16/11/2018 0:33:29 ¶ ●

## 138 - Harvest Time

Everything old will be new again,
Except for when it’s so old it disintegrates at your touch and scatters into oblivion.

Welcome to Night Vale.

It’s harvest time. A time of reaping, sowing, and rebirth. A time of turning over old soil and doing something with crops, maybe. No one really knows.

All we know is that every night for the past week, we’ve heard the air raid siren blasting in the town square and a (-) voice chanting: “Behold! Despair! Rejoice! Harvest time approaches!”

There has never been a harvest time before, so it should prove to be an exciting event. Or phenomenon. Or period of forced manual labor. No one currently has any guesses as to what exactly will be harvested. Since the land surrounding Night Vale is barren sand wastes, as noted on the new tourism billboard out on Route 800, which reads: “Now entering Night Vale. If you lived here, you’d be dead by now.”

John Peters – you know, the farmer – remarked with pride that he’s never encountered a single visible crop in all his years of farming. And then remarked with suspicion that he doesn’t believe in routes, and if anyone tries to tell you different they’re a filthy liar. He then opened a tobacco tin, pulled a wad of feathers from inside and ate them.

A big congratulations to former Night Vale Community Radio intern Maureen, who has just received her heating, ventilation, and air conditioning or HVAC certification. It’s apparently one of the only certifications one can receive from the Community College that does not require internship credits. She isn’t sure if she’s passionate about the ventilation sciences yes, but it at least makes for a lucrative side hussle. Especially in this current heat wave. According to our friends at the Unavoidable Casualties Bureau, the current heat wave will statistically take eight lives by morning. Who will they be? I don’t have the answers, of course, and there certainly isn’t a betting pool laying 7-to-1 odds on Susan Willman or anything like that, but that’s a fun thought experiment, right?

Former intern Maureen has also expressed the need for an income boost, so she can help her girlfriend Michelle’s store, Dark Owl Records, out of financial difficulties. Dark Owl Records has been on hard times since they took a stance against free market capitalism by ceasing use of actual currency.

We have here a testimonial from one of Maureen’s satisfied customers. Gladys R. from Old Town says: “Our air conditioner was making a terrible sound, and Maureen came in and installed new insulation and cooling pipes and even fixed the motor. It works great now. The insulation she used was made of premium wolf spider eggs, which she explained are particularly energy efficient, since they are made to withstand the extreme desert heat and keep all those tiny wolf spider embryos nice and cool. Millions of matured wolf spiders did begin pouring out of every vent in our house after a few weeks, but the air quality remained crisp and cool.

An exterminator came in and sprayed for the spiders, which totally killed them, so that’s not an issue anymore. But the poison that was used to kill that particular species did cause small benign tumors to form along my underarms, as well as my husband’s. And the tumors began pulsating, and the doctors later discovered heartbeats inside the tumors, but they did stress the fact that these tumors are totally benign. The doctors advised a wait and see approach and put my husband and I on a course of prenatal vitamins. Unfortunately, the vitamins gave both of us a rash, which is slightly itchy, so we stopped taking them. There’s no specialist in town to help us with this, and no ointment or home remedy that seems to work, that’s a little frustrating, but the air is still very crisp and cool, and the unit doesn’t make that terrible sound anymore. Thanks Maureen, five stars! Would suffer sentient tumors again.”

Wow, what a nice review from Gladys. Personally, I love it when it’s this hot out. It feels like everything is just moments away from catching fire. It’s exhilarating.

Now the community calendar. Let’s see. Um… it’s all just notations in a childlike scrawl about how harvest time is coming. Oh wait, here’s something else.
Uh, there’s a spaghetti feed tonight at the Elks Lodge. If you’ve never been to the spaghetti feed before, you’re really missing out. It’s all about folks in the community coming together and eating and eating and not knowing when it’s over, because the spaghetti just keeps coming. It’s about commitment and dedication. It’s about not being a quitter. Remember when they called you a quitter growing up? “Quitter,” they said, pointing at you and your half eaten sack of pasta. Don’t you wanna prove them wrong? Keep feeding! Feeding isn’t about nourishment, not anymore. It’s about quantity, mass, volume, and proving you’re no quitter. It’s about commitment! Tonight at the Elks Lodge. This has been the community calendar.

And now, traffic.
When you were 12 years old, you sat in the passenger seat waiting for your mother to come out of the clothing store called Don’s that used to be on main street. You turned the ignition to the battery-only setting so you could listen to the radio. You were reading a fictional tabloid newspaper and eating candy. The window was halfway down. A crisp breeze ruffled the newsprint in your hands. You were perfectly content, a feeling you won’t experience again until well into your 30’s.

The car that was parked next you began to back away. You saw it from the corner of your eye, and you were overcome with the panicky vertigo sensation that your own car was moving forward, that it was picking up speed and rolling right into the Don’s, through the display window, through the mannequins and Wrangler jeans that hung loosely around their plastic hips, and oh god your mother! She would be mangled among heaps of bloody denim and plastic body parts, and it would all be your fault somehow.
Yes, you probably turned the ignition too far and somehow put the car into gear. You were only trying to listen to the radio. Your hands slammed onto the glove compartment, and you waited for the deafening impact of plate glass, and you squeezed your eyes shut.
This has been traffic.

Did it just get dark out suddenly? No. Wait. There’s something covering the windows of the studio. What is that? It looks like someone has plastered flyers all over the building. Wait, let me peel one of these off. OK. Plastered all over other nearby buildings as well. They say “Harvest time is nigh. All will be cleansed.” Huh. I just got a text alert saying the same thing. Did you guys get that? Wait, is that smoke outside? Hang on a second.

Yes. Um, the Night Vale fire department is assuring me now that the air is filled with black acrid smoke, but there’s no fire to account for its origins. So the fire department says it’s not actually smoke, it’s perfectly normal dark air. Breathe deeply, go for a jog, let the little ones run free in the park, fire chief Ramona Incarnacian announced from insider her airtight bunker.
“The dark air is coming from all directions at once,” Incarnacian explained. “So there’s no point in avoiding any particular areas. Just go about your business, folks. Visibility is hovering right around zero, so please stick to the posted speed limits when driving. You will not be able to see the posted speed limits, so just try to remember what they are. We’re on the honor system here, OK?”

The fire department recommends trying memory games to help sharpen your skills, like “look look” or “fruit flip”, or get yourself a Simon. You guys should remember Simon, the toy that flashed different colors in a certain order, and you’re supposed to correctly mimic their patterns. If you do it right, they tell you a secret. Sometimes it’s a secret about someone else, maybe a stranger. Maybe someone you know. Probably your girlfriend. It’s a secret about you, something she would never tell you, and certainly something you don’t want to know. The only way to make sure that secrets stay safe is to get the pattern right.

[sings] Blue blue red green, blue yellow, ochre, (-), cornflower, chartreuse, chartreuse, ecruu… It helps to sing it.

“Remember if you fail at this or anything,” Incarnacian added, “it’s because you didn’t try hard enough. Everything is a pure meritocracy.”

Speaking of remembering, my niece Janice has been practically knocking herself out studying for the pre-SAT’s. I know a lot of other kids at Night Vale High School are doing the same right now, so we’re going to run through a few practice questions to help them prepare. First, basic analogies.

Scavenger is to carrion as love is to A) car accident, B) quitting your job, C) cooking for friends, or D) cooking friends.
Wait, (that was) the answers for the verbal section, um.. Here, let’s try math. [clears throat]

How much would you have to be paid to pull out your own fingernails? The correct answer is 450 dollars.
How much would you have to be paid to pull out your own fingernail sin the year 1979? The correct is 1,520 dollars, adjusting for inflation.

How many box turtles would it take to eat a common raven? Hmmm. Think about that
while we go to the weather.

[“Friend or Foe” by Low Power https://soundcloud.com/lowpowermusic]

Breaking news. A giant statue has been erected in the town squire. A post-minimalist anthropod the size of a suburban rent style house. It’s made of Italian marble with tasteful touches of bronze, but also concrete, scraps of paper, chicken feet, and plastic (cub) caps from a 1979 Nissan Ultima for eyes. Scratched into the dirt around the statue are the words: “Harvest time is now”. Theories vary on what this means, but seem largely to fall in three categories.

Religious leaders believe harvest time may finally signify the onset of end of times, which they can’t deny will give them a certain smug satisfaction. There have been more than a few human sacrifices so far, which some are saying is a bit pre-emptive, but as John F. Kennedy famously said, “sacrificers gonna sacrifice”.

Others are claiming this is all a viral marketing campaign for a new vegan restaurant. A voice was heard echoing the smoke-filled streets. “It’s a chain, isn’t it? I’ve eaten at one. It’s a buffet thing,” the voices shouted. “The restaurant is inside a statue.”
Others still prepared a public demonstration by standing around holding blank signs, knowing they will feel strongly about something soon.

Hm. Uh, looking at the community calendar, I no longer see the notation for harvest time. The Elks Lodge spaghetti feed is still happening though. Not too late to get down there and grab a plate. I know that’s where I’m headed right after this broadcast. I’m getting a report from the spaghetti feed that those in attendance felt painfully full only moments ago, or “abysmal with spaghetti”, as one feeder put it, and now fall somewhere in the spectrum between ravenously hungry and the absence of any sensation at all. Sounds delicious!

OK, alright, I am getting quite a lot of reports all at once. Um, [clears throat]. It appears some things have gone missing. Citizen Jeremy Godfrey, who has been experiencing symptoms of midlife crisis for several months, reported a sudden and complete loss of the fear of death. My brother-in-law, Steve Carlsberg, reported his Christmas decorations are missing from his attic. Now this includes the life-size Santa that sits in an aluminum boat and casts a fishing pole string made of lights. My niece Janice expressed the dissenting opinion that the loss of these decorations may actually be a gain for the family. Janice also reported her PSAT practice test went completely blank, after she spent hours filling it out. Fortunately she enjoys standardized tests, so she just did it again.

Professor Harrison Kip is missing two toes. Though luckily, they were his two extras. Siobhan Asdaq has reported the loss of a close acquaintance after inadvertently hurting their feelings online, but noted maybe it’s better this way, if they’re going to be such a crybaby about little things like all caps curse-filled insults. Little league coach Betty Lucero reported all of her baseball bats are missing. She found her garage filled instead with fruit bats, which are at the time of this report drowsily eating bananas.

Ah, also. Everyone in town reported their credit card numbers stolen and maxed out. Hmm. The charges on the cards originated from the same places: a building supply company, a scrap yard, and a Michael’s craft store next to the Staples. It appears all the stolen funds have gone to building the new statue in the town square. Now there are mixed feelings about this, as it is a beautiful statue but you know, it’s also credit fraud.

And I have here and addendum to the testimonial I read earlier from former intern Maureen’s air conditioning client, Gladys R. It reads: “The skin hangs loosely from our arms, where tumors once bulged with unknowing life. They hang flat and empty, with tiny open sores. Perhaps where something emerged in the night while we slept. We slept so well. I can’t emphasize that enough. The rhythmic sensations of those little heartbeats vibrating against the fat and bones of our arms lulled us into a state of complete relaxation. A relaxation deeper than we have ever known before. We miss that. We really miss that. Wee can’t sleep anymore. We didn’t fully appreciate what we had until it was gone. We acknowledge that and we repent. We want to find whatever it was that was inside of us and put it back. We don’t know what to look for or where to begin. If anyone has seen anything, please let us know.”
Thanks, Gladys R.! Will do.

Wait, are you guys hearing that? There’s a new sound coming from the town square, it-it sounds like the trumpeting of ram’s horns. And the smoke has started clearing up, and now there remains only a gray dusty quiet.

Is it over? Did anything really happen? So many things are like that, aren’t they? Anticipation and disappointment. Loss and abundance happening at the same moment. So that you end up with only the uneasy illusion of balance or meaning. I’m hearing now that there’s an engraved placard on the anthropod statue, previously unseen because it was slopped over with plaster and looked hastily scratched into the back of a license plate with a nail. It says, [clears throat]
“Ripeness is perfection, and perfection is the step before decay.”
Awww, that’s sweet, right? Anyway, better get down to the spaghetti feed before it’s over. Oh, and the answer is 2. 2 box turtles can completely devour a common raven.

Stay tuned for the original 1972 folk rock ad jingle for the Simon memory game entitled “Never Forget to Remember – and Remember to Forget to Forget”.

Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.

Today’s proverb: If you circle the letters in the Bible just right, you get the phrase: “lightly dressed kale”. So I don’t know what that means, but it’s direct from God.