167 - Echo

and I don't just write Welcome to Nightville, we also write books that are not about Nightville, and here are some of them.

Alice Isn't Dead, a lesbian road trip horror love story for fans of Stephen King.

The Halloween Moon, my book for kids of any age about a Halloween where things really start to get weird for everyone.

The First 10 Years, a memoir from me and my wife about our relationship told year by year without consulting each other about our differences in memory.

And from Jeffrey, You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, an apocalyptic novel that takes place in the same universe as the Within the Wires podcast.

No matter what you're looking for, we've written a book just for you.

Find them where you find books.

Okay, bye!

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Spring reveals nature's secret that death is reversible.

Welcome to Night Vale.

The worst part is not the tall plumes of smoke, nor the destroyed cars and buildings,

nor the armed desert cult marching through the streets.

It is the silence.

The absence of sirens echoing across the valley.

The absence of help.

The absence of hope that help will happen.

And now the absence even of screams.

The clan of passengers of Delta Flight 18713 prowls the streets of our town, seeking those who hide, those who resist.

They know there are few of us left who have not been subsumed by their leader's commands, and those of us who do remain will be captured and eventually killed.

They must know I am here, hiding, talking,

resisting.

They must see our radio antenna, our station sign, hear our broadcasts.

The pilot knows who I am.

delights in having inhabited my mind a couple weeks ago to speak his vile truth.

He holds out some hope that he can re-enter my brain, squeeze it tight with his calm, convincing voice.

I remain alive because the pilot wants me in my job.

Wants me on his side.

I hope for a solution.

I hope my own voice empowers those who are still free to rise up to fight back, but so far,

nothing.

I no longer hope to find Amelia Ana Alfaro, who was always the best at everything, and who disappeared eight years ago to look for Delta Flight 18713.

I no longer hope that Amelia Ana Alfaro will be found or that she will save us because she is found.

She will not save us.

Amelia stands at the top step of the Night Vale City Hall.

Behind her is the multi-headed, single-bodied entity that is City Council.

Amelia and the City Council are both fully under the control of the pilot.

Amelia Ana Alfaro found the missing passengers of Flight 18713 and then was enjoined by the pilot to join them.

When the pilot makes contact with your brain, he does not speak to you at first.

He does not begin with a plea, with a mission, with a request or command.

He first forces you to hear the lives of his passengers, innocents who boarded Delta Flight 18713 from Detroit to Albany on June 15th, 2012.

You hear a mother calming her child.

You hear giggling teenage boys.

You hear middle-aged men telling each other the same stories they have told each other for years on end.

You hear about vacations, and jobs, and families, and favorite books, and unrealized dreams.

You hear it all until you accept the mundane comfort and intimacy of community, until you are lulled into a willingness to hear hear anything.

And then

you hear the pilot.

And you hear his message.

The words of his message are about nature's beauty.

The words express loving respect that all nature is beautiful.

But the message is not the words.

It's what's encoded within them.

The message is that all who are not beautiful are an affront to nature.

His power of unspoken oration, of

invisible influence, allows his hatred to metastasize to become an active assault rather than an idle grumble.

It is difficult to stop his voice from entering your head.

Nearly impossible.

I am not able to do it on my own.

Carlos sits with me still in my studio.

When I talk to Carlos, I do not hear the voice of the pilot nor his passengers.

Charles Rayner, the former warden of the Nightvale Asylum, went fishing to keep his mind clear.

Tamika Flynn has taken to listening to the audiobook of Emily St.

John Mandel's best-selling novel Station 11, which is narrated by Nightville's own Lee Marvin, who, by the way, turns 32 next month.

Happy early birthday, Lee.

If you can hear me.

I have found that Carlos calms me, centers me,

silences the echoes of a hundred different people, a hundred different thoughts in my head, none of which are my own.

If you know what centers you, do that immediately.

The streets are quiet, Nightvale.

I hope some of you can hear me.

I hope some of you are staying out of sight, out of reach.

If you can come together, find each other.

Perhaps we can overpower these invaders of our peace, but the pilot hides from any potential counterattack.

And if we can't stop him, can't cut out the brain of his insurgency,

I believe our hopes are lost.

Our end

is near.

The last hope I had stands on the top step of City Hall, rallying her mindless clan on a ruthless scouring of our city.

Amelia Ana Alfaro was always the best at everything, and the pilot knows that.

It is why he chose her as his chief strategist, his general, his right hand.

They will push beyond Nightville soon,

to Red Mesa

and Pine Cliff,

and to the rest of the state

and beyond.

More people are brought to City Hall as I speak, and Amelia, flanked by Doug Biondi, delivers their sentence, their punishment for resistance, their fate for lacking beauty in the eyes of a truly hateful man.

Their sentence is to be tied together and held in the rock garden lining the outer lawn of City Hall.

Once every person in Nightvale has been gathered in one place, the pilot will make one last attempt to overtake our minds as a group to grow his army tenfold.

He may succeed with some, and the remainder

will be executed.

The pilot believes in his own specific definition of beauty.

He believes those who fail to be good enough specimens of nature, of humanity, must be removed from the genetic pool.

Every few hours, another group of prisoners crouches before Amelia, and another group receives immediate conviction.

As Amelia stands in judgment before the most recently indicted, she pauses.

One of the captured is standing in defiance.

In response to this rebellious act, Doug Biondi, still wearing his asylum-issued coveralls, raises a handmade curved blade, but Amelia stops him.

The one standing is Yvette Alfaro.

It is Amelia's mother.

She begs Amelia to recognize her own family and to have mercy.

But Amelia's eyes show no hint of relenting.

Yvette tells Amelia she always loved her, was always proud of her, but that her motherly pride was sometimes a selfish pride.

You were a story I wrote for myself to tell my friends.

Yvette says contritely.

I did not let you tell your own story.

I should have have been proud of you for what you achieved for yourself.

Happy for your happiness.

But I saw you as a way to better me.

I'm sorry, Amelia.

Yvette tells her only child and then hands Amelia a note.

Please read this.

It's all I ask that you do for your mother.

Read what I wrote, Yvette says.

Without even glancing at the paper, Amelia crumples it into a ball.

Her face reddens and her eyes blacken as she pushes her mother back down to her knees.

With a nod of Amelia's head, the brainwashed and ever-growing clan of Flight 18713 ties up the new prisoners and pushes them into the rock garden until every remaining person in town has been drawn together for the pilot

and the last who resists his voice will be destroyed.

A rotten harvest to be composted for a more promising crop.

If you can hear my voice,

you are one of the last left.

We cannot see the pilot, but can see us, and it is not long until his minions are here with me, or there with you, Night Vale.

We are the last to be reaped.

The last to be gathered.

They stalk outside my studio now.

Climbing the walls, smashing in windows, knocking down doors.

I can hear them in the hallways behind me.

Carlos is barring the door to the studio, but I know it will not hold.

Carlos, do as you promised and run!

I will stay focused.

I will keep my head safe.

I will take us all to the weather.

Hey, it's Jeffrey Kraner with a word from our sponsor.

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I am captured Nightfale.

So is Carlos.

I can't see where they took him, so I keep my eyes closed and imagine Carlos's face.

I keep talking to this image of Carlos to protect my thoughts from the pilot's voice.

The ragged, empty-minded clan of Flight 18713 pushes me into a larger group of captives.

I still do not see Carlos, but I see the violence-hungry faces of those under the pilot's control.

I see two teenage boys who are secretly mad for each other.

I see a middle-aged man who either went to New Orleans or heard about New Orleans so much that he might as well have gone.

I see the people who inhabited my mind.

whose voices were used to hypnotize me,

to lay the psychological groundwork for the pilot.

And I hear them.

I hear their voices coming from their mouths, live, in real time.

But I hear them in my head, too.

Separate from their bodies.

And I think of Carlos again,

trying to stop the echoes to return to silence and clear it.

They lead our group, I with my head down, eyes closed, quietly conversing with an imaginary Carlos to the steps of City Hall, to the feet of the ruthless Amelia Anna Alfaro.

But she is not ruthless.

She is compromised.

I do not know how to convince her of this if her own mother could not.

Even still, immediately we are denounced as resistors and tied up with the other uncooperative prisoners wriggling uselessly in their bindings along the rock garden.

The last of those who refuse to join the 18713 have been gathered together.

Amelia knows she has quickly and thoroughly sorted our entire town into the recruited and the renounced.

She was always the best at everything.

At this moment,

The pilot emerges from the front doors of City Hall.

Amelia and the rest of the 18713 look on him with awe, and it occurs to me they have never

seen him in person,

only heard his voice.

The enormity of his legend is evidenced in the gaping maw and sparkling dark eyes of Amelia Anna Alfaro.

The pilot does not visibly speak, yet I can hear him in my head.

Each of us can hear a personalized appeal from from him in our minds.

Cecil,

he says to me,

you have a beautiful voice.

Think of how much beauty we can share together.

Think of your voice,

carried miles through the air like dandelion seeds,

spreading our message of nature's true beauty to everyone in the desert

to everyone

beyond

the desert

you

are

chosen,

Cecil

Be

my

voice.

I think of Carlos' face.

I say aloud to my imagined Carlos, the first time you called me, I knew you liked me.

Even though you avoided my flirting.

I thought you were trying to be professional, Carlos, playing ignorant, but you weren't.

You were shy.

You didn't know how to ask.

And I knew I loved you.

My mind remains clear as I talk, but I see several of the remainders struggling to ignore the pilot's voice permeating their every thought.

A few lose the fight and join his clan.

He is too far from me.

Too far from any of the rest of us to reach him.

To subdue him, to kill him, to get back my mind, to get back my town, to get back my Carlos.

When the pilot's final pleas and patience expire, he walks down the paved path and stands next to Amelia Anna Alfaro.

Then he says for the first time using his mouth, None of them are beautiful.

None of them are nature.

None of them can live.

Amelia stares at him like a star-struck fan in the presence of a Hollywood celebrity.

Doug Biondi, next to her, holds up his crooked blade.

The Angel of Death wears electric blue coveralls, and the 18713 raise their weapons too, glaring at the last of us tied up in the rock garden.

I search in vain for Carlos one last time, battling the sick truth that we are born alone and we will die alone.

And Amelia Ana Alfaro raises her hand.

Inside her hand is a ball of paper.

Seeming confused about how it got there, she unfurls it.

Smoothing out the wrinkles with her fingers, she examines the paper.

There is a long silence.

Should I do it or what?

Amelia?

Doug Biondi asks, anxious to get to the killing part.

part.

I now see what Amelia sees.

I cannot read what is written on the paper, but I know what is there.

They are words from her mother, written in code,

in a puzzle.

The one place Amelia's mind can hide from the voices, from the voice of the pilot,

is in puzzles.

Amelia says,

It is my responsibility to destroy that which is not beautiful.

Give me the blade, Doug.

Doug reluctantly does so.

Still staring at the paper, she pulls the blade behind her shoulder and says, You come from nowhere,

and that is where you shall return.

She splashes the blade into the pilot's throat.

I see his hands clutch at his neck.

I see Doug beyond the lunge for Amelia to protect his beloved leader, but as his arms crash down onto her shoulders, he relents.

Doug's mind is free now, too.

I see the pilot convulse.

One final time.

I see the emancipated Amelia run toward her mother.

Other members of the 18713 surrounding us drop their weapons, their eyes vacant and lips white.

The rush of mental agency is blinding them, staggering them.

One of them cuts the ropes from my hands.

I help free the others one by one, still searching for Carlos, and then I find him.

He is in the very back.

The last of the last of Nightvale.

Those who are free are running or embracing or helping those who are still bound or drunk with confusion.

And on the ground where Amelia stood moments before, I find the wrinkled note from mother to daughter.

It is a series of numbers, not words.

I show it to Carlos.

A cryptogram puzzle, he says.

I love those.

I ask him if he can solve it.

He He screws up his face.

We should get out of here first, he says.

Please,

I say.

He looks at it for a couple of minutes until finally he says,

It's a basic alphanumeric code.

It reads, Amelia,

I am proud of you.

No

matter

what.

Carlos and I hold each other through the town,

passing two teenage boys dressed in scraps of airplane upholstery, gripping tightly each other's faces.

We help a lost toddler find his parents.

We clear broken glass from streets.

We walk home.

We shade our eyes from the setting sunset,

which kindles

through a hilltop cleft.

We talk non-stop about today,

about tomorrow, about yesterday, about every possible moment, just talking and talking because we almost lost our talk forever.

We do not hear the returning echo of sirens across the valley.

We do not hear anything

but ourselves.

stay tuned

next

for a silence

that is all

your own

Good night,

night fail

good night

Welcome to Night Vale is a production of Night Vale Presents.

It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Craner and produced by Disparition.

The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin.

Original music by Dispirition.

All of it can be found at disparition.bandcamp.com.

This episode's weather was The Stolen Century by Ellen Beiser.

Find out more at ellenclarebeiser.com.

Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at nightvale radio or visit the lambing barn and pick up a lamb.

Check out welcometonightvale.com for info about supporting us on Patreon because we really need it right now.

Today's proverb.

Did you know the Germans have 31 different words for beer?

Well they don't.

That's wrong.

You're wrong.

Olivia loves a challenge.

It's why she lifts heavy weights

and likes complicated recipes.

But for booking her trip to Paris, Olivia chose the easy way with Expedia.

She bundled her flight with a hotel to save more.

Of course, she still climbed all 674 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

You were made to take the easy route.

We were made to easily package your trip.

Expedia, made to travel.

Flight inclusive packages are at all protected.

I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director.

You might know me from the League Veep or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

We love movies and we come at them from different perspectives.

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't.

He's too old.

Let's not forget that Paul thinks that Dune 2 is overrated.

It is.

Anyway, despite this, we come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.

We're talking Parasite the Home Alone, From Greece to the Dark Knight.

We've done deep dives on popcorn flicks.

We've talked about why Independence Day deserves a second look.

And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of, like Kanja and Hess.

So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget to hit the follow button.

Hey, Jeffrey Kraner here to tell you about another show from me and my Night Vale co-creator, Joseph Fink.

It's called Unlicensed, and it's an LA Noir-style mystery set in the outskirts of present-day Los Angeles.

Unlicensed follows two unlicensed private investigators whose small jobs looking into insurance claims and missing property are only the tip of a conspiracy iceberg.

There are already two seasons of Unlicensed for you to listen to now, with season three dropping on May 15th.

Unlicensed is available exclusively through Audible, free if you already have that subscription.

And if you don't, Audible has a trial membership.

And if I know you, and I do, you can binge all that mystery goodness in a short window.

And if you like it, if you liked Unlicensed, please, please rate and review each season.

Our ability to keep making this show is predicated on audience engagement.

So go check out Unlicensed, available now only at Audible.com.