01/02/2016 10:54:04 ¶ ●

## Episode 81 - After 3327

To err is human. But to err is also computer. We’ll have to find another test to reveal which of us are secretly bots.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Let’s start things off with the Community Calendar.

This afternoon, the Museum of Forbidden Technologies will be hosting a lecture by Night Vale High’s A.P. auto shop teacher, Nick Teller. He will be demonstrating some fun devices he came up with while tinkering around in his garage. As usual for talks at the museum, Nick will be covered with a burlap tarp, and a white noise machine will be played through a state-of-the-art surround sound system, so that no dangerous and secret technology can accidentally be learned about.

Tuesday will be the annual day in which we leave offerings of fruit and Rolaids for the Eternal Scouts on display in front of City Hall. These brave children rose through the ranks from Boy Scout, to Eagle Scout, Blood Pact Scout, Weird Scout, Dreadnought Scout, Dark Scout, and Fear Scout, before finally achieving the rank of Eternal Scout.

Now, these two brave boys, Frank and Barty, stand in their glass cases, as they have for almost three years, with wide unseeing eyes, wide unseeing mouths, and long unseeing hair.

It is rumored that one day, in Night Vale’s hour of greatest need, the Eternal Scouts will awake and walk among us once again. Until then, we all bow our heads in silent reverence so that we don’t have to look at them because they are very creepy. We all look at the ground instead, because the ground it not creepy, except that it consumes your body when your body no longer belongs to you.

Wednesday is “Take Your Daughter to Work Day.” Wednesday is “Put Your Daughter to Work Day.” Wednesday is “Teach Your Daughter How to Do Whatever Simple Task It Is You are Paid to Do and Then, Once She has Mastered It, Slip Away and Leave Her as Your Replacement Day.”

If you do not have a daughter, one will be assigned to you. If you do have a daughter…are you sure you do?

Thursday is a lost cause. Why even bother with Thursday? We all tried and tried, and still Thursday is what it is. Let’s all give up hope for Thursday and just let it do its thing.

Friday evening, legendary rock band The Clash and the great Amy Winehouse are joining together for a free concert in your imagination.

Saturday, there will be a sale at Dark Owl Records, with everything wildly reduced in price. Cheapest of all, said Dark Owl owner Michelle Nguyen, will be the idea of art, which has been degraded to a point where it holds no recognizable value.

“It’s like, what does art even mean outside of the intention to make art?” said Nguyen in a statement she burned into my lawn this morning. “And does the intention to make art alone define what it is? Anyway, you can take art for all I care. I moved on to the intricate fractal happenstance of nature, like, years ago,” she concluded.

If there’s any particular album you’re looking for, please do ask for it by name so that Michelle can know the album is too well-known now, and she can put every copy she owns in the garbage, with all the rest of the popular music.

Sunday is someone else’s problem. What, you have to worry about every day yourself?

This has been the Community Calendar.

My former intern Maureen has dropped by the studio, and oh my God! She has the most adorable beagle puppy with her! Look at you! Look at yooouuu!

Maureen: I’m here too.

Cecil: Oh, of course! Hello, Maureen, you are also here. Yes.

Maureen: Hi. Whatever. I guess hi.

Cecil: Maureen, it’s just a delight to have you and your little buddy here!

Maureen: Yeah. I– I bet it’s a delight.

Cecil: Okay. What’s been new with you?

Maureen: Well, let’s see. Oh, yeah. I had to start a new internship because I still need those credits to graduate. The new internship’s pretty sweet, I guess. I, lead an army, or whatever.

Cecil: You lead an army?

Maureen: Or whatever! It doesn’t matter! I mean, I don’t have to! If you could write my intern credit letter for school, I wouldn’t have to do this other internship. I could just graduate…

Cecil: Oh, your new internship sounds great! I hope you’re truly applying yourself.

Maureen: I– I’ve been talking with another former intern of yours, by the way.

Cecil: Oh, Dana? Oh! So proud of her! My best intern. Ever. She’s really doing some great things for this town. You know she’s mayor now, right?

Maureen: I know who Mayor Cardinal is! Everything’s about Dana, isn’t it? “Oh, look at me, I got college credits, and I get to be mayor, not like Maureen. Maureen has to lead an army, or whatever, to get those credits.

Cecil: An army?

Maureen: Or whatever, it’s not important!

Cecil: It sounds kind of important.

Maureen: Oh, does it!?! Is that what sounds important? Do you know that there are people starving to death somewhere?

Cecil: Oh my God, where? We should help them!

Maureen: I don’t know, somewhere! Wasn’t being specific. Wasn’t actually suggesting making the world a better place. Was just using theoretical human suffering as a deflection.

Cecil: Oh, have you been taking those, uh, Art of Conversation classes at the community college, too? Our receptionist, Lance, got me into these classes, and I’ve learned so much about how to better talk with people. Uh, techniques like intense, almost-invasive listening, and absolute denial of the reality of truth. And, changing the subject – your best line of defense.

Maureen: Can you write me a credit letter, or not?

Cecil: That’s a good question. Another good question is, “Whose a good boy? Whose a good boy!”

Maureen: This dog is, obviously! He’s a beagle! Therefore, he’s a good boy! This was a mistake. I’ll talk to you later, or whatever. More whatever than later.

Cecil: Bye, buddy! Oh, look at you, such a cute dog! I would do anything for that little face, that tiny adorable face and those floppy dumb ears! I would do anything!

Oh no, the beagle’s leaving! In the arms of Maureen. Maureen is also leaving.

Um, goodbye, Maureen! It was nice of you to drop by and talk about…oh, whatever it was you were talking about.

Listeners, she’s leaving in the company of that same boy I saw her with a couple weeks ago. The one with the baseball cap pulled low over his face? I definitely recognize him. Where do I know him from?

Nah, I’m certain this won’t come up again. I wouldn’t worry about it.

A small update on my previous Community Calendar announcement. Things have…gone off track during A.P. auto shop teacher Nick Teller’s presentation on his inventions. It seems that he somehow accidentally removed the unsecured burlap tarp from his body, and turned off the switch on the white noise machine next to him, thus foiling the usual safeguards against learning.

His completely audible talk covered simple life hacks he’s developed to lower your electric bill.

The first is a way of transmitting energy over great distances. To that end, he held up a lit light bulb, not visibly attached to any power source. The power, Nick said, came wirelessly from a coil situated 26 miles away in the desert.

His other power saving tips included setting your thermostat just a bit higher, improving the insulation in your home, and using a free energy generator he invented that can provide power for an entire household indefinitely, on no fuel at all.

The World Government has made a statement, apologizing for the technical errors that are allowing this speech to be heard, and have released a response that consists of just the words, “Nuh-uh!” drawn in red crayon on construction paper.

So, two interesting sides to consider in this story.

Update on the trial of the century, as four of the five heads belonging to five-headed dragon Hiram McDaniels are tried for their role in the attempted coup against our beloved mayor.

The first witness of the trial was called to the stand today. It was Harrison Kip, Adjunct Professor of Archaeology at the Night Vale Community College. He was once tricked by Hiram’s heads and their co-conspirator, the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home, into summoning a sand golem that wreaked havoc throughout Night Vale. We covered all this, of course, in our two-part report last year.

Harrison had been so ashamed of his role in the destruction that he fled into the desert to live the life of a simple hermit, only reaching out to civilization to procure the bare necessities of life. And, occasionally, get on Skype to remotely teach classes and hold office hours.

Mr. Kip did his best to describe what had happened. But mainly, all that happened is that he was tricked into raising a sand golem, so his testimony wasn’t that interesting.

The only highlight came when he was asked about his months out in the desert. He indicated that he found the desert mostly peaceful, but that he had recently seen something in the middle of the night that had disturbed him. He seemed very shook up about it, slumping forward, and mumbling what was (I believe) the word “appalling” over and over.

That part of his testimony probably didn’t mean anything, and probably doesn’t indicate anything is going to happen. As that famous T.V. lawyer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, always says in her big closing arguments, “Past performance is not a predictor of future results.”

Nick Teller’s speech at the Museum of Forbidden Technologies is disastrously continuing to be heard by attendees. And, even more disastrously, the contents of this speech are being repeated on the radio.

He moved on from his energy tips to reminisce a bit about some projects of his that didn’t go exactly according to plan.

For instance, he said he once did some work on a boat in Pennsylvania [mispronounced], and a few mixed-up calculations meant that instead of the boat becoming invisible, as planned, it jumped through both time and parallel universes, horribly altering every human on board. [x]

But, Nick went on to emphasize, he didn’t let failures like that get him down, even though that particular failure was so spectacular that he had to change his name and fake his death in order to evade the consequences.

Whoo! This is inspiring stuff. Even though hearing it is completely illegal…as is, probably, repeating it on the radio.

Whoopsie!

Well, more from Nick as I continue to “accidentally” tell you what he’s saying.

But first, today’s traffic.

A spectrum of gray. The top-most gray is that of sunlight, filtered through high-altitude clouds. Then, through lower-altitude haze, darkening down on a monochromatic spectrum toward dirt that is gray…or, appears gray due to the quality of light.

Built up from the dirt are gray buildings, full of gray people speaking grayly.

“Yes, I’ll have another slice of pie,” they say.

“Business is looking as good as this pie,” they say.

“Pie tastes great, and is better, nutritionally, than most people think,” they say.

Colorless, toneless words. Gray faces slacking onto gray necks and gray bodies, gray dreams of a gray future that is neither good nor bad, but just what’s next. A gray life, lived grayly. Gray dreams through gray nights, electric lights too bright to ever let dark settle into dark, no great absence to contrast the stars, no rich black of the void, a gray night. Gray dreams. Gray life. Gray words. Gray buildings in a gray world and the light grays grayly through the gray.

This has been traffic.

And now, a word from our sponsors:

Today’s sponsor is Google. Looking for pictures of a monkey riding a pony? Just search that on Google and it will probably be there. Looking for pictures of a dog named Table? Search that, and I bet someone named their dog Table and took a picture.

How about an image of the exact moment of your death? I don’t know, that might be on there too. Give it a search!

The internet is huge. Whatever it is, it’s probably on there.

Google. Search for super-weird stuff. You’ll probably find something at least kind of similar.

This has been a word from our sponsors.

Well, it’s almost time for our weather report, and I have to admit, I’m surprised. I’d have thought, given some of the forbidden information we’ve been repeating from Nick Teller that we would have been shut down by now. But maybe I was wrong ab–

wrong ab–

wrong about–

wrong ab–

[Electronic rising tone]

–bout that–

shut down by now–

wrong–

wrong–

wrong–

wrong–

wrong–

g-g-g-g-g-g-gggggggggggggggggggg

[Electronic steady tone]

[“Table Song” by Katie Kuffel]

I’m finally back, listeners.

I’m sure you’ve noticed, over the past several days, that our usual broadcasts had been replaced by harsh buzzing and the occasional shout of “You’re not hearing anything right now, this isn’t sound!”

As I had kind of hoped, the World Government shut down our station. Which meant that I got a couple weeks off.

I had been needing a break, and the extra-legal closure of my place of work, and the forced reeducation of all of us who work there, gave me just the chance I needed.

In between reeducation sessions, I did a number of household chores that needed doing. Painting, gutter cleaning, and the like. The picking up, and the putting down, and the mending, and the clearing. Re-sodding my lawn after Michelle burned her statement into it. I had some quiet time with Carlos, and I re-watched the entire series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Uh! I just love at the end of every episode, after she successfully wins the big court case, when she smokes cigars and cracks wise with her law firm partner, Angel. Ugh! So good.

I also dropped in on Nick Teller at his auto shop in the high school. He had just finished up feeding the cars and was grading some papers, but he kindly made time for a chat. I asked him if he wished things had turned out for him differently, if he wished that he hadn’t had to flee his old life and come to this town where his best inventions are suppressed by order of the World Government.

He smiled.

“No,” he said. “Honestly, I get it. The world has never been accepting of what I do, and I’m happy with my life here. I like teaching auto shop, I like working with young people, I like guiding them into a life of creating new things that will never see the light of day because they threaten the system as it is and the powers as they are. It’s rewarding work.”

I told him I was glad that he seemed to have found peace in his life. He said he was, too.

“After all,” he said, “what other choice would I have? It’s not like I can go back and fix my mistakes. Or…wait.”

He turned pensively and told me that he had some old papers he wanted to look through for purely nostalgic reasons, and asked if I could leave him to it. And so I did.

Listeners, maybe at some point Nick wanted to be something other than he was, but that doesn’t mean he is beholden to that dream he once had. It’s okay for him to be all right with who he is now. Acceptance is not failure. Sometimes acceptance is just acceptance.

Of course, one must always be open to new dreams, and new ambition. And if, at some point, Nick decides that he no longer wants to be an A.P. auto shop teacher, or if he decides he wants to alter history so he will never have even come here…then that, too, will be okay.

Stay tuned next for an unexpected gain in cabin pressure. No mask will help you. We weren’t prepared for things to go this way.

And goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.

Today’s proverb: You know what would be great? If someone finally made a movie showing Spider-Man’s origin story. I’d love to finally see that on the big screen.