157 - The Promise of Time

If it walks like a duck, and sings like a duck,
And excretes slime like a duck,
Then it’s a d- uh, you know?
I don’t think that’s a duck.
Welcome to Night Vale.

The future is here, listeners. The future is now.
Dying has become a bad joke, and we wonder how we ever put up with it.t
The Quality Cryogenics Corporation, run by one Casper Rhodes, is offering a simple solution. They will remove your brain upon death, freeze it, and then revive you hundreds of years from now, when the technology exists to live eternally.
The town was recently traumatized by time working correctly and us all having to deal with aging, so this solution is exactly what we are looking for. And it only costs 10,000 in cash, no refunds. I am currently getting together the funds to purchase this service for both myself and my husband Carlos, because I believe that the two of us can live together forever. No more is there this awful time limit ticking down from the moment of our meeting until the moment of our parting. Now our brains will sit snugly next to each other, until we are weakened anew to a bright future.

Carlos says he is a little unsure about this, because he thinks that death is one of the most scientific processes of all. But he’ll come around. We’ll just talk about it, and he’ll see it my way. After all, we have the rest of our lives. And our lives – will never end.

Here’s the news.
Now that we all know we’re going to get to live there, all any of us can talk about is the future. What is it going to be like? Will there be trees? Will we still have that insufferable moon? These are the questions we are all having to consider now that we will live forever. And one person is claiming to have those answers. A professional futurist and digital prophet named NZ has released a lengthy report outlining what the future is like. Apparently, skyscrapers will be twice as all, but also twice as thin. Each floor will only hold about one medium room or three very small rooms. But also, skyscrapers will have thousands of floors. The biggest revelation in NZ’s report is that in the future, menial labor will be done by robots! Robots will wash our cars, clean our toilets, and cook our food, leaving us all the time in the world to quietly boil in existential dread. According to NZ, these robots first enter the market in about a hundred years, and then really catch on until everyone has three or four at their disposal. And also everyone is so, so bored.

Man, the future sounds great. I can’t wait to get there!
This has been the news.

Let’s have a look at today’s horoscopes.
Leo. This is a fantastic month for new business plans, travels, meeting new people, and breaking out of the windowless prison cell you woke up in this morning. Good luck on all those exciting ventures!

Virgo. I hope you are not too attached to your left hand. Either way, you won’t be soon.

Libra. You will walk out from your house. The sun will look strange to you, even though you think it perhaps always looked like that. It will look like it always has, and it will look so strange. As you walk down the street, you will see a path you’ve never noticed before, leading away from the familiar into a dark and twisted wood. You will follow this path, the warm dirt softly crunching under your feet. At the end of the path, you will come to a small and cozy home. In the window will be a boy, and he will give you a sign. A hand to the side means it is safe to go on, a hand by the air means the burrowers are hungry tonight. A covered mouth means the time is nigh. You may proceed accordingly. Even the stars do not know what happens next.

Scorpio. You’re a great brother-in-law, husband, father and friend. And if it’s up to me - and let’s be honest, it is – the stars will never say another mean thing about you again.

Sagittarius. You are really walking on thin ice here, buddy! No really buddy, you are walking on thin ice, buddy look down, the ice is about to crack and the waters below are so cold and clear. You have never seen anything so beautiful.

Capricorn. You have spent your life searching for your soul mate. Finally, having given up on love, you have volunteered to board a starship destined to never return to our world. You will live out decades on that vast arc, developing close but platonic relationships with the few fellow humans that are with you. Finally, in your 83rd year, you will land on a planet that’s surface will appear to be made entirely of silver. You will step out onto that foreign terrain, and waiting for you will be an alien being made entirely of vapor, a wisp of a creature whose droplets will curl around you, and you will smile and realize that you have finally found your soul mate.

Aquarius. Your lucky number is five, which is also how many days you have left. That’s an auspicious coincidence!

Pisces. Everyone knows your terrible secret, and they think it’s really boring.

Aries. This just says “spiders” in increasingly large fonts for about seven pages. Aww, that’s cute!

Taurus. Turn your eyes to the heavens. Honestly, it’s better not to see what’s approaching from below.

Gemini. There will come a day in which you will have to go to the ocean. Who knows when that day will come. You might be hundreds of miles away form the ocean, you might be in an airplane or working on a farm in Ottawa. But there will come a day in which you will have to go to the ocean, and so you will travel in whatever attire you were wearing when you were called, barefoot and groggy, walking day and night until you see the glitter of water, until you hear the hush of the waves. And then you will walk into the ocean until only your head is above the surface, and you will laugh and laugh and laugh. And the ocean will laugh with you. But today is not that day. Who knows when it will come?

And lastly, Cancer. Uh huh. OK. Yeah. Everything is basically fine with you, yeah. You’re good. Nothingggggg tooo report.

This has been horoscopes.

Demand has become so high for the services of the Quality Cryogenics Corporation that Casper Rhodes announced that he has run out of space for brains. “Gotta stuff these head blobs somewhere,” he said, “but where to toss ‘em?” City Council agreed that this is an important problem, and immediately requisitioned large swaths for Night Vale real estate to serve as eventual brain storage locations. There are rumors that this move was made in exchange for free use of cryogenic services by the City Council. But the council vehemently denied the allegation and said to prove their innocence, they would arrest anyone who tried to say that they were guilty.
Initially, the public library was one of the buildings intended to be converted to brain storage. But a single librarian scuttled out from the front door and stood eye to eyes with the City Council, until the City Council whimpered and backed down. At which point the librarian silently retreated, their deadly point made, their library safe.
This is quite a change from when the only customer of Casper Rhodes was Charlie Bear, weekday shift manager at the Ralphs. Now there are only a few people left in town who haven’t signed up. I am a little ashamed to say that Carlos and I are one of those few, it’s y-, eh, taking me longer than I thought to scrape together the money and Carlos still wants to talk about it more but don’t worry, we will definitely join you all in the future. I will see you there!

Speaking of which, local futurist and digital prophet NZ is giving a seminar on the future. But attendance is expected to be low. Frankly, people find NZ’s predictions a little silly. After all, what does this NZ know about the future that we don’t? All any of us know about the future is that some day we will end up there, and by the time we get there, it won’t be the future. In any case, we expected more exciting predictions. Frequent space travel, miracle cures to the disease, and contact with more alien species than the three we know about in our primitive time. But NZ just won’t shut up about robots, and how much of the future is defined by robots serving us hand and foot. Only three people showed up to NZ’s seminar, one of whom was your faithful reporter, and one especially upset attendee even threw popcorn and led a chant of “Booriing!” during the part about the robots. And I’m not sorry I did it, either. It was very boring.

The family of missing person Frank Chen has filed a lawsuit against the city, declaring criminal negligence in allowing a five-headed dragon to claim the identity of their one-headed human family member, merely because the dragon carried about Frank’s ID.
“You are all monsters,” said Frank’s sister Lauren. “Monsters! Monsters! Monsters!”
She said this through a bullhorn, as she drove her convertible up and down the city streets.
“But how could we have known?” the City Council fumed. “What, are we supposed to look into every suspicious disappearance in Night Vale? We only have 18 hands, we are doing the best we can.”
The lawsuit will start with a document review and depositions. Currently, they are seeking all records on the suspected killer of Frank Chen, one Hiram McDaniels, who has not been seen in town for a couple years now. They also want to interview friends of Hiram, including a radio host who wouldn’t describe himself as a friend, more a dedicated observer.

And now a look at the stock market. [squeals] Wheee, ahahahaha! Ahahaha ooh, oo-hohoh, whaaaaaaaaa, hahah, wow!!
This has been a look at the stock market.

Now let’s go over to – hello? Oh sorry, wha-what are you doing here? Listeners, the futurist NZ has entered the studio. They are waving at me frantically and holding up signs, um let me just put on my reading glasses. Embarrassing, but I suppose we all eventually reach that age. I never thought I would, but now that time is working correctly and I have aged – yes. Yes, no I see you, pointing at the sign, screaming NZ just give me a moment now where did I put those glasses? It’s in my pocket, oh [chuckles]. Now there’s some sort of metal man next to NZ. Oh, yes you have a sign, OK alright, alright, here’s my glasses!
[clears throat] Uh, NZ’s sign reads “I am not a futurist, I am from the future. A time traveler sent back to warn you all.” And they’re still pointing at the metal man.
Ah, this is one of those robots that NZ is always going on about! NZ is saying that everything they told us about the robots was true, and they brought one just to prove it, well hi robot! Oh, oh the robot has something to say? Oh, wait, it’s saying “I’m hardly a bear.” Well no, [chuckles] I’d say you’re not. You’re more of  a robot. Oh no, I misheard, they’re saying “Time carved a pear.” What? NZ, I think your robot is malfunctioning. Wait, not it’s saying… it’s saying, “I’m Charlie Bear.” Charlie Bear? Well he’s the weekday shift manager at the Ralphs, this makes no sense. The robot is saying again: “I’m Charlie Bear.” And then it is saying: “Help me.” It is saying “help me” over and over in a hollow digital moan.

Listeners, uh..
Let’s check in on the weather.

[“Good Intentions, Bad Advice” by Nicky Flowers https://nickyflowers.bandcamp.com]

The robot told us everything. Once the robot was Charlie Bear, weekday shift manger at the Ralphs, and then a man named Casper Rhodes came to town. Casper offered the idea of living forever, freezing Charlie’s brain after death so that he could wake up in the future once mortality was a bad dream. Once sickness was a memory. So Charlie signed up. He took out his life savings plus a couple loans and paid the 10,000 dollars. And Charlie became the first customer of the Quality Cryogenics Corporation. And Charlie was so happy. He is so happy somewhere in town, even while this robot tells us its story. Charlie is unaware, and he is happy. Because Charlie believes he has defeated death. And Charlie will continue to believe this for another 15 years until the unfortunate whistle pig incident. And after that, his brain will be removed from his mangled corpse and will remain frozen for centuries in the grain silo outside of town. And then one day, Charlie will awaken. It will be the future, as promised, and as promised he will not be dead, but all will not be well. He will have awoken as a brain in a metal body chained to that body’s programming. It will be explained to him that he was brought to the future by the Quality Cyborg Corporation, in order to take care of any errands or busywork needed while the humans of that future relax and watch him toil.
You see, when we deny death and toss ourselves into the future, we do so with the strange delusion that the future feels it owes us life. That in the world of the future, they would want nothing more than to devote time and money into resurrecting each of us into eternal wellness. But the future does not feel any obligation to us at all. The past means only one thing to the future, the past is a resource. Every brain saved by Casper Rhodes is a resource.

It is a trick. We are being used. We must put a stop to this, we were all wrong trying to fight death this way, to put our trust in the future is though it would be anything but some other person’s present. Carlos was right, I was wrong! Who is this Casper Rhodes, and why is he doing this?

Oh, Casper’s calling to the station. He must be calling to confess or otherwise explain his crimes. Casper, is that you? What have you done? What have you done?
Casper: Hi there, Cecil. Was listening to your show and really disappointed to hear what you were saying about me, buddy. But as the Smiling God says: when your enemies try to bring you down, just smile wider and wider until your smile eclipses the sun and then all other life in the universe. Believe in a Smiling God, buddy. Believe in a Smiling God.

Today’s proverb: As Dolly Parton said: tumble out of bed, and I stumble to the kitchen. Have to fight an evil magician, yawn and stretch and fight him for my life. Wise words.