Who's a Good Boy?

by Joseph Fink

  CECIL: I’m gonna say it’s a low number, like one point five or two.

  MELONY: But let’s make it on a scale of zero to three. So that’s pretty good. Everything’s going fine. Ethically speaking anyway. But the programming has been tough. Have you ever even tried to program a computer?

  CECIL: I barely know how to turn one on. Say, as long as I have a real computer expert on, do you have some basic computer tips for me and our listeners?

  MELONY: Oh, a public service like that would be really ethical. Like a two point five or even a three on the Ethicability Scale. What a good idea. Here are some basic tips for the computer novice who is hoping to one day write code that advances us closer to the singularity.

  Tip one: Computers can make you angry. Anything can make you angry. Computers are anything.

  Tip two: Is your computer plugged in? That’s probably illegal. You need a license to plug in a computer.

  Tip three: Computer programs are a lot like humans. They’re full of bugs, mostly theoretical, and invented by overly caffeinated, lonely people in dark rooms.

  Tip four: Did I say that thing about the stars already?

  CECIL: Y——

  MELONY: Oh, good. Tip five: Create a strong password. The most secure password possible is “You’llNeverGuessThis,” where the O is replaced with a zero and the L’s are replaced with zeroes and all of the other letters replaced with zeroes. A string of nineteen zeroes is the most secure password.

  CECIL: I added an exclamation point at the end of my password.

  MELONY: Exclamation points are impossible to hack. You are very secure.

  Tip six: There are two main types of computers.

  The first are PCs, or personal computers. Personal computers know your name and things about your life and are casual and friendly. Sometimes they’re overly personal and you end up having to say, “This is all too much. Back off, computer.”

  The second type of computer is the house cat. These are ambulant robotic quadrupeds used by the Secret Police to monitor our domestic behavior and to try to understand why people like to stroke robots and talk in high voices to them.

  CECIL: This has been very helpful.

  MELONY: Thank you for saying that. I love to be helpful. This trial has been so challenging, and everyone is upset. These days I don’t feel helpful. These days I feel kind of useless and it gets me down.

  CECIL: Oh, I know that feeling. Sometimes when I’m sad, I like to sing old hymns to myself.

  MELONY: Me too. Which one’s your favorite?

  CECIL: “I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter . . .”

  BOTH: “. . . dancing through the fire. ’Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar.” [Melony really sings out the last part of this.]

  MELONY: That’s my favorite passage from the Old Testament. I feel better already.

  CECIL: Thanks, Melony!

  MELONY: I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name. Good-bye.

  CECIL: The mayor’s office reports that perhaps their earlier call for not being alarmed was a bit premature and that we could all stand to be a little more alarmed. Several dead animals have been found all about town. On sidewalks, in trees, in fields, animal corpses everywhere. This has happened before, listeners. Many of you remember the glowing cloud (all hail) that passed through Night Vale years ago dropping dead animals on all of us. And since that first terrifying and bloody visit, the Glow Cloud (all bow before the mighty cloud) has since settled down as a citizen of this town, even joining the school board, as the Glow Cloud’s child attends Night Vale Elementary.

  It’s hard to believe that the Glow Cloud (all praise to the malevolent cloud who rules my every puny desire, et cetera, et cetera) would return to such dreadful acts of violence against animals and rooftops, but again, it’s hard to know why anyone does anything.

  John Peters—you know the farmer?—standing out in his freshly sown field of imaginary corn, near his pasture, said he saw a couple of mangled squirrels and expired possums. He added, “I seen them strangers, too, those ones what don’t move ’cept for their breathin’. Just breathin’ and breathin’ and sometimes gettin’ a little closer’n you think they were a second ago, despite not lookin’ like they were even movin’.”

  He also said he finally received a card from his brother Jim, who left town nearly forty years ago to fight in the Blood Space War. The message inside simply read, “Happy twelfth birthday, little brother! Only three months into my mission and I’m already missing you something fierce, Johnny.” John covered his face and pointed to one of the strangers out on the edge of the cornfield. “Yeah, it’s definitely them strangers what’s killin’ these animals.” John then began weeping and clutching the birthday card—on it, a farmer caricature holding balloons and a caption reading, “I love you . . . ‘Cows’ Your My Brother”—tightly to his heaving chest.

  And now a word from our sponsor. Today’s show is brought to you by Papa John’s.

  At Papa John’s, we make pizza with only the freshest ingredients using old-world recipes passed down from our family’s many generations of pizza makers. Nearly all of these pizza makers are still alive, making pizza and passing down recipes. They live in the back. We’re running out of room for them. We’ve long given up on thinking they’d eventually die. Why don’t they die? I mean we love them, but there are close to fifty people in our family dating back to at least the 1800s, their bodies aging and failing but not ever, you know, dying.

  Perhaps it’s our secret recipes causing that. You’d think so, but it’s not. Because a few members of our family have actually passed away. Although now that we’re thinking about it, those were public executions for treason back during the first World War. And another couple were car accidents. Maybe it is the sauce.

  Either way, visit your local Papa John’s. Order a delicious pizza. How hard can it be? Immortality we mean.

  Papa John’s. It’ll be fine.

  And now a look at traffic.

  They met through a mutual acquaintance. They shook hands and met eyes. Over food and drinks and among friends they laughed and told stories. Occasionally their eyes lingered. Occasionally one looked away first. They shared a brief but quiet and private moment on the front porch. It was getting late. People were leaving. It was a new moon that night. Neither would remember that part. One of them said good-bye as they headed to their car. The other said good-bye back. They hugged, both thinking in that short embrace about the other’s body against their own—about the topography of forgiveness and the geography of tomorrow. See you again soon, I hope. Yes, you too.

  They parted as the one drove away. Later the other drove away. It was a fun party with good friends, good food and drinks. They would remember the laughing and the stories. They would not remember the moon or the name of the other. It wouldn’t come up again. They later met other people, and still other people. Later they would drive home and drive home. They never met again. They both lived meaningful lives, laughing, drinking, eating, and driving home.

  This has been traffic.

  While officers from the Sheriff’s Secret Police are now responding to a series of power outages and broken water mains, witnesses have reported a strange sight at the city’s Dog Park. Hooded figures, which are sometimes glimpsed inside the Dog Park, were all lined up outside the Dog Park, as if standing guard.

  A long row of dark cloaks and hoods, humming and chanting. Witnesses kept a great distance from this scene, simply noting the hooded figures were all of equal height and imposing stature, spaced evenly around the forbidden municipal park. The sidewalks in front of them were empty except for one young couple and their dog, who walked slowly past the sentries, unperturbed by the presence of these eldritch figures emanating a crescendo of white noise. Witnesses watched the couple stroll past the park, turn a corner, and disappear from sight.

  The witnesses reported that just around that corner where the couple had walked was a different person, a stranger staring right back at th
e witnesses. They did not recognize the person, for the person had no noticeable features. This stranger did not appear to move, except for its steady breathing.

  No single witnesses saw the stranger move, but suddenly it was closer to the crowd of onlookers, merely feet away from them.

  One of the witnesses said, “We should run away.”

  Another agreed, “Yes. Let’s run away.”

  They did not go anywhere.

  And now, let’s check in on the weather.

  WEATHER: “Well-Dressed” by Hop Along

  If you can hear me, Night Vale, it is because you are one of those still with electricity or whose home is not on fire. Oh. Breaking news, there are a bunch of fires across town. They are spreading from home to home. Fire Chief Ramona Encarnación said that she believes the fires were started by the neglect of common but dangerous things like kitchen ranges, candles, cigarettes, and bloodstones. Encarnación said, “These strangers are appearing at doorways and in windows and inside showers and from behind refrigerators, just staring and breathing and otherwise not moving. Upon seeing these strangers, the residents of those homes became frozen in fear and thus incapable of tending to their flammable items. Never leave a bloodstone unattended, Night Vale,” Encarnación cautioned.

  Mayor Dana Cardinal finally relented to the sheriff’s request to try to round up the strangers. Sheriff Sam responded with a jumping heel click and a “You won’t be sorry, Mayor” as they ran out to start making arrests. Sam has long held that the strangers are just troublemakers who’ve moved here from the collapsed town of Desert Bluffs, our former neighbors.

  But upon arriving at several of the burning homes, Sam began to have a change of mind, of belief. These strangers were not from Desert Bluffs at all. These strangers, Sam now believes, are something else. “They’re not from here,” Sam said. “Not here meaning Night Vale but HERE.” Sam then indicated the broadness of the term HERE by swinging their arms slowly to indicate the entirety of the tangible world we all pretend to know and understand.

  The Secret Police, instead of arresting or detaining or even getting near the strangers, began to move the petrified residents of each of these homes safely away to an undisclosed location (which I assume means the same thing as a safe location, since the Secret Police are law enforcement professionals). The strangers never moved other than their steady breaths, even when they sometimes appeared dramatically closer than they were before.

  “The strangers seem to have no goal other than to threaten our well-being, Night Vale,” Sam explained wordlessly, using only a long ribbon and floor dance routine to express the dire situation we are all facing. “My Secret Police and I will work to serve and protect you. Secretly, of course. This is off the record. In the meantime, stay in your homes and lock your doors. If you see a stranger, keep moving. And call us. We’re an unlisted number actually, so maybe e-mail,” Sam said with a flick of their ribbon and a double somersault.

  Night Vale, I think back to the words of Little League coach and ghost Lusia Tereshchenko, “They’re no longer coming. They’re here, and we cannot stop something that wants nothing.” And I think of the image of that young couple and their dog blithely passing the row of fearful hooded figures. No doubt it was Maureen and that boy and that beagle.

  Maureen is such a good kid, and that beagle, so, so cute. SO CUTE! But I fear whatever it is she and that boy (and that dog) are involved in.

  Heed our sheriff tonight, Night Vale. Stay safe in your home. Get away fast if you see one of them.

  Stay tuned next for words ordered intentionally and confidently, saying something, understanding nothing.

  And as always, good night, Night Vale. (Maybe lock those windows too.) Good night.

  PROVERB: Call me old-fashioned, but I believe there should only be one continent.

  Episode 87:

  “The Trial of Hiram McDaniels”

  AUGUST 15, 2016

  THERE ARE GOING TO BE SOME SPOILERS TO THIS EPISODE IN THIS INTRODUCTION, so it might make sense to read the episode first. In any case, I’ll cover the nonspoilery stuff first, and then mark clearly where spoilers begin.

  This episode contains the return of a few older Night Vale characters and plots that haven’t come up in recent years. In this episode we see the return, for the first time since Episode 17, of Martin McCaffry, local representative of the TSA, and his . . . problem. And the return, seventy-eight episodes after it was destroyed, of the Beatrix Lohman Memorial Meditation Zone. Going through old scripts to put together these script volumes always reminds me of interesting odds and ends we haven’t talked about in a while. Creating the last round of script books led to these references. Who knows what making these scripts books will give me!

  I don’t write poetry much, but occasionally I get the bug, and when I do, I can always find a way to put it in the show. Often as a traffic or a word from our sponsors (such as the original word from our sponsors in Episode 2), but here it shows up as a Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner. Nothing, after all, is more scientific than poetry.

  There is also a reference to another popular podcast in this episode. If you don’t spot it, I recommend listening to every other popular podcast until you notice it. Good hunting!

  OKAY, SPOILERS START HERE!

  The trial of Hiram McDaniels has mostly been played for a laugh up to this point. But we always knew where it was going. The world of Night Vale is a surreal one. It’s sometimes silly and it’s sometimes creepy. Rarely is it mundane. Because of that, mundanity has a special power in the writing of Night Vale. It’s something we deploy only when we really, really mean it.

  The verdict in this trial is mundane. People get convicted and sentenced to death all the time. The method of execution was also chosen to be as divorced from the surrealism of Night Vale as possible.

  Even Gold, the unshakably charming head, can’t take it. I think the moment that Gold crumbles is the most difficult detail in that scene. There are certain people in our lives we expect to take even the worst news well. When they are shaken, it can destroy us.

  So that was the trial of Hiram McDaniels. This is justice, I guess.

  —Joseph Fink

  Numbers don’t lie. But humans using numbers lie all the time.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE

  The trial of Hiram McDaniels, five-headed dragon, former mayoral candidate, and current presumed criminal, is coming to a close. There are only a few minor legal technicalities to get through, such as testimony from the remaining witnesses, arguments from the lawyers, and deliberation from the jury, and then we’ll finally have all that bureaucratic mess out of the way and be able to get to the verdict.

  We’ll be covering the trial as it continues, so stay tuned here for all of your trial info.

  And now for community classifieds.

  Item: Big Rico’s Pizza is looking for a new cashier. Must have retail experience and be good at not talking if they know what’s good for them. No funny business. No secret wheat speakeasies. Why would you even bring that up? Who have you been talking to? To apply, look at yourself in the mirror for a long time, until your face no longer seems to be your own.

  Item: Have you seen a tall shadow where no shadow should be cast? Have you seen a person exist in two places at the same time? Have you seen a young girl with an upside-down face? No, you haven’t. That would be ridiculous. Grow up. Sincerely, Richard. Also if anyone’s seen my wife please let me know.

  Item: Lost cat. Blindingly bright, orb shaped, often visible in the sky during daylight hours. If found, please worship.

  And finally, item: I haven’t forgotten you all. I let you live the first time. The next time you may not be so lucky. Love, the Woman from Italy.

  This has been community classifieds.

  The Night Vale Parks Department announced that after a multi-year, five-million-dollar repair and renovation project, the Beatrix Lohman Memorial Meditation Zone is once again open for public use. The Meditation Zone, a state-of-the-
art meditation facility, was destroyed by a multidimensional sentient pyramid almost four years ago. But the Parks Department used that crisis as an opportunity to update the meditation mats, equipment, and machines. Now you can be hooked up and meditating in no time, and it’s almost twice as efficient as before, when measured in gallons per kilowatt.

  The rebuilding was funded with a simple tax levied on every school child per school day they attended, and the construction only went three years and four point nine million dollars over budget. We look forward to enjoying the new Beatrix Lohman Memorial Meditation Zone for years to come.

  Today the mayor herself, my former intern and current friend, Dana Cardinal, took the witness stand in Hiram’s trial, the final witness in the Trial of the Century. She looked at the citizen who had tried to overthrow her beating heart, to sabotage her lungs, to end the administration of life within her body. And, calmly, she met his eyes. And then calmly, she met his eyes. And then she met his eyes calmly. And then, still calm, she met his eyes. She did not even glance at the violet head, the only head who did not participate in the crimes against her.

  Her hands were tight in front of her. Her shoulders were back. She looked tired and she looked determined and heavy with stress and still barreling forward. Judge Azdak asked her to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.

  “You want the whole truth?” Dana said. Everyone got very quiet. That is not a question that is asked often in a town like ours, and it carries a dangerous weight. “I will give you all of it and nothing but,” she said.

  The defense attorney and the prosecutor, two identical men both named Troy Walsh, objected in unison, although their objections were unclear and consisted of a high-pitched, panicked, “No, stop her.” The judge upheld both objections, but Dana ignored all this.

  “Being mayor means carrying many secrets,” she said. “I am so young to carry so much. Now you will share in my burden.”