15/11/2013 14:24:00 ¶ ●

## Episode 35 - Lazy Day

No one has seen the trees this week. Hopefully, they’ll come back soon.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Hello, listeners.

Nothing much to say about this day in Night Vale. Today is just a lazy day in our beautiful little town.

The heat is unusually strong for this time of year, assuming you believe in concepts like time, and year, and unusual.

Flies are buzzing around and around a trash can somewhere.

Frances Donaldson – manager of the Antiques Mall – is waving listlessly at a wall of old items ready to be bought anew, her hand a slow signal of submission to inactivity.

The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home is finding herself clicking the same apiology website she has read a million times.

I, myself, am slumped against this desk, murmuring into this microphone, too tired by the heat to give more than a token effort to the work of my life.

Ours is a quiet now. No one is speaking but me. If speaking took me any energy, if it were not merely a reflex of my living form, then I, myself, would not be speaking either.

Carlos – perfectly imperfect Carlos – is the only one feeling industrious today. He’s mowing the lawn, and whistling.

And the lawn is whistling back.

And now the news, I guess.

Alert citizens from all over Night Vale are reporting a Man in a Tan Jacket standing behind the Taco Bell, near the dumpster and the constantly-ringing payphone. He is plucking insects out of the air, and stuffing them into his deerskin suitcase. Alert citizens report that they don’t remember what his nimble hands look like, and many of them lost track of what they were saying mid-sentence, lapsing into a gaped-mouth silence.

All of them received one stamp on their Alert Citizen Card. As always, five stamps means stop sign immunity for a year!

Also, congratulations to Jake Garcia, who has completely filled up three Alert Citizen Cards, thus giving him the mandatory right to disappear forever! His entire family, in a statement given in monotone unison, said that they were proud, and that they didn’t miss him much, really.

Remember what Secret Police mascot, Barks Ennui, always says: “Citizens be alert! But not too alert, there is much that you should not see. Only you can prevent your own house mysteriously catching on fire. Woof woof!”

[chuckles]

Oh, I bet Barks is such a cute little cartoon dog. Maybe someday the Secret Police will declassify what he looks like.

Update on the Summer Reading Program from a couple of months ago:

Those children who made it out of the library alive – bloodied, covered in the guts of Librarians, and clutching reading lists far in advance of their grade level – have formed an organized militia under the leadership of fellow survivor, 12 year-old Tamika Flynn. They have taken to conducting drills out in the Sand Wastes, hundreds of children shouting and moving in unison, as Tamika stands over them on a hilltop, watching for their weakness, encouraging their strength.

Tamika has taken to wearing the detached hand of a Librarian around her neck as a warning to any who would dare face her that she has already defeated the most fearsome creature imaginable.

When reached for comment, Tamika said, “We do not look around. We do not look inside. We do not sleep. Our god is not a Smiling God, and we are ready for this war.”

When asked to clarify, she challenged our reporter to a hundred days of hand-to-hand combat, which our reporter declined by running away screaming, pursued by hundreds of battle-hardened children.

It’s still just a lazy day here in Night Vale. Mayor Pamela Winchell called a press conference, and then did not speak. She sat on a folding chair next to the podium, her head lolled back, taking a brief nap, before getting up and jumping – folding chair in hand – though a small glowing portal she created in mid-air.

All of this would have been quite rude to the attending reporters, if a single one of them had actually attended, but they called a press conference of their own to announce that they were just going to take the rest of the day off, if that was OK; that the still afternoon sunlight was somehow more conducive to a gentle rest than the dark cradle of night.

No one showed up to that press conference, either.

Carlos has vacuumed his living room, and is now organizing his closets. He’s holding up items and making decisions. He is humming.

The grass cannot hum, and so is silent.

The Vague, Yet Menacing, Government Agency would like to remind you that UFOs are totally not a thing. They remind you that UFOs are merely weather balloons. And further, that weather balloons are merely misplaced clouds. That clouds are merely dreams that have escaped our sleep. That sleep is merely a practice for death. That death is merely another facet of our world – no different from, say, sand or bicycles – and that the great glowing Earth is merely the last thoughts of a dying man, laughing and shaking his head weakly at the improbability of it all.

Remember, it’s not just the law, it’s an illusion!

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and you know what that means! It means it’s time for us to go groveling to the Brown Stone Spire, thanking it for all that it has done, and all that it has mercifully not done!

This is just a great time to get the family together, eat your fill, then crawl out through the sharp rocks and sand until your knees leave blood streaks on the barren earth, and you feel the Brown Stone Spire loom up before you. But you dare not look. You dare not look.

“Thank you,” you whisper. “Thank you, thank you,” more plea than prayer, more fear than gratitude.

And if it accepts what you have to say, you and your family can return to your homes – shaking, safe, together. Shaking. Together.

And if it does not accept what you say?

[laughs]

It doesn’t really matter what happens after that, does it? I mean, would knowing make it any easier? No. Knowing never does.

The Brown Stone Spire. Give thanks. Cry out thanks. Scream thanks.

And now, a word from our sponsors.

Today’s broadcast is brought to you by Costco. How much could a body even weigh?

In addition, today’s broadcast is brought to you by waves of sound, that are somehow carried by a form of light, and that a machine is turning into an invisible man talking to you, intimately, quietly, into your ear. That doesn’t seem natural to us.

StrexCorp Synernists, Inc.

Distrust all that you previously trusted.

This day, in which nothing happens, continues to not.

Even bodily functions are taking the day off. Reports are coming in that hearts are failing to beat, lungs failing to inflate, the muscles of the arms and legs turning to a loose, relaxed jelly. People are falling dead in the street – suddenly blue, suddenly seizing, spit dribbling from their lips in tiny pools of foam and mud in the sand, loved ones looking on without the energy needed to weep.

Just nothing much of any kind going on. A lazy, lazy day.

Our favorite local cereal company, Flaky-Os, is gearing up to announce their newest big product: Imaginary Corn Flakes. The cereal chefs down at Flaky-Os are taking only the sweetest, most non-carcinogenic cobs of imaginary corn, supplied by John Peters – you know, the farmer. They are distilling that imaginary taste down to a crisp, flavor-packed imaginary corn flake, ready for you to eat out of a big bowl of milk.

“We are very excited about this product,” said Miranda Yespie of the new Flaky-Os Board of Directors. “We are thrilled to be working with John Peters – you know, the farmer? – I mean, as soon as we can find him. Has anyone seen him? He’s become as hard to locate as his corn!”

Miranda also said that there are no plans to do viral marketing involving a sentient, trans-dimensional pyramid, as the costs on that last one were just too high.

“I mean, we had nothing to do with that,” she said. “But if we did, then we might say that a certain sentient pyramid really got an outsized ego after one simple viral marketing campaign, and started making unreasonable demands, like a trans-dimensional trailer, on location, that is normal-sized on the outside, but contains within it vast, looming spaces. Impossible. Endless. Also health benefits. So if that were the case, we would probably have had to let the sentient pyramid go.”

Miranda then thanked us for attending the announcement, and dug her way back into the Flaky-Os offices using her large, claw-like paws.

And now, traffic.

A few drops of ice melt, almost invisible as they slide down great slabs of mountain rock, joining together into a slight trickle, the mere suggestion of movement and water. That suggestion becoming more clear, clear water. Clearly moving in a clear trickle downwards, forming with others into a stream. A stream rolling over pebbles and around debris, hardly any force behind it, but implacable in its searching out of lower ground.

And then, gasping from some height, as a splash, into a river. A deep river churning its way through a landscape, drawing boundaries over which wars can later be fought. Slamming against boulders with violence, but without malice. Becoming wider, slower, like a human settling into the better part of age. A river that only shows evidence of movement when it carries some other thing, some life, upon it – like a human settling into the better part of age.

And finally, one last exit. A great engulfing by an ocean, in which all water is the same water. In which we can finally find some rest – like a human, settling into the better. Like a human, settling.

This has been traffic.

And the lazy day continues. A neon sign advertising The World’s Best Burgers blinks uselessly in the glaring haze of the sun, its light as small as the probability of its claim.

The earth is starting to slow its rotation, joining in on the mass malaise. Magnetic fields are going crazy. They are the only things going crazy. Everything else is completely mellowed out.

Those people with still-functioning hearts and lungs are lounging around, saying “Ohh, huh, who cares?” and “What a bother!” when presented with stimulus or thought.

The earth is slowing. Gravity is slacking off. My mic is floating.

Carlos is also floating, and he’s taking this opportunity to clean out the gutter on his roof. How industrious! How…uuuugh, I don’t really have the energy to think of another word.

Radio waves are reacting strangely to the loss of gravity, the change in magnetism as the earth slows. So, if you are having difficulty receiving this message, we apologize, but…won’t do anything about it.

Doing things, right? Movement, y’know? Existing? Do you see what I mean?

Oh, what’s that? Intern Maureen is flicking her eyes up in her otherwise motionless face. Her mouth is set into a deep loll. Her cheeks are slack. I believe she is indicating something, I suppose I should turn my head and look…I suppose.

Oh. Oh, all right, here I go!

Listeners, I am engaging the muscles in my neck and I am turning my head.

Ahh ahh, I see. The sun is going out. Yes. A black tumor of darkness, of absence, is on the face of the brightness. The brightness is dimming. The source of all life is going, is joining the rest of us in taking today to do nothing.

That’s probably not good.

We should probably do something about that.

But…it’s like…well, anyway. At least I got to see how Breaking Bad ended.

And now I don’t so much take you, as just kind of leave you – just kind of disappear and gently nudge you towards, in the heart of a world that soon won’t be, the weather.

[“Mijn Manier” by Brainpower]

Welcome back. Welcome back! I guess, from a crisis. Welcome back from, I guess, a crisis.

How was it solved? How was the day saved?

It wasn’t. It didn’t need to be. There are lulls and gaps, and rests, and stops. But this world stumbles on. The sun flared back, the world restarted. Still bodies, blue in the gray street, gasped suddenly, and rose back into the blue-gray light of day.

We wake up, we move on. No state is our state forever. All is fleeting.

Frances Donaldson, manager of the Antiques Mall, has gone back to violently smashing her stock of old items, as is usual.

The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home has gone back to flitting around in the corner of your eye, rearranging your belongings according to some unknown purpose.

The flies are still buzzing around that trash can, but with more verve. More zest.

Intern Maureen brought me some coffee.

[sips, smacks lips]

Ahh! Yeah, that’s helping. Coffee helps sometimes, though, doesn’t it? Other times, it just makes things worse. I mean, everything does.

Business is booming, people are moving, events transpiring. All as usual, all returning. We are up! We are full of energy! We are ready for the next great thing to be made for us, and delivered to us, and done to us!

Carlos, meanwhile, says he’s had a busy day and might take a nap now. That…well, that sounds nice.

Listeners, I think now is the time at which I must say goodbye. There’s a place here in Night Vale. A place I’d like to be just now. Maybe my lazy day isn’t quite done after all.

Stay tuned next for a keening howl, a scratch at the door, a hood falling suddenly over your face, and a delicious roasted squash recipe your family will just love!

Goodnight, Night Vale! Goodnight!

Today’s proverb: On this day in history: mundanity, and terror, and food, and love, and trees.