The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe

by Joseph Fink

  EPISODE 38:

  “ORANGE GROVE”

  JANUARY 1, 2014

  I KILLED TWO GOOD PEOPLE.

  Sort of killed. Depends on your definition of alive, I guess, and how sentient you consider fictional characters.

  In this episode, Intern Maureen—named after one of my favorite people, author Maureen Johnson—and Adam Bair—named after the person who bought the welcometonightvale.com domain long before we realized we needed to secure it from poachers, and just gave it to us—both touched the Orange Juice that made them flicker out of existence.

  We didn’t hear much from Adam. I hope he appreciated his death.

  But Maureen—oh boy.

  In fact, we heard about it on Twitter from Maureen. So much so that somehow her intern namesake didn’t die at all. More on that later. But this was the episode that drew Maureen’s online ire.

  The upshot, though, was we ultimately became good friends with Maureen. The lesson, as always, is if you want to make friends, you simply need to kill virtual versions of people you like in a work of fiction.

  We agreed to keep Intern Maureen alive as long as author Maureen agreed to perform her part live at our two-year anniversary show at New York’s Town Hall that June. And she did, and it was perfect.

  That recording is available online (at our website—you know, the one Adam Bair gifted us? He was a good Web designer, and he will be missed).

  —Jeffrey Cranor

  You take the good. You take the bad. You take them both, and there you have spiders crawling out of a red velvet cupcake.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE.

  We start today’s show with some exciting agricultural news. John Peters, you know, the farmer?, said his winter orange crop is outstanding this year. He said there are oranges everywhere. Delicious clementines, juicy Valencias, rich navels, and bold blood oranges. John said there are so many oranges. A real bumper crop, he said. A real orange-tacular, he did not say. A real orange-a-thon, he never would have said. A real orange-ocalypse, he may have thought but kept to himself.

  John, speaking to a pack of local reporters, and backed by a group of farmers wearing black double-breasted suits and red silk ties, said this is the dawning of a new citrus economy in Night Vale. John said citrus is our future. Citrus holds the key to prosperity. Citrus holds the key to health. One particular orange here literally holds the key to a one-sided door in the middle of the desert. If you find that orange, John said, I will pay you dearly for it. Or rather, John corrected himself, you will pay dearly for it. John then said, either way. Whatever. Would love to have that orange, my friend. Would love to have that orange. Yes sir, he punctuated. Or ma’am. Or neither. I mean, whoever. Sure would love to have that orange. He chuckled while sweating and adjusting his wooden hat.

  John then tossed some oranges to the reporters. The reporters caught the oranges and then began to disappear and reappear, blinking in and out of existence. Quickly at first, then slowly, then more out of existence than in, until they were all gone.

  More on this story as it develops.

  The City Council announced today that they just can’t be here anymore. They said this in unison, standing in a cramped meeting room and wearing tiny rectangular sunglasses. They added that they wish us all the best in our final weeks. They then made the standard American Sign Language “I Love You” gesture as smoke filled the room.

  Witnesses said the smoke smelled of maple and was a little briny but not unpleasantly so. When the haze cleared the City Council was still standing in the room apologizing, claiming “This usually works” and then, no longer speaking in unison, casting blame on each other for not believing hard enough and that if weren’t for so-and-so they’d all be on a beach somewhere safe from the bears or whatever those things are.

  When asked for an explanation about the bears, or whatever those things are, the council simply whispered, in unison, “Mistaaaaakes.” No follow-up questions were asked, as the reporters became physically and emotionally occupied with the dozens of agitated starlings that began pouring from the air-conditioning duct.

  You know, listeners, I’ve been thinking about John Peters’s orange grove. I did a little digging online and found that orange trees are not native to deserts.

  I also e-mailed my boyfriend, Carlos, about this. He’s a scientist, which kind of makes me a scientist too.

  Here’s Carlos’s e-mail back to me just now:

  Cecil, I’ll do my best to answer your questions, but do know that I don’t specialize in botany or dendrology. I am a scientist. I study science, not plants or nature.

  I did drive out past John’s farm a month ago, and there wasn’t a single tree, just acres and acres of rocky, cracked, flat ground. There’s no way he could have grown anything natural on that land, let alone a bountiful orange grove, especially in just a few weeks.

  As far as your other question goes, let’s stay home tonight. We ate out last night. Plus, there’s a new documentary about scatterplot matrices on Netflix I’ve been wanting to see. Also The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is on TBS again. We could rewatch that. I’ll make pasta, if you can pick up some—

  Et cetera et cetera. Carlos goes on about weekend bowling plans. . . . You don’t need all this. Okay, I think that’s all he had about the orange trees. I do hope we watch Liberty Valance, though. I love that film.

  And now a word from our sponsors.

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  Stamps.com. You live in a dying world. We love you.

  Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just received word that the Ralphs is stocked full of fresh orange juice from John’s farm. It’s called JP’s OJ, where the O in OJ is a bright cartoonish sun with big, pink eyes, and a strained, toothy smile, and the J is a sickle the sun is using to slice down ripe oranges from a large tree.

  Adam Bair, weekday shift manager at the Ralphs, said they have removed all other produce to stock JP oranges and even emptied out the refrigerators to fully showcase all of JP’s mouthwatering stock of fresh juice. Even several of the dry goods aisles had to be cleared out, Adam said, pulling oranges from his apron pockets. He continued pulling oranges from his tiny pocket, mesmerized by their seeming infinitude and unable to continue speaking as he began to blink out of existence.

  Listeners, we here at Night Vale Community Radio need to offer the following correction.

  In a previous broadcast, we described the world as real. We indicated, using our voice, that it was made up of many real objects and entities, and we gave descriptions of these disparate parts. We even went so far as to ascribe action and agency to some of the entities.

  But, as we all know, nothing can be fully understood to be real. Any description of the world we give is simply the world we experience, which is to say a narrative we force onto whatever horror or void lies behind the scrim of our perception.

  We at the sta
tion offer our deepest, most humble apologies for the previous, erroneous report. We affirm once again that nothing is real, including this correction, and least of all your experience of hearing it.

  This has been corrections.

  More on the orange grove: Intern Maureen brought it to my attention that until today John Peters, you know, the farmer?, has been missing for about four months. Former intern Dana was the last to see him. Unfortunately, we do not know where Dana was when she saw him. We are also unclear as to when Dana was, as time and space seem to not apply to Dana these days. She’s been without a phone charger for about eight months now, and we’re still texting. Also, I’m not sure how she’s been paying her cell phone bill.

  Maureen. What is that? Maureen, that’s not a glass of orange juice you’re drinking, is it?

  Oh, I see. She got it from our station break room, not from the Ralphs. It’s probably safe, then.

  Oh, well, thank you for the offer, Maureen, but I’m still working on my coffee.

  [Sips coffee]

  Maureen, is everything okay?

  Listeners, Maureen is just staring at me, silent, a single bead of sweat running down her left temple. She is staring now at the orange juice. She is biting her upper lip with her lower jaw and breathing through her nose. Her cheeks are flushing, and she is shaking her head, very, verrry slightly. That looks like a no.

  Is that a no, Maureen?

  Listeners, I think that’s a no from Maureen.

  Oh dear. Maureen just flickered. Like she was there and then she wasn’t and then she was, like when a plane flies in front of the sun, and the light leaves for a brief moment as you wonder, for just that split second, is this it? Is it over? Only to have the sun return as your brain hears the faint hum of a distant jet and you sigh with relief and disappointment that everything is as it was. A similar thing just happened with Maureen.

  Listen, Maureen, I’m—

  She is backing out of the studio. She is backing out of the studio. She has dropped the glass. She is flickering. She is flickering. She is gone.

  Listeners, Maureen is gone. I hear no hum of jets. I see no intern. Just an open door and an empty glass and a spreading stain.

  To the family of Intern Maureen, she was a good intern with a beautiful puppy and a chatty neighbor. She will be missed.

  [Incoming e-mail sound]

  Wait, I just got another e-mail from Carlos, marked urgent. He says:

  Cecil, just talked to my team of scientists, who have been investigating the house that doesn’t exist. The one in the Desert Creek housing development that looks like it exists? Like it’s right there when you look at it, and it’s between two other identical houses, so it would make more sense for it to be there than not? That one.

  They still have not gotten up the courage to go inside the house, but they did peek in the window, and they saw John Peters, you know, the farmer? They saw John sitting in a chair in an empty room staring at a picture on the wall. They could not see what was in the picture, but John was sitting quietly, staring at it, not moving. They called his name. They tried dialing his phone, but he did not respond. They even knocked on the door. Nothing.

  Whoever this John Peters is selling oranges and orange juice, he is not the John Peters we know.

  Also, I take it back. I think we should go out to eat again tonight. I tried to go to the store but they’re completely out of pasta, tomatoes, herbs, scissors, fire, everything.

  Well, now, that is—

  [Banging sound]

  Listeners, someone is pounding at the studio door, despite the brightly lit ON AIR—DO NOT DISTURB sign we always put out.

  Dear listeners, John Peters just came to visit. I should talk with him. Maybe this is a good time for us to go to the wea—No! Wait. Stop. John! NOO—

  [Very suddenly the weather]

  WEATHER: “Black White and Red” by Emrys Cronin

  Listeners, what a fretful few moments we just had. John Peters, you know, the imposter? He burst into our studio and tried forcing me to eat an orange. I attempted to reason with him, attempted to talk about our old bowling league and the wood shop class he used to teach.

  I even asked him about the hilarious times we used to have standing silent and trancelike in front of the Ancient Chalk Spire (predecessor to the current Brown Stone Spire), our mouths frothing, our minds spinning, our ventricles slowing. But John did not acknowledge any of these fond memories.

  As a last resort, with the orange nearing my face and my back pressing hard against the sharp edge of my broadcast table, I grabbed my phone to tell Carlos that if I didn’t make it home tonight, it wasn’t because I didn’t love him, or didn’t want to watch a documentary on special scientific graphs, or was too obsessed with my job to relax and enjoy a good meal and some television. It was only because I was zapped out of existence by a lunatic Non–John Peters. And that, in fact, I do love Carlos, and I would want nothing more than to watch a documentary on scientific graphs over some homemade linguini, or go out to eat again, or whatever.

  But then, as I grabbed my phone, I thought: That’s way too long to write for a text. So I just hit John Peters upside the head with it, knocking him unconscious.

  The Sheriff’s Secret Police came to carry the fake John away, telling me that I didn’t see anything here. But then the Strexcorp-affiliated Station Management arrived and asked the Sheriff and his Secret Police to stand down and that they, the Secret Police, didn’t see anything here and to move along like nothing happened. The Secret Police nodded, and quietly shuffled out of the building, heads facing down at their shoes.

  There’s still an empty OJ glass on the floor. The carpet around it is dark, not with liquid stain but with void. The spilled juice has taken the rug wherever it has taken Maureen, wherever it has taken the reporters, wherever it probably took the real John Peters, you know, the farmer?

  Oh. My producer, Daniel, just gave me a disapproving smile as he handed me this note: “Strexcorp Synergists, Inc., majority shareholder of JP’s OJ Ltd., is recalling all oranges and juices due to . . .” (and here there’s just a dark red smudge across the words). “Strexcorp apologizes for any inconveniences, disappearances, lethargy, and/or multiplicity you may have experienced.”

  [Text message sound]

  Oh, Carlos texted: “No pasta, but there’s leftover falafel and an unopened bag of nutmeg seeds to snack on. xoxo”

  And then there’s an emoji of two dinosaurs chasing an early 1980s Ford Mustang up a palmetto-lined suburban street as some residents look on shocked and scared, a few laughing, others undisturbed as they mow their lawns or sculpt their fruit-shaped topiary bushes.

  Oh, that’s very cute. Listeners, let me release my own special announcement: Cecil Palmer would like to not be late for dinner.

  Stay tuned next for an hour that will feel like minutes but will in actuality take weeks.

  Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

  PROVERB: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single command from a satellite-activated mind-control chip.

  EPISODE 39:

  “THE WOMAN FROM ITALY”

  JANUARY 15, 2014

  SOMETIMES, WHEN YOU’RE CREATING AN ONGOING ARTISTIC PROJECT, YOU have to throw caution to the wind and just get the job done! Does an idea sound too over the top, but it intrigues you? Great—try it out and see what happens. Maybe it is the best idea you’ve ever had, or maybe it falls flat and you have to try something new. You can make yourself crazy wondering if the finished product is “good” or just “good enough,” second-guessing yourself, your instincts, your talent, your life, the universe, oh God, why did anyone ever give me a microphone in the first place?!? It’s a slippery slope, to say the least.

  “What’s up with that voice, Cecil? Why do you sound like the leprechaun from that ’90s Jennifer Aniston movie?”

  Wish I had an answer for you, but the truth is I have no idea. Cecil seemed to be possessed, unconsciously speaking in verse about this mysterious
stranger, and I just followed those given circumstances.

  With some episodes of Night Vale, there’s a moment before I send the finished recording off to Joseph and Jeffrey where I think to myself: “This sounds so over the top! There’s no way they will put this on the air.” And miraculously, they usually run with it (there’s only been one instance where I went off the rails and had to pull back a performance to make the character more grounded in the world of Night Vale).

  Working on a project like this, with a dedicated first-person narrator, I am always conscious about trying to find as many different variations in acting choices as I can. And sometimes, you just have to pull out the weird voices . . . Night Vale is a weird place, after all.

  —Cecil Baldwin, Voice of Cecil Palmer

  Flying is actually the safest mode of transportation. The second safest is dreaming. The third safest is decomposing into rich earth and drifting away with the wind and rain.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE.

  Hello listeners, welcome to this, another day. Or, you were already in this day, and my voice is now joining you. Perhaps you should be welcoming me.

  I’d like to take this moment to update you about the misbehaving child, Tamika Flynn. She has been witnessed with her army of missing children, sabotaging any business owned by Strexcorp, which is getting to be most of them at this point. The White Sand Ice Cream Shoppe isn’t. There are probably others. They should not be proud of this.

  Tamika was last seen leading her army through the Ralphs, shouting to all witnesses that “We are here. We are the beating heart. We are the breathing lungs. We are the lips that chant.” before erecting a bloodstone circle in the produce section in direct defiance of Strexcorp’s recent ban on bloodstone manufacture and use. This was wrong of her, and it is my duty to condemn her act of extreme civic pride and heroism, which is also wrong. Everything was incorrect, and not allowed, and should not be celebrated or reported on.