16/10/2016 23:14:16 ¶ ●

## Episode 96 - Negotiations

You are statistically likely. Welcome to Night Vale.

Today, negotiations began between the representatives of the five-headed dragons, led by Hadassah McDaniels and her team of lawyers, in an attempt to save her brother and fellow five-headed dragon, Hiram, from execution. He is charged with the attempted murder of Mayor Dana Cardinal, and the attempted overthrow of city government. We will keep you updated on the negotiations as they happen.

But first, the Community Calendar.

On Sunday, we will be holding a parade to celebrate the fact that the world probably won’t end in the next few days.

Monday is Cloud Amnesty Day, the one day a year in which all Night Vale citizens are allowed to acknowledge and talk about clouds. Common topics of discussion include what clouds are made of, what their intentions might be, and why talking about them can result in fines and jail time. The day will end with the usual ceremony, in which the Sheriff’s Secret Police will do their best to arrest the cloud, marking the reinstatement of the cloud ban. Of course, the only exception to this ban is the Glow Cloud, who is almighty and gracious in its cruelty. All hail, as everyone in town says every day, at the exact moment of midnight.

Tuesday, Gino’s Italian Dining Experience and Grill and Bar will be closed for a private event. This private event will be a celebration of Bart Mentenya’s 60th birthday. Bart is only two days old, so the private celebration will last just short of 60 years. Gino’s Italian Dining Experience and Grill and Bar will be back to regular business once it’s over. Happy early 60th, Bart!

Wednesday is now only available to paid subscribers. Please join the Days of the Week membership program to receive this member-exclusive day.

Thursday is Take Work to Your Daughter Day. Gather up all your coworkers, the furniture and appliances that make up your workspace, all the petty office politics and backroom bickering, the contents of the supply closet, the structure of the supply closet, the entire building that houses your work, and bring it all piece by piece to your daughter. And then reassemble it for her saying, “See? See?” over and over as she, gape-mouthed, watches your work transplanted monstrously into a place it was never meant to be. Be sure to send us cute pictures of her weeping over what you have done.

Friday, the Museum of Forbidden Technologies will be opening its newest exhibit: Lie detectors! A hands-on, interactive and completely mandatory exhibition organized by a vague, yet menacing government agency. Remember: if you have nothing to hide, then you haven’t confessed yet. We will break you. Children and anyone with an implanted government monitoring chip gets half off admission.

This has been the Community Calendar.

The first round of negotiations over the fate of Hiram McDaniels continues today at City Hall. Not much progress has been made. Mayor Cardinal called a press conference to deliver the following update.

Dana: People of Night Vale. I entered these negotiations to represent you. So much of my job now is to bury myself, my own feelings and thoughts and opinions, and instead act as a proxy to all Night Vale citizens, to do what I think you might want or what is best for you. So here I am, all of Night Vale in one fragile body, entering into conversation with several towering five-headed dragons. This is just scene-setting, I suppose, this is just me letting you know the situation I’m in. The argument from Hadassah and her lead negotiator, Miriam, is that Hiram is a suffering citizen of their world, a world ruled by the five-headed dragons. And so, he must be taken back to their world for trial and punishment under their own justice system. It seems odd that they would send Hiram’s own sister as a representative of that justice system, but who am I? As we discussed before, in many ways, I am no one. I am all of you. I listen politely. I nod.

Now I will return to this negotiation, the ears of Night Vale, the mouth of Night Vale, the collective head of Night Vale, nodding and listening and talking. More soon from me, from all of us.

Cecil: There were no follow-up questions, as the reporters began kissing one another. Dispassionately at first, but with a growing claustrophobic panic a few moments later, as they were unable to stop. Many were heard grunting, their eyes bulging in terror as their arms, against their own desires, began clawing and clutching one another in deep embraces, their lips locked, tongues pressing behind others’ teeth, and noses smashing into cheeks.

In other news, here is what we know: the spacecraft is 10 miles in diameter, it floats 3 miles up. Here is what we know: it is translucent blue, lit from within. It radiates heat, but is far enough away that the heat is reduced to warmth. Here is what we know: the spacecraft is beautiful. Beautiful like industrial waste pouring neon over a barren dead landscape. Here is what we know: our landscape is not barren or dead. It is just dry. Here is what we know: the landscape around Night Vale is many landscapes, different depending on viewing angle and time of day. Now a wall of searing sunlight and hot sand, now a carpet rolling away into an inviting distance. This is not any sort of mystical thing, this is just how landscapes work. Here is what we know: the spacecraft has intentions. Here is what we don’t know: what those intentions are. Here is what we don’t know: what we will do next, what anyone will do next, what next. Here is what we know: the spacecraft is 10 miles in diameter, it floats 3 miles up. 3 miles below it, there is us, knowing almost nothing at all.
This has been the news.

In other news, local star reader and commander of an armed militia, Tamika Flynn, turned 16 years old today. To celebrate, Tamika asked to read a statement to our radio audience. And who am I to turn down such a bright young woman with such a powerful and violent army backing her? Ahaha, she truly terrifies me. Let’s throw it to Tamika.

Tamika: Night Vale, today is my birthday. In many ways, this milestone is meaningless. Time passes incessantly, not annually. I’m always older than I was, always more knowledgeable and experienced. Every day, I have more memories than I did the day before. But our culture tells me this day means something. So fine, I will make it mean something. I spent my morning in quiet contemplation, reading our culture’s great religion texts, like The Wizard of Earth-Sea and the Collected Fictions of Borges. I know now the path forward. From this day on, I am no longer the teen leader of an armed teen militia. I am the leader, no adjective, of a militia with only one adjective: armed. I no longer content with being a curiosity, or a good local story, or even just a teen. I want responsibility and respect, and I believe I have earned them. I do not ask for a place in Night Vale hierarchy, I demand it. Or even more, I take it without waiting for permission. And so, it is with great pleasure, and without leaving any room for dissent or protest, that I hereby appoint myself to City Council. If the multi-body being or beings that make up the current City Council would like to discuss this appointment, I will be waiting for them with the full force of my militia out on the Sand Wastes. If not, I’ll see you at the next meeting. Leave a chair open for me, or else. You can’t see me, but I’m pointing at the librarian I’ve had stuffed and mounted. It was difficult to get the tentacles just right, but my taxidermist Regina did an exquisite job.

And to Night Vale, from your newest and youngest city appointee: I will fight for you. After all, what else is an armed militia for? Thanks for all your birthday wishes. Happy birthday to you as well. On this day, all of us are older. Let us celebrate that with cake!

Cecil: Wow! An unexpected development from Tamika Flynn! City Council has responded by running up the walls of their chamber and yowling like cats, but they seem disinclined to take up her offer of confrontation, so it seems that we have a new member of the City Council for the first time.. well, ever. My best to Councilwoman Flynn.

Simone Rigadeau, the transient who lives in the Earth Sciences Building of the Night Vale Community College, is reopening classes, which have not been offered in that department since 1983. The curriculum will be modified slightly from the original Earth Sciences program, removing courses such as Elementary Oceanography and Environmental Geology to make room for new course work including “1983 – the Year the World Ended?” and “Clear and Distant Danger: the Terrible Mysteries of the Distant Prince”. And one course that’s title is the emoji of a silhouette of a woman, an emoji of the map of Italy, and an emoji of an innocent human being living within a perpetual waking nightmare, never able to escape. It’s good to see education embraced once again in the Earth Sciences building. You know, it’s been a fair bit of time since I went to college. Maybe I’ll take a few of those just for my own self-improvement. I mean, education doesn’t stop when you’re a grown up, you know. And re-education never stops, as long as you don’t perfectly echo the City Council and world government’s policies and dictates.

Update from City Hall. It appears that negotiations are breaking down. Also possibly, City Hall itself, as the building is shaking and smoke is pouring from several of its windows. Mayor Cardinal is leaning out one of those windows and is giving a statement. We go now to that statement.

Dana: Whoa! Well. It is not going great in here, obviously. They want us to send Hiram back to his own world, to be tried and punished under their own laws for attempting to violently overthrow Night Vale’s government. So I asked them, well, what’s the punishment for that over in five-headed dragon world? And Miriam said, “Nothing, that’s just how governments change. You don’t punish someone for doing their civic duty by throwing a coup or assassinating a head of state. What you do is give them a sticker with a flag on it, and the words “I overthrew”, so that everyone will know that you are a good citizen who participates in important civic responsibilities.” I told them I wasn’t about to send Hiram back just to get a sticker, and then Hadassah jumped in and said that if I didn’t send Hiram back, then she might be earning a sticker of her own.

Remember, citizens, in that room I am not me. I am you. I am us. And Hadassah was threatening us. So I told her, “You are not the first five-headed dragon to threaten me or to threaten my town. It didn’t go well for the last one, it will go even worse for you.” Which is all to say that the negotiations are going fine. I mean, Hadassah threatened to level this city, but I think that’s just what’s called a negotiating ploy. I wouldn’t worry about it.

Overall, I’m pretty calm about most things. The stress of this job would be unbearably otherwise. Hey, knock that off! Ugh, hold on.

Cecil: Listeners, it appears that Hadassah is making good on her threat. She is tearing at City Hall and.. Oh no! Oh, oh.. City Hall has collapsed! The enormous dragons are shrugging off the wreckage like so much particles of dust and are now advancing on the rest of Night Vale. Negotiations are going poorly, negotiations are going very poorly. Uh, oh the weather is nice though, let’s hear about that!

[“A Trip Out” by British Sea Power]

Dana: Thank you for your patience, Night Vale. I know things were scary there for a moment, but I hope you held on to your trust in me. Hadassah and her dragons have leveled most of this city. Entire neighborhoods reduced to a smoulderscape, smoke and rock. Schools, hospitals, nothing was safe. Everything was destroyed. But as I suspected, the whole thing was just a negotiating ploy and I held firm. So it’s all fine, we’re back at the table and talking again. We are unfortunately no further along than we were at the start, but now they understand that I am a formidable negotiator, and not one they can scare with cheap tactics, like destroying every building in our story. Anyway, our busy local contractors will get right to work rebuilding everything. They have a lot of practice since, of course, some threat or the other destroys most of the town once or twice a month.

In the meantime, I am you. We are all us. And we are going back to that negotiating table. And Hiram McDaniels is going nowhere at all.

Cecil: A great statement from our great Mayor. Hiram, the subject of all this back-and-forth, said only that he’s not worried at all, that everything is under control, and then four out of five of his heads winked.

The rest of us, the rest of town, moved on with our lives. The problem wasn’t solved, but most problems don’t get solved. I mean, generally we just do our best to mitigate the problem, and if it can’t be mitigated, then it can be relegated to a background noise by pleasant distractions and a prioritization of interests. We live with hearts that can just stop working at any moment. And yet we still lie in hammocks sometimes, or watch a sitcom, or stare at a spot on the wall thinking of many things, none of them having anything to do with the spot on the wall. Herds of grazing creatures are routinely attacked by predators, but when the attack is over, you know what they do? They go back to eating grass. Let us all, metaphorically, go back to eating grass, or, if you are a member of the Rotary Club, you can go back to literally eating grass, as usual.

Best to just ignore danger until it’s too late. The end will be the same, but the experience along the way will be far more pleasant.

Stay tuned next for a pilot turning to her co-pilot and saying, “Let’s see what this baby can do.”

Good night, Night Vale, good night.

Today’s proverb: The children were right. The floor is lava. But they were wrong about the heat-resistance of sofa cushions.