The Buying of Lot 37

by Joseph Fink

  Outsiders . . . wait, how did these outsiders get in? Night Vale is not so easily found, so how have they so easily found it?

  Oh! Oh! The carnival gates have opened. All of Night Vale is there. Only I sit contained in my booth, helpless as usual. The carnival workers smile wider and wider and wider and wider. Breath is heard, loud and wet and without an obvious source, and the birds are gone. There is a fearful infinity of an instant.

  I take you now, uncertain of what this next instant will bring, and none of you near a radio anyway, to the weather.

  WEATHER: “Bremen” by PigPen Theatre Co.

  The carnival has left. Night Vale citizens resisted entering the metal gates. They formed a semi-circle around the opening and shouted INTERLOPERS while pointing, as is our friendly, mandatory way of welcoming strangers.

  Soon the painted people backed away, closing themselves into their miserable flatbed corral. They disassembled their mechanical monstrosities and drove them away.

  Night Vale, en masse, waved fists and sticks and farm tools and cactuses and animal parts. Our citizens chanted curses upon the carnival.

  The carnival employees, in their haste, left behind several artifacts of their attempted threat to our sanctity, our sanity. We found clear plastic bags filled with cheaply produced dolls. There was a large styrofoam-stuffed green and orange squirrel.

  As the trucks drove away, proud and vigilant Night Vale civilians set the squirrel ablaze, that unholy totem of that unholy carnival. With the sun long gone, presumably scared away by the unexpected visitors, the happy fire of victory shone out to meet the taillights of the retreating trucks.

  Witnesses heard the carnival perpetrators saying things like “run!” and “get out of here!” as they made their way to their trucks. Shouts of “what the hell is this town?” and “where the hell are we?” and “this is definitely not Modesto” and “I think they’re going to kill us, Stacy, run!” were the verbal white flags, signaling our triumph as a town, as a proud community that stood for itself once again.

  And intern Maureen, who is. . . .

  Maureen, you look upset. Are you upset? Is everything okay?

  Maureen does not look happy, listeners. I’m not sure why Maureen is not happy about today’s victory she helped bring about. You are part of this, Maureen. This victory is also yours.

  [pause]

  Maureen, do you not love victory over outsiders who mean us harm?

  Maureen, do you . . .

  Well, Maureen left the control booth. She just got up in a huff and left. Huh, teenagers, I guess.

  Stay tuned next for people arguing about sports. Not on the radio, somewhere else. Somewhere and soon people will be arguing about sports. I don’t know what’s happening next on the radio. I never do.

  And as always, good night, Night Vale. Good night.

  PROVERB:Say what you will about dance, but language is a limited form of expression.

  Episode 55:

  “The University of What It Is”

  OCTOBER 1, 2014

  THIS EPISODE REPRESENTS A COMMON PHENOMENON IN LONG-RUNNING stories. It’s a setup for an idea that ultimately just drifted away or transformed or was set aside to maybe pick up in the future. My idea here was that throughout this year we would get different origin stories for the character of Carlos, and they all would be contradictory. This would be the first one, and then there would be another that told a completely different life story, and so on. And what happened was I wrote this one, and then I just didn’t write another. I don’t have a good reason for that. Other ideas became more prominent, and we followed those instead. I think this idea about Carlos could have been an interesting and fun one. But I think the ideas we followed instead are also very interesting and fun. Ideas are easy, and when you’re a working artist you generally have way more ideas than you’ll ever be able to execute. So you come to value the good execution of an idea, rather than the original idea itself. After all, any number of other ideas would have worked just as well, given proper execution.

  What’s with the name “The University of What It Is”? I have no idea. Like so much in Night Vale, it’s a phrase that my brain locked onto and wouldn’t let go of until I had written something with it. Once I had written something with it, I was free, since it had left my brain and gone off to all the listeners’ brains instead. Thanks for carrying it for me.

  This episode also sees the official debut of the character Jackie Fierro, owner of the local pawnshop who would, about a year later, be one of the main characters of the first Welcome to Night Vale novel (available at your local independent bookseller or library!). One of the strangest things about writing a book versus a podcast for us was the lag time between writing and release. With a podcast, we were used to writing a story and then having it out to the world in a matter of weeks or days, depending on how on top of script writing we were. This continuing process of write-and-immediately-release is immensely satisfying.

  But with a book, you basically have to be completely done with the thing a year before it comes out. Which means by the time you’re getting in front of crowds and talking about it, you’ve half forgotten what was even in it, since you’ve written a novel’s worth of podcast scripts and live shows in between. Another effect of this is that there is a temptation that had to be resisted to build on plot elements we just wrote into a book within the podcast episodes that we wrote after. For our brains, this is a logical continuation of what we had recently been writing, but for the listener, it would be references to plots they won’t be able to experience for more than a year. And so I would have to settle for introducing the character of Jackie, whom I had already written hundreds of pages about, as though she were new to all of us. What other elements of the podcasts are secret references to works we’ve already written but won’t be able to release for some time? Who knows? (We do.)

  —Joseph Fink

  Oh, Cecil and his moveable emotional boundaries! He’s so loveably adorable . . . but then you remember that he is literally broadcasting his relationship therapy to the entire town, and then it seems less adorable and more, oh what’s the word . . . presumptuous? Indiscreet? Creepy?

  So Night Vale citizens, confused by these outsiders who have come to their town to locate Carlos, are about to attack the representatives from the University of What It Is. This puts Cecil in quite the moral dilemma. As a native Night Valean, Cecil has been taught to fear and mistrust outsiders, but he’s fallen in love with an outsider who is well on his way to being an insider (if he weren’t trapped in a weird desert otherworld, that is).

  So when does one stop being an outsider and start becoming a citizen? Is it dependent on legal status or social status or both? Or does it just take time?

  In a way, these are the questions that America is asking itself right now. There’s something about Cecil that’s so innocent, it’s like walking into a Cracker Barrel gift shop. It’s like seeing things the way Anglo-Americans once saw themselves—Cecil in a weird way is a throwback to the best part of that belle époque Americana.

  The America-as-remembered.

  Tall-Tale America.

  “Back in my day, we had to walk to school in ten feet of snow. Uphill! Both ways!” America.

  Once while on tour with Night Vale, we pulled into a breakfast joint somewhere in rural Middle America, Kansas maybe? It had been a long day of driving, and we had more to go after our lunch break. I looked up at the quaint, antique barn-turned-comfort-food-cafeteria and saw three old ladies seated around a table in the second-floor window. They reminded me of the applehead dolls we made every fall back in Appalachian Tennessee.

  And they stared, unblinking, stone-faced, at us as we got out of the van, stretched, and made our way across the gravel parking lot. I waved up to them. Nothing. I nudged whoever was next to me and pointed up to the three Midwestern biddies who were giving us interlopers the once-over. They never broke eye contact. They said nothing to each other. They just stared. Were outsiders that
unusual there? The Night Vale crew can be boisterous and we certainly wear our hipster-artsy uniqueness like a badge at all times, but seriously . . . we can’t be that unusual, right?

  The too-apt twist to the story is that once we headed up to the second floor to get seated, there was nobody there, just the friendly cafeteria staff. We were the only customers in the place, and there was only one staircase up to the second-floor dining room.

  Rural American stoicism or something more . . . sinister?

  [Cue Night Vale theme.]

  —Cecil Baldwin

  Let me be brief. Let us all be brief. Let us, briefly, be.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE

  Listeners, I received a call today from a Dr. Sylvia Kayyali, who introduced herself as working at the University of What It Is. I told her I had never heard of that particular learning institution (actually what happened is the name led to a comedic back and forth: “What what is?” “What It Is” “The University is what?” “No, no, of What It Is” and so on) but eventually I accorded her the usual treatment of any academic person of importance, which was a bellowing lecture about the dangers of education followed by a tense, suspicious silence.

  Taking advantage of that silence, she jumped in and explained that the University of What It Is was concerned about one of their faculty members, who had taken a sabbatical to investigate some probably fantastical rumors about a strange town in the desert and then had never returned.

  I told her that I didn’t know of any strange towns, just the pleasant burg we call home.

  “Well,” she said, “I’ll keep trying then. If you hear from a scientist going by the name Carlos, please let us know.”

  As you could imagine, listeners, I made all sorts of noises when she said that, but she had already hung up and had left no call back number. My phone screen just showed a picture of a beach during a bad storm with a shivering human figure off in the distance, again and again nearly but not quite swept away by the pounding surf. I think that’s an area code of . . . what? Idaho? I don’t have these things memorized. More on this as I aggressively investigate.

  Well, it’s time again for one of our audience’s most requested segments. I assume. I’ve never actually asked, but I can’t imagine anyone having a different perspective from my own, so I assume this is what listeners are most focused on. It’s time to check back in with Khoshekh and his floating kittens.

  Khoshekh, the cat floating exactly four feet off the ground in the men’s room here at the station, is doing great. Nothing to report. He’s a healthy kitty going through his third molting of the year, and his fur-cusp is as radiant and sticky as any cat’s has ever been. He loves to be petted, and the petting is completely survivable with the correct antibiotics.

  His kittens are, of course, also floating in fixed locations in the same bathroom, and are being cared for by their various owners. Larry Leroy, out on the edge of town, has especially taken after one of the kittens, who he has named, confusingly, Larry Leroy. “Oh, Larry Leroy is just the best,” Larry Leroy said, in what was either an expression of affection or extreme egotism. Either way, he’s being a great dad to that little cat, and we wish Larry Leroy and Larry Leroy the best.

  And now, a word from our sponsors.

  Traditionally, when cooking a steak, there have been a few basic rules to follow. For instance, using a form of meat that is recognized by both the current culture and the human body as food. Following basic food safety procedures so as to prevent illness. Not intentionally bleeding on the finishing steak.

  But that’s just traditionally. Here at Outback Steakhouse, we say: No rules. Just right.

  Absolutely no rules. Food safety? Pfft. Federal law? Ugh. The laws of physics? What are you, a narc?

  It’s weird here. The steak floats. Sometimes the steak is and also isn’t, simultaneously. Sometimes the steak is a chair, and we point at the chair and we say, “That chair is a steak.” And we make you eat it.

  That is the one rule. If we say something is a steak, you have to eat it, no questions asked. I know we said there are no rules, but that itself is a rule and so is void. You want your philosophy non-contradictory? Go to Sizzler.

  In the bathroom where most places have a sign saying EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS we just carved LAND OF THE FREE directly into the wall. There isn’t even a sink in there. Heck, our bathrooms are just sealed vaults full of poisonous gases. No rules. We might kill you. We’ve killed a lot of people.

  Outback Steakhouse: “Do What Thou Wilt” shall be the whole of the law.

  I received another call from Dr. Kayyali. Before she even spoke, I told her that I in fact knew a Carlos and explained, in a completely businesslike and journalistic tone, the tenor of our relationship.

  “Carlos is there?” she said. Only she didn’t put a question at the end of it. So maybe she was just saying, “Carlos is there.” In either case, she told me that this was surprising and that the University of What It Is would send someone right away to see why their faculty member had never made it home.

  I said, “He never mentioned a university to me.”

  And she said, “Do we ever dare to speak of higher education to the ones we love?” which is a valid point. Education is such a scary and forbidden subject that you would be a fool to mention it out loud. I forgive Carlos for this lapse. Or I will as soon as I can get him on the phone. Hey, Carlos. Call me.

  In the meantime, I’ll let you know what happens when the folks from the University of What It Is come by.

  And now the community calendar.

  On Monday, the Baristas of Night Vale are inviting everyone in town to come to the Barista District for the annual Barista Cultural Fair, where they will be performing traditional Barista dances like the Twice Dip and the Mustache Snort, and serving traditional Barista foods like lemon poppyseed scones. There will be a showing of Barista-themed movies like Jaws and Jaws 2, and Norah Jones will make an appearance via a photo of her tacked up on a wall so you can say, “Oh look, that’s Norah Jones,” while pointing at the photo.

  Tuesday is a day for trying to find what you’ve lost. Tear through your house, dress in clothes you haven’t worn in years, reenact situations from your childhood and try to get them to turn out differently. You will get it all back. You will finally have lost nothing. It’s all possible and it’s all healthy.

  Wednesday is a secret that has been badly kept.

  Thursday is a day of remembrance and memorial dedicated to all the people who will happen to die on that Thursday. The City Council would like us all to take a moment and think about the many, many people who will just happen to die within that particular frame of time, for unrelated reasons and adding up to no coherent picture of human existence. Please find the time within your life to mourn those who will, by complete chance, be gone. Unless you turn out to be one of those people. In which case, hey, you’re off the hook on all this tedious grief stuff.

  Friday is a plan that has been poorly thought-through.

  Saturday is absolutely nothing you should be worried about, say hulking, buzzing figures hiding in all of our attics, in a statement that they issued today, thus revealing to us for the first time their existence.

  Sunday is a lie that has been foolishly believed.

  This has been the community calendar.

  Jackie Fierro, who runs the only pawnshop in town (which for some reason is named Lucinda’s Pawn Shop), announced today that she is having a sale on ideas about time.

  “People keep coming by and pawning their ideas about time,” Jackie told a friend of hers in confidence, never knowing that it was going to end up on the radio. “And, like, I don’t want to turn them down because it looks like they need the money, but, dude, how many ideas about time am I supposed to keep? None of these ideas make any sense anyway.”

  So if you’re looking for a gently used idea about time, or perhaps if you pawned your own idea about time and now are able to retrieve it, then get on down to Lucinda’s Pawn Shop and talk
to Jackie. Don’t know where her pawnshop is? Don’t worry. When you need it, then, then you will know.

  And now, corrections.

  In a previous broadcast, we swung a baseball bat wildly around the studio, knocking our microphone onto the ground until all it could pick up was the stomping of our feet as we systematically destroyed all of our possessions in a misguided attempt to make the world better and ourselves more happy.

  After that, we mistakenly referred to Trish Hidge as the Assistant Deputy to the Mayor when she is in fact the Deputy Assistant to the Mayor. We deeply regret this error.

  This has been corrections.

  Still haven’t heard from Carlos. The representatives from the University of What It Is arrived. They are besuited and behatted and be-a-number-of-other-things-besides. They move in a group of three, led by Dr. Kayyali herself, looking at everything and everyone they encounter with a critical eye and what looks like a sneer but could just be the natural set of their faces.

  I rushed out to meet these people that could perhaps tell me something that I don’t know about the love of my life, only to find that, flush with their recent victory over the carnival, Night Vale citizens had cornered the staff members from the University of What It Is, shouting and waving household items like sticks and police batons.

  INTERLOPER they cried. INTERLOPER.

  “No, no,” I said. “Well, yes,” I said, because they were interlopers, but good interlopers. If only there was a word that meant good interloper.

  Dr. Kayyali did not seem afraid of the crowd. She considered the Night Vale residents before her and patted at the air in a placating motion. (And, by the way, did you know that the term for a “group of citizens” is a “mob”? The English language is so funny.)