Episode 88 - Things Fall Apart

[Sound of phone ringing as heard by the person who made the call]

Female phone voice: Citywide utility failures continue to haunt us, but not as much as the strangers who do not appear to move.

Welcome to the Night Vale Public Utilities Phone Line.

If you’re calling with a water, power, gas, phone, or surveillance camera malfunction, please press 1.

If you just called to chat…

[Sound of 1 being pressed]

Night Vale is currently experiencing citywide power outages, as well as polluted water supplies, and several gas leaks. It’s not our fault, but H.R. says we should apologize for the inconvenience. Sorry, I guess.

It’s not like we’re not experiencing the same thing, though, so maybe you could reciprocate the sympathies?

Cecil: I’m sorry?

Female phone voice: Thank you.

To pay your bill, press 1.

To compliment the fine work of the Utilities Department, press 2.

To whine about your personal problems…

Cecil: I’m not complimenting the fine work of the Utilities Department.

Female phone voice: I can repeat that last option, if you need.

To compliment the fine work of the Utilities Department, press 2.

[Extended silence]

Okay, fine.

To whine about your personal problems, press 3.

To schedule a service technician, press

[Sound of 4 being pressed]

You pressed 4. I didn’t give you an option 4, you just assumed the next number and then cut me off mid-sentence.

Cecil: Oh, good God!

Female phone voice: I’m sorry, is this hard for you? Do you need a hug? Do you need me to sing you a lullaby and feed you? Here comes the airplane spoon to feed the hungry hungry boy! Vroom! Mmm, tasty carrots! Feel better now?

Cecil: Wow, the phone tree is getting snippy!

Female phone voice: Don’t be rude. I am a person, not a phone tree. This is my job, to record every possible phrase for every possible person’s possible need. I recorded all of it. I’m a real human, with a body, and needs, and a family. And I have a name. I am Maggie Pennebaker. I’m not a “disembodied lady voice” who will passively ignore your whiny entitlement.

Cecil: I – I’m sorry, Maggie. Are…are we speaking live?

Female phone voice Maggie Pennebaker: You selected “schedule a service technician.” Please hold.

Our next available service date is between the hours of:

Male phone voice: one

Maggie: and

Male phone voice: five p.m.

Maggie: on

Male phone voice: September 4th, 2005

Maggie: in the

Male phone voice: common era.

Cecil: That was 11 years ago!

Maggie: To have time explained to you like you were a five year-old, please hang up now and give up on ever having realistic expectations.

To confirm this appointment, press 1.

To speak to a customer service representative, press 2.

[Sound of 2 being pressed]

All operators are currently

Male phone voice: shouldering the immense burden

Maggie: of

Male phone voice: societal displeasure.

Maggie: Please continue to hold. Current wait time is

Male phone voice: super long.

Cecil: Aaaagh!

[Sound of  call disconnecting, then another dialed phone ringing on the line]

Carlos: Hey, Pooh!

Cecil: Hey, Bunny. Listen, Carlos? The power is out here at the station. I can’t even do my show! I’ve been trying to get through to the Utilities, but they’re slammed with calls.

Carlos: Oh, I talked to my friend Maggie, who works there. She said her cousin has an extra generator we can borrow.

Cecil: You know Maggie?

Carlos: Yeah! She used to work with me part-time as a lab assistant. Also, Josie came by with her friends and dropped off some bottled water. Even John Peter has stopped by. You know John Peter, he’s the–

Cecil: Yes, John Peters, the farmer. I know.

Carlos: No. John Peter, remember? The pharmacist. Anyway, he dropped off your prescription this morning.

Cecil: Oh, well that was nice of him!

Carlos: Listen, since you don’t have to work today, you should come back home! It’s bad out there, and if you’re going to get killed or possessed by one of the strangers…I’d rather you do it here with me! I’ll make us some lunch, and we can play Cards In Favor Of Humanity.

Cecil: Aw, that sounds great, but I still need to get to the bottom of what is going on in this city. Intern Kareem pulled some documents for me that he says I need to read through, and I have some calls to make. The invasion by these strangers is a big story, and even if I can’t broadcast it, I still need to find some way to report it. I’ll call you later.

Carlos: You’re so good at your job.

Cecil: You are too, Carlos. Oh, how’s your research going?

Carlos: Well, I’ve been examining some of the places where the strangers have been spotted. I have a meter that makes squawking sounds sometimes, you know? And I’m uncertain if those last two sentences are related. Cecil, Be careful. And…if you see one of the strangers, just get out of there quickly, and call me, okay?

Cecil: We’ve survived one at the station before. I think I’ll be fine.

Carlos: Well, past performance is not an indicator of future results, but…I love you.

Cecil: Okay. Bye.

[Sound of  call disconnecting, then another dialed phone ringing on the line]

Sheriff Sam [“Kill V. Maim” by Grimes plays faintly in the background while the Sheriff is on the phone]: Howdy! Sheriff Sam.

Cecil: Sheriff? Hi, this is Cecil Palmer, over at Night Vale Community Radio?

Sheriff: What I just said was off the record. Don’t play it on air.

Cecil: You only said “howdy.”

Sheriff: No, I didn’t.

Cecil: Okay. Sheriff, I’m not even on the air right now. No one is listening to this call, except the Secret Police, the City Council, the mayor, and…well, some neighborhood espionage clubs, but they have our community’s best interests at heart.

Look, I’m calling because I wanted to find out what the Secret Police know about the strangers who are showing up all over town. Are the structural failures related to their presence here?

Sheriff: Now, by “strangers,” do you mean the foreigners from Desert Bluffs, who are taking over our beautiful city after they managed to run their own city into the dirt? Or are you referring to the people who don’t seem to move, except for their breathing, who stand and stare at seemingly nothing, and who – without any noticeable motion – suddenly appear much closer, and who cause our citizens to stand trance-like until they’re taken or killed or subsumed or converted into non-moving strangers themselves?

Cecil: The latter.

Sheriff: Cecil [the Sheriff pronounces it “sess-ill” throughout the conversation]. There are two sinkholes opened up on Route 800. The dam along Night Vale Lake broke. Fortunately our lake is just an empty dust hole, but it still broke wide open. Also, I have a caffeine headache, even though I don’t drink caffeine!

Cecil: That just sounds like a headache, then.

Sheriff: Look, I don’t want the media dictating to me what is or is not a caffeine headache! The point is, things are falling apart, but not in the fun way – in the awful way!

Cecil: There’s a fun way?

Sheriff: Well yes, like…during a scheduled earthquake, or ho-ho! Or when the lizard people dig new tunnels below old buildings.

Cecil: [Laughs] Oh, oh, of course! Of course. Oh! What about the former Desert Bluffs residents who moved to Night Vale? Are…are the strangers doing the same to them?

Sheriff: Who cares?

Cecil: Well, I care! The people who know them care! They’re humans, Sheriff! And as a reporter, I will report that you said that.

Sheriff: Well, I’m the sheriff of a secret police force, so, no you won’t. You won’t do that at all.

[Awkward pause]

Ha-ha! I’m just playing with you! I have a dry sense of humor, you might have missed that. I was delivering a real threat to your life, but in a teasing way. Ha-ha. You definitely won’t report anything I tell you.

Some of those Desert Bluffs people we can’t even track. Not all of them stayed here, some of them moved away. In our regular interrogations and detentions of these non-citizens, we’ve learned that a lot of them moved to some other place, which they say feels a bit more like home. I don’t know anything about that, except that I’m happy to get them out of here. They can set up all the Joyous Congregations of the Smiling God that they want some other place!

Just tell your listeners that everything is fixed, and everyone is safe. The Sheriff saved the day.

Cecil: But you didn’t do anything!

Sheriff: Got to go, Cecil! Just got some new calligraphy pens I need to break in before the press conference to announce that all is lost.

Cecil: Uh, it’s Cecil [pronounced “see-sill”], thanks.

[Sound of  call disconnecting, then another dialed phone ringing on the line]

Michelle Nguyen: Dark Owl Records, please shut up about music before you embarrass yourself.

Cecil: Michelle? Hey, it’s Cecil. I hate to bother you but I’m trying to track down Maureen. I heard that you two are friends.

Michelle: I only talked about Maureen privately into my audio journal. Did you listen to the monologue I recorded?

Cecil: Yes, I played it on the air six weeks ago.

Michelle: I didn’t want anyone to hear that! That was personal!

Cecil: Michelle, you mailed me a cassette with a note that said “Here’s my monologue to play on your show, Cecil!”

Michelle: But that was me from more than a month ago. I hate that me. Haven’t you ever made mistakes in your youth?

Cecil: Yes. Many. Michelle, you’ve talked to Maureen recently, how is she?

Michelle:She’s fine. I mean, she’s not that into leading an army, or whatever, but it’s just a thing she does for a living. I sell records, you talk on the radio, Maureen leads the army of unmoving strangers.

Cecil: She’s the leader of the strangers?

Michelle: Or whatever. Maureen was sweet, and let me see one of the strangers up close. They smell like compost, and are all gray, and they make you feel cold. They’re really beautiful, but they’ll devour your soul and turn you into one of them. Maureen says it’s super painful when they do that, and the transformation is for forever. That’s why they can only stand and breathe, and not really move, because they’re in so much pain for so long, trapped in immortal bodies.

It was cool. Kind of cool. I mean, I don’t know. Will you hate me if I like something?

Cecil: Michelle, how did you get up close to one without being devoured?

Michelle: Maureen said she’d keep me safe from them, because we’re each others’ only friends. Maureen’s a…kind person. She does like country music, but I think friendship is sometimes about compromise. If it means getting to be around her, I’m perfectly happy covering my ears and humming the Bob’s Burgers theme.

Cecil: What about the boy in the hoodie, who hangs out with Maureen?

Michelle: Chad? Chad’s okay, I guess. He’s just Maureen’s boss, though. She has to hang around him a bunch and watch his evil dog. It’s just work, you know?

Cecil: Michelle, I…

Michelle: Cecil? Music sometimes calms me. You want to hear a song I really like?

Cecil: Sure.

Michelle: Okay, here you go.

[“Palestine” by Sam Baker, featuring Carrie Elkin]

Cecil: That was a wonderful song, Michelle!

Michelle: Are you still talking about that song I started playing five minutes ago? I’ve moved on from that. Glad you like oldies so much.

Anyway, Maureen’s new phone number is Old Town-57614.

Cecil: Thanks, Michelle.

[Sound of  call disconnecting, then another dialed phone ringing on the line]

Maureen: Hi, this is Maureen. I am probably at work, or asleep, or somewhere else. Somewhere listening to the sound of the moon slowly trying to peel off our oceans with its gravity, pulling its weak little chalky speck of a body, grabbing this blue giant and tearing away at its watery skin. A futile fight. A spinning battle of large and small. And in the sky you can hear the whirling of the battling siblings.

Or maybe I just don’t want to take your call. Or maybe I’m dead. Or maybe you’re dead, and this is the voicemail you get when you die.

“Hi, Maureen here, sorry you’re dead! For some reason, I’m the one person you wanted to call the moment you left behind your short life, and I’m not even here to take it. So sorry, newly-dead person! Make sure you leave a phone number where I can reach you, because I certainly don’t know how to call dead people on the phone.”

Or maybe I lost my phone, and it’s in my car, or under a pillow, or I left it in a movie theater, or a raccoon ate it.

Maybe there’s a raccoon somewhere in the brush, or in a trash can behind a house, walking with a limp because it just ate a phone. A rectangle of glass, and metal, and electronics, that’s a quarter of the length of the raccoon’s body, and now that phone is inside the raccoon’s guts, stretching its tiny tummy impossibly long, pressing against the masked Procyon’s little heart and lungs as it walks tenderly to one side to alleviate the discomfort of such an intrusive foreign object.

The raccoon – and…this is kind of cute, kind of sad to think about – walks diagonally, all the while emitting a little “♫ doo-de-lee-doo-ooo, doo-de-lee-dooooo, doo-de-lee-doo ♫” ringtone, all muffled from within its quivering torso, and questioning its “eat everything it can find” dogma, and thinking perhaps to just limit that life philosophy to trash cans.

Of course, I bet people throw away phones all the time, so that’s probably not a big help…although in my case, I’m positive I didn’t do that because my job is too important to just throw my phone away. Too, too important. Too many evil beings to manage. Too fragile a portal into another dimension, a dimension which is probably Hell? IDK. I…I’m not a religious studies major, although if I were, I bet I would have graduated by now.

I mean, so much can go wrong if I lost my phone. Like, no one could get a hold of me to help me fix it. Which is not to say I know how to fix an inter-dimensional portal between Hell and this world, but just that I could be a person to be like “Oh no! I’m sorry to hear the portal is malfunctioning! Let me panic a little bit and make some phone calls to feel like we’re all doing something about it!”

And that would be helpful, because sympathy is critical to good teamwork, and if you don’t care about your job, you’re not gonna make anything of yourself.

I am! I am making something of myself! Just sculpting away! Here’s a clump of Maureen, let’s work it with it with these hands. Yeah, this is looking great! This is a really nice Maureen here, all ready to be put in a fire, cooled, painted, and set upon an alabaster pedestal in the foyer.

So leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.

[Answering machine beeps]

Cecil: Maureen! I finally figured it out. Chad Bowinger! That boy I’ve seen you with! He used to intern here, just like you! He went to report a story on that used sporting goods store that we thought was a front for the World Government, and never came back out. I guess it was something much worse he found in that shady old building.

Now the two of you have a really successful startup. I’m proud of our internship program here at the station. I – I’m also proud of you for becoming a professional. You’re leading an army, Maureen, that’s very impressive! Much more so than filing papers, fetching me lunch, and updating my erotic fan fiction blog. It sounds like a great job with good benefits. It’s, uh, it’s a tough job market for you young people these days. Lots of changing technologies making old jobs like print journalism, cardiology, and computer programming obsolete. Plus, all these new people moving here from Desert Bluffs? Kudos to you, Maureen!

Here’s my question, though, and it’s an important one. So, Carlos, my boyfriend. Earlier, when I talked to him, I forgot to say “I love you” at the end of the call. I was…I was preoccupied. No – no big deal. My love was implicit in the way was talked to each other. Love needn’t be verbalized when it exists in intuition and physical contact. He knows I love him.

But part of me wonders…what if one of those rare times I forgot to hug him goodbye, or failed to say “I love you,” turns out to be the last time I have that chance? Lots can go wrong in an indifferent universe.

I’ll see him in a couple of hours, right? I’ll see Carlos later. Right, Maureen?

Please call me back. I want to talk more about what you and Chad are doing to my town. I…oh. I’m getting another call from an unknown number. I’m hoping this is the Sheriff. Call me back.

Hello?

[Unidentifiable sound]

Hello?

[Unidentifiable sound]

Who is this?

[Muffled sounds that may be muffled screams, or possibly sounds that an evil dog might make – it’s unclear which]

Today’s proverb: Want to feel old? People born in 2014 have already graduated college, don’t know what a trombone is, and are all named after gourds.