Episode 73 - Triptych
What’s past is prologue; what’s future is epilogue. This, right here, is maybe Chapter Four or Five.
Welcome to Night Vale.
Today’s top news is the screaming vortex that opened up in the Night Vale Mall food court, completely obliterating Ice Cream on a Stick, Lucy Tropic’s Fried Ice Cream, and Mario’s Very Authentic Italian Ice Cream Sub Sandwiches, while doing significant damage to American Teddy’s Ice Cream and Falafel.
American Teddy’s owner, Teddy Rajal, said that this is the worst case of food court vortex that Night Vale has seen in decades. And then he started hollering about the figures he could see approaching from within the depths of the vortex, and…
[Static sound plays in background]
Uh, I’m sorry, but…I’m getting some weird feedback in my headphones. Um…just some slight technical difficulties. Uhh, let me see if any of these wires are loose, and I’ll get right back to this important story.
Um, oh, oh, OK. Uh, this one looks a little loose; I’ll just wiggle it a bit…
[Strong static hum, then all static ends]
Kevin: …started hopping up and down joyously about the figures he could see approaching from within the depths of…
Cecil: Oh, no.
Kevin: Hello? Is there a new friend on the air with me? This is Kevin in Desert Bluffs.
Cecil: We know who you are, Kevin. And another thing, just because you have decided to name the other desert world that you are living in Desert Bluffs, doesn’t make it the town of Desert Bluffs! That’s not how names work! You couldn’t just start calling me Cecil [pronounced Sessil] and have that suddenly be my name.
Kevin: Wow! You have so much passion! What a passionate individual you are! Cecil [pronounced Sessil], is it?
Cecil: Cecil.
Kevin: Delightful. But to your, um, point, while where I live is definitely a desert, I don’t know what would make it other than your world, and I didn’t call this town Desert Bluffs, someone much older and smarter than me, I’m sure, did that. And I’m glad they did, because you couldn’t ask for a better home town than the Bluffs.
Cecil: [Scoffs] What a stupid name! Night Vale is way better name by any measure. For instance, I like it more. By any measure.
Kevin: That’s disappointing news. But I’ve never heard of any place called “Night Vale.” I can’t imagine anyone disliking us here in Desert Bluffs.
Cecil: What do you mean, you’ve never heard of Night Vale? You and that evil corporation StrexCorp tried to take over Night Vale very recently.
Kevin: StrexCorp? That faux friendly big business corporate monster? Don’t talk to me about them. StrexCorp is the worst! Strex has been buying up a few of the businesses here in Desert Bluffs, and I am not happy about it. It makes me very unhappy to be unhappy. I’m much happier being happy.
No. Strex is against everything I believe in. Community, radio, community radio, government intervention in the world, world government intervention, secret police, and, of course, adorable cats!
Cecil: I love cats!
Kevin: Who doesn’t love cats? Heartless people, that’s who. Monsters without the capacity for love. Without the capacity for love, Cecil! That’s who doesn’t love cats.
Cecil: Wow! You’re way nicer than I remembered.
Kevin: I want to represent my town well. We’re decent people here. Good people, sharing what we have: a watchful and oppressive government keeping us safe from ourselves and others, children playing in the schools, working hard in paramilitary clubs, and marching with crisp, clean uniforms in parades.
Cecil: Wait…your marching band has crisp, clean uniforms? But that hasn’t been true since the…
Is it possible that somehow I am getting a radio signal from Desert Bluffs all the way back from before the incident?
Kevin: I…have no idea what any of that meant, but it sounded terrifying.
Cecil: So, you don’t like Strex?
Kevin: Of course not! But don’t worry, we won’t let them get too powerful. Not here in the Bluffs.
Cecil: Uh, please stop calling it that.
Kevin: Sure. We’re all united on keeping StrexCorp just a small local business here in the Bluffs.
Cecil: It’s so strange to hear this version of you! Uh, I– I don’t know how this stray signal ended up in this where and when, but…here it is! This “you” before everything that happens that makes you…whatever you become.
Kevin: Wow! Sounds like I have some fun stuff to look forward to once I kick StrexCorp out of town. You know they’ve been trying to buy the radio station? Can you imagine how awful that would be? They’d probably try to take me off the air, and replace me with someone else. Or, worse, try to change my personality completely. Oh! I would never let that happen. I would never– [static cuts Kevin off]
Cecil: Kevin. Kevin! I don’t think he can hear me anymore.
Kevin: You don’t think who can hear you anymore?
Cecil: Oh, thank the lights in the sky, Kevin. You’re still there. I need to warn you about Strex.
Kevin: Warn me? About Strex? Why would you ever need to warn me about an honest family business like Strex? Why, ever since they bought the radio station years ago, I’ve learned so much about good business practices, and the value of hard work, and individual responsibility, and smiling, and destroying the weak, and eliminating the lazy, and smiling, and smiling, and…smiling.
Cecil: Oh, no! Uh, I must be getting a radio signal from the much more recent past.
Kevin: [Scoffs] The warping of linear time is exactly why I don’t trust radio, Cecil. Especially community radio.
Cecil: Kevin! What did you become?
Kevin: I’m just a happy-go-lucky guy! It’s like they say: “Work hard, play hard. Then work hard again, work hard more, work harder, keep working hard, have you been working hard enough? Work harder if you want to live! And then, and then, play! Play very very very hard.”
Cecil: Do you remember nothing of the you that was? The you that believed in good, healthy things like family, and a caring totalitarian government?
Kevin: I…oh! That’s a good question! What do I remember?
I remember being a real grumpster, just a grouch and a half about everything! Mister Frowny Face, I’d call myself now, if I were talking to myself then.
But Strex bought out my radio station, and everything changed for the better. Ha-ha! Can you believe it, I actually tried to stop them from buying it! I tried very hard. I put my own body, this fragile thing, in between the Strex representatives and the entrance to the building, but they forced their way past me using ethically brutal methods that left me forever physically changed. What a silly old hen I was about all that!
Once Strex entered my life and showed me the power of the Smiling God, why, nothing was the same for me ever again! I felt so much happier. I did terrible things. I felt so much happier! I tore and bit and growled…I felt so incredibly happy! My skin rent, blood drops on the ceiling, someone’s throat hose in my hand! So deliriously happy!
[Sigh] You know what? Thank you, Cecil, for bringing back such good memories to me!
Cecil: I am so, so glad that we drove StrexCorp out of Night Vale.
Kevin: Oh, that’s not true, Cecil! We only just started moving into Night Vale. Why, I believe we bought your radio station only a couple weeks ago?
Cecil: Oh, that’s because you’re talking to me from my past. Uh, the radio signal got temporally misplaced, as sometimes happens…obviously. In the time you’re speaking from, we haven’t led the secret revolution against Strex yet.
Kevin: So you’re saying that there will be a secret revolution against Strex? Hang on, I’m jotting down a few things.
Cecil: Uhh…um…n– nope! Uh, doesn’t sound right at all! Uh, I think Strex has nothing to be worried about, and should just be relaxed. And complacent.
Kevin: Cecil! Ha ha ha! Your jokes delight me! He-haha! Just in case, though, I’m going to send a new supervisor over to Night Vale. Daniel is fresh off the line in one of our most efficient radio content manufacturers. You’ll love him. Or, not you now, you then, I guess. Hah! Time is weird, isn’t it?
Cecil: So weird.
Kevin: Right? Anyway, Daniel will keep a close eye, and if anything seems wrong, well…me and some StrexCorp executive or another will head right over to set things right.
Cecil: Well…umm…
Kevin: Oh, don’t sound down about yourself! We all make mistakes, Cecil. Except wonderfully productive StrexCorp, bursting at the seams at the power of our awesome Smiling God! They don’t make mistakes. And that is why we’re all grains of sand beneath their feet, the bended neck at their throne. Isn’t language fun?
Cecil: Kevin? I already kicked you off my station once. I’m not just going to sit back while some errant radio waves from the past somehow put you right back on here. Uh, uh, maybe if I wiggle the wire this way…
Kevin: Lauren! Lauren, I just heard some interesting ideas about the future on the– [static cuts Kevin off]
Cecil: He seems to be gone.
Well, I have some feelings about how that conversation went, but…Carlos always tells me never to be down on myself about honest mistakes. Not even massively destructive paradoxical mistakes. He’s…always saying that.
I suppose, now that the technical difficulties are taken care of, I should give you an update on the screaming vortex at the Night Vale Mall. You won’t believe what…
[Someone coughs over errant radio waves]
Oh, no. Hello?
Kevin, sounding frail: Cecil! Cecil, old friend! I’m here.
Cecil: You sound different. When is this radio signal coming from? Uh, when are you in your life?
Kevin: I am very old. It has been many years since I last spoke to you. It’s great to hear your voice again. It’s great to hear any voice again.
Cecil: I’ll admit, this is a little exciting. How is the future?
Kevin: Desolate.
Cecil: Okay, not what I expected, if I’m honest.
Kevin: Oh, what StrexCorp and their Smiling God did to my wonderful little town. What they did to me. I’m not myself anymore. I’m a smile, and a twitch of the wrist. It has been years, Cecil. I’ve drifted away from myself. Sometimes I am one me, and then again I am the other. What they did to the sentient heat trapped temporarily in my body.
Cecil: Oh, Kevin.
Kevin: “Kevin.” Even my name is a strange figment. My tongue has forgotten how to form the word. And once, I was so good with words!
Now I am an ancient thing, withered away by what they did to me all those years ago. The power of the Smiling God is an endless flow. It ebbs, like the tides. But, like the tides, it returns.
I think about what I could have been if I had never encountered Strex. I imagine an entire life without them. It makes me happy. I picture every detail, I try to live it in real time, but it is only a slight, sweet fiction, and dissolves like sugar into water.
Oh, Cecil! I wish you had known me before…before Strex. Before it all, when I was just a dedicated community radio host like you. I wish you had– [static cuts Kevin off]
Cecil: But I did know you, just now, Kevin! You sounded so excited about your town, about your community…you were so happy! You were you!
Kevin? Kevin? Kevin!
Listeners, I must find this Kevin again. But first, I must take you to the weather.
[“The Heroine” by Unwoman]
Kevin: Cecil? Cecil?
Cecil: Yes, Kevin? I'm– I’m here.
Kevin: Oh, good, I got you back. Lost you there for a moment.
Anyway, as I was saying, Strex wants to buy the radio station, but I’ll never let them. I’ll fight them off, Cecil! I’ll defeat them!
Cecil: Ah, it’s this version of you.
Kevin: There is only me, Cecil. I’m the only me there is! And we’re gearing up to push Strex out. Grandma Josephine, my oldest friend in town (both meanings of the word), Mayor Pablo Mitchell, Lawrence Levine out on the Edgertown Development, we have all had our differences in the past, sure, and we will have our differences again. We can’t always be happy. But we love each other. We are a community.
And sure, that community has a beautiful name. I mean, can you think of a single more beautiful name than Desert Bluffs?
Cecil: Obviously, any name. Like, literally, any name.
Kevin: But it’s not about the beautiful, beautiful name. It’s about the people. A town is its people, and the good and the bad of them. And that is what we are going to fight for. That is what we are going to win for.
Hey, you’re from the future! That means you know how this turns out!
Cecil: Well, uh, y– y– yes, I do.
Kevin: So? Do I win? Does everything go just as right as right could be?
Cecil: … Yes.
You win, Kevin. Everything goes right. You and community radio prevail. And you are happier than ever. Desert Bluffs is a wonderful town, and you live happily in it.
Kevin: Oh! That’s such good news! Thanks for telling me. I can’t wait for the future to come! Though, I have no choice but to wait, I suppose. That’s how the future works, scientists keep insisting. Scientists are the worst, right?
Well, I’m sure I’ll talk to you again at some point in my life.
Until next time, Cecil. Until next ti– [static cuts Kevin off]
Cecil: Goodbye, Kevin. I wish…
Does it matter?
Listeners, I…what do I say here? I– I wish things could have gone differently, obviously. That is, obviously, what I wish. But they didn’t.
What is the use of nostalgia for what didn’t happen when we have to live with what did? Do I wish the food court at the mall still existed? Sure. But it doesn’t.
Oh. Right. Sorry, uh, didn’t get a chance to update you. The whole food court and everyone in it is totally gone now.
Anyway.
A counterpart that never was? A friend that I never had? A life that was never lived. Could Night Vale and Desert Bluffs have been sister towns? Was there a moment when that possibility drifted like breath into frozen air until it wisped away into the cold truth of what happened?
I don’t know. I heard only what you heard. I know only what you know. Probably, you know more than me.
Stay tuned next for a feeling in your chest that will never quite sit right with you again.
And goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: Candles lit, runes drawn upon the floor, sacrifice prepared. Everything is ready for the summoning. I begin the incantation. “♫ Shakira Shakira! ♫”