You live, you learn. You die, you also learn. You just don’t hold onto the lesson for very long. Welcome to Night Vale

All is in chaos. All is in ruins.

The worst has come to be, and the worst of the worst might yet to be.

The supply chain into Night Vale has completely broken down under the weight of our existential otherness. No trucks can find their way through the strange backroads that lead to our doors. The shelves of the Ralph’s are bare. No frozen yogurt. No Provençal herb mix. No edible cling film. All the necessities of life, that we assumed would be on hand forever, gone. What are we to do without Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce Flavored Cough Drops? Or whole fish, flown in daily from high end Japanese seafood markets, as we are accustomed to?

Now is not the time for panic. No, the time for panic was a few weeks ago when there was still anything we could do about this. Now is the time for despair. Real lamenting hours, if you know what I mean.

City Council, speaking from their underground bunker where they have been hoarding food over the last few years, put out a statement reminding people that the City Council is fine and, quote, “well, sucks for the rest of you.”

None of that seems great, if I’m honest, but I’m a reporter and must stay impartial, so maybe it’s actually good? Who am I to say?

Meanwhile Steve Carlsberg, my friend and brother in law, is leading the men who are not tall and the men who are not short through town, a silent procession. They are leaving behind Labyrinth, which sought to use them toward unknown and inhuman ends. They are leaving behind their generic labels and asserting each of their specific identities.

Gathered outside of town in the desert, Steve calls upon them one by one and they tell their stories. A man who is not tall steps forward. “My name is Yousef. I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and then on my 40th birthday, I woke up, and I was in the passenger seat of a Labyrinth truck. I didn’t know why this had happened to me, but I also did not know how to resist the inextricable tide of change. And so over the years, I have taken part in unforgivable things. I have buried crates in the desert from which I could hear the faint but terrible sound of fingernails clawing at wood. I don’t understand anything I have done or that has been done to me, but I never knew how to stop until now.”

A man who is not short now speaks. “My name is Christine. I have always lived here in Night Vale. I actually wanted to work for Labyrinth. I remember seeing their trucks as a child, so secret and yet so important. I wanted to be secret and important too. And so I traded away everything that made me myself and became what they needed me to be. Once, I drove my neighbor to the desert and I slit his throat. I did this because I knew Labyrinth needed me to. My partner, who I now know is named Dennis, watched impassively as I did it. We have been made monstrous. Is there any way back for us?”

Finally Steve says: “I am a man who is not short. And I am Steve Carlsberg. And I know the way back. It is by speaking loudly and repeatedly the actuality of our individual lives. The more individual we are, the less hold Labyrinth has on us.”

And somewhere a crow caws, a sharp bark in the evening air. On an office wall, a door appears. A woman who is both not tall and not short steps out of it, a look of sad determination on her face.

The supply chain crisis is of course not only affecting food. Toilet paper is obviously just a no go, but really, you should have joined the “go outside and spray at it with the garden hose” revolution when you had the chance. It’s time we caught up with the rest of the world.

And it’s almost impossible to find double A batteries, although weirdly there are more triple A batteries than ever. We are practically swimming in those useless things.

Other core essentials that have become impossible to find: printer paper. Laser discs. Wiffle bats. Scratching posts. Horse figurines. I repeat, you cannot find horse figurine one in the town of Night Vale.

Gordon Moreno, former PTA president and current head of the Night Vale Consumers Association announced he had something to say and then screamed for several continuous minutes into the microphone until he passed out from lack of air. He is currently resting in our break room, although every time he wakes up, he just starts screaming again.

Frantic Night Vale citizens are standing at the edge of town, waving glow sticks and shouting “here truck! Here truck!” to try to help trucks find their way to Night Vale, but all to no avail.

Soon enough we will have nothing left to eat except triple A batteries and those things taste terrible.

Out in the desert, Steve speaks to the people of Labyrinth: “They will not let us go peacefully. We have always known that. We are the milk they churn into the butter of oppression. Or, uh, you know, a better metaphor than that.”

He directs the men who are not tall and the men who are not short to construct barricades and keep watch for any approaching danger. Other groups try to teach each other martial combat. “I think you put your thumb inside your hand when you punch,” says a man who is not short, helpfully. “So your thumb is protected.” Everyone else nods eagerly.

Steve does not take part in this training. He sees something that makes him lose interest in everything else. It is Abby, his wife, and Janice, his daughter. They have come not in an unmarked black sedan nor a box truck with the labyrinth logo on the side, but in the family hatchback.

The family embraces, here at the edge of everything, at the turn of history.

“I am sorry I lost myself, even if for a moment. And I’m sorry that in finding myself, I have put you in danger,” Steve says.

“Yeah man, it sucks,” says Janice.

“It really does,” says Abby. “You shouldn’t have done that, and it has made our life a lot harder.”

Steve nods. “I know. I can only try to find my way back to you. And to do that, I must face this.”

“Sounds like some macho BS but go off, king,” says Janice.

“Please be home for dinner,” says Abby.

They get back in the hatchback. They leave Steve in the desert. He is more scared, less focused than before, but the great task in front of him remains.

Back in town, a woman who is both not tall and not short passes the Moonlite All-Nite Diner. A man rolls around in the parking lot. “MUD WOMB” the man says. “MUD WOMB.” She reaches down and touches the man on the forehead. The man makes a shuddering gasp, and then he dies. She leaves the body on the dusty asphalt, and continues her slow, unstoppable walk toward the Sand Wastes, toward Steve.

Word is in now that not only are food and basic consumables unavailable due to the complete collapse of the supply chain into Night Vale, but even day to day items like washers, dryers, laptop computers, and woodchippers are nowhere to be found. I bought a laptop just last week, so obviously I have been thinking that it’s time for me to get a new one. But everywhere I looked, the Ralph’s, the Worst Buy, Diana’s Computer and Crab Shack, they’re all out of stock. Now I’m stuck with this antique machine that can barely open an internet browser in half a second. It makes me feel less-than, honestly. And that’s the supply chain’s fault.

Susan Escobar, the second grade scrying teacher at Night Vale Elementary School, has been in the market for a new stove. “I don’t want nothing fancy,” she said, unprompted, to a passerby who mistakenly made eye contact. “Just a cherry red gas range. Has to be gas. I don’t believe in electricity, on account of the lord.”

But there is no stove to be had, gas or otherwise. Not anywhere Susan has looked. And she says she has looked everywhere. “I’ve even tried scrying” she told me, although I hadn’t asked. “But the bones are silent. If there were a stove, those bones would find them. But the trucks won’t come.” She shivered, even though the afternoon was blisteringly hot. “The trucks won’t come,” she muttered again.

The sun starts to set, and shadows of the people of Labyrinth stretch far out from their bodies. Steve stands at the top of a hill, and his shadow casts itself all the way to the bottom. He is watching a woman who is both not tall and not short, as she picks her way steadily up to him. She does not cast any shadow at all. The barricades do not slow her, and not a single one of the brave-talking people of Labyrinth make a move to defend themselves. Finally, she reaches Steve. He tenses, but she merely meets his eyes steadily. Behind her eyes there is a chasm of deep time that makes him feel like vomiting. The people of Labyrinth shudder in quiet fear, as the woman and Steve face each other.

Somewhere, on the radio, a man says something about the weather.

[weather]

The woman who was both not tall and not short sighs. Her sigh sounds like brittle paper tearing. Her eyes water a little in the sandy air.

She says: “When the first molecule formed, it was at that moment that Labyrinth came into this world. Before sentience, before lungs. We are deeper than purpose, we are older than thought, and without us you would be nothing. With us, you are also nothing, but a nothing that serves a greater good. You foolishly presume you can separate yourself from us, but can you separate yourself from a scattering of clouds, from the grains of sand under your feet?” She waves one hand. “Have a look at this now.”

Steve and the people of Labyrinth groan, as a strong image of a burning cactus next to a rock shaped like a pit viper, wriggles its way into their minds. Then the image of ants crawling along the frame of a rusted Chevy truck. Then the stars, ancient and pitiless, hundreds then thousands then millions, an eternity of stars and not a single one shining upon life. These images push through their mind like the trampling of a panicked crowd.

The people of Labyrinth stagger, Steve falls to his knees.

“As easily as that,” she says, “as easily as that it can be done. And yet here you all are, rebelling against this natural order. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

Steve is silent for several seconds. He needs to put himself back in order and shake off her terrible visions. Finally, still on his knees, he speaks.

“Yes, we are only human,” he says. “I am only human. And you are something else. Something bigger. Something more powerful. I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to know. But we are human. And that is its own vital thing. Our lives are so brief and they matter so much. They matter all the more for how quickly they pass.”

Steve rises to his feet. The woman looks up at him cooly.

“We would not stand in the way of Labyrinth,” he says. “But neither can we remain in your drivers seats and office chairs. We cannot stop the machine, but we do not need to help it run. We are neither not tall, nor not short, but we each of us have names and lives. And in this moment we are reclaiming those lives and those names. Now do what you will to us.”

He finishes. His lips are dry. He licks them nervously.

“And this is the answer for all of you?” the woman asks.

Steve glances at the crowd. No one says anything. Finally Christine, in the front, nods. Emboldened, Steve looks back at the woman. “Yes,” he says.

She shrugs. “Fine,” she says. “You’re all fired. We purchased that self-driving rideshare company — what was it? De Tours? — because we needed a system that lacks the weakness of humans, only the cold reliability of ghosts who drive cars. Now, please bury your company IDs and keycards in the sand of the desert.” She tilts her head. “On a personal note, Steve Carlsberg. You are the only interesting human being I have ever met. Not that interesting. Not more interesting than a supernova, for instance. But a little bit interesting.”

Done with words, she turns and walks back through the Sandwastes toward Labyrinth headquarters, at the same steady, slow pace with which she had arrived.

Steve begins to laugh. And the crowd laughs too. They howl with laughter, finally free, and utterly lost.

Steve and the people of Labyrinth turn, still laughing with relief and fear, and walk back through the Sandwastes to their town. They are only citizens now, like everyone else. But they have made themselves separate from their neighbors, and they don’t know what to do next.

Janice and Abby are waiting for Steve at the city limits, leaning on the hatchback. He rushes to them, and they embrace again. “It’s done,” he says. “I’m only here for you now. I don’t know what I’ll do for a job or how I’ll support the family, but I’ll figure out a way. And most importantly, I’ll be there, every day. I love you.” Then he looks up in confusion. Around them, the citizens of Night Vale run here and there, screaming and throwing trash cans and small shrubs.

“Why is everyone wailing?’ Steve asks.

“Have you not noticed that nothing has been able to come into Night Vale for weeks because trucks can’t find their way in or out?,” says Janice “They get lost. Their navigation systems can no longer handle the strange highways through the desert.”

Steve shakes his head. “You don’t use a navigation system. To drive on those roads, you need a language that comes beyond thought. That happens in places in your brain you didn’t even know existed.”

“Well, I guess truck drivers can’t do that,” says Janice.

“No,” says Steve. “But I can.” He gestures at the newly unemployed crowd behind him. “We all can.”

Which is how Steve and the former members of Labyrinth comandeered the big rigs left behind by frustrated truck drivers who couldn’t find their way out of town. Steve and his people used their innate impulses of movement to cross the desert. Take Route 900 out of town until you see the tree that looks like your mother weeping, and then make a left on a small dirt road. Eventually you see two old logs that look like they are arm wrestling, and from there it is a slight right and then a sharp right, and then boom, you’re in Omaha. That’s just an example. They brought us back food, and toilet paper, and FINALLY a new laptop for me so I don’t have to keep using this thing that is almost eight days old now. Ugh.

Steve is working to organize these drivers into a new company, that due to the complexities of navigation, will have something of a monopoly on getting goods in and out of Night Vale, so I suspect he will do quite well for himself. Maybe he can finally fix his pool that Janice and Abby have been bothering him about. It’s time he put his mind and his energy into the people who care about him most.

Meanwhile the box trucks and cargo vans and unmarked black sedans of Labyrinth are self-driving, using the ghosts of De Tours. And honestly? They’re terrible at it. They keep crashing. There are like vans on their sides with crates spilling out of them on every block. Self-driving is just not a workable system, especially for an ancient mysterious force, older than breath and thought. But what do I know? I’m just a guy eating a battery.

Stay tuned next for the hollow voice of the universe, eulogizing another year into rest, calling another year into being.

And good night, Night Vale. Good night.

[a short interlude of music, then:]

At a little house on a little street in the Scrying Druid housing development, a man named David Lane stands on his front lawn, eating a popsicle. He found the box of popsicles in his fridge. They’re shaped like Spongebob Squarepants, from the last time he had a weekend with his son, which was a while ago. Probably for the best. He doesn’t know if he has anything to offer his son but disappointment and Spongebob popsicles, and his son deserves better than that.

David had a very strange experience a few weeks earlier. Yes, strange is relative in a town like Night Vale, but he had been propelled by an inexplicable force to drive into the desert, and there a man had put a knife to his throat. He was going to die, was supposed to die, but instead the man had let him go. And he had run home, promised to become a better human being, a better father, even though he knew these were not promises he would be able to keep.

He licks his popsicle. Freezer-burned. It really has been awhile since his son has visited.

A woman walks up to him. “Hello,” she says, as though they have an appointment and she is checking in.

“Ah, hello,” he says back. He doesn’t know who she is.

“My name is Tabitha Littlefield,” she says. “I founded this town.”

“Ok,” he says. “It’s nice.”

“What?” she says, cocking her head.

“The, uh, the town, it’s nice.” He wishes he wasn’t holding a freezer-burned popsicle shaped like Spongebob Squarepants. He feels that this woman might be the change he has been waiting for, his way out of this sad stasis. And he is right about that.

She opens her mouth wide, and then wider, and then beyond any human capacity. Her mouth is a tunnel to a dark nowhere. The sky turns red, or it seems to. David is not holding the popsicle anymore.