15/07/2014 13:00:00 ¶ ●

## Episode 50 - Capital Campaign

Home is where the heart is. We found it one day in the sink. It hums things late at night, but they are not songs.

Welcome to Night Vale.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a proud citizen of Night Vale, it’s that horses are incredibly susceptible to suggestions from government satellites. But I’ve also learned that Night Vale is a community that cares about education. Night Vale is a community that fears education. Night Vale is a community that allows education to happen the way terrified campers allow bears to eat their food.

“Education is important,” say whispers with no obvious source we all hear every night.

College graduation rates in our little town are above the national average. We bravely continue to promote literacy in spite of the terrible dangers associated with books. Our truancy rates have significantly declined, due to the Sheriff’s Secret Police’s program of humane, low-fatality taserings.

So, I know we can count on all of you to support the Night Vale Community College Capital Campaign, which was launched this past Monday to fund the establishment of a new Science Center for students.

Science, I especially believe, is very important.

College president Sarah Sultan announced, “In our present, rapidly changing technological environment, it is more important than ever to encourage students to consider study and careers in all the sciences. Except astronomy,” she added, pretending she was coughing. “Nobody cares about Astronomy,” she said, obviously under a cough.

Reporters stood quiet and confused about how President Sultan could make such an announcement, as she is a smooth, fist-sized river rock, and has no visible mouth, and likely no internal organs, muscles, or passageways that can create a human-sounding voice.

“Telephathy,” President Sultan said with a cough. “It’s telepathy, you guys,” she said in all of our minds.

Fundraising opportunities like these can make a huge different to small local colleges. So please, Night Vale, consider making a contribution.

As always, you can give to the Capital Campaign by burying your check, cash, or credit card donation in warm, wet earth, and whispering “I know what you did! I do not forget!”

I’ve gotten a lot of calls, emails, telegrams, and sympathetic glances the past couple of weeks, from people who are wondering if Carlos the scientist has returned from the Other World desert he is trapped in. And here I remind you that he became trapped there while saving our city from treacherous dark forces. I remind you he is a hero. I remind you that my boyfriend is a hero.

Sadly, Carlos is still in the desert – the same desert our new mayor was once trapped in. Fortunately, as Dana discovered, cell phone batteries last forever there, and there’s pretty good wifi, despite there being just vast amounts of sand and…apparently, a mountain. But if our mayor can make it out fine, I think a scientist can too. Scientists are always fine.

Listeners? I’ve been seeing all the reviews for that new restaurant, Tourniquet. Sounds like executive chef LaShawn Mason has created a real culinary hit! It’s almost impossible to get a reservation there. I tried to get a table for…for just one, of course, and the nearest available date was not for another two months! And even then, it wasn’t a reservation for Tourniquet, but for Applebee’s. Actually, you know what? I think I’ve been looking at the Applebee’s website. It’s very easy to misspell Tourniquet. Anyway.

Gia Samuels’ review in the latest issue of the Night Vale Daily Journal mentioned Tourniquet sous chef Earl Harlan, and that surprised me. He was a childhood friend of mine, and I had no idea he was a professional chef! It also surprised me because he was dragged away screaming by the herd of mute children at last year’s Eternal Scout ceremonies. Very few ever survive Boy Scout Courts of Honor – especially not those dragged away by the mute children – so it’s good to see Earl back home and safe, and likely returning to his volunteer duties as scoutmaster! I hope, one day, I can get a reservation to his fine restaurant.

Umm, let me see…nope, nothing. Oh! Wait! Yes! Yes! I got one! I– oh. Nope. No, I’m on the Applebee’s website again. Nevermind.

An update on the progress of the Night Vale Community College Capital Campaign:

Thanks to the generous donations of Night Vale citizens, the campaign has already reached 30% of its target goal. A particularly notable gift was made by local eccentric recluse and proud alumna, Mrs. Sylvia Wickersham. The college fundraising staff was caught off guard by this donation, as no one has heard from or seen Mrs. Wickersham in over a decade. Also, the gift was a fine porcelain vase, filled with two dozen English Angora rabbits.

College representatives expressed their gratitude for Mrs. Wickersham’s generous and super-cute contribution, of course, but would like to remind the greater community that it is preferred that donations be made via cash, check, credit card, spinal columns, or other common negotiable currencies.

“Money,” college representatives added helpfully, through the narrow crack of a slightly-lifted manhole cover on Main Street. “You know, the kind you use to procure goods and services when you still have a physical form,” they added in spray-painted bubble graffiti on the side of an abandoned warehouse near the train tracks.

More on this as there is more on this.

Night Vale, our new leader is almost here! This Friday is Inauguration Day for our new mayor, Dana Cardinal, who used to be an intern at this very radio station! Dana may in fact be the most successful intern this station has ever had. So few of our interns have ever gone on to do anything. Important. Gone on to do anything important.

Inauguration of new mayors includes a swearing in ceremony that takes place behind a think velvet curtain. The curtain is raised a few inches, and all the press and public are shown a few shuffling feet and hear loud, high-pitched shouts. They mayoral swearing in ceremony is the one point in Night Vale’s political calendar where citizens may voice their opinions and beliefs without risking reprisal or imprisonment. They are, in fact, encouraged to shout even the most forbidden beliefs and thoughts during the ceremony – openly, and without fear.

The event will take place in an undisclosed location 200 miles from Downtown Night Vale and will be exactly two minutes long.

Former mayoral candidates, the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home and Hiram McDaniels, who is literally a five-headed dragon, have both declared this a botched election and are filing for a recount by shouting their complaints into the side of a canyon wall they think might be Hidden Gorge. No one can tell exactly where Hidden Gorge is, which is how it got its name: Gorge.

It doesn’t matter. I’m ecstatic for our new mayor! It’ll be weird having a former intern as a leader, but I just think she’ll do a wonderful job! Congratulations, old young friend!

I’ve just been informed that Mrs. Sylvia Wickersham has made another large donation to the Night Vale Community College Capital Campaign, this one consisting of 1,000 live and extremely fluffy rabbits. The Capital Committee is beginning to have difficulty finding space on campus to house her donations. What foliage existed on campus has been immediately devoured. Several of the botany program’s greenhouses have been broken into and ransacked. And many of the rabbits have reportedly entered the Student Center, refusing to wait in line before ordering at the snack bar, and taking way more napkins than they need.

In order to make the most of this impressive endowment, the Capital Committee is currently discussing the possibility of…re-purposing some of the rabbits towards resident’s life operations. English Angora rabbits are well-known for their thick, soft, silky wool – so the college’s Student Housing Office feels this presents an opportunity to make new blankets and rugs and hats and blindfolds for students, as well as winter cloaks for the coyote-faced advisers that lurk about the Student Programs Office.

Representatives have attempted to contact Mrs. Wickersham to discuss the possible redistribution of her generous gifts, bu without success. More curiously, when attempting to visint Mrs. Wickersham’s home, committee members were informed by her neighbors that they have never actually seen Mrs. Wickersham, but they often have dreams of her.

“I mean, she never looks like herself,” each of the neighbors stated. “Generally she appears as a hovering green box that pulses with light, and her voice sounds like an oboe playing a whole note, but like, in the dream kind of way where I totally know it’s her,” they concluded.

Some committee members raised questions about how an incorporeal dream-being could donate wild animals, and also if maybe…she could stop doing that. Those members were quietly removed from the room by other committee members.

In any case, Night Vale, let us hold Mrs. Wickersham in our thoughts – and of course, dreams – and hope for her safe return. Or, possibly for an end to her rabbit donations. Both would be nice, but…let’s not be greedy Night Vale! We all take what we can get in this life, you know? We take what we can get.

Ahh, bad news from the Night Vale Community College, listeners. A donation of 5,000 English Angora rabbits in the name of Mrs. Sylvia Wickersham have just arrived at the college’s fundraising headquarters. It’s uncertain how they found their way there, as said headquarters had already been relocated to the Underground Emergency Fundraiser-Related Disaster Bunker, constructed in the 1970s by Dr. Erless Bedermayer, the Community College’s all-time second-least popular president.

As of last report, the rabbits have invaded and taken over control of fundraising headquarters – using dedicated telephone lines to make personal calls, uttering insensitive remarks about the body types of students and staff, and tilting the vending machines in clear violation of safety labeling.

Simone Rigadeau, the transient who lives in the Earth Sciences building, says these are typical behaviors for this breed of rabbit, and that she is not surprised. She also repeated her claim that the world ended more than 30 years ago, before grunting some French cuss words and disappearing into a small, round hole in the wall.

The 6,800 rabbits – more rabbits now than students – are running amok throughout campus. They have disrupted lectures and shown flagrant disrespect for faculty, they have joined academic and social organizations, and are engaged in irresponsible drinking. There are even reports that these vulgar, cuddly rodents broke into the college president’s office and licked visciously on President Sultan for several minutes before her administrative assistant could free her.

Listeners, this is an urgent situation. These rabbits – well, all rabbits, really – are a menace, and they now have access to all the advantages of higher education. I advise you to lock your bookshelves, eat your diplomas, and place any vulnerable stones or rocks in your home on high inaccessible shelves. If you see a rabbit, do not attempt to engage it in debate on post-structuralism, semiotics, gender politics, or sporting events.

Even as I speak to you college officials and the Sheriff’s Secret Police are desperately searching for Mrs. Wickersham, hoping top mitigate some of the damage that is being done.

I hope they find her, Night Vale! I hope that the rabbits do not find us! I hope that we all find something – or someone – that can keep the light on a little longer against the endless pressing dark.

And in the meantime, I take you now to the weather.

[“Ghost Story” by Charming Disaster]

We have received information that agents of the Sheriff’s Secret Police broke down the door to Mrs. Sylvia Wickersham’s neo-Victorian home on the east side of town. Their search of the house found it completely empty and uninhabited, with the exception of a small green tree lizard sunning itself in the front parlor.

The Sheriff’s Secret Police grabbed the lizard and were on the verge of eating it, as none of them had had lunch that day – well, I mean…some raisins and a few roasted almonds, but that’s not really a full lunch, and lizards are a complete protein – but the Capital Compaign Committee stopped them.

“This is Mrs. Wickersham,” said a committee member.

“This is Mrs. Wickersham?” said the Secret Policeperson.

“Yes,” the committee member said, explaining further that Mrs. Wickersham was a “High-Level Donor” to the college. At certain levels, donors receive benefits like mugs, or tote bags, or names carved into blood stones. At higher levels, donors receive very special benefits, like being able to invade the dreams of their neighbors, or having all of their belongings taken from their home, or…being transformed, permanently, into a tree lizard.

“Most of our benefactors choose a Gila, or skink, or chunkwalla,” the committee member said, quoting from the college’s own fundraising brochure as the lizard form of Mrs. Wickersham dangled and squirmed above the Sheriff’s Secret Policeperson’s gaping purple maw.

“Mrs. Wickersham takes a lot of pride in her alma mater,” the committee member explained, “and she has donated so much to the college. None of it has ever been money, but she is a valued donor to the community,” continued the committee member, as a brass band somewhere else in the world,and completely unrelated to this story, played eighth notes quickly, but softly.

“Why did you make a big fuss about it and call us here?” said the Secret Policeperson.

“Oh, that?” said the committee member, shrugging. “It was just, uh…good publicity for our Capital Campaign.”

The Sheriff’s Secret Police coaxed the tree lizard into a comfortable vivarium filled with fresh reptile bark, wrote EVIDENCE on the side of it in Sharpie, and removed it to an undisclosed location near the microwave in the Secret Police breakroom.

In her absence, Mrs. Wickersham’s next-of-kin was found to legally be her dry cleaner, Ben Burnham, who was amenable to the idea of retracting Mrs. Wickersham’s donation – more specifically, what he said was “Yeah, sure, whatever. What do I care? All the colleges are just factories for little socialist robots these days anyway. BEEP-BOOP-BEEP-BOOP! Free health care for everybody! BEEP-BOOP-BEEP-BOOP-BEEP-BOOP I’m a robot!”

Then he began to – without breaking eye contact – eat the plastic hanging bags on his desk, starting from the top and working his way down.

The rabbits have been removed, and re-donated to the Night Vale Petting Zoo. This worked out well, since until today the Night Vale Petting Zoo has only ever housed emaciated wolves. But now, thanks to Mr. Burnham’s donation (on behalf of Mrs. Wickersham) of nearly 8,000 cuddly rabbits, those wolves will not be hungry again for months!

Despite all interruptions, the Night Vale Community College Capital Campaign has actually surpassed it’s undisclosed goal, and construction of the Science Center is slated to begin this coming Summer.

The Capital Committee would like to extend its thanks to everyone who donated. A community that cares for education, after all, is a community that cares for its future – with all the fear and respect and awe that the future is due.

Knowledge may be terrible, but we can only prefer it to ignorance. Light may be terrible, but we can only prefer it to the dark.

Stay tuned next for a reality that cannot possibly match expectations.

And as always, goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.

Today’s proverb: Soccer is also commonly known as football, Canadian baseball, American football, violent jogging, and World War II.