LEONARD

Hello folks. Well. Leonard. Still here, but not here. Gone, but still talking.

Speaking of gone, Cecil is still missing. Now I said to not be alarmed, but at a certain point. Well. I leave it up to you. At a certain point you have to ask yourself. Just what is happening here. Just what is going on.

But never fear that you will be without your evening’s entertainment. We have today another show from the archives. This one is particularly interesting. It is from the long summer of 1946. The second great war had ended. Our nation’s shattered youth stumbled home from foreign shores, to a country that had learned to go on without them. Ahead, the prosperity of the American century. Behind, the despair and destitution of the Great Depression.

The Great War. The Great Depression. The Greatest Generation. They really didn’t have a lot of variety in adjectives I suppose. They were there for the beginning of modern history, and they thought it was all great, even if by that, they meant it was bad. I envy their simplicity.

Oh, but I could jabber on forever. I think maybe I only exist when I’m talking. So if I pause for a beat like so. [beat] Yes, I did not exist for that moment. Fascinating. Well, I suppose then I will return to oblivion rather than bore you.

Please enjoy this archived recording and uh, you might start looking for Cecil. Seems problematic that he has not yet been found. Not my problem though. I don’t even exist starting right…now.

CECIL

Today is a day that will live in mundanity. Welcome to Night Vale.

Night Vale. Our boys have come home. After years of war, and then more months of post-war organization and peace keeping, the young men of Night Vale are returning. There is the glint of life in their eyes, eager to get started with careers and families now that the dark cloud of war has lifted. Sure, have they seen things that will mean they need to do just a little bit of heroin now and again to keep from mentally collapsing? Who hasn’t? And yes, are their dreams dark tangles of limbs none of which are attached to anyone, as they swim against the current in a river made of warm and sticky blood? Ok, yes, that is also true.

But our boys were brave and resilient, and now they are care-free job seekers. And look out ladies. They just might be interested in relationships with you despite unresolved tragedies shaping their behavior in ways that cause them to harm themselves or others.

Yes, dawn has returned to America, and this will be America’s century. Which will hopefully last a whole century and someone won’t foolishly tear down all of our prosperity and power for no reason in say 70 years or so. That would be needless and stupid, so I can’t see that happening.

More soon on the boys coming home, but first, let’s take a look at the community calendar.

This Wednesday there will be a green tent in Grove Park. From within, will come the scent of exotic and rich spices. You will hear the trilling of beautiful music. The air outside will be perfectly still, but there will be the slightest breeze from the mouth of the tent, and the breeze will be warm and moist. If you look at the tent long enough, it will almost seem that it is breathing. And if you look deep enough inside, it will almost seem like you see teeth. So I say: yeah I don’t know, maybe just try going inside. It’s probably fine in there. When has a tent ever been bad?

Don’t be a chicken. Which is a new slang that comes from the popular phrase “chinchilla ick’ing” as in, you’re so cowardly you icked out my chinchilla.

On Thursday, there will be the official start of the space race. What’s a space race? No one knows, but there will be a starting pistol fired and then we’ll be off. I guess bring track gear.

Friday we will be peering into orbs and spheres, divining esoteric truths. Bring beverages and snacks, pop a beach chair open on the desert sand, and peer into the orb. See beyond the bounds of our world, and beyond the structure of our timeline. There will be toy shovels and cars for the kids to play with as we let our minds wander where our bodies never could.

Saturday, the Night Vale book club will be meeting to discuss Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories. Topics will include who in the book is good and who is bad, which characters should kiss each other, and if Christopher Isherwood personally believes everything that he has the bad people say and do. There will also be a special guest lecture on cats from Mr. Fornifer, who is a cat.

Last Sunday went so well that we’re going to go ahead and do it again this Sunday. One more time from the top!

Monday, at the Night Vale community theater, local-boy-made-good Artie Miller will be doing a reading of a new play of his called All My Sons. Everyone please go and be very nice about it. We’re all so proud of his little plays.

[feedback]

CECIL (modern day):

Hello? Hello?? Is this getting through? I can’t tell. If you are hearing this, my name is Cecil Gershwin Palmer. I live with my handsome scientist husband on Whitaker Lane. I wish there was some way to know if this was working. Are you hearing this? Test. Test. I knifed a knave in Knoxville. Hush hush don’t play Rush, don’t play Rush in this mall’s Lush. Oh, there is just no way to know!

[feedback]

CECIL 1946:

And finally, Tuesday is a dream from which I am trying to awake.

This has been the community calendar.

Our boys are really ripping it up and roaring it down as part of their big coming home celebration. Susie Q’s Burgers N’ More, out on the main drag, neon lit and full of the smell of frying onions and browning meat, a slab of mint light in the desert darkness. Well Susie Q’s has been full to bursting with our young men, still wearing their uniforms for all the various services, green army jackets, cute little sailor uniforms for the navy boys, diving suits for those who fought in the depths of the sea, their eyes invisible behind the black glass, still dripping with water that smells of sulfur and fear. And the boys are getting in little fights and breaking dishes and mugs and such.

Susie Q called in saying “I’m proud of our boys, I am, but they are doing real damage to the physical structure of the building. Oh ho, there goes one of the support beams,” she added, before concluding her call with a blood curdling scream that got cut off with the empty hiss of a dead telephone line. So it sounds like things are really going wild at Susie Q’s Burgers N’ More.

Other Night Vale residents are reporting the boys celebrating in a variety of fun and cheerful ways. A few of the boys are racing up the side of town hall, climbing with their bare hands, skittering up it like insects, moving at speeds previously unknown to human climbers. They are hooting to each other, low and hollow, like lips on the edge of a bottle top. The boys on the ground are hooting up to them as well. Every hoot is a slightly different tone. Notes unknown to pentatonic or even heptatonic scales. Hundreds of tones each just slightly off from each other. The opposite of harmony. Boy, now this brings new meaning to a hoot and a holler. I mean, the boys are hooting and the bystanders are hollering. Hollering in terror. Fleeing. So forth.

Now a word from our sponsors. For that, we have Dottie, a sentient patch of haze.

DOTTIE (transatlantic accent)

Royal Portable typewriters. Tired of a typewriter that keeps you tied to your desk? Now you can clatter away at the keys in the park, at a friend’s house, in the front seat of your Town and Country Convertible, or in the produce section of the A&P. Yes, the Royal Portable typewriter is the ultimate writing tool for those who can’t seem to get it done at home. And don’t take our word for it. Here is a quote from celebrity endorser Betty Smith who says “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? More like a typewriter types wherever the heck you want it to.”

Take your work on the road. A road is a great flat surface to put a portable typewriter on. Just set down some flares so the cars don’t cream ya.

Royal Portable typewriters. It’s not merely a typewriter. It’s a full sized and full weight typewriter that comes with a suitcase.

CECIL

Thank you Dottie.

This has been a word from our sponsors.

More news on our boys, rambunctious all-American boys that they are. Seth Peters, you know, the farmer? He says the boys have been all up and down his fields, eating up all the wheat, the wheat by-products, as well as potatoes, carrots, why, all the great variety of vegetables that Seth Peters is known for farming.

“My fields is ruined,” Seth moaned to me, through a special phone line that has been laid between his farmhouse and our community radio station for reasons no one, including me, understands. “Ruined, I say! They won’t grow anything for a thousand years. The only thing anyone will be able to farm on this land is imaginary corn.”

I tried to say something at this point, but Seth just kept talking.

“And my boy. My poor young boy. What will become of his inheritance? Ruined earth and imaginary corn. That is all. Oh my poor boy, what will be the America that you live in?”

I reminded him that he didn’t have a son and he said that he planned to have one eventually, probably, and then I went outside and cut the phone line from his farm so he couldn’t contact me anymore.

But listen boys, you simply must tone it down out there.

And now, some patriotic health tips from the Night Vale Medical Board.

Folks, it’s 1946, and we’re believing just about anything when it comes to medicine. There is some kind of potion and it comes in bottles and it cures something called “ailments”. Go ahead and drink that up.

Smoking is good for your lungs, sure!

Don’t let scientists rain on your parade. Unless it’s one of those rain parades where everyone dresses in swimsuits and dances in the rain. Those are fun.

But medicine is more of an art than a science. Try to stay loose and have a good time out there. We’re pretty sure it’ll be good for you, maybe.

This has been a message from the Night Vale Medical Board

[feedback]

CECIL (modern day)

To anyone who can hear. I am trying to return to you. I am trying. But there are forces beyond my power that- Oh, no, I gotta go!

[feedback]

CECIL 1946:

Things may be getting a tad out of hand with our boys. In the heat of their recent victory and the joy of their homecoming, they are tearing apart every building in town with their hands. Some of them are galloping on all four limbs down our city’s streets, eating the asphalt in huge lusty gulps as they go. Now boys, we understand and even applaud the spirit of the celebration. But you simply are taking it too far. Please, for the good of everyone, let’s dial it back a little, shall we? Oh. Oh my. It seems the boys are outside the radio station, egging each other on and seeing if they can pick up the entire building. I must go out and confront them. While I do that, let’s take a gander at the weather.

[WEATHER]

The victorious boys did not stop during our weather report. They continued to rend and tear and devour. They partied their way from town limit to town limit, eating the town as they went. The public library, and all the librarians within, which was quite a sight to see, I’ll tell you. Town Hall. The house of Rosa and her daughter, Little Girl Josie. This radio station. Me. My body. They ate me. I am gone. I am eaten.

They continued. They ate the desert, and they ate the mountains. Howling and laughing, waving American flags and holding aloft beer bottles glistening with condensation, they ate the roads and the air. They ate the United States, and then continuing, they drank the oceans. They ate every living thing within the ocean. They bit into the mantle of the earth, and greedily sucked up the magma within. The entire earth was eaten, and everyone on it. And the boys continued. They climbed to the moon and they ate it. They ate the sun. They ate the nearest star and the farthest star. They ate nebulas. Somehow, they ate the void between the stars. They ate the observable universe, and then continued eating past the point where we could observe them.

Everything is gone, including me. I am not speaking to you now. You are not there to listen. None of this is happening because none of it can anymore.

[feedback]

MODERN CECIL:

I’m back! Hello? Yes! I am back. Ok, I’m turning off whatever old episode that was. Some uninteresting filler one I’m sure. Nothing is more interesting than the present moment. History should not be considered.

Oh there is so much to tell you. So much has happened. You must know this.

But there’s the light and my time is up. Oh well, we’ll get to it next time.

Stay tuned next for a contractually obligated eight days of Christmas music that we didn’t get to last Christmas season.

And to my community that I am so glad to have returned to: good night, Night Vale. Good night.