Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. You never know what’s gonna come out of those eggs.

Welcome to Night Vale.

You’re soaring above the desert as the sunset unfolds dramatically across an expanse of rock formations and sand. A lens flare turns everything golden, then white, like a nuclear blast. In slow motion, a supermodel sitting on the hood of a vintage convertible takes off their sunglasses and laughs for no reason, nodding and beckoning to you with their almost reptilian eyes. Hypnotic synthesizer beats pulse as glow sticks and white smiles flash in the dark.

Onscreen text reads: Push the Boundaries of Experience.

Dune buggies careen over the sun-baked earth. They are packed with supermodels, each holding a different breed of puppy. No one seems to be driving. Everyone is laughing hysterically, having the most fun of their entire lives. They’re laughing so hard their eyes are nearly swollen shut, their faces streaked with tears and dirt.

Onscreen text reads: Join Us In a Remote Desert Oasis.

A time lapse video shows a makeshift city being built, a place of precarious stone towers and mud sculptures and rusted metal contraptions.

Hundreds more supermodels stampede toward you, slamming tiki drinks down their gullets and screaming, their frothing mandibles open wide, their sun-kissed thoraxes gyrating, their eyes changing color in the shifting light.

Onscreen text reads: The Festival. Is. HERE.

Then: GPS coordinates corresponding to the dead center of the Night Vale Sand Wastes.

Listeners, I know many of you have seen this video and have the same questions I do. I’m here today to hopefully find the answers to those questions, but so far we only know two things for sure:

One, some kind of festival has chosen Night Vale as its host city without informing any of the town officials or residents, and two, it seems to be happening soon, judging by the hordes of strangers wearing elaborate outfits and camping backpacks that are currently being dropped off by the busload at the Estes Truck Stop on Route 800.

More on this story as it develops.

In other news, Dark Owl Records is hosting a vinyl listening party on Saturday.

“Vinyl is the only format worth listening to,” store owner Michelle Nguyen proclaimed in her public invitation. “It has a richness and texture that you don’t get from your little MP3s or whatever. Do you ever stop to think what your songs on Spotify are made of? Nothing. Less than air. No substance whatsoever. You’re practically imagining them.”

Michelle continued: “Come down to Dark Owl this weekend for a dose of sonic reality. We will provide an array of scratching implements including nails, screwdrivers, knives, files, chisels, and ice picks so you can experience all the pops, shrieks, and skips that real music is supposed to have. These sounds prove that the music you’re listening to has a physical form and isn’t some disembodied trickster. Digital songs are ghosts. If you want to listen to a hollow shell of a corpse, go ahead. But if you want to listen to the obscure Icelandic black metal band Hollow Shell of a Corpse, then come down to Dark Owl this weekend and we will give you that record on vinyl and provide you with a potato peeler so you can really get in there and find the music.

“Because music is not about the melody or the instruments or the vocals. It’s about the imperfect, changing nature of a physical medium. So put down your airy little perfect nothing songs that you can just play over and over with no consequences whatsoever and wake up. Vinyl is reality. And reality is effing physical, you babies. Reality is about the damage caused by loving something too much. Reality is about our inevitable degradation over time. Do you think you’re going to live forever or something? Then why should your music?”

Oh, that’s the end of the invite. No time listed. Not sure if there’s going to be snacks or drinks or anything. Well, either way, sounds like fun! See everyone there.

In fast food news, Arby’s is unveiling a plant-based menu to be more inclusive to our vegetarian and vegan community members. Offerings will include soy beef hearts, mushroom tripe, and tempeh calf’s liver. Wheat gluten duck embryo, tofu lamb’s brain, jackfruit horsemeat. Lentil fish guts. Fried rats’ feet. Sorry, that one was from the meat side of the menu. Lots of exciting new additions for everyone.

Speaking of new additions, the influx of festival tourists has reached a fever pitch down at the Estes Truck Stop. “The buses just keep coming!” Byron Villalobos, truck stop owner, remarked in excitement. “And those kids, they’re buying all kinds of things! I’m thinking of raising my bottled water prices through the roof! Not to mention the chips and soda and coffee and batteries and hats and shampoo and fuel. Maybe a cover charge just to walk in the door,” Byron mused, who has been waiting his whole life for a situation like this to capitalize on. “They seem to be going hard for the road flares and Halloween masks at the moment—I think those are what I’ll jack up first,” he concluded, his eyes sparkling with dollar signs, which are etched into his contact lenses. Byron then hurried off to rebrand his dusty stock of recalled energy drinks as “Festival Juice.”

It is still uncertain exactly what kind of festival it is and who’s organizing it. Will there be music? Will there be art? Is it a rave, like the ones from my youth, where we all gathered in a vacant warehouse and dared each other to eat large quantities of horseradish till the sun came up? Luckily I have found one actual Night Vale citizen who is attending the festival and can help us answer these questions and more.

Resident shapeshifter and on-again-off-again community college student Josh Crayton is en route to the festival right now and has agreed to keep us informed with some on-the-scene reporting. He is also unsure about what exactly is going to be happening out in the Sand Wastes this weekend and only bought tickets because he saw the video on social media and it seemed like, quote, “I dunno something to do I guess.” He is currently taking the form of an out-of-towner wearing a unicorn costume in order to blend in.

More on this developing story soon.

First, a word from our sponsor.

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Just close your eyes, take a deep breath, and repeat the phrase “Let go and let Lunchables.”

Lunchables. Because time always wins.

Now, breaking news from the Sand Wastes.

Undercover festival informant Josh Crayton has just updated me that he has arrived at the provided GPS coordinates and things are not off to a smooth start. There’s evidence that the organizers tried to build some infrastructure but the project seems to have been abandoned halfway through. A partially constructed stage. A makeshift shower building with all the boxes of plumbing hardware still sitting in the dirt. A medic yurt with no staff inside. A single porta potty. Scaffolding everywhere. It’s also clear that several sink holes opened up at some point and swallowed much of the building materials and possibly the organizers as well, which is of course a common occurrence in the Sand Wastes and the reason why everyone brings double or triple the usual amount of supplies and crew when doing any sort of work out there.

Shortly after Josh’s arrival, a Cessna business jet plummeted to its fiery end just south of the festival grounds, which caused a panic among the attendees even though that’s also a common occurrence in the Sand Wastes. I mean, look around, people! You literally cannot count the amount of charred fuselages out there. Anyway, apparently many people started running and screaming, which has led to several attendees colliding with the venomous cacti and sustaining serious bite wounds. At least one person has hurtled straight off of Skeleton Gorge.

Josh quickly dropped his out-of-towner disguise and is just being himself now, trying to act as a local representative so that he can assure the tourists that there’s nothing to be alarmed about. He has tried to tell them that the venomous cacti will not bite unless they are provoked. And that you can’t fall off of Skeleton Gorge if you stay at least six feet away from the edge. And that the sentient mirages will not target you if you’re hydrated enough. And to watch out for the tumbleweeds because they’re made of twisted metal from all the airplane wreckage and they’ll slice you up real good if they brush past you.

He says most people are not listening to him and in fact, seem to be afraid of him too.

“I’m just trying to get everyone to calm down so we can get this party started and have a fun, chill time, like in the video,” Josh told me via voice note, sounding disappointed.

Sorry to hear things are off to a bumpy start out there, Josh! Hopefully it will even out soon and you can still have a great weekend. Keep us posted.

Now, a letter to the editor.

[Cecil reads the following in the John Peters accent]:

Dear Cecil. This is in response to the fake meat they’re selling down at the Arby’s. Vegetarians and the like say killing cows for food is cruel. Well, did you ever think that if we didn’t breed cows for food, then less cows would be born? Denying a creature's entire existence sounds more cruel than letting them live and turning them into meat patties later on. I’d be proud to end up as a meat patty! Sign me up, buckaroo. In conclusion, I like eating beef and the fact that there’s an option to eat something other than beef is personally insulting, to me, personally. I propose stopping the sale of fake meat products immediately as it is discriminatory to carnivores. The existence of vegetarians in general is judgmental of my lifestyle. I would like that to stop also. Signed, an anonymous, you know, farmer.

Thanks for the letter, anonymous. I have it on good authority that Arby’s, as a singular corporate consciousness, does listen to our show and I’m sure they’ll consider your viewpoint.

Now back to Josh in the Sand Wastes. Here let me just play his latest voice text.

JOSH CRAYTON: Hey Cecil. Josh again. So you know Tabitha Littlefield, our town founder who emerged from a chrysalis after 300 years and has been randomly devouring townspeople for the last eight months? Well, she just rolled up. Her 2023 Hyundai Ioniq looks super good by the way, she did a great job restoring it. So I thought she was gonna, like, try to help calm everyone down since she’s the town founder and everything, but she looks pretty hungry today. And lot of people are doubled over on the ground after drinking the bottled water, ‘cause I guess our water can make people sick if you haven’t grown up drinking it and built up an immunity to it and everything. Anyway, a lot of them look like they want to run away, but they can only writhe around in the sand. I’m gonna go ahead and turn myself into a creosote bush so she doesn’t come after me and I can keep an eye on things. Okay. She’s approaching the crowd. She’s making those weird cooing sounds she makes and cocking her head back and forth. Never a good sign. Yep, her jaws are starting to do that thing where they open up real big. Damn, she looks really hungry today.

Thanks for the update, Josh! Hope to hear from you again soon. While we wait, let’s go to the weather.

[The Weather]

I’ve just been talking with Josh Crayton and you’ll all be relieved to know that things have turned around for the better out there since we last heard from him.

All the out-of-towners have either been eaten by our ravenous founder, Tabitha Littlefield, or succumbed to their various injuries and ailments. That in itself isn’t the good news, of course. It’s merely the neutral news that paves the way for the good news. Once the bloodbath ended and Tabitha drove away, barely able to squeeze into her Ioniq after feasting so hard, Josh was about to call the weekend quits. He reported being, quote, “bummed about the whole thing.” As he turned back from a creosote bush into the form of a young man in glasses and khaki shorts, he spotted movement behind the smoking wreckage of the Cessna. At first he thought it was one of the sentient mirages sensing that he was low on electrolytes, but he saw that it was actually a human being. A young woman, big and tall and powerful looking. She wore a safari vest and a red bandana and a muscle tee featuring Perses the Greek god of destruction and her face was covered in soot. The sole survivor of the out-of-towners. She grimaced as they walked toward each other.

“Wonder if we can get our money back,” she said.

Josh asked her where she was from and she told him she couldn’t remember. Once she entered the city limits, she said, she seemed to forget a lot of things about the past.

“That’s normal,” Josh said.

“That’s good,” she said. “I thought it was weird, but now that you say it’s normal, it seems totally okay.”

Josh wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or sincere, but he liked it either way. He was about to offer her a ride back to town when another vehicle appeared on the horizon. It was an old school bus with FESTIVAL spray painted across the side, and it was filled with people and music gear. A band started to set up amidst the half-eaten bodies and smoldering heaps of debris. Josh recognized them immediately. It was the extracurricular project of some of the culinary students at the community college, a French cookery themed hardcore band called Crusty Baguette. Josh was super into them, and shows were rare.

“Hey, they’re pretty good,” said the woman in the red bandana, nodding along as the band began to play their first song, Creep Suzette.

“Totally,” Josh said.

And as far as I know, Josh and his new out-of-towner friend are still out there enjoying the music and making the most of their festival weekend. So it seems like everything is just fine after all and this whole thing wasn’t the huge disaster that some of us predicted. Sometimes things do work out against all odds.

Stay tuned for a special announcement from Byron Villalobos about the big sale down at the Estes Truck Stop, with prices slashed to almost normal.

Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.

PROVERB: Once bitten, twice shy. Twice bitten, quadruple shy. Thrice bitten, sextuple shy. And so on.