02/05/2019 0:14:37 ¶ ●

## 147 - The Protester

Hot singles in your area are staring into the forest and grinning absently.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Astronomers are frantically trying to determine why a chunk of the moon is missing. Ragged and greedy like a slice removed from a pie by hungry hands rather than a civilized serving utensil, the gap in the moon has been baffling professional sky gazers for weeks. Fun fact: did you know a group of astronomers is called a commotion?

Astronomers believe the moon could be eroding, because people have stopped believing in it, like ancient Roman polytheism. Others have theorized that the moon was damaged by enemy ships in the ongoing Blood Space War. But people on the internet have countered that this is part of the mandala effect, and that that piece of the moon has always been missing and we’re collectively misremembering. Like how those beloved picture book bears that we all remember as the Berenstein Bears, have by all physical evidence always actually been spelled “The Dog Pound Boyzzzz”. Boyz with a Z. Because of the 2016 city ordinance that proclaimed that anything can be true if you say it loud enough, astronomers are forced to consider all sides.

I don’t know any astronomers, but I do know a scientist! My husband Carlos has been the leading scientific mind in Night Vale since we started dating, almost six years ago. Carlos says that he has been studying and interesting meteorite he found out in the sand wastes and scrublands beyond Night Vale. He believes this particular rock is a piece of the moon. Standing before a giant wall of blinking lights, flickering screens and intermittent beeps, Carlos determined that this piece of the moon broke off only one month ago. But this is impossible, because no one can remember seeing the moon breaking apart in the sky. Well, maybe we were all asleep when it happened, I told Carlos as I dabbed away a small crumb from a cheese Danish that had gotten stuck in his beard. Oh, fun fact: Carlos grew a beard! And I have never liked beards on men, but now – I do. It’s got two thin silver racing stripes down the chin, and the hair is so soft. We’ve been married over two years and every day, I fall more in love.

Oh right, the moon, OK good God, always with the moon. [mutters] Yeah, yeah…
Carlos has been studying an unusual number of empty homes and businesses about town. He noticed that the houses on either side of us are completely empty, but he didn’t remember them being empty before. He remembers us having neighbors, but he couldn’t name a single thing about them. He believes this might be related to the damaged moon. Whatever happened a month ago to the moon immediately caused us all to forget it, because something in our timeline changed.
Carlos said: “Perhaps we are not forgetting people and events, perhaps they never existed at all.” His eyes were cloudy with pensive thought, and I touched his furry cheek and said: “You’ll save us, hon. I know you will.”
He smiled and asked if I’d be willing to reach out to archeology professor Harrison Kip again. Carlos, uh, had been communicating with Kip about this very issue, but now emails to Harrison keep bouncing back, and his phone number is no longer in the phone company’s database of working numbers. I laughed and said: “Carlos, I don’t know who Harrison Kip is!”
Carlos looked worried, and said he wasn’t sure he did either. But he felt like he should.

Protestors have organized a sit in in front of city hall, demanding an end to the Blood Space War. The city council, seeing the crowd of about 150 people gathered around the front entrance of their building, took immediate action. They announced they would be taking a long planned family vacation to the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, until this whole protest thing runs its course.
“We don’t believe South Dakota actually exists,” the single-bodied, multi-voiced council said. “When you look at a map, it seems like it exists, like it’s just right there when you look at it and it’s between two other identical states, so it would make more sense for it to be there than not. Anyway, this feels like a great time to take the kids to see Mount Rushmore.”
As the city council said this, several small childlike heads emerged from the city council’s singular body and screamed in happy unison. Or terrified unison. Mm, it’s hard to get an emotional reading on screams.

The organizer of the protest is 20-year-old Night Vale community college student, Basimah Bishara, whose father Lieutenant Fakir Bishara returned home from the Blood Space War three years ago. Basimah greeted her father’s return with joy, but that joy has since been replaced by confusion and pain. Let’s hear Basimah’s story in her own words.

Basimah: Time no longer works correctly for my father. I understand time does not work correctly for many people in Night Vale, but it had always worked correctly for him before the war. In December 2015, he returned home after 11 years of serving our city, our country, our planet in a war that still makes no sense to me. I was six when he volunteered for service, he was 30. 11 years later when he returned home, I was 17. My father was 19. He did not remember joining in the war nor having a daughter nor meeting his wife. He is a teenager, like I was. I no longer am a teenager, but my father still is. He has stayed 19 years old. Time no longer works correctly for him.

My mother Tahira raised me. She expressed reticence about the band I started, the music we played. She grounded me when my grades slipped and shouted at me when I told her I had a girlfriend. But she came to love Marina and more, my mother came to understand as both as people, as women. Not as rivers to be damned or levied.

My father’s return has been especially hard on her, because she is 45 and her husband is a 19-year-old stranger. You probably know what it’s like to have a father, to have a man much older than you who changed your diapers or watched your diapers being changed. Who taught you to speak or ride a bike, who helped you develop as a human from an animal from a larva from the simplest, squirming wad of meat into an adult. That father will always be a father, not a friend, not an equal, a father. You probably do not know what it’s like to see a father at your age, to talk with your father when he is also barely an adult. To have your father lonely and inquisitive think of you as his only friend in the world, while you look to him for guidance and love. But he is incapable of both, at least not in the way you need to be guided and loved.

It took two years for Fakir to open up about the war and it still makes no sense to him nor me. The Blood Space War requires constant shifts through time, through worm holes to change lost battles into won battles, to undo what has already been undone thousands, millions of times over. The future does not look like a blank page, it looks like a tattered sheet of paper, grayed and frayed from countless transcriptions and erasures of history. Battles are won and then undone through time travel. We lose our lives and then regain them by traveling backwards and fighting again. We are winning the war by perpetuating the war. Last month, the Polonians attacked our earth, I am sure of it. The only evidence is our broken moon. I believe the general undid this attack with time travel and this has changed our reality, changed who was born, who ever lived in the first place. People are disappearing because they will have never existed.

People think we’re crazy for protesting. I’m 20 and my father is still 19. I’m not crazy. My mother Tahira is not crazy. We are angry.

Our next protest is scheduled this afternoon at the corner of Earl and Somerset by the Dog Park near the Ralphs.

Cecil: Not sure what Basimah was referring to. That’s an empty lot by the Ralphs. There was word for a dog park to be built there many years ago, but it never materialized.

[clears throat] Let’s have a look now at local news. Earth sciences professor Simone Rigideau announced today that she is scrapping all text books and lesson plans at the community college in favor of organized prayer to a god named Huntokar. Several students and parents argued against such an extreme divergence from core curriculum in favor of French religious practices, but college president Sarah Sultan supported her staff member by saying: “Cut Simone some slack. She doesn’t even teach classes. She’s a transient who lived in a storage closet inside the earth sciences building for 20 years. The only reason she has the title of professor is because of antiquated squatter’s rights laws.”
Rigideau donned rabbit furs and an old bicycle frame wraught into the shape of antlers, and began spray paintin the Fibonacci sequence on the cars in the college parking lot, all the while singing a ballad about clocks.

The intergalactic military headquarters released their first quarter earnings statmenet this week. Investors were displeased to see that each of the board members of the privately own space defense contractor had purchased a 125-foot yachts and NFL franchises. But those fears were quickly allayed by the announcement of layoffs of more than 5,000 employees. Stock prices for the intergalactic military soared to an all time high this afternoon, at 490 dollars a share. Senior strategic advisor Jameson Archibald said the intergalactic military has no actual earned income. 100 per cent of their gross is from venture capital. Archibald said: “Some investors keep asking how we plan to monetize our military, which is a stupid question, man! I mean, look at this Patek Philippe watch I bought. It’s encrusted with 10 pounds of diamonds, and the watch face was made using an actual piece of the Sistine Chapel. We are doing fine.” Archibald added that the intergalactic military is developing an app and a subscription service that allows people to engage in celestial war fare any time they want for only 12,99 a month.

Alright, listeners, I heard back from Basimah, and she said I was right. There is no dog park. Of course I was right. If I knew there was a dog park being built in this town, I would have reported it immediately. Carlos and I have a dog. His name is Aubergine because he’s purple and European, and Auby is adorable and we love him dearly. I mean, I wasn’t into the idea of having to care for a dog, but Carlos strongly urged this case one morning over breakfast when he said, “I think we should get a dog”, and 20 minutes later, we were leaving the SPCA with our adopted pet. [clears throat]

Basimah said she was positive there was a dog park next to the Ralphs, but when she arrived at the corner of Earl and Somerset, it was all empty lots. To be honest, I don’t remember her mentioning a Ralphs before, because I would have corrected her. There’s never been a Ralphs affiliate in Night Vale. This is what Basimah had to say. Um, hang on, let me just insert the tape I used to record her. And there we go.

Basimah: If a person never exists, did they disappear? If you never knew them, can you miss them? My father spends most of his days playing basketball with friends he made at the rec center. He is 19 years old and trying to escape a decade of inescapable drama from warfare. Asked him who my mother was. I grew up with only my uncle Omar and did not know my parents until my father returned from war. Fakir did not remember my mother. He did not remember his marriage or my birth, because it has not happened yet in his timeline. Asked what if mother didn’t exist at all. What if the general’s time traveling has altered our lives so much that my mother was never born and you can never meet her. My father, the teenager said: “If I never met a woman, I do not know I will not miss her. But I’ll meet another woman.”
I asked: “What if I was never born?”
My dad said: “Basi?” He hid his tears and then he hugged me, but it was not the hug of a father and daughter. It was the hug of a son and mother. He buried his head into my shoulder and sobbed, repeating: “Basi! Basi!” And I comforted his heaving head with my palm.
I said: “Father, Fakir. I think I shall no longer exist soon. [voice fades] I think I-

Oh OK, sorry for the dead air, listeners, I was playing a recording of an interview I did. Wait, nope. I just checked, there’s no tape in the player at all. I thought I had been talking with… Ugh. Aah! Who have I been talking to? Maybe it was my husband Carlos reporting on his findings about the damage done to our moon or, mh, or maybe it was nothing at all. [clears throat] Well, let us forget that we forgot, and go now
To the weather.

[Shake” by Wednesday’s Wolves https://www.wednesdayswolves.com]

We have an update on the Blood Space War, Night Vale. John Peters says his brother has returned home again. When he left a month ago, James Peters was 22 years old. But he is now in his seventies, which is the age he should be. John held his brother tightly, crying in gratitude and relief that his own family could return to some kind of normalcy. James at first was heartened to see John again, to see his home again, and to learn that he and the general had thwarted the Polonian attack on our planet. But his tearful smile drifted slowly downward, an evening shadow overtaken by night. Upon James’ face now was the sudden knowledge that he had made a grave error. James looked around Night Vale seeing empty lots and homes, abandoned buildings and sparse streets. According to James, thousands of people have gone missing from Night Vale, because they never existed or never moved here in the first place. The general had leapt in time to successfully stop the Polonians from ever reaching Earth, but the change in the timeline caused Night Vale to change too.

Listeners, this may seem strange, but perhaps there are people you once knew, family you once lived with, places you were in, all of which are gone, and without your knowing. I have tried hard to think of any memory of any experience or person I have lost in the last month, but I can think of none. I told James Peters that perhaps the change in timeline did not matter if no one knew what they had lost, if no one noticed any change.
James said: “Cecil, I just don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe if we had a scientific perspective on this, we could better understand how this is affecting us as a community.”
And I said I didn’t know any scientists, not personally anyway. There’s the strange woman who lives in the storage closet at the community college, I suppose we could ask her.

The important thing is that we are safe, and that another veteran has returned home, and it is another beautiful day in Night Vale.

Stay tuned next for “Conspiring to Love”, our new relationship advice show, which as a lifelong bachelor sounds like something I should check out.

Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.

Today’s proverb: “Nothing lasts forever” is a phrase with two meanings, and they’re both true.

08/05/2019 20:34:05 ¶ ●

## Bonus episode transcripts

A couple of people have asked about the bonus episode transcripts, but I haven’t gotten emails from anyone.

If you sent me an email but didn’t receive a response, please DM me, in case there’s something wrong with Outlook.

The email is cecilspeaks AT outlook DOT com. Forward or attach the email from wtnv that links to the bonus episodes, and I’ll send you the transcripts.

16/05/2019 1:56:37 ¶ ●

## 148 - The Broadcaster

Leonard Burton: The opposite of war is not peace. It is tedium.
Greetings from Night Vale.

[distorted version of the theme song]

Hello, listeners. it’s your regular host Leonard Burton welcoming you to yet another beautiful day in Night Vale. There is the sun, of course. I don’t need to tell you there is a sun, you know this. You’re so confident that he sun is there. Past performance is not a predictor of future results, folks, yet sure as I say it, there is the sun. And near the sun are clouds, but they’re not near, are they? Millions of miles separate those clouds from that sun. And yet our eyes measure mere inches of the space between. What deception, this human sight.

The air is crisp and cool. A slight morning breeze touches us. We feel it like cold fingers playfully caressing our shoulders, our hair, our skin. I see no breeze, but I feel it. That which I feel, that is my only truth, listeners. Wind is a verity.

I hope you will join me in closing your eyes and walking naked through the invisible yet irrefutable air. Hold aloft your arms, widen your jaw and feel the impact of atom upon atom upon atom against your body.

This day is beautiful. This day is crisp. This day is true.

This morning I nearly died. I’m always nearly dying, proximity is subjective. This morning I nearly died in the same way I nearly die every day. After waking, I showered. After showering, I drank coffee. After coffee, I ate a grapefruit and oatmeal. After eating, I walked. After walking, I walked some more. I do not own a car and I live two miles from my work. I purchased a quart of whole milk, and then I climbed a tree. Atop a tree branch, I saw a grackle’s nest and I drank my milk. I counted four eggs, each of them blue. Each of them lifeless, abandoned for countless years. I did not finish my milk, because I cannot digest milk. I poured the remainder into the nest. Then I climbed down from the tree and walked again. I do this every day. It is, as the French say, vie sans signification.

As I approached the radio station, a cargo truck driven by a man who was not tall, barrelled down Mesa Boulevard. I stretched one foot outward from my body like so, and here I demonstrate my leg extending outward. A tentative (-) [0:05:00] as the French dancers phrase it. My head was turned away from the oncoming traffic, because I saw a municipal garbage can on fire. Gathered around the flaming bin were angels touching together their unusually long fingers and moaning. The cargo truck honked loudly, but it was not as loud as the moans from the fire-lit celestial beings, so I did not alter my attention. I stepped into the roadway like this. And then again like this, and then again like this. Then again several more times, til I had crossed the road safely. Immediately following my final step, the cargo truck roared past me. I had not died, but I had a vision of my death. No, not a vision. What do you call a vision without visuals? My vision was every other sense. I had a dreadful snap, I felt my legs (accordion) [0:05:56] beneath my neck, I tasted blood and asphalt, I smelled the pungent rubber tire against my nose. My vision halted me for what seemed like hours but was less than a second.

I should have died, Night Vale. For it was in my vision. Yet I did not. The truck honked again, and the man in the passenger seat who was not short waved his fit and cursed at me. On the back of the truck were several wooden crates emblazoned with a white labyrinth above a black square. The crates glowed from within. I do not glow from within. I am darkness from within.
I crossed the street, the angels moaned, and I wet myself.

It is a beautiful day in Night Vale. How was your morning?

And now the news. There is peace in our time, Night Vale. We hold a parade today to celebrate the end of the Blood Space War. The Blood Space War ended many years in the future, and we celebrate armistice today. Time, you see, is not a line but a (-) [0:07:10], which is kind of like a donut. And we are living within the donut. If we were to look out across a hall in the middle of the donut, we would see other times that have happened both before and after us. This presumes we can see time, which we cannot. We can only describe visually the shape of things that have no shape. Here is an incomplete visual description of things that have no shape.
One: death is a bottomless pool of clear water.
Two: wind is a question mark.
Three: morality is a thermos.
Four: love is an overfull shopping bag with a broken handle.
Five: fear is a cinderblock tower with a single door and no windows.
I hope that makes sense to you, dearest listeners. Because it does not to me. I’m neither a scientist nor a poet. I’m a radio host. I merely repeat to you that which I have learned. And what I have learned is that time is shaped like a donut. Beyond that, I have no comprehension.

When you woke up this morning, Night Vale, did you remember a life you never had? Did you experience the faint memory of a conversation, of a smell, of a feeling that never happened? Jamais vu, I believe the French say. The French say so much. And what do they know of peace? Today, I celebrate peace, however I do it alone. I broadcast my feelings to no one. Night Vale is empty, and I am its only citizen. Yet I have a vision of a town full of people. One of those people is a man, a radio intern named Cecil Palmer, but he is not here. No one is here. No one has ever been here. Has he died? I do not know. He simply is no longer here. You do not remember his years of fine reporting on this very radio station, because you never heard those reports. I did.

I remember things that never happened, yet I have no evidence of any of it. Let me describe to you the shape of Cecil Palmer. He’s a line of leafless mesquite trees, he is a glass factory, he is a golf ball sized (hell) [0:09:37], he has a voice like distant highway traffic. He loves coffee and handshakes, he wears tight clothing, and has never once worked with modelling clay. He covers mirrors with cloth and has an irrational fear of glowing lights beneath locked doors and dark hallways. You cannot know any of this, because Cecil is my vision, not yours. He is real all the same. He is to be my replacement when I retire. But he does not exist, so I can never retire. I am your permanent host.
I can still see his face. I’ve said it before and I will say it once more. What deception is human sight!

The parade for the end of the Blood Space war has begun! There is no one attending, because no one lives in Night Vale. Perhaps we’ll reach a day when no one has ever lived. An emissary has arrived in town to lead the parade. The emissary’s an astronaut, bloated white arms and a mirror for a face. The emissary walks slowly through our empty city streets. I do not know why I broadcast this to you, dear listener. For you are not even here. No one is here, except for me and the emissary, who walks like a marionette under the wobbly control of a novice puppeteer. And the angels, whose moans are songs and whose fingertips are (-) [0:11:11] rods. Also there’s the two men in the cargo truck who are driving far beyond our town. And somewhere there are the French, who are inventing phrases to describe, I don’t know what.

The parade of absent floats along empty streets (-) by a mirror faced marshmallow of a grand marshall approaches our radio station. I will enjoy getting to see the festivities up close and describing shapes out of the shapeless.

And now the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner. Kids, did you know that everyone experiences time differently? Physicist Albert Einstein once said: “There’s no business like show business. Like no business I know.” He said this while starring in “Annie Get Your Gun” in London’s West End. The performed the title role ten years before Irving Berlin even wrote the musical. This is because Albert Einstein experienced time differently, but only when it came to songwriting. He had the complete discography of both Leonard Cohen and Kendrick Lamar before either were born.

And perhaps, like you and I only hear music after it is written, we experience time differently in other was. Like say our births. Think about your birth. You don’t remember it, do you? This could be because you’ve forgotten it, but how do you forget something that so powerfully impacted you? I would argue that your birth was the important moment in your life, and you have forgotten it? I cannot believe you’re so cavalier as to allow the memory of your entry into this world to dissipate like steam from a screaming kettle! No, you do not remember your birth, because it has not happened yet. I am sure this is scientifically true. It can be the only explanation. You experience time differently. One day you will be born, and you will experience awe and pain and confusion. You will begrudge the lack of input you were given in this decision. You did not ask to be born, and yet pow, bam, squish, there you are, or were, or will be.

Earth is an (–) [0:13:32] during a flood. Memory is the chipped bark of the cedar tree. Time is a donut. This has been the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner.

The parade has ended. The street moments ago crowded with no one are once again still empty. The celebration of peace has ended, and another beautiful day comes to a close. The sun, like a shopkeeper with no customers, leaves work early. And the radio softly reminds us the shapes of the shapeless.

Oh! Oh dear, you startled me.
Listeners, the emissary has appeared in my studio without warning, without even opening a door. And they’re sitting in the chair next to me and slowly rotating. Their visor is open, and I’m being forced to stare at the ineffable darkness within the emissary’s helmet.
This seems like a good time
For the weather.

[Subspace” by RAQIA
https://raqia.bandcamp.com and https://www.instagram.com/raqiaband/]

Have you ever forgotten where you put your keys? You were certain they were on the mantle, but they were not. Have you ever missed an appointment because you were sure it was on Wednesday at noon and not Tuesday at ten? Have you ever remembered a life you did not lead? Has a carefully collated series of words ever made you uncertain, unconfident or un, just un? Un as an adjective onto itself.

The emissary arrived from the future, from space. The emissary told me changes were made, and those changes became mistakes and those mistakes became truths, and all of it would need to be undone.
“Night Vale is a vibrant and full city with tens of thousands of people,” the emissary said. “Yet here you are, Leonard, the only person in Night Vale.”
I nodded into the dark onyx of the emissary’s face screen.
“How old are you, Leonard?” the emissary asked.
I did not know. I still do not know.
The emissary revealed to me a newspaper clipping. From the Night Vale Daily Journal obituary section dated November 1983. There was a photo of me and a story about my life: my childhood, my radio career, my wife, my children – my death. It was all true and yet I remembered none of it, except for the last part. I looked at my obituary photo. I read how I died. Under cargo truck wheels on Mesa Boulevard. In print, everything looks true.
“What deception is human sight,” I said.
The emissary lifted their trick gloved hands to their neck, unlatched the snaps and removed their helmet. I saw the face of an old woman, with sunken tearful eyes.
“I am the general,” the emissary said, placing her enormous soft paw upon my hand. “I have tried to save myself, my soldiers, my town, my planet, through time travel. Every time we lose a battle, I return to before it even happened and fight it again. I fight each battle over and over, until we have won.”
“You’re an excellent general,” I told her.
“Of course I am,” she snapped. “In battle. But each time I interfere in the timeline, I create a widening ripple of historical changes. And now Night Vale is empty, on the verge of never having existed at all. This must be undone. Do you understand me, Leonard?”
I nodded yes, to hide the fact that I did not understand.
The emissary pointed to the moon. An enormous piece of the moon was missing. I did not remember that the moon was broken, but also I rarely look at the moon out of disdain.
“Like the moon, time has broken,” she said. “Night Vale should be full of people, and you should have died long ago, Leonard,” she added. “Do you understand?”
I shook my head no, to hide the fact that I did understand.
“I’m sorry, Leonard,” she said. If Night Vale is repaired, you will return to the grave.”
“But you have achieved peace,” I argued.
“I have achieved peace,” she said. “And in doing so, I have made it so that no one in this city, or this world, or this universe, ever lived. I have achieved an infinitude of emptiness. Leonard, look.”
She touched my shoulder with one hand, and with the other, she indicated once more the moon. When I looked, the moon was again whole. I looked back at the general and she was gone.

I hear now a voice, not my own, like distant highway traffic. I do not think I should be alive, but I do not know what else to be. Am I a ghost? Am I a god? Am I at all?
Whatever it is I am, I reject my end. I embrace my existence, even in a world with no one to acknowledge it. I never wish to die, Night Vale, and still I refuse to do so. I am a broadcaster. I do not stop broadcasting simply because I do not live!

Stay through next for grackles hatching from long dormant eggs, and anything else I wish to describe, real or not. For you do not hear me anyway.
And until tomorrow,
See ya Night Vale,
See ya.

Today’s proverb: Ask your doctor about dogs. Have a long conversation about how good dogs are. Show each other pictures of dogs.