Welcome to Night Vale (8 page)

Jackie rolled open the car window (her car had manual everything except the transmission, which was some form one less than a manual, the works of which even her mechanic couldn't understand. “This isn't even a transmission. This is just a bag of rocks attached by string to your gear change. How does this car even drive?” he had said to her the last time she had gone in for an oil change. Her answer, as was her answer to everything that was outside the routine of her days, was to shrug and cease thinking about it the moment people around her stopped reminding her of it) and let the sun do its thing on her skin. The air as she drove felt good, sliding over her and feeling real in a way that nothing else that day had.

What she needed was someone who understood the world, who studied it in an objective way. She needed a scientist. Fortunately, Night Vale had, just a few years earlier, acquired a few of those.

They had come all at once, scientists being pack animals. Their leader was a nice man named Carlos, who had started dating Cecil, the presenter of the local radio station, after a near-death experience a few years before involving a brutal attack from a tiny civilization living under lane 5 of the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex. It was an ordinary enough way to begin a relationship, as these things go.

Jackie had always thought they made a sweet couple, even if Carlos was a bit too preoccupied with whatever “science” was,
and Cecil was a bit too enthusiastic sometimes about, well, everything. The fact that Carlos was an outsider to Night Vale was unusual as well. Night Vale doesn't bring in a lot of new residents, and most people born there never leave. Everyone liked Carlos, as they liked most out-of-towners (or “interlopers,” the affectionate nickname Night Valeans shout while pointing when they see someone unfamiliar in the street). He was likable enough, good looking enough, and smart enough to be reprehensible, but despite all of these things, no one feared or distrusted his clever science or perfect hair.

Because Cecil talked openly on his radio show about Carlos, their relationship was a point of near-constant discussion in Night Vale, all of their imperfections and faults, which made them individuals worth loving. They had built those faults into the usual messy, comfortable, patched-up, beautiful structure that any functioning long-term relationship ended up being.

This, the idea of relationships bit, was all conjecture on her part. She herself felt too young to try to figure out her own life, let alone someone else's life near hers, and so she had never even sought out companionship of that type. Jackie thought about dating from time to time in the distant way a person thinks about eventually becoming famous or owning a castle or growing ram's horns. They're all achievable, realistic goals, but by turning objectives into mere fantasies, she never had to go through the trouble of achieving or maintaining them.

She occasionally found herself thinking about love when staring at the many twinkling spy satellites in the night sky, or when the wind tasted like sour peaches for no understood reason, or when she said a word that seemed different than a word she would ever say. Then she would wonder what it might be like to join her life with someone, or even just a few min
utes with someone, just a touch or a glance, just anything, just something.

I'd like to meet someone special someday, Jackie thought.

“KING CITY,” the paper in her hand said.

Jackie crumpled the paper against the steering wheel. She hadn't been completely aware she was driving.

She pulled into a strip mall that only had two businesses: Carlos's lab and Big Rico's Pizza. Big Rico's had struggled ever since wheat and wheat by-products had been declared illegal. This was the result of a long and not terribly interesting story, but the gist is that wheat and wheat by-products transformed first into snakes and then into evil spirits resulting in a number of dead citizens.

Jackie parked the car on asphalt that had been lifted into sharp undulations by the roots of a nearby tree, which was transformed by the tires of her slowing car into a disquieting thumping that did nothing to improve her mood.

Carlos's lab was on the outskirts of the science district, which was a pretty run-down part of town. There were a few new laboratories being built, but the science community did not like gentrification, so they resisted new money, holding tight to their history and culture.

It was not uncommon for a single block to have not only marine biologists but also quantum physicists living next door to each other. In many other cities, this may seem like the makings of a civil disaster, but Night Vale's science district really made it work.

There were certainly some major disagreements and highly public conflicts between, say, the astronomers and the ornithologists, neither of which considers the other a real science. It's difficult sometimes for two scientific groups to get on well
when the core tenet of one science is to disprove the existence of another science—such as it is with meteorologists and geologists.

Carlos's lab was helpfully labeled with a simple illuminated yellow and black
LAB
sign and a handwritten

WE ARE “OPEN”!

sign in the front window. The door was unlocked, and led first into a small waiting room, like a doctor's office but with fewer deadly traps. She passed through it into the lab itself.

Carlos and his team of five scientists were huddled around a table. There were rows of beakers around them, all bubbling, and a chalkboard covered in numbers and also the word
science!
in different fancy cursives. Some of the iterations had pink chalk hearts around them. It was much like any university-level science lab.

“Excuse me,” Jackie said.

None of the scientists noticed her. They were all writing busily on clipboards and wearing lab coats. This is called “doing an experiment.”

She walked up to see what they were experimenting on. Under some work lights was a pink plastic flamingo.

“Careful now,” Carlos was saying. “We don't know what this or anything else does.”

The scientists nodded in unison and scribbled on their clipboards.

“We understand very little.”

More nodding, more scribbling.

“Excuse me, Carlos?” she said. He turned. There really was something blindingly handsome about him. His hair maybe.
Or his demeanor. People are beautiful when they do beautiful things. Perhaps he had spent most of his life doing beautiful things and it had really stuck. He smiled. He had teeth like a military cemetery.

“Jackie, hello. I'm sorry, I was doing science.” He waved over at the flamingo. “This is all very sciency stuff. Just here is an equation,” he said, indicating some numbers on the chalkboard. “It's important to have equations.”

“I see that. How's Cecil?”

“Overenthusiastic, consumed with his work, has very little understanding of science. I love him a lot. The usual.”

The scientists nodded and wrote on their clipboards. All information was important information, even if the reasons were not immediately apparent. The reason for anything was rarely immediately or even eventually apparent, but it existed somewhere, like a moon that had escaped orbit and was no longer a moon but just a piece of something that once was, spinning off into the nothing. The scientists were just then writing down that very metaphor. Metaphors are a big part of science.

“I need your help, Carlos.”

“Jackie, there's little I love more than helping people. Science and Cecil are about it. But I'm in the middle of an important experiment, and I think if we just push through we might figure out why the experiment is important. Finding out why we are doing what we already were doing is an exciting moment, and I believe we may be almost there.”

“All right, dude, but—”

“Besides, Josie asked us to look at this, and I owe her a few. More than a few. I owe her, I don't know, a high number. I would express it as an equation, but it's all figurative and figurative math is really tricky.”

“Carlos, look.”

She held up her left hand. The scientists all waited with pencils hovering, unsure of what observations they should be making at that moment. She did all her tricks with the slip of paper. She tossed it on the ground, tore it into pieces, flung it onto a Bunsen burner. Hell, she ate it. Why not?

Each trick ended the same way, with her holding the uncreased paper back in her left hand, where it had never really left.

Carlos dropped his clipboard.

“You too?” he said.

“Me too?”

“Let me see that.”

He took the slip of paper and examined it closely. When he let go it was back in her hand. The scientists were staring, mouths open. Their clipboards were at their sides. One of them appeared to have overloaded and shut down completely.

Carlos rushed around the lab, turning on and off burners, and throwing switches frantically. The other scientists helped the one scientist reboot.

“We start immediately,” Carlos shouted.

“Oh, good,” she shouted back. “Why are we shouting?”

“Here is what we know so far. The composition of the graphite is what you would expect to find in graphite. The composition of the paper is exactly what you would expect in paper. All the parts are as we suspected, even as the whole astonishes.

“It does not appear to be physically dangerous. Mentally it exerts a hold stronger than even the fascination with its properties could explain. After all, and I speak as someone who came here for what was supposed to be only a short research fellowship with the local community college, this town is mostly made of the unexplained.

“Sorry, I'm getting distracted. Also, can you stop throwing the paper at me? I know it never actually reaches me, but it's still unnerving, and I'm helping you out here. Thank you. I'm sorry if I snapped. It's okay to say I did. No, it's okay.

“King City is a small town of a little over ten thousand people in Monterey County. You can see pictures of it online. Just search any phrase at all in image search and a picture of it will always be the first result. There doesn't appear to be anything unusual about it, any more than any other place where people live their unusual lives.

“You are not the first I've seen with these slips of paper. It's not important who else. It's important to them, but not to you. I haven't thought much about it, so I guess not important to me either. I just assumed it was another passing strangeness that would take care of itself before Cecil even finished the broad
cast day of reporting on it. But it's been a few weeks now. And I didn't realize the paper did that. I wonder what else it does.

“You've reported feeling like your life is different since getting the paper. Like you are not yourself anymore, and the past is not your past, and the future you planned is now impossible. This is a common feeling, usually felt when we first wake up or when we receive thoughts that do not seem to be our own while showering. But with that feeling sustained as long as it has been, and the start of it aligning exactly with your receiving of the paper, it is safe to say that the two are connected.

“Here, look at this equation. I have no idea what it means. It's really long though. I'm going to add a couple more variables. Great, that looks really great. Nilanjana, please add that to the chalkboard.

“The next obvious step would be to go visit King City itself. See if all of this can be explained through simple physical proximity, or even if the slip of paper will react differently when it is proclaiming location rather than destination.

“Oh, and Nilanjana? Draw another ‘Science' with a heart around it please. Put that next to the new equation. Thank you, Nils.

“But getting to King City is not as easy. Getting anywhere from Night Vale is a little tricky, as we have a vast desert around us and our reality does not seem to align exactly with the reality of the rest of the world, but King City is an especially difficult case.

“Look at this map. Stan, can you please put the map up on the projector? No, wrong slide. That's the picture of a bee with a label saying ‘Blood Oath.' That goes with the apiology project. Yes, the next three slides as well. They're some free-writing I did about bees. That's why they're labeled ‘Research Notes.'

“Okay, yes, good. There's the map. So this is a map of our region, with all roads and highways, and I want to show you all something. Let's start here with a laser pointer and try to make our way from Night Vale to King City. Head out on Route 800 and then turn here, and merge with this— But oops, we missed it. So we go back, maybe try cutting across on this little mountain road. You believe in mountains, right? Not everyone does. Either way, we end up miles away. You see? None of the roads connect. It is like they are two entirely different road systems that seem like they should connect but never do.

“Here, this next slide even brings us down to the level of horse and hiking trails, small ranch roads, stuff like that. I won't try to trace it all out right now, but believe me: there is no sequence of walking or driving or any other kind of transportation that would take us from here to King City. Even though, and this is very strange, we could easily follow any number of roads to get to, say, Soledad, just a few miles down the highway from our target. Okay, so easy enough, now that you got to Soledad, just head down the highway to King City. Well, if you're starting in Soledad you can do that. But if you start tracing the roads all the way back in Night Vale, then by the time you get to Soledad you can't find any way to get to King City.

“Scientifically speaking, wow. Big wow. This makes no sense, right? Do you think this makes no sense? Everyone nod if this makes no sense. Everyone's nodding. See, we are all in agreement that it makes no sense.

“But this is all laboratory work. And what does lab work tell you? Almost everything. Labs are very important.

“Something is wrong with King City. That's the most scientific answer I could give you. And I think that it would be dangerous to go. Which you couldn't do anyway. But even the
attempt might do irrevocable harm to your person or to the consciousness within your person. Not recommended.

“You might try talking to our mayor. She's had some experience with other worlds. I can't think of anyone else who has. Besides, of course, me. I've had extensive experience. But I don't like talking about myself. It's personal and not scientific.

“Most people don't leave here. Most people only come and then stay and stay and stay. Honestly, I have no idea how long I've been here. Time doesn't work here and all that. But not long enough. I haven't stayed long enough.

“Oh, sorry, I have to go. Or you have to go. I'm going to stay here, this is my place of business. But it's just that Cecil's show is almost on and I never miss it.

“No, I think I haven't stayed long enough at all,” Carlos said.