03/10/2014 12:12:00 ¶ ●

## Episode 55 - The University of What It Is

Let me be brief. Let us all be brief. Let us briefly be.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Listeners? I received a call today from a Dr. Sylvia Kayali, who introduced herself as working at the University of What It Is. I told her I had never heard of that particular learning institution.

Actually, what happened is the name led to a comedic back and forth.

“What what is?”

“What It is!”

“The university is what?”

“No, no, of ‘What It Is.’”

And so on.

But eventually I accorded her the usual treatment of any academic person of importance – which was a bellowing lecture about the dangers of education, followed by tense, suspicious silence.

Taking advantage of that silence, she jumped in and explained that the University of What It Is was concerned about one of their faculty members who had taken a sabbatical to investigate some…probably fantastical rumors about a strange town in the desert, and then had never returned.

I told her that I didn’t know of any strange towns, just the pleasant burg we call home.

“Well,” she said, “I’ll keep trying, then. If you hear from a scientist going by the name of Carlos, please let us know.”

As you can imagine, listeners, I made all sorts of noises when she said that. But she had already hung up, and had left no call-back number. My phone screen just showed a picture of a beach during a bad storm, with a shivering human figure off in the distance, again and again nearly but not quite swept away by the pounding surf. I think that’s an area code of…what? Idaho? I don’t have these things memorized.

More on this as I aggressively investigate.

Well, it’s time again for one of our audience’s most requested segments…I assume. I’ve never actually asked, but…I can’t imagine anyone having a different perspective from my own, so I assume this is what listeners are most focused on.

It’s time to check back in with Khoshekh and his floating kittens. Khoshekh, the cat floating exactly four feet off the ground in the men’s room here at the station, is doing great! Nothing to report. He’s a healthy kitty going through his third molting of the year, and his fur cusp is as radiant and sticky as any cat’s has ever been. He loves to be petted, and the petting is completely survivable…with the correct antibiotics.

His kittens are, of course, also floating in fixed locations in the same bathroom, and are being cared for by their various owners. Larry Leroy, out on the edge of town, has especially taken after one of the kittens, who he has named – confusingly – “Larry Leroy.”

“Oh, Larry Leroy is just the best,” Larry Leroy said, in what was either an expression of affection or extreme egotism. Either way, he’s being a great dad to that little cat, and we wish Larry Leroy and Larry Leroy the best.

And now, a word from our sponsors.

Traditionally, when cooking steak, there have been a few basic rules to follow. For instance, using a form of meat that is recognized by both the current culture and the human body as “food;” following basic food safety procedures, so as to prevent illness; not intentionally not intentionally bleeding on the finishing steak…but that’s just traditionally.

Here at Outback Steakhouse, we say “No rules, just right. Absolutely no rules.”

Food safety? Pssh! Federal law? Ugh! The laws of physics? What are you, a narc? It’s weird here. The steak floats. Sometimes the steak is and also isn’t, simultaneously. Sometimes the steak is a chair, and we point at the chair and we say, ‘that chair is a steak.’ And we make you eat it. That is the one rule: if we say something is a steak, you have to eat it. No questions asked. I know we said there are no rules, but that itself is a rule and so is void. You want your philosophy non-contradictory? Go to Sizzler.

In the bathroom, where most places have signs saying “Employees must wash hands,” we just carved “Land of the free” directly into the wall. There isn’t even a sink in there. Heck, our bathrooms are just sealed vaults full of poisonous gases.

No rules. We might kill you. We’ve killed a lot of people.

Outback Steakhouse. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

I received another call from Dr. Kayali. Before she even spoke, I told her that I, in fact, knew a Carlos, and explained, in a completely businesslike and journalistic tone, the tenor of our relationship.

“Carlos is there” she said. Only she didn’t put a question at the end of it. So maybe she was just saying “Carlos is there.” In either case, she told me that this was surprising, and that the University of What It Is would send someone right away to see why their faculty member had never made it home.

I said, “He never mentioned a university to me.”

And she said, “Do we ever dare to speak of higher education to the ones we love?”

Which is a valid point. Education is such a…scary and forbidden subject that you would be a fool to mention it out loud.

I forgave Carlos for this lapse…or, I will, as soon as I can get him on the phone.

Hey, Carlos? Call me.

In the meantime, I’ll let you know what happens when the folks from the University of What It Is come by.

And now, the Community Calendar:

On Monday, the baristas of Night Vale are inviting everyone in town to come to the barista district for the annual Barista Cultural Faire, where they will be performing traditional barista dances like the twice-dip and the mustache snort, and serving traditional barista foods, like lemon poppy seed scones. There will be a showing of barista-themed movies, like Jaws and Jaws 2. And, Nora Jones will make an appearance via a photo of her tacked up on a wall so you can say, “Oh, look! That’s Nora Jones!” while pointing at that photo.

Tuesday is a day for trying to find what you’ve lost. Tear through your house, dress in clothes you haven’t worn in years, reenact situations from your childhood, and try to get them to turn out differently. You will get it all back! You will finally have lost nothing! It’s all possible, and it’s all healthy.

Wednesday is a secret that has been badly kept.

Thursday is a day of remembrance and memorial, dedicated to all the people who will happen to die on that Thursday.

The City Council would like us all to take a moment and think about the many, many people who will just happen to die in that particular frame of time, for unrelated reasons, and adding up to no coherent picture of human existence. Please, find the time within your life to mourn those who will, by complete chance, be gone.

Unless you turn out to be one of those people. In which case, hey! You’re off the hook on all this tedious grief stuff!

Friday is a plan that has been poorly thought through.

“Saturday is absolutely nothing you should be worried about,” say hulking, buzzing figures hiding in all of our attics, in a statement that they issued today, thus revealing to us, for the first time, their existence.

Sunday is a lie that has been foolishly believed.

This has been the Community Calendar.

Jackie Fiero, who runs the only pawn shop in town, which for some reason is named “Lucinda’s Pawn Shop,” announced today that she is having a sale on ideas about time.

“People keep coming by and pawning their ideas about time!” Jackie told a friend of hers in confidence, never knowing that it was going to end up on the radio. “And, like, I don’t want to turn them down, because it looks like they need the money, but dude! How many ideas about time am I supposed to keep? None of these ideas make any sense anyway!”

So, if you’re looking for a gently-used idea about time, or perhaps if you pawned your own idea about time and are now able to retrieve it, then get on down to Lucinda’s Pawn Shop, and talk to Jackie.

Don’t know where her pawn shop is? Don’t worry, when you need it, then…then you will know.

And now, corrections.

In a previous broadcast, we swung a baseball bat wildly around the studio, knocking our microphone onto the ground until all it could pick up was the stomping of our feet as we systematically destroyed all of our possessions in a misguided attempt to make he world better, and ourselves more happy!

After that, we mistakenly referred to Trish Hidge as the Assistant Deputy to the Mayor, when she is, in fact, the Deputy Assistant to the Mayor. We deeply regret this error.

This has been corrections.

Still haven’t heard from Carlos. The representatives from the University of What It Is arrived. They are besuited, and behatted, and be-a number of other things besides. They move in a group of three, led by Dr. Kayali herself, looking at everything and everyone they encounter with a critical eye, and what looks like a sneer. That could just be the natural set of their faces.

I rushed out to meet these people, that could perhaps tell me something that I don’t know about the love of my life, only to find that, flush with their recent victory over the carnival, Night Vale citizens had cornered the staff members from the University of What It Is, shouting and waving household items like sticks and police batons.

“Interloper!” they cried. “Interloper!”

“No! No!” I said.

“Well, yes!” I said, because they were interlopers, but…good interlopers. If only there was a word that meant “good interloper.”

Dr. Kayali did not seem afraid of the crowd. She considered the Night Vale residents before her, and patted the air in a placating motion.

And, by the way, did you know that the term for a group of citizens is “a mob?” Huh. The English language is so funny.

The Doctor’s calm demeanor did not transfer to the crowd around her. They howled and jeered, saying things like, “Remember that carnival? Let’s do that again!” and chanting popular slogans, like “Aaaaargh! Outsiders!”

I, more than anyone, know that not all outsiders are bad. Most outsiders are. Aaaargh. Outsiders.

But some outsiders are great! The best! My favorite. And these outsiders know about that outsider.

“Listeners,” I said to the mob, because the moment I began speaking my relationship to them was one in which they were hearing me, I said, “please! Let us proceed with caution, and empathy. We’ve never tried it before, maybe it’ll work.”

But the mob was beyond hearing, and they continued their advance. For the first time, I looked out at the faces of my fellow citizens and saw them – not as friends as companions, but as a dangerous combination of suppression and indoctrination.

So I did the only thing that I could think to do in that moment: “If you won’t listen,” I said, “then I will make you listen. I will make you all listen…to the weather.

[“Catfish” by Waxahatchee]

While the crowd was distracted by the sudden weather, I was able to flag down a passing Sheriff’s Secret Police helicopter which was conducting routine surveillance operations just overhead. I explained to the officers inside, all of whom where wearing loose-fitting gowns and Richard Nixon masks, that I was in need of a lift to the radio station for important community reasons. They did not respond, but they also did not do anything else. So, I hustled the representatives from the University of What It Is onto the craft, and we left the hostile mob listening docilely below us.

“Please tell me everything!” was how I casually started the conversation with Dr. Kayali.

She blinked. “That would take a long time, and I feel like much of it would be things you already know,” she said, continuing. “For instance, tying shoes, operating your own tongue, feeling insecure, and other things you would know these things already.

I clarified that I meant everything about Carlos and her university.

And this is what she said, as we hammered our way across the sky.

She actually shouted it, to be heard over the rotors, so this is what she shouted.

She shouted that she is from the University of What It Is, and that they have been looking for some time for a faculty member named Carlos, who is a professor of science. He has been missing for decades, and they were getting very worried. They had no choice but to hire a new professor of science, but it isn’t going well, because the guy they hired is a “new media artist,” interested in collage as it intersects with social media, and he isn’t even sure what science is. They don’t know why they hired that guy…it had somehow made sense when they did it.

She told me, in a quieter voice, once we had landed near the safety of the station, and had decided that the Sheriff’s Secret Police were not going to prevent us from leaving the helicopter, she told me that if this is how our town treats outsiders, then Carlos is in more danger than she thought. I told her that Carlos wasn’t treated that way, that he was well-loved by everyone, and especially loved by someone. And she said, “Sure, sure.” But she didn’t sound like she believed it.

And then she said that there was much she needed to do, but that they would make sure Carlos found his way to safety, and they were looking forward to him taking back over the one class they have on science, because the new media artist guy is really messing it up.

She said she had to go, but gave me her card in case I ever wanted to get in touch with her.

I imagine that I definitely will.

So there it is. So many questions, so many possible answers, and like the title of that much-beloved picture book classic, How Many Lies?

Listeners, I do not know everything about Carlos and he does not tell me everything. That is OK. We are not one person. How lonely that would be! A couple who has made themselves one so completely, that they are once again alone.

We are two people, separate. Unique. And joined only where we choose to join.

I don’t know what is his affiliation, truly, to the University of What It Is. Perhaps I will never know, but I can know about the taste of food he has made me, or the feeling of his hand in mine, or the absence of his hand not in mine. I can feel the distance between us, and I can know that that distance, viewed properly, is no distance at all.

But still, I think I’ll keep Dr. Kayali’s card handy, just in case I ever need her, or what she knows. And that time may come. Certainly so many other times I never even thought possible have come before it.

Stay tuned next for a loss of words, an absence of silence, some noise. Some noise. And then, perhaps…and then, perhaps…meaning.

Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.

Today’s proverb: Language will evolve, irregardless of your attempt to literally lock it away in a secluded tower. Obvs.