If you meet the Buddha on the road, neat! What a cool celebrity sighting. Welcome to Night Vale.

Don't be alarmed, listeners. That screeching noise emitting from your cell phone is just a test.

The Night Vale city council is rolling out a new emergency alert system. As of today, Night Vale citizens will receive text alerts in moments of acute crisis, like if there's a flash flood, or if someone goes missing, or if Lucy Tropic's Fried Ice Cream shop runs out of vanilla bean. That last one wouldn't normally be an emergency, but since a couple of deep-fried scoops of Lucy's vanilla bean cream are the only thing that satisfies the town founder’s hunger besides human flesh, it counts.

The emergency alerts will be transmitted via text message, and I am not threatened by that at all. I get it. I can't be broadcasting all the time. Some major events are bound to happen when I'm not here at the radio station to report on them. I mean, that's exactly why I have my portable broadcasting set-up at home—but even that's not foolproof! What if I'm asleep, or enjoying a date night with Carlos, or helping Esteban practice spelling in his grimoire workbook? He's been making great progress, by the way. It's so gratifying watching him sound out a word himself, and it's so dangerous when he misses a glyph in the Forbidden Sigil. But that's why we work in pencil! Except for the scorch marks on those houseplants, it's like it never happened.

The point is, I'm not always available to report on the things that you need to know, Night Vale. Only the vast, vast majority of the time. So I guess this emergency alert system could be kind of helpful, maybe. In a few highly specific cases.

And now for an update from the Night Vale Parks Department. Next Saturday, Park Ranger Layla Burke will be leading a group of amateur mountaineers out to the sand wastes to climb the shimmering mountain that only appears when the planets are in disharmony. And boy are they discordant right now. Venus is like, not speaking to Saturn—and I don’t know why nobody’s saying it, but we all saw Saturn curve Mercury last week, and that’s obviously what started all of this.

Ranger Layla's group will aim to summit the mountain over the long weekend, or, failing that, to retrieve the bodies of the missing climbers who haven’t been seen since they tried to reach the top last spring. All of the members of that earlier climbing party are presumed dead, their corpses half-buried in snow drifts; only the scuffed toe of a boot or the hem of a brightly-colored parka would be visible under the snowfall, possibly no more than a few yards away from the peak toward which they struggled but ultimately failed to reach. Which is a real shame. It’s an awful thing, littering on a mountain like that.

For some other fun activities in town next weekend, Paulette Dadiet [pronounced like the last name here: https://www.nba.com/news/new-york-knicks-2025-26-pronunciation-guide] will be teaching a free yoga class at the community rec center. Paula will guide her students through some classic yoga poses such as Downward Dog, Warrior I, Warrior II, Backwards Dog, Warrior III: Return to The Fields of War, Prehensile Ponytail, Warrior IV: Space Marine, Bird of Purgatory, The Gentle Whizz-Bang, and Warrior V: Warrior Vs Freddy. All skill levels are welcome, and donations are appreciated.

[emergency text alert sound, it’s Jon’s voice saying “There is an emergency.”]

Listeners, I've just gotten a notification from the emergency alert system. Little weird they didn’t ask me to read it on the radio first, but whatever. Let’s see what it says.

[Reading from the text message] "Missing Person Alert: Oziyah Edwards, male, 24 years old, 5' 9". If seen please call the Sheriff's Secret Police." They've even included a link to a photo of Oziyah in the message, which: rub it in, why don't ya? The one thing you can't do over the radio, and they just had to…What am I saying? A young man is missing, and that's obviously more important than my petty concerns about—[Jon: “This is an emergency.”] oh, there's another alert.

It's almost the exact same message, but this one's from a different number. It says: "Missing Person Alert: Oziyah Edwards, male, 24, 5' 11" according to his internet dating profiles but we're not so sure. If seen please call the Sheriff's Secret Police."

Well, I guess they're still working out the kinks with this whole emergency alert system. Which is to be expected. Not to say I told you so, but… anyway. In the meantime, listeners, please keep an eye out for Oziyah. A search party will be assembling shortly in order to sweep the area for signs of where he might've gone. Hopefully we can find him soon.

Let’s take a look at traffic.

Cause and effect are distinctions without difference. Quantum physicists have already proven that it's possible for event A to cause event B and, simultaneously, for event B to cause event A. Our dependence on sequential narrative hinders our ability to reconcile reality as it is with how we experience it, but the fact remains: linear time is a soothing fiction. We delude ourselves into believing that we're something more than particles whose course has been charted by forces that we could grasp intellectually but could not bear to know.

But we're not talking about quantum superpositions. We're talking about you. You who by hearing this have been condemned to know your fate instead of merely living it. This is the moment of cause and effect, the catalyst made inevitable by the end result that birthed it. Nothing can be altered; your fate was sealed the moment the first atoms erupted into being. All of which makes it very difficult to say who's at fault for the fender-bender on Exit 7 of Route 800, but that's really a matter for the insurance companies to sort out.

This has been traffic.

There still haven't been any sightings of Oziyah Edwards, but the search has become much more urgent. The thunderstorms that were supposed to roll in later this evening have been upgraded to a tornado watch. Now a watch is still less severe than a tornado warning, which is less dire than a certainty but more serious than a premonition.

Ugh, I don't know why I'm even saying all this—you probably saw the emergency alert about the tornado on your phone, just like I did. [Jon: “This is an emergency.”] And I'm getting another message now. Oh, it's about Oziyah!

[Reading from the text message] It says "The missing person alert for Oziyah Edwards has been canceled. Be advised, Oziyah Edwards does not and cannot exist." So… that's great! I guess. I mean, if he doesn't exist he can't be imperiled by a potential tornado, right? [Jon: “This is an emergency.”] Wait. Listeners, I'm sorry to just be reading off my phone right now, but there's another update:

"The missing person alert for Oziyah Edwards has been canceled." Right, they already said that. [Picking up where he left off] "—has been canceled because Oziyah Edwards has split into three separate but evidently identical selves. Be advised, because each of the Oziyahs has two other Oziyahs with him, he is technically triple-not-missing."

Wow, they have got to work out the bugs in this system. Apparently Oziyah Edwards either never existed and couldn't possibly exist, or he exists three times as much as the average person. Or, one point five times as much as the average person if you count your doppelgangers, assuming one of you hasn't murdered the other. Is my math right?

[Jon: “This is an emergency.”] Hang on, there's another emergency alert—ugh, I might have to mute these notifications. This one says: "Please ignore the previous message. The missing person alert for Oziyah Edwards has been canceled because he cannot exist. Oziyah Edwards isn't. That is all."

[Jon: “This is an emergency.”] But that's not all, because there's already another emergency alert. "Please ignore the previous message but do not ignore the one before that. The missing person alert for Oziyah Edwards has been canceled because it would have to be a missing persons alert because there are now three of him."

Okay, so I'm not sure what's going on with Oziyah, but I do know that the tornado watch has been upgraded to a tornado certainty. Night Vale residents are strongly encouraged to head to the lower floors of their homes or places of work, move away from any windows or shelves laden with precariously-balanced objects, and to start huffing and puffing really hard in the direction of the incoming tornado. Maybe we can just sort of push it away from us. We'll never know if we don't try, right?

More on these stories as they develop. But first, a word from our sponsor.

Do you remember that girl who wore pajama pants to high school like, every day? It's not as though she hadn't gotten dressed—she was clearly showered, and she wore makeup and even some jewelry—but always she was in those pajama pants. And she was always getting into fights. No, that's not quite it—she was always starting fights. But they weren't unprovoked. She always seemed to be fighting on someone else's behalf, like if a bully was picking on a kid who was smaller, or different somehow—blaow! Suddenly there was pajama pants girl, tackling some lacrosse jerk into a vending machine. She didn't even have to particularly like whoever was being picked on, and it definitely didn't matter if the person she was fighting was bigger than she was. She tackled the assistant principal once. Unless that was just a rumor.

You lost track of her after high school. Everyone seemed to. The occasional internet search never turns up a thing about her, though of course people change their names and, even if she hasn't, not everyone shares their lives online. And what do you hope to find when you look her up, anyway? To learn that pajama pants girl matured and found a different outlet for her rage, that maybe she's lost her violent need to see justice dealt out at the speed of a headbutt? Do you really want to know if she became a public defender or a case worker or something? Or are you hoping that you can place her into the same mundane reality that you inhabit now, when back then she was so much more alive than you, clear in her thinking, decisive in her actions, cheerfully accepting the consequences for doing what she was certain needed to be done. You've still never shown the kind of courage that pajama pants girl displayed before she could legally drive. If you knew what she was up to now, would it assuage your guilt? Why do you feel guilty? Those pajama pants sure looked comfy, though.

Old Navy. We probably sell pants like that.

The slate gray storm clouds have developed an eerie green cast. Thick sheets of rain are thudding against the station's roof and the rumble of thunder has grown more frequent than its absence. Night Vale is directly in the path of the tornado bearing down on us, due to strike in a matter of minutes.

[several emergency text alerts going off in a row underneath Cecil’s lines, they are all Jon: “This is an emergency.”, cutting each other off and/or overlapping]

But I am getting just, so. Many. Texts. right now.

A few are from Carlos, obviously—he and Esteban have taken shelter in the basement at my sister Abby's house along with my beloved brother-in-law Steve Carlsberg and my niece Janice—but I can barely see his messages beneath all of these emergency alerts. Of course there is an emergency going on right now, but this is a bit much.

And I keep getting these duplicate updates. This one says "Severe weather update: Tornado incoming" and this one says "Severe weather update: Incoming tornado." How is that helpful?

Oh. Oh no. "Emergency alert: All three Oziyahs Edwards have been spotted wandering through the Sand Wastes, headed directly into the path of the tornado. Night Vale residents are encouraged to do precisely the opposite of what the Oziyahs Edwards are doing and seek shelter."

Another emergency alert. Um, this one says that that isn't happening. "There is no Oziyah Edwards, much less multiples of him, and Night Vale residents are encouraged to forget his name and any conception you might have had of him, and then to seek shelter if you have the time."

More alerts. Ugh, I'm just going to summarize them, too many are coming in at once. The three Oziyahs have stopped their progress into the Sand Wastes. The tornado is visible from where they stand. Even if the Oziyahs started to run away now it would be far too late. But they're not running. The Oziyahs are walking away from one another, calmly, moving apart at an identical pace. Though they are facing away from one another and do not speak they all stop walking at the same instant. They're being buffeted by gale force winds and soaked with rain and yet the Oziyahs are eerily still. They stand equidistant from each other, forming a sort of triangle.

Or they're not doing all that, maybe! Maybe they do not exist and what's out there in the Sand Wastes is the space where Oziyah Edwards isn't. The alert system is a little fuzzy on what's actually going on out there and I'm hiding under my desk, so I can't verify one way or another.

What is certain, however, is that a tornado is about to slam right into Night Vale, so now would be as good a time as any for the weather.

[[Weather]]

We have been delivered! Sorry, I could have phrased that clearer. The smoothie I ordered has been delivered. But also! The tornado is no longer a threat.

Before the tornado could cross the edge of the Sand Wastes into Night Vale, it passed through the triangle made by the three Oziyahs Edwards standing in the storm. At the center of the triangle was nothing. Or, more specifically, there was a lack of something. There was an Oziyah Edwards-shaped absence where he was not and could not be, and because he wasn't there, there was nothing—less than nothing—in his place. As the tornado passed through that vacuum it disappeared, taking the storm and all three extant Oziyahs with it.

So I'm still pretty unclear whether or not Oziyah Edwards is missing or even exists at all, but the emergency alert system seems to be down for maintenance. We'll have to wait for an update until such a time as they've fixed it, which might be a while. Other than that, Night Vale and its residents are unharmed—except for the two fried ice cream shop employees who our town founder devoured. They mistakenly gave her a scoop of french vanilla and that's just not the same.

Stay tuned next for snatches of a curious melody you hear playing at the edges of your dreams but will never listen to in its fullness. Good night, Night Vale. Good night.