new generation is draining the life force from her institution. But like a human body, a corporation can eventually die of old age. The body eventually shuts down. In humans, this is a genetic design. If an organism replicates more that it dissipates, it can overrun its host (see cancer; or in terms of humans on the Earth, see climate change).

  The Daily Journal, like any being, wants to live, but rather than try to better its bodily health, just wants to blame the world around it. This is probably the same part of human nature that leads us to sneer at younger generations. We are so afraid of our own demise that we must attack those who will eventually erase what we built.

  All of this is to say, it’s hella fun to give Leann an arsenal of artisanal hatchets for her to keep her company viable. It’s way less harmful to humanity than the news my family shares on Facebook.

  —Jeffrey Cranor

  Dare to dream. Do it. We dare you. Go ahead . . . dream. It’ll be fine. We promise.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE

  Leann Hart, Publishing Editor of the Night Vale Daily Journal, announced today that for a limited time the Daily Journal will print actual newspapers again. No longer will subscribers have only the Imagination Edition of the daily paper—a compulsory and automatic $60 monthly charge to imagine whatever news you want. They will once again have the tyranny of a printed daily edition where all of the stories are immovable declarations of recent history told by a biased and underpaid third party.