01/06/2015 13:01:47 ¶ ●

## Episode 69 - Fashion Week

But don’t you see? You never needed anything else. The weird was within you the whole time.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Hello listeners. Later, News, capital N. But forget about that. First news, lower case N.

It’s Fashion Week in Night Vale, that exciting time of year in which we all get to decide what is fashionable and what is not. To use the charming colloquialism, we decide what is “in the sphere” and what is “spared from the sphere”. This is Night Vale’s hippest event, and everyone is there, because it is required by law. So everyone is there, and scared, and it is hip as heck.

Michelle Nguyen is the only one who doesn’t look scared. This is her favorite holiday, and she is wearing a vintage summoning cloak and a dog catcher’s cap, and has two tiny neon signs attached to her face indicating her eyes. She is the most fashionable person in town, and certain to be spared from the sphere.

Others are less lucky. Town clerk, Veronica Rothschild, is running around saying “oh no, oh no”, and adjusting her unfashionably distressed eyeglasses, casting glances backward at the sphere which is moving implacably to devour the unhip and absorb the outdated. Soon she will stumble, and then the sphere will be upon her. It’s like that popular joke: why did the hipster burn her mouth? Because she survived the sphere and was able to eat her pizza before it was cool. And sure enough, Michelle Nguyen, pizza in hand, is cackling madly watching the chaos and listening intently to headphones that are plugged into nothing at all.

The Sheriff’s Secret Police are seeking any leads or witnesses in the case of the disappearances at the housing development of the Shambling Orphan. Over the last several weeks, at least twelve people have vanished without a trace. Except for our memories of their previous existence which, according to a roving gang of pedantic philosophers, who has been interrupting Secret Police press conferences, does in fact count as a trace. “Memories are as real as any of our constructed experiences of the world,” said one philosopher, without invitation, interrupting important information about the missing persons. “I bet you think reality is a thing,” he continued, much to the delight of his fellow philosophers, and not a single other person in attendance.

The philosophers were last seen high-fiving each other while drinking cheap, but locally made canned beer. The missing persons were last seen at home, and on the street, about town, about their lives, just normally living, until suddenly and unaccountably, they no longer were seen anywhere at all. Residents of the Shambling Orphan and the nearby development, the Desert Pines, express mild concern over their strong fears about their abject terror.

More on the story as we grasp at narrative threads that can assuage our helplessness in the face of inexplicable tragedy.

Listeners, last week I had my niece Janice over while her parents were taking a romantic long weekend in the kingdom of the Deros, deep within the hollow earth. Which is of course easily accessed by ordering any item from the Arby’s market fresh menu. Yeah, it was really nice to get some time alone with Janice. She’s getting older, you know, and is moving from a child, which is something of an abstract concept, to a person with adult ideas and thoughts and feelings, a human being who you can relate to and with, which is also an abstract concept. We talked, and watched movies. She let me put on Cat Ballou five times in a row, because that was Carlos and I’s movie night thing and I had been missing that. We ate popcorn. I asked her about any girls or boys she might be interested in, and she diverted me politely but awkwardly to other subjects. I let her. It’s not for me to pry, that’s the government’s job. And if I’m ever curious, I can look at the public registry of middle school crushes, which is constantly being updated via mind scanning satellite.

Janice gave me a feeling of family. I rarely feel anymore. Eh, it was a good feeling. I hope I will be able to visit Janice regularly.

In an earlier program, we brought you this week’s Community Calendar. However, it appears that there were a few errors in our reporting, so we would like to offer some corrections to our previous calendar.

Monday we said was free hot chocolate day at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner. In actuality, Monday will be the day that a great craft crashes down from the heavens, and we all will surround the ominous bulk of it, still glowing hot and smoking from the impact, whispering and wondering, helpless to act.

Tuesday we said was sign-up day for the Night Vale adult kickball league in Mission Grove Park. We were right about an event taking place in the park, but it appears that this event will instead be a creature emerging from the craft, towering over us and, in a language we should not understand and yet, and yet we do understand, demanding that we worship it.

Wednesday we described as being just a nice day to go outside and take a walk. Just a really nice day for it, we said. Stretch those gams, we said. We said the word “gams” over and over, seemingly unable to say anything else. As it turns out, Wednesday is actually the day we will stage a brief but ultimately unsuccessful resistance against the horde of slimy, many-appendaged alien warriors pouring out from the landing craft.

Thursday we said would be the day that beings from another world fully defeat us. And we will line the roads and avenues on our knees, heads bowed in recognition of our new masters, our new gods. Turns out we were 100 per cent right on that one, so we didn’t completely get the week schedule wrong.

Friday we said would be the day that your citizen renewal packets are due, you know, the reams and reams of paperwork probing every personal detail that you have to fill out in order to remain a citizen of Night Vale. Well, it’s still the day to do that, but instead of turning it in to the City Council, who will at that point be locked in a hyperdimensional prison by the occupying extraterrestrials, you will instead turn it in to the supervisor of your assigned human pod, so that they can gauge how much energy can be extracted from your body.

Saturday we said was Caturday. We didn’t mean anything by this, we just thought it would be funny. People didn’t find it funny. They wrote and called the station, demanding an explanation. Janice Rio from down the street seemed especially disturbed. “What do you mean it’s Caturday? Will we be attacked by giant cats? Will the giant cats build huge black cubes all over town? Will I be forced to enter a strange black cube that will absorb my essence until there’s nothing left of me? I am allergic to cats!” Janice cried.

Well no, Janice, and I’m sorry for causing a panic. Saturday will actually be the day the invading aliens start feeding on us, so don’t worry, no cats that day. Caturday is just a fun day to say. Caturday!

And Sunday, well, we were right about Sunday, so there you go. Just as we said, Sunday will be the day that Tamika Flynn and the beings who claim to be angels team up to lead a dramatic attack against the occupying force with the help of every Night Vale citizen, driving away our new masters and reinstating our old masters, who are brutal and awful, but who at least are a brutal and awful we know and understand.

This has been Corrections. Or, the Community Calendar. Um, Community Corrections? I don’t know. This has been what it was.

Fashion Week continues, and the sphere is huge and pulsing. Everyone is screaming and running and looking just as fashionable as they ever have in their soon-to-be-ended lives. Director of emergency press conferences, Pamela Winchell, is ostentatiously using decorated cigarette holders of ludicrous length, despite the fact that she does not actually smoke. She’s not holding them delicately between her first two fingers, but instead gripping hundreds of cigarette holders in her fist, like a quiver of arrows. “See how hip,” she is saying in a booming voice, levitating quite fashionably three feet off the ground. “See how absolutely of the time I am!” The sphere hums next to her for a moment, and then rolls by, leaving her be. So it seems like this year, holding a quiver of cigarette holders is very “spared from the sphere” indeed.

Good survival tip there.

Old Woman Josie, speaking from the headquarters of Strex Operatic Limited, said that the New Old Night Vale Opera House is complete, and that rehearsals are under full swing for opening night, on June 15, of a brand new opera written, composed, directed, by and starring legendary screen actor Lee Marvin, who will also form the entirety of the cast and will be selling concessions during intermission. Josie said that Night Vale citizens should expect some of the usual disruptions resulting from rehearsal of any kind of live performance. Namely, stop and go traffic in a several block radius around thetheater, a wake of buzzards circling over the city, and a slight uptick in the number of patients at the emergency room.

So it sounds like this opera, whatever opera means and whatever it is, will be a blast!

And now, Traffic.

A man came and went. He was here before and now isn’t. How briefly the moment of is before the endless was. He was not a serious man, but then this is not a serious life. We all heard him speak, did we not? We still do. He is speaking still, even though he is not anything else at all. How comforting the continuation of communication past that point. He was our tour guide through the cosmos, he would say, and then apologize for saying it. He was not a serious man. But then, this is not a serious life. A man came and went. He was here before, and now isn’t. We miss him.

This has been Traffic.

The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home made a public statement that she will not wait any longer. She will destroy Mayor Dana Cardinal once and for all, and claim the mayorship for herself. In her statement, which was stitched into the inside lining of my jacket this morning, she said: “You want opera? You want grand performance? On opening night, you will see a spectacle indeed. A spectacle indeed.”

Meanwhile, still no word from Hiram McDaniels, the literal five-headed dragon and the Faceless Old Woman’s previous partner in crime. According to local normal citizen, Frank Chen, Hiram left town weeks ago and won’t be seen around here again. Frank’s other four heads agreed, except the purple head, which had a bag over it and was mumbling, “Please don’t include me in your foolish schemes ever again! If it were up to me, things would be very different! Things are different every time it is up to me!”

The other heads hushed the head with the bag over it and reiterated that they are just a regular guy, like you or me or anyone else who identifies as a regular guy, with things like a pick-up and pieces of denim clothing, and enjoyment of certain types of music, and being completely wingless, despite how powerless this must feel.

Oh, hear that? Listeners, the time has come. The sphere has arrived at the station. It hums, looming; it considers,humming; it looms, the sphere will decide whether the station and the souls within it are hip enough to be spared. I tell you now that I… did not prepare for the sphere. It’s not that I forgot, i-it is that I do not care, and I’m not afraid. I don’t know. I wear leather pants and a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball hat made of honeycomb. I just wore the same thing I slept in last night. If I get ingested by a fashion-conscious sphere for wearing comfy casual clothes, then that’ll just be what happened to me. I don’t write the story of my life, I only live it.

So, while the sphere does whatever it will do next, I take you all - well, all of you hip enough to still remain, to the weather.

[ “Evelyn” by Kim Tillman & Silent Films (thekimtillman.com & silent films) ]

Back from the weather, still here! The sphere moved on and is now out in the scrublands and sand wastes, deciding which cacti and cottontail rabbits are of the now, and which must be assimilated into the pulsating dark innards of the sphere.

Of course, radio is always hip! Radio is timeless! Community radio exists outside of time and space and so is the most fashionable thing of all. Of course. We all know this. So it’s good that our station was spared and that I will continue doing radio for the foreseeable future.

I’m not stopping radio broadcasting. I won’t be doing it here, but I’ll be continuing to do it. Right.

So I guess it’s time then. Um, at the start of all this, I promised News, capital N. Here is the News.

My next broadcast as host of Night Vale Community Radio - will be my last, in Night Vale. I am moving to the Desert Otherworld to spend more time with sweet, talented Carlos and the community he has built out there in that vast, sandy alternate dimension. There is a radio station there built by Kevin, who.. seems to have himself pretty under control, and his studio only has a little bit of blood, so I should be able to continue doing what I’m doing just fine. I won’t be doing it in a way that you will be able to hear. But that, too, is just fine.

I’ve missed Carlos greatly, and I’ve also grown weary of a mayor that can’t protect herself, of a town that fears outsiders. Of a Faceless Old Woman who secretly lives in my home and publicly wants to do me harm. And I think of a Desert Otherworld where it’s always sunny, and mountains are real. There is a helpful masked army that can build anything, and your cell phone battery never dies, even if reception is 4G at best.

There is the question: is Night Vale worth it? Is Night Vale good? Is it a good town?

Well… I will, for the first time in my long life, live somewhere other than Night Vale. But, as a poet once said, “no matter where you end up, you’re still from your home town.”

I’ll be back to visit from time to time, of course. I need to see Janice and my old friend Josie, and many others besides. I am not gone, but I am going. I’m going to live somewhere I can feel good about, somewhere newer and better for me.

[sighs] Stay tuned next, eventually, for me reporting on the opening of the Opera House, and then not reporting on anything else here, ever again.

Penultimately, good night, Night Vale. Good night.

Guest post by Maisie-Whimsie. Many thanks to tiikerikani for proofreading.