by Joseph Fink
Defensiveness is natural, protective. The body’s number one objective is to preserve itself. Being told that your actions are bad would seem a threat to your well-being, harming your reputation, your self-esteem, leaving you vulnerable to retaliation, possibly losing your job, which is your livelihood, which is what keeps you sheltered and fed and alive. In the quick moment of a single piece of negative feedback, however catastrophic, the subconscious mind processes all of that far below the surface. It doesn’t make these proceedings transparent to the conscious mind. It doesn’t speak to itself in any kind of human language with constructed arguments for and against. There is no Robert’s Rules of Order in the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is ruled by neurons and synapses and the deep, conservative demands of instinct.
So while Carlos’s reaction to Nilanjana’s statement was rich and complex in terms of physiology and, neurologically speaking, was profoundly interesting, what he said was:
“Oh, come on.”
Then he stared at his machine for a long time.
Nilanjana put her hand on his shoulder. He jerked it away.
Therapists will say that the root of much human anger is guilt, that what makes a person most angry in another person is a reflection of their own recognizable shortcomings. “I hate it when people are aggressive drivers,” says the aggressive driver. Or just the feeling of guilt can make a person find any other thing anger-worthy. “I hate it when people are aggressive drivers,” says the person who realized they forgot to call their daughter on her birthday.
“Go away,” Carlos said.
“Just hear me out.” She wanted to keep her voice gentle, so as not to rouse defensiveness, but she could hear the whirring of the machine, the quiver of the floor. What was intended as soft and pleading came out as a bark, a command.
A matinee crowd at Night Vale Cinemas, excited for the opening weekend of Superman Vs. Himself, in which immortal screen legend Lee Marvin played both Supermans. Josh was there, human face and long bird legs, wings tucked in beneath him. He favored forms that could fly now, although despite various girlfriends’ and boyfriends’ (and his sister, Jackie’s) constant begging, he found he was only able to get himself into the air. Passengers were just too much for him. He was looking forward to the show. He had never missed a Lee Marvin movie. Growing up, he had always gone to the movies with his mom, but now he preferred to go on his own. Not a negative judgment on his mother, whom he truly loved, but a positive judgment on solitude, which he truly appreciated. So, with Big Rico’s closed again while Rico and Arnie figured out the whole smoldering giant centipede body problem, Josh took the opportunity to sit in the back of the theater, away from the other moviegoers.
He scooped up popcorn with his wing and deftly flicked it into his mouth. He smiled at the dexterity he was developing with his new forms, but his smile fell into a curious frown as he began to feel a certain strange warmth beneath his talons. He examined the floor, which looked no different, but felt warmer and warmer with each passing moment.
Carlos turned, his eyes deep and angry. “Pamela lied. She stopped us at each turn, followed us around each corner. We killed that monster they were trying to keep out of our reality, and still. Still it’s not enough for them. If they want a fight, I will show them a fight. I will protect my city. My family. My lab. Our lab, Nilanjana. I will protect you and everyone here.”
“By destroying the town?”
“I’m not . . .” He snorted and kept his eyes hard on Nilanjana. “I’m not destroying the town. I’m doing science. Science is helpful. That nutty church, those nutty religious people, they tried to destroy this town. I’m going to save it.”
“Larry Leroy came back,” she said. “He wasn’t eaten like we thought. It wasn’t the centipede doing any of this. The centipede never touched anyone until we started attacking it.”
“Out!” Carlos stood, his voice hard, his eyes harder, and Nilanjana reflexively backed away. Taking the opportunity of the space ceded by his fellow scientist, Carlos closed the door, Nilanjana on the other side. She heard the lock.
Josh had no time to worry about the warmth from the floor because the movie was starting. Or, of course, the pre-movie messages and previews. There was the usual one about buying snacks or adopting a dog from the concession stand, so that you’d have something to munch on or a beautiful puppy to pet during the show. Josh kind of wished he had thought to adopt a dog on the way in instead of just getting popcorn, but he was afraid that, if he went out now, by the time he had filled out all of the adoption paperwork and had the required inspection of his home to make sure it was a healthy environment for a dog, the movie would have already started. Instead, he sat through previews for the latest big alien invasion documentary from Werner Herzog, full of the usual explosions and wisecracking good guys keeping earth safe, and the preview for Lee Marvin’s next superhero film, Superman Vs. Nobody, in which Superman finally found peace.
The floor was going from warm to downright hot, but he was distracted from that by an even more annoying issue. He would think that a movie theater, on the opening weekend of a major blockbuster, would properly calibrate their audio system, but, over the sound of the previews, people in the room could hear a low rumbling and an annoying mechanical whirring. He had made his ears larger than normal to better hear the movie, and so he was especially put out by the sound problems. And the floor just got hotter and hotter, so hot he had to lift his feet to avoid getting burned. He felt a sense of terrifying familiarity in what was happening, but before he could process this, the movie began.
“Nilanjana, you’re alive!” Darryl stumbled in. “I was so worried.”
Darryl moved to her, his eyes damp and sagging. He wrapped his arms around her. Between the violence of the slammed office door on one side, and the empathy of Darryl on the other, Nilanjana went stiff. Sandwiched by two different kinds of aggressive passions, she wanted to collapse to the floor.
“Are you okay? You were gone when I woke up, and I wasn’t scared at all, but a little confused that you weren’t there, but then the TV came on, and—”
“Darryl!” Nilanjana put her hand to his face. “Shut up.”
She kissed him. Quick and soft.
As their lips parted, she said, “This isn’t about me or you right now. This is about Carlos.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said by scrunching up his face.
“You don’t have to understand right now,” she said by actually saying it.
The whirring of the machine got louder. She banged hard on the door.
“Please let me in. Carlos.” Her violent knocks were fading. She could feel her energy waning as well. “Carlos, if you could just pause your experiment, for a second. If you could only hear me out. Hear my hypothesis. I think once you understand the science of the situation, you—”
Carlos opened the door. He was crying. She had never seen him cry. He was overwhelmed, and unsure of how to express his emotions, since he usually only did so in carefully worded sentences, not with water from his body.
“The science of the situation?” he snarled. “That otherworld. I was trapped there, Nilanjana. I couldn’t see Cecil. For ten lonely years, I was kept away from the people I love, in that desolate place where you never get hungry, and you never have to drink water, and so you never live. It is a place that devours. It is a place that is empty. That is the science of the situation. And I study it. So I can fix it. Only I can do that. Only these experiments can do that. I’m sorry, Nilanjana. I’m not going to stop so that you can tell me what science is.”
Josh didn’t fully comprehend all that was happening at first, only that people in the front of the theater were getting up and shouting. This wasn’t polite behavior in a movie theater, but he didn’t feel like having an argument about that. It wasn’t until the standing people started running back toward him that he got up too, concerned. He looked down at the floor, which had gotten unbearably hot, and he remembered how the floor o
f the gymnasium had felt. The screams of the cinemagoers, the screams of the basketball team.
A hole had opened up just in front of the movie screen. It was small at first, capturing a stray empty cup that rattled over its side, but it was expanding quickly. Josh fluttered up into the air in panic, and took stock of how bad the situation already was. As the crowd scrambled back from the edge of the hole, its bottomless depth had cut everyone off from all exits. The people could only retreat toward the back wall of the theater, until there would be no more theater to retreat to. The hole was already a crevasse. Row by row, empty seats littered with popcorn and bags that had been left by fleeing people were tipping forward and disappearing into the darkness.
Josh eyed the exit. He still could fly down there, get out the door, keep himself safe. But he looked back at the panicking crowd, shoving each other as though there were anywhere to go but where they already were, and he swooped down to land among them.
“I know how much you believe in what you’re doing,” Nilanjana said. “But the pastor believed in what she was doing. So did everyone at the Joyous Congregation who went along with what they did. Belief is not enough. Not in a god. Not in science. We were wrong, Carlos. Science is not inherently good. It is just a method of thought that works to find truth. But the thoughts within that method can lead to good or bad places. It’s not enough to believe in science. You also need to listen. Listen to other people. Please let me tell you what happened to Larry.”
“Please let me tell you what happened to me,” said Larry. He had run a few blocks, but then he had turned and come back. His legs were shaking in terror, but he was a man that cared more about the legacy he left than at what age he ended up leaving that legacy. And without a Night Vale, there would be no one to receive his art. He would be forgotten, not after two generations of children, but all at once, in a single falling motion. So he had come back to do what he could, whatever that was.
“Larry,” Nilanjana said. She was overjoyed to see the man she thought she’d never see again. This was the second time in only a few minutes she’d felt this way about Larry. “Tell Carlos what is happening.”
“I know what is happening,” said Carlos. “Don’t lecture me about—”
Larry stepped cautiously to the door, and Carlos went quiet, reacting to Larry’s calm demeanor. Larry’s hands were old, the skin hanging off thin bones, knuckles ashen, nails long and yellowing around the cuticles.
“You don’t know me, young man,” Larry said, his voice still a bit weak. Nilanjana could barely hear it over the machine. “My name is Larry Leroy, and I think you might know something about a lighthouse. On top of a mountain.”
Carlos opened his mouth, and then closed it again.
There was hardly a theater left to stand in. In front of the audience was a wide nothing, growing wider, and before that was Lee Marvin, intoning masterfully that Superman must be stopped, and the only person that could stop him was Superman. Josh felt pressure and then a crushing as everyone compressed into a smaller and smaller island of safety. And then he heard the cries and caught the eye of a man, a father maybe, or an important member of society, or just a person who got on with his life, just a normal person who didn’t think his life would end today, as the man teetered backward and then with one terrified yelp was gone into the abyss.
Josh thought again of flying away, but knew that he couldn’t. He thought of what his sister, Jackie, would do. Jackie, the bravest person he knew. Probably she would fall into the pit and die. Sometimes bravery isn’t enough. Sometimes you need the right tools for the situation. He flapped his wings experimentally. It wasn’t going to work but he would have to try. He turned to the woman next to him, Maureen, whom he recognized from Dark Owl Records, where she often hung out.
“I think I can lift us,” Josh said to her. He grew human arms to go along with the wings. “Let me try.” He held his new arms out and moved his wings to indicate what he was going to try to do.
“No way,” Maureen said. Two more people fell screaming. The math was simple: the same size crowd, less and less floor.
“Yeah, okay,” Maureen said.
Josh and she hooked their arms together, and he flapped as hard as he could. He flapped until his shoulders burned. He bit his lip in the exertion, and tasted blood. He tried to find more in himself, but there was nothing. It was no good. He couldn’t do it. And it was as he was thinking this that he realized his feet were no longer touching the ground.
“Oh holy shit,” Maureen said.
He wasn’t that high up, but he didn’t need to be.
“Okay, I’m going to drop her off, and then I’ll come back to get each of you,” he said. But as he dropped Maureen safely at the exit, another couple fell into the crevasse. He knew there would not be enough time left to save all of them.
“There is a lighthouse on top of a mountain,” said Larry. “From that lighthouse, you can see all of the desert, not this desert but another desert. And in that desert is one other structure. It is a home. It is a home with a photo of that same lighthouse.”
Larry tilted his head.
“You’ve been there, haven’t you?” he said.
Carlos reached over and shut off the machine. The whirring faded down to a faint hum.
He looked empty now, without the fire of a scientific solution to a crisis to fuel him. Science could not fix this basic fact: His method had not been wrong. All of the science had been correct. But still the results had been, morally, bad. It was an equation he was still struggling to comprehend.
“It’s nice to meet you,” said Larry.
“Hi, I’m Carlos.” His voice was weak but steady. “I’m a scientist, for better or worse.”
“You hear that?” Larry asked.
“What?” Carlos asked. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Me neither,” Larry said, smiling now.
“What’s your—”
“Hang on, son,” Larry said. “Just listen.”
There was nothing. No rumbling. No heat. The vast crevasse that once was a theater was still there, but the crevasse wasn’t getting any bigger. The crowd found stable positions on the bit of floor that was left. As moments passed, and nothing continued to happen, they realized they were going to survive. Most of them started weeping. One woman just started swearing, as many words as she could think of. She didn’t even know why. Delayed fear, maybe. Or a celebration of the existence of her lungs.
Josh looked around. He had only been able to carry a few people to safety, but now that the crisis was over, or at least paused, he felt a surging satisfaction that he had found it in himself to do even that.
“Let’s keep this going,” he said, testing out the power of his wings. They felt good. They felt strong. “I can just take one person at a time but I’m going to get you all out of here.”
There was nothing. Or there were many sounds: helicopters and sirens, near and far. Wind and leaves and traffic. The slight sound of the sunrise, lingering on into midmorning. Breaths and heartbeats of the people in the room. The low grumble of a jet plane somewhere near the stratosphere as it released helpful psychotropic chemtrails. The constant clicking of the camera held by an agent from a vague yet menacing government agency that was in the room, monitoring them. The sounds of day-to-day life. The sounds of everything. And so, nothing.
Carlos had been causing disasters by trying to stop the disasters that he was causing. A loop that could only be broken by just holding still. And now he could hear his own inaction, and it sounded like the safety of his family.
“It’s quiet, Carlos. Do you hear that?” Nilanjana stepped toward him slowly, respecting his space, but Carlos inched back toward his office. “Listen.”
“Listen,” Luisa said.
“Listen,” Mark said.
“Listen,” Darryl said.
Nilanjana smiled and touched Carlos’s hand. He flinched but did not end the contact.
“Come here,” she said.
Carlos looked at each of them. They were all smiling, albeit tentatively, except Darryl, whose lips were pulled completely back, teeth exposed, as his church had taught him. Carlos paused for a second on Darryl, but then finally moved his eyes to Nilanjana.
Carlos cried and cried. A lifetime of physical emotion that he hadn’t expressed, all coming out of him. It felt like illness, but it was only existence. Nilanjana was crying too, crying for her town, which had come so close to not existing anymore. And crying for her mentor, who had done everything right but gotten it all wrong. She pulled him in and embraced him. Luisa and Mark followed, then Darryl and Larry too. They did what all scientists do when following proper scientific method: (1) hypothesis; (2) argument; (3) fight; (4) cry; (5) hug.
And though this moment didn’t fix the town, it saved it.
38
They had gone to the house that didn’t exist. Carlos insisted on going in alone. He had started this. He would end it. He led everyone he could find in the otherworld back through the house, into Night Vale. He couldn’t find everyone. No grave mistake can be fixed completely. Carlos wanted to keep going back, to keep going and going, but Nilanjana wouldn’t let him. Past a certain point, it would stop being about helping others, and instead be about punishing himself.
Even though the pit at the theater had happened less than an hour before, survivors that he led out reported they had been in the otherworld for six weeks.
On their last trip through, Cynthia—the woman who lived in the house that doesn’t exist and, by extension, did not exist herself—protested. She shouted at these strangers barreling through her home, not wiping their feet.
“I’m sorry,” said Carlos. “No one will be coming through here anymore.”
“I’d certainly hope not,” said Cynthia. She huffed into the next room and promptly disappeared, because she did not exist.