The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe

by Joseph Fink

  We tried it with a few different voices, but it was easy to pick the one we used moving forward as the right choice. I love that it makes no attempt to sound old, but that it also doesn’t sound quite like a normal human either. It is the voice of someone telling you a terrible secret. And the Faceless Old Woman has many terrible secrets to tell.

  —Joseph Fink

  Our God is an awesome god, much better than that ridiculous god that Desert Bluffs has.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE.

  There is, listeners, a blinking light up on the mountain. It is red. Blinking lights are always red. It is nestled among the crags and nooks of the precipitous slope. We all can see it. No use denying it. The City Council tried. “Nope,” they said. “Blinking light? Let me think. Blinking light. No, sorry, it doesn’t ring any bells.” But then a bell started ringing, a signal from the watchman who lives in Night Vale’s invisible clock tower, letting us know that he had seen something. And we all saw it too. It was a blinking light up on the mountain. “Ah, well,” said the council, crawling backwards through a window into Town Hall, one by one, “Ah, well, it was worth a shot.”

  What does this light mean? Who will dare investigate it? Will it spell our doom? Dear listeners: Who knows. No one. And probably. More, later. For now: just this. Just a blinking light. Red. Up on the mountain.

  Harrison Kip, adjunct professor of archaeology at Night Vale Community College, announced an upcoming three-part series on Night Vale Community Television, defending his fringe views that the pyramids and other ancient structures were constructed by human beings, rather than benevolent ancient aliens. Harrison, against decades of reasonable evidence, raved that “it’s possible that these historical marvels could have been made using mathematics and slave labor.” He went on to explain, shrieking like an obvious lunatic, that agriculture was probably not started on Mars and that humanity was created through evolution and not through selective breeding of alien DNA.

  We reached out for comment to the president of Night Vale Community College, Sarah Sultan, who is a smooth, fist-size river rock, about the extreme beliefs expressed by a staff member. Sarah had no comment, as she is a smooth, fist-size river rock and unable to speak. She can write, however, and wrote No Comment before drawing an insulting caricature of your humble reporter, which was hurtful and unnecessary.

  Listeners, here’s something weird. I know you can’t see it, but it’s sitting in the studio with me at this very moment. And it is definitely something and definitely weird. I’m not sure how it got here, but I’m not sure how I got here either. Causation is difficult and confusing. I haven’t tried touching it. I’m going to try touching it now.

  I believe it likes being touched, because it started to vibrate and lean in toward my body. But that could just be its way of expressing anger or immense physical suffering. When something is this weird, one shouldn’t assume to understand anything specific about it at all.

  Is it a bomb? Is it one of those objects that isn’t a bomb? Is it just a kind of dog? We don’t know, and we will never find out, and we will never try to find out. Ignorance may not actually be bliss, but it is certainly less work.

  So with no new information, and with nothing learned, I’ll repeat what I said, gesturing at it with a hand you cannot see: Listeners, here’s something weird.

  A continuation on our previous report about a blinking light up on the mountain: As many of you noted, the very nature of our report indicated the existence of a mountain, which is surprising, given that we live in vast desert flatness. So yes, there is a mountain. Let’s start there. There is a mountain now, rising up out of the alluvial floodplain. It is made of rock and height and awe. Its peak is higher than where I am now, but lower than the void. Larry Leroy, out on the edge of town, said that it was definitely a mountain, saying, “That’s a mountain if I’ve ever seen one. I haven’t though. Seen one. I think that’s what they’re like. Mountains are like that, right?” Madeline LaFleur, head of the Night Vale Tourism Board, said, “Oh great, now we’re going to have to reprint all of these brochures” before taking more sips of her coffee than she needed to in a given span of time, because the frequency of sips was under her control, and her own life was not. John Peters, you know, the farmer? We haven’t heard from him in a while. If anyone knows where he went, or about the blinking light up on the mountain, or the mountain rising up out of this muddy plain outside of town, please call into the station and release the information with your mouth.

  As part of our service to our community, Night Vale Community Radio is taking this moment to allow one of the candidates for mayor to make a brief statement. The following is from the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home.

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: I replaced your books with other books. The covers are the same, but the content has been altered. I don’t think you read enough, but that is not why I did it. I changed every single word of some of the books. In others, only a single comma on a single page. This is a metaphor, but I’m not sure what it represents. That is also a metaphor. We all are.

  Our political system has become too complicated. I am not complicated. I’m just a gentle old lady, who lives in your home. I’m touching your hand right now. No, not that one. Not that one either.

  Do not think you are superior because you have a face and I do not. All of your books are now different books and you did not notice, so who is the lost child in the dark, howling woods of this fable?

  Anyway, I hope you’ll vote for me. One of the books is now my life story, if you’d like to know more about my background. No, not that one. Not that one either. You’ll know it, because my life story is just like yours, starting with calamity and shouting, and ending with an empty room and a to-do list.

  Also Hiram McDaniels has been exchanging e-mails with corn lobbyists looking to elbow in on our local imaginary corn market. Hiram: Bad for our community, bad for our interests, literally a five-headed dragon. Vote for the candidate you can trust. Vote for the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home.

  CECIL: And now a word from our sponsor.

  Today’s broadcast may have been brought to you by uncertainty.

  And now back to our regular programming.

  Ah, we have some sharp listeners. Several of you noted that the strangeness of today does not end with the blinking light up on the mountain, or the mountain itself, but also this vast, muddy plain it rises from. So yes, we are now reporting that there is a great floodplain, strewn with bones, around our city. Its wet patches glint slightly when the blinking light is illuminated. At night, when all distance is darkness, it appears that the universe itself is glimmering red and then gone. Red and then gone. The mud ripples under the footsteps of the approaching, masked army, and this warps the reflections in interesting ways. Carlos says he would like to study it, but that he promised to make a certain person dinner, and he has to learn how to put other things besides science first. Some of this realization might have come with help from those around him. Mayor Pamela Winchell was seen holding her official mayoral bloodstone aloft toward the mountain and the blinking light up on it. She was standing on that plain. The plain that exists now, which we should have mentioned earlier.

  In other news, a man in a tan jacket carrying a deerskin suitcase was seen outside of one of the currently closed subway entrances, passing out flyers explaining the benefits of a mass transit system and encouraging citizens to push for the reopening of the subway as soon as possible. “Transit is the opposite of traffic!” the flyer reportedly said. And “Subway?? More like wowza!” Some citizens reported that the flyer went on to say: “Traverse the naval of the world. That secret, buried point. It is my home. Help me get home. It is already too late to be early, but not too late to be on time.” Here at the station, we can’t confirm any of this, as those holding the flyer soon found that it had vanished from their hands, that they could barely remember their interaction with the man, and that, looking back, all they saw was a haze of dust and
heat, distant and indecipherable, like a country they’d never live to visit, like the landscape of a fading dream, like fiction, like fiction.

  All right, we’re really going to get it right this time. We have been focusing too narrowly, and we realize that. As many of you pointed out, we should have spent less time on the blinking light and more time expanding on the bit about the approaching masked army. So: There is now a great, masked army, coming toward us across the bone-covered plain. We have no specific information about them, other than that they look small when far away, and then appear to grow as they come closer, which they are, coming closer. They also might be actually growing. They are quite large now. The blinking light up on the mountain has not changed its pace. There is a noise like growling, only less organic. Like wind hollowing through a canyon, only more . . . growly.

  Ladies and gentlemen, here is what we know. There is a blinking light up on the mountain. There is a mountain on the floodplain. There is a floodplain under the imminent army. There is an imminent army maybe a couple hours’ march from here. I do not believe now that we are leaving anything out.

  If you have homes, I suggest you flee them. If you have friends, I suggest you warn them. If you have children, did you not know how dangerous and unpredictable the world was when you created a defenseless tiny human within it?

  And much like Madeline LaFleur, head of the Night Vale Tourism Board, I will now control the one part of my life that is under my control. Let us go now, and I do hope we come back, to the weather.

  WEATHER: “Never Be Famous” by Hussalonia

  Well, we did come back. Here we are. Postweather.

  Carlos finally took a look at the situation. The blinking light up on the mountain and all that came with it. Horrific invading army, etc.

  “Oh that,” he said, gesturing with a spatula he had until moments before been using to cook, “that’s a mirage. I’ve seen that one before. When you get the clouds in a certain way and the temperature is where it’s at, you can sometimes get this blinking light–mountain floodplain–masked army mirage. Wow, this is a pretty strong one. Should disappear in an hour or two.”

  And it did. Completely gone. Well, the mountain and the blinking light and the floodplain disappeared. The masked army turned out to be real, but they weren’t coming to attack us, just passing through on their way to attacking someone else, and they provided some valuable traffic for local business. A few of them even took a bus tour of Radon Canyon.

  Madeline LaFleur was both relieved and pleased. “I’m relieved,” she said. “I’m also pleased.” She still was sipping her coffee too often. Perhaps her feeling of lack of control stems from a personal issue rather than the impending doom we imagined. Stress from her failure to live up to her own self-imposed life goals for instance. Or a relationship that wasn’t exactly the relationship she had envisioned it would be.

  But who knows? No one. No one has ever known anything. Not really.

  Still, nonetheless, we have come to another end. We have come to it as we always do: blind, ignorant, groping. I take comfort in that consistency.

  There is no blinking light up on the mountain. There is no mountain towering over a muddy plain. There is no muddy plain under an invading army. There was an invading army, but they’re gone now. What is left? Well, what is always left?

  Night Vale. Our little city, our tiny town, our Night Vale. Proud. Safe. Existent.

  Stay tuned next for the background hum of the universe, amplified, and with live color commentary.

  Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

  PROVERB: Throw your hands in the air. Now your arms. Keep detaching limbs and throwing them in the air. Hopefully, the birds will be sated and leave.

  EPISODE 32:

  “YELLOW HELICOPTERS”

  OCTOBER 1, 2013

  GUEST VOICE: JACKSON PUBLICK

  OVER THE COURSE OF OUR FIRST YEAR, WE DEVELOPED THE STORY OF Cecil and Carlos’s relationship, culminating in their getting together in episode 25, “One Year Later.” When we first started we didn’t really plan to have any long story arcs. It’s not that we rejected the idea. We just didn’t really plan any. Cecil and Carlos happened organically based on intuition.

  As year two began, we continued writing some one-off episodes (“Summer Reading Program” and “Subway,” to name a couple) with the thought that these new story lines could and would come back later, but nothing as far as a major plot arc goes.

  Then as the Dana story line unfolded with the desert otherworld, and as Joseph and I talked about what Desert Bluffs might be up to, we came to episode 32, “Yellow Helicopters.”

  We had only loosely discussed down-the-road ideas. It was mostly things like: “I have an idea about Cecil finding old cassettes of himself” or “I think it’d be interesting to have an episode where Cecil suddenly isn’t there and someone else is running the show.” More on these ideas soon.

  I wrote the first draft of episode 32 wherein yellow helicopters with the Strexcorp logos start showing up in Night Vale. In episode 19, A and B, Kevin R. Free played such a delightfully evil Kevin from Desert Bluffs, I just wanted to find ways to get that story back into the show.

  So here in episode 32, I had Strexcorp buy the Night Vale Community Radio Station.

  When I sent over the first draft of the script, Joseph’s response was “Oh, I guess we’re doing this.” I didn’t really recognize what we were doing until we were doing what we were doing, but he was right, we were doing it.

  —Jeffrey Cranor

  A lonely heart. A wandering eye. An empty stomach. A shoulder to cry on. This is what makes us us.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE.

  Sad news, listeners. Old Woman Josie says that the angels who have been living with her, helping around the house, and ultimately protecting her from all evils, have disappeared. It’s hard to say just how sad this news is, for two important reasons: One, angels are not real, and two, we are not allowed to know about their existence or hierarchical structure.

  Josie called this weekend and spoke to Vithya our station intern. She said the angels often leave her for a few hours or days at a time, but they’ve never been gone for three straight weeks. She thinks they are off fighting an important war for good, but she’s worried that maybe she just made them mad or bored. “Angels get bored very easily,” Josie said, “which is strange because they are eternal and there is a lot of downtime during immortality.”

  Vithya told Josie that angels aren’t real and that we cannot know such things about them, but this just made Vithya cry, because if you talk about angels and you are one who has been secretly chosen by angels for special angelic purposes, you will start crying. Vithya has been sobbing quite a bit this morning, as a matter of fact. I keep asking her “Are you okay?” But she just says “Angels aren’t real,” and then buries her heaving face into her inner elbow and runs off.

  Dear listeners, it appears the angels, if they are real, and they are not, have left Night Vale, and none of us are allowed to know this. So forget I said anything.

  The Night Vale Medical Board wants to know: Are you heart healthy? How healthy is your heart? Have you ever checked? Doctors recommend checking your heart at least once a year. Simply separate the skin on your upper chest and break open the ribs. (Here’s a tip: If you don’t have a bone saw handy, just sterilize any old electric saw you might have in your work shed.) Right behind your ribs, kind of to the left is a potato-shaped muscle lump filled with straw and maybe some insects. That’s your heart! Pull that out and sew your chest back up.

  Wash your heart in warm water. Pat dry with a paper towel and roll flat on a floured surface. Brown on both sides in a sauté pan and eat immediately. Remember: A healthy heart is a healthy life.

  This has been Community Health Tips.

  Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been getting reports that several yellow helicopters have been seen hovering above town. We all are aware of the black helicopters, which are world government, and blue hel
icopters, which are secret police, and the helicopters with detailed murals of diving birds of prey, which are the helicopters that took all the children in Night Vale away a few months ago. We still don’t know what those helicopters are. But they did bring all the children back unharmed and much more well-behaved than before, so they are deemed just as safe as the other helicopters.

  But these new yellow helicopters . . . no one quite knows. They tend to hover in packs of three or more in fixed locations for several minutes before moving on. The City Council has said that the helicopters are our guests and they should be treated as such. But added that the helicopters, more specifically, are uninvited guests and should be treated with fear, hatred, and uncontrolled panic.

  If you have more information on these yellow helicopters, keep it to yourself, there’s no question they can hear every move, every sentence, you make. Be quiet and stay inside. They already know.

  Let’s go now to sports.

  After a second straight loss this weekend, Night Vale High School football coach Nazr al-Mujaheed expressed some concern over senior quarterback Michael Sandero’s poor play. Last season, the Scorpions won the division title under Sandero’s leadership and special powers he had acquired from multiple lightning strikes. One such advantage was the second head he had grown, which helped him see rushing linebackers and get better reads on zone coverage. But in the off-season Sandero had one of his heads surgically removed leaving him with only the head that speaks Russian.

  Angry fans speculate that because Sandero no longer looks like his original self, and because he no longer speaks English nor Spanish, he does not have the same rapport with his teammates. When asked whether or not Sandero was losing the respect of his team, coach al-Mujaheed said: “Our boys play together. Our boys play good games. We want to”—and here he paused, clearly upset with his star quarterback’s decision to get off-season surgery without consulting team trainers. “We want to be good football boys,” he concluded.