The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe

by Joseph Fink

I’m not sure why you’re asking all these questions. All I know is that I would do anything for the folks at Night Vale. And I’m thrilled to be a part in any way.

  Now give me my *&$#%& college credits, Cecil.

  —Maureen Johnson, Voice of Intern Maureen

  Think back. Look forward. Listen timelessly.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE.

  Hello listeners. I speak to you now from the one spot of Night Vale that remains truly ours. The studios of the Night Vale Community Radio Station. I have learned well from my misunderstanding about how barricading a door works, and so I have, for two weeks, managed to keep this studio free of Strexcorp influence and employees.

  But enough preamble. Now, to the amble. Today is the day. There is only one thing for today, and that is the destruction of the hated Strexcorp, and the freeing of our town Night Vale. We will work no longer. We will worship a smiling god no longer. We have failed before—we have failed so many times at so many tasks—but at this we will not fail.

  I hope.

  I really really hope we will not fail.

  In any case, we will be devoting all of today’s broadcast to the revolution, with no interruptions.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Excuse me!

  CECIL: Excuse me?

  HIRAM-GREEN: CEASE SPEAKING OR I WILL CEASE YOUR SPEAKING FOR YOU.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Easy there, Green head.

  CECIL: Listeners, I’m sorry. Mayoral candidate and literal five-headed dragon Hiram McDaniels has just burst into the studio.

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: I am also present.

  CECIL: Did someone speak?

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: Yes, it’s me. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home. I’m crouched in the crawlspace under your studio right now. There are many interesting insects and pipes down here.

  CECIL: Well, it’s great to have you both, but there’s a revolution to do, so—

  HIRAM-GOLD: Listen, Cecil. Far be it from me to get in the way of your revolution. I’m all for liberty.

  HIRAM-PURPLE: The tree of liberty must be periodically watered with blood and mulched with detached limbs and pruned using shears made from bones. It’s my favorite tree.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Yes, exactly, Purple head.

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: We are here because you are forgetting the most important thing that is happening today. Today is election day. That day when finally Night Vale citizens will be able to effect change. Or not effect change, but be affected by it.

  CECIL: Well. Sure. There’s also an election today. And we will definitely cover that as well. Okay? Now please go stand in the alley behind City Hall and await the results, as is traditional.

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: Thanks, Cecil.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Absolutely. Thank you much. Check back in with you soon.

  HIRAM-GREEN: YES, WHAT MY GOLD HEAD SAID, YOU PITIFUL WHELP OF A MAN.

  [Exit HIRAM and FACELESS OLD WOMAN]

  CECIL: Let’s go immediately to the news.

  Many citizens are reporting that old oak doors with brass knobs have been appearing all over town. The doors open onto a desert landscape quite like this one. Through these doors are arriving tall creatures with long faces and broad wings. These creatures are difficult to categorize, but the best I can do is “definitely not-angels.” The not-at-all-angelic creatures are joined by enormous men and women wearing masks. The not-angels and the masked army have torn down the electric fences trapping people at the Strexcorp company picnic.

  This is great news. But unfortunately, the news is not over.

  Strexcorp has responded with a seemingly unending force of eyeless, blood-drenched office workers, dressed in smart but affordable business casual clothing and armed with jagged knives and toothy smiles. They are backed by a swarm of yellow helicopters that have filled the sky and yet, strangely, have not blotted out the sun. In fact, the sun seems brighter than ever. Unnaturally bright, if a ball of highly compacted gas that sustains life through mere proximity could ever be called natural.

  The horrible, smiling office workers have driven the tall, winged creatures and the masked army back from the picnic. The Strex force is too much for even these rescuers from another world to handle. Whatever unspecified powers they have are, unspecifically, not enough, and they are, quite specifically, losing. They are fleeing. Some have fallen, as the ravenous office workers swarm over them.

  The angels, or, you know, “not-angels,” have entered the juvenile detention center, looking for a certain little girl, no, young woman, no, human being, and her well-trained militia of other human beings. But the cell that once contained Tamika Flynn is empty.

  Instead there are only shackles that have been pulled completely apart, and the words I AM FOUND written on a bookmark laid across page 210 of a paperback copy of Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing. The current whereabouts of Tamika Flynn are not known. The winged creatures who are all named Erika and the army of masked giants have continued their retreat before the onslaught of eyeless office workers all the way past the Old Town Drawbridge.

  Given the urgency of today, I planned to skip some of our regular features as well as sponsor ads, but since forcing out our current ownership, we’ve gotten a bit behind on our bills. So there’s now a sentient patch of haze in my studio.

  DEB: Hello, Cecil. Hello, listeners. My name is Deb.

  CECIL: And Deb won’t leave my studio until she has told us about . . . what are you promoting?

  DEB: Whole Foods.

  CECIL: Right. So, even though we have a big revolution to do, let’s take a moment to listen to Deb the sentient patch of haze about . . .

  DEB: Whole Foods. Thanks, Cecil.

  At Whole Foods, we don’t have any rotting, decayed matter mixed into our products. There are no secret blood rooms in our stores, where we keep the secret blood. None of the boxes of cereal contain spiders, and, if they did, they would be very friendly, helpful spiders. Why, you would be lucky to find a spider like that in a box of Whole Foods cereal. Or not just one. Hundreds of them. But anyway, you won’t.

  Whole Foods serves only the freshest food, and certainly we do not keep venomous snakes under the fruit in our produce section. Why would we? That would be dangerous and not good for business. No one has died of a snakebite in a Whole Foods. No one you know.

  Whole Foods: Why in the world would we poison our frozen dinners? We definitely do not.

  CECIL: Thanks, Deb.

  DEB: No, thank you, Cecil. Good luck with whatever you’ve got going on here. Seems uninteresting and human.

  CECIL: Okay, well . . . good-bye, Deb.

  [Exit DEB]

  [Sound cue: static, radio distortion]

  Listeners, I apologize for these noises you may be getting. There is some other radio signal interfering with our own.

  LAUREN: Cecil? Hi, it’s Lauren Mallard, you know the Vice President of Strexcorp—your parent company.

  KEVIN: Sorry to interrupt.

  LAUREN: Kevin and I are broadcasting from a secret location and we just had to break into your signal. We wanted a moment to talk with you. Gently talking solves a lot of things.

  [Fade out sound cue]

  KEVIN: Violent revolution has never solved anything.

  CECIL: I beg to differ. America was founded on a revolution. I mean sure, we still are ruled by the reptilians. But the lizard kings let us have our own country after they saw how hard we tried during that revolution thing.

  LAUREN: That was decades ago, Cecil. Anyway, we want to know what we can do to keep your business. We here at Strexcorp Synergists, Inc., are dedicated to the betterment of life through branding, social networking, and upbeat music.

  KEVIN: And hard work.

  LAUREN: I’m pretty sure it’s implied that hard work is part of it, Kevin.

  KEVIN: I’m pretty sure I didn’t ask for your feedback.

  LAUREN: Cecil, Strexcorp values the efforts you put into making this station what it was. Is. What it is. But when employees are refusing to participate in our trus
t exercises and boycotting our products and attacking us with our own helicopters, then I think we have failed our mission statement.

  CECIL: What’s your mission statement?

  KEVIN: This.

  [Sound cue: rumbling from episode 47]

  LAUREN: We got so caught up in thinking about our business that we didn’t think about the people. People matter at Strexcorp. They matter because of the business.

  We’re here to set things right. First things first, we will rebuild the Night Vale Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area and divert thousands of gallons of necessary drinking water from other towns to provide it with its namesake. We will also fill in the giant hole out back of the Ralphs.

  CECIL: But where will the people who huddle there go to huddle?

  LAUREN: Oh, Cecil, you are simply resistant to change. Your revolution is cute. Community togetherness is adorable. But money, money is power. We will invest—

  KEVIN: Are currently investing.

  LAUREN: —to make Night Vale a better place to live.

  KEVIN: Thus increasing the resale value.

  LAUREN: Also, we know everyone fears libraries in Night Vale. Which is why Strexcorp will tear down the library, destroy the dangerous librarians, and replace it with StrexBooks purchase centers.

  TAMIKA: Don’t you dare try to bring books into this.

  CECIL: Tamika, is that you?

  TAMIKA: Yes, I found their secret location using a radio triangulation technique I learned by reading an anthology of Emily Dickenson’s poems.

  KEVIN: Lauren, be careful. She has a slingshot and a heavy-looking edition of John Osborne’s successful play Look Back in Anger.

  LAUREN: Thank you, Kev. But I will happily deal with this myself. I just so happen to have my own slingshot and an extremely heavy edition of the Strex Employee Handbook.

  KEVIN: Well, Lauren, you have this situation under control, I’m just going to . . . oversee important . . . things elsewhere. Let me know if . . . when you take care of the child.

  [Exit KEVIN]

  TAMIKA: I love books. Take that book you’re holding. It looks ill-written and ill-conceived, full of bad ideas expressed poorly. I bet it lacks narrative arcs and an appreciation for the flow of language. It looks like the worst book in the history of books. But here’s the thing. It’s still a book. And I love books. So you do not deserve to even hold it.

  LAUREN: Then come and get it.

  CECIL: Tamika, stay alert.

  LAUREN: Let me throw some ideas at you.

  TAMIKA: Ugh!

  LAUREN: Ha! Yes.

  CECIL: Tamika? Are you hurt? Tamika?

  LAUREN: Cecil, Tamika won’t be a problem for us any longer. Now what were we talking about? Right. Money. Success. It’s . . .

  TAMIKA: [Groans, waking up]

  CECIL: Tamika! Tamika, can you hear me?

  LAUREN: Well drat. Hold on, Cecil. Seems she’s still up and about. This’ll just take a second.

  TAMIKA: Lady, I’ve trained for months. I’ve taken down your helicopters with only a slingshot. I’ve looked a librarian right in the area where most creatures would have eyes. You. Do. Not. Scare me.

  LAUREN: Oh no. Where did all these children come from?

  TAMIKA: Doesn’t matter. What matters is that in a few moments you will start running as fast as you can in the direction of Desert Bluffs. All right, Book Club. Books as clubs. Go!

  LAUREN: May the smiling god show me mercy. I give up! I give up! I—Ow! Okay, I’m going!

  [Exit LAUREN]

  CECIL: Well done, young Ms. Flynn.

  TAMIKA: I’m securing this frequency. We’ll keep broadcasting instructions from here. Stay vigilant, Night Vale.

  [Exit TAMIKA]

  CECIL: Thank you, Tamika.

  Listeners, Night Vale is coming alive.

  After weeks of the Company Picnic, the citizens are remembering who they are. They are members of a proud pseudo-democracy run by lizard kings through a byzantine maze of puppet governments and paperwork.

  A crowd of those grinning Strexcorp drones surrounded one of the winged “not-angels” who was wearing a hand-tailored suit coat and was otherwise totally nude. But then Leann Hart, managing editor of the Night Vale Daily Journal, hacked her way through the crowd with a hatchet.

  “I am imagining you are all news bloggers,” she screamed. “You are destroying years of journalistic tradition.”

  At the urging of Sarah Sultan, the president of Night Vale Community College, Leann then threw Sarah at the few remaining Strex workers who were still intact. Sarah, who is a smooth, fist-size river rock, hit her target magnificently before bouncing off somewhere.

  And so this Erika, who looked both wealthy and mostly nude, was saved.

  Wait, I am seeing a flickering. The flickering is becoming a shape. The shape is becoming a woman.

  DANA: Hello, Cecil. It’s me, Dana.

  CECIL: Dana, why haven’t you returned to Night Vale?

  DANA: I will soon, I think. But there is something here that has me worried. That rumbling is getting louder. And the light on the horizon is quite close. I can feel heat, but I am not warm. The more the heat grows, the colder I feel. It is a terrible light, and it is so close now. I feel as though the universe itself is unraveling.

  Plus, I found someone here in the desert.

  CARLOS: Hello, Cecil. I am manifesting myself in your radio station for both personal and not personal reasons.

  CECIL: Carlos! Oh, thank the imperfect heavens. I haven’t seen you in weeks. I didn’t know where you had gone.

  CARLOS: When I entered the house that does not exist, I found myself in this other desert world. But something had happened to my team of scientists, and there was no one to let me back out. Then I couldn’t even find the door. Eventually your friend Dana found me.

  CECIL: Carlos, why didn’t you call? Or Snapchat? Or reblog any of my woodcarvings of Khoshekh?

  CARLOS: Cecil, how would I do that? I’m in the middle of a desert that is not of this world. There’s no cell towers or Wi-Fi or any kind of communication system. Plus, I want to save my battery until I can find my way back to—

  DANA: Oh no, your phone totally works here.

  CARLOS: Really?

  DANA: Yeah. Also l haven’t charged my phone in like a year. Battery never ran down.

  CARLOS: Is that a Samsung?

  DANA: No no. Same as yours.

  CARLOS: Wow.

  DANA: And Wi-Fi is pretty decent out here too.

  CARLOS: Oh, look at that. Cecil, I’m on your Tumblr right now. That artwork is amazing.

  DANA: I mean, time is pretty messed up, so sometimes you reply to e-mails before they’re even sent to you, but other than that . . .

  CECIL: Carlos, how do I get you home? Dana, how do we get Carlos home? I would like Carlos to come home.

  CARLOS: I’ll be able to very soon. I’m working on inventing something right now.

  DANA: Every time the doors are opened, it lets that terrible light into Night Vale. And the light is so close now. We can’t risk it.

  CARLOS: Right. You’re very smart. You have very smart interns, Cecil. So I’m building a highly scientific device to keep the light away from the doors. Now the device looks a lot like a big umbrella, but it’s way more complex and scientific than that for reasons I don’t have time to explain right now. My Danger Meter is in the red, and, scientifically speaking, red is the most dangerous color.

  CECIL: Carlos, you’re fading. Dana, where’s Carlos?

  DANA: He’s still here.

  CARLOS: Dana, I can’t see Cecil anymore.

  DANA: He’s still here. Carlos, thank you. I may get to see my mother and my brother again because of you. You are a hero.

  CARLOS: I’m not a hero. I’m a scientist.

  DANA: Then scientist will always be my word for hero.

  CECIL: What’s he saying?

  CARLOS: We should go. Tell Cecil we won’t be long at all. The doors should be safe to ope
n now. I just need to finish stabilizing the device.

  DANA: Cecil, we have work to do, but we’ll be home soon.

  CECIL: I can’t wait to see you both.

  CARLOS: Like, an hour or two, max.

  CECIL: What? Did he say something? Was it cute?

  DANA: Good-bye, Cecil.

  CECIL: It’s good to know we have such a talented former intern and brilliant scientist working together.

  Once again, listeners, as several frantic phone calls have reminded me, it is also election day. Let’s check in at the alley behind City Hall. Hiram? Faceless Old Woman?

  HIRAM-GREEN: YOUR REVOLUTION IS MEANINGLESS. I WILL BURN ALL DETRACTORS.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Yep, Cecil, all of us are in agreement. Me, my green head there, my other three heads.

  HIRAM-GRAY: Sure, just lump us together as “the other three.”

  HIRAM-BLUE: It’s always just gold talking away like he’s the important one and sometimes green yells something. Green and gold. Green and gold.

  HIRAM-PURPLE: Also, please call me Violet. You always say Purple, but I prefer Violet.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Right, yes, also my gray, blue, and, uh, violet heads there. Anyway, we all agree that once we become mayor, this whole revolution . . . well, it’s sort of moot. If Strexcorp is still here and the people want them gone, we’ll just, you know, throw some flames at the problem.

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: The real issue now is getting these doors shut. There’s a blinding light pouring from them and it’s causing the world to become translucent. We can hear a deep rumbling sound, which I do not like. The helicopters seem unaffected. I think a terrible thing is trying to come through. Something whose secrets I do not know. The unraveling of all things. Fire-breathing will solve none of this.

  HIRAM-GOLD: Basically, the angels, or you know, “not-angels,” just need to shut the doors when they’re done going through them.

  HIRAM-PURPLE: Yeah, were they born in a barn?

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: According to religious texts, yes.

  CECIL: Did you not know that?

  FACELESS OLD WOMAN: Anyway, I agree with Hiram. A revolution and the unraveling of the universe is all fine, but it would be great if you could cover the election more comprehensively. We’ve worked really hard.