158 - The Battle for Time

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.

If you're dying for the next batch of Wednesday Season 2 to drop on Netflix, then I'll let you in on a secret.

The Wednesday Season 2 official wokeast is already here.

Dive deeper into the mysteries of Wednesday with the Ultimate Companion Video Podcast.

Join the frightfully funny Caitlin Riley, along with her producer, Thing, as she sits down with the cast and crew.

Together, they'll unravel each shocking twist, dissect the dynamics lurking beneath, unearth Adam's family lore, and answer all of your lingering questions.

Guests include Emma Myers, Joy Sunday, Hunter Doohan, Steve Buscemi, Fred Armison, Catherine Zeta Jones, the Joanna Lumley, also show creators Al Goh and Miles Miller, and of course, Wednesday herself, Jenna Ortega, plus many, many more.

With eight delightfully dark episodes to devour, you'll be drawn into the haunting halls of Nevermore Academy deeper than ever before.

But beware, you know where curiosity often leads.

The Wednesday season two official wocast is available in audio and video on todoom.com or wherever it is you get your podcasts.

The future wants you.

The future needs you.

The future will have you whether you like it or not.

Welcome to Nightvale.

Casper Rhodes here.

Hello.

There's a lot of talk, generally, and in particular, about the future.

Everyone's going on about this or that, rocket ships, inspires, eternal life, and AI, but the future is also soil and leaves.

It's a hand holding a hand.

It's clouds and it's water and it's salt.

The future is organic as anything.

There is still sweat in the future.

I'm sweating right now.

It's hot where I am.

And I am Casper Rhodes, president of the Quality Cyborg Corporation.

And I can take you away from all this in the name of the Smiling God.

The God that grins down at us all, grinning through our pain and grinning through our joy, just always grinning, just always the smile.

Do any of you believe in anything?

I do.

I believe in anything at all.

I just believe.

What a powerful thing it is to believe.

To let doubt wick off you, just like the sweat.

I have a proposition, and it's also a promise.

I will take your brain, and how much were you using it anyway, and I will put it in a robot.

And that robot will do wonderful things.

That is my promise.

And it's also a proposition.

Anyway, we'll talk more in person.

I'm on my way.

I'll see you soon.

Am I on the air?

I come to you in a time of emergency and panic.

We thought we could cheat death.

Casper Rhodes promised to take our brains and freeze them into the future where we could be reawakened into life eternal.

But it was all a lie.

Casper is a time traveler here to collect the brains of the past to power robots of servitude in the future.

We were being tricked into an eternal life of manual labor, and now we know the truth and stand against them.

Unfortunately, he has called in reinforcements from the future and they are those very robots with our brains inside of them.

They cannot fight against their programming and they weep as they crush us, but still

they crush us.

There are robots patrolling outside of the abandoned grain silo and every other spot in town where the Quality Cryogenics Corporation is storing brains.

So we cannot save our fellow citizens from the terror of the future.

And we're worrying.

Casper worships a smiling god.

I thought we had escaped that cosmic terror, but it has returned and it has come for our minds.

Night Vale, I call for resistance.

I call for a stand against the future.

I muster the present to destroy every moment that comes after.

We will never stop fighting.

We will never surrender.

Oh, um,

but first,

tickets are going on sale for the Lions Club charity raffle.

All proceeds from the raffle will be going to weapons and barricades to be used against the endless onslaught of future robots piloted by our own brains.

So, that's just a great cause.

Let's have a look at the prizes.

There's a package tour to somewhere called Nashville.

That's exciting.

The package includes a map showing where Nashvile is and a pad of paper on which is scrawled, you should probably get a hotel room when you get there.

Everything you need for a fun vacation.

There are 10 free piano lessons from Louis Blasco.

He says that piano is a great way to exercise your mind and your creativity, and he promises much fewer injuries this time around.

There's a free haircut and style consultation from Telly the Barber.

Ugh.

Ugh, that vile Telly.

Nah, I shouldn't say that.

Carlos has forgiven Telly for cutting his

beautiful hair all those years ago.

And so I should too.

There are lots of things I should do.

And I'm sure I'll get to them eventually.

In the meantime, though, ugh, violatelli.

Finally, there is the grand prize, which is an all-expenses paid trip into the bottomless hole betwixt the dunes, that inexplicable dark pit that appeared a few years ago out in the sand wastes.

We're not sure who donated this prize.

It just showed up at the Lions Club in a basket that smelled of mud and wet dog.

But the winners will have the opportunity, in fact, they will be compelled whether they want to or not, to leap into the bottomless hole betwixt the dunes.

This is all expenses paid.

I'm not sure what expenses there are to jumping into a bottomless hole, but in any case, they're covered.

Raffle tickets are only $5

and can be purchased at the Lions Club or by whispering into any crack in any wall.

And again, proceeds go to saving us from the robot army, so please do buy a few.

There's a lot of talk generally, and in particular, about pain.

Oh, I'm in pain, many say.

Oh, this pain is the worst I've ever felt, many say.

Many just scream, and that's understandable.

I'd scream too, if I could, but you can't scream with a smile.

That's one of the laws of the smiling god.

I believe in laws, but then I believe in anything.

Have you ever had rock rock candy?

Who even thought up something so useless as these crystalline sugar lumps?

What point is there to any of this when rock candy is the kind of thing that we as humans apparently are up to?

Generally, also in particular.

What I'm talking about is

what point is there to rock candy?

And what I'm also asking is,

What point is there to you?

But I can provide a point to you, anyway.

Wouldn't that be nice for once?

And don't we want it to be nice for once, just once, before we go?

I'm talking here about purpose.

And I have more purpose than I need.

You have less purpose than you want.

Let's meet in the middle.

And there, in the middle, I will take your brain.

Believe in the smiling God, and why not?

I do.

Night Vale, we will fight.

Night Vale, we will win.

The night may be long, but inevitably comes the dawn.

Especially now that time works correctly here.

Tamaika Flynn has gathered her militia who have aged to the point where they are no longer teenagers.

It was kind of cute.

A local friendly teenage militia.

But now they're just a militia, which is less cute.

But definitely good to have on our side in this struggle.

They are currently pelting the robots with stones, but...

Ah, the robots' metal frames are impervious to such attacks.

Oh, this is so worrying.

Josh Creighton, local shapeshifter, has resumed the form of a waterfall in an attempt to short out the electronics of the robot army.

Unfortunately, it appears that their bodies are water-resistant and perhaps even waterproof.

And so they are simply walking past him like he isn't there.

Josh, maybe some other form.

Oh, okay, okay.

Josh has panicked and accidentally taken the form of a 1970s-style avocado green galley kitchen.

Oh, Josh, this form won't be helpful at all.

We're going about this fight all wrong, said Lenny Butler, who has no official bona fides on military tactics, but considered himself an aficionado of rowdy boys really taking it to each other on the battlefield.

Lenny continued, What we want to do is flank them.

When asked what that meant, he shrugged and

irritably.

I know what it means, he said.

I'm not going to waste time explaining it to you, just like flank them.

Other towns have been forced to join the fight as the robots are sweeping through the entire area.

The ghosts of Pine Cliff have enthusiastically entered the fray.

Unfortunately, of course, ghosts cannot physically affect our world, and so they are just hovering back and forth through the robots.

But good hustle out there.

Citizens of the the Whispering Forest muttered warm compliments to the robots in an attempt to assimilate them into their tree forms, but robots are immune to compliments, as they are only able to think as highly of themselves as they are programmed to do.

Oh now, nothing is working.

Well,

this seems like as good a time as any to talk about survival tips.

The first thing to consider is your water source.

Now, your body is 60% water, so that seems like enough.

Let's move on.

Next, you will want to consider food.

Stuck up on essentials like canned beans, easily stored grains, and those little bags of baby carrots, which are just big carrots carved into small pieces and called babies.

Which is not how babies are made.

This is not what the word baby means.

Anyway, if you find yourself in an emergency situation without enough food, consider expanding your definition of the word food.

For instance, theoretically, you could eat a desk if you tried hard enough.

Maybe the problem isn't a lack of food, but a lack of motivation on your part.

Finally, look for shelter.

This one is easy.

There are houses and buildings everywhere, and you can just go into them.

Some of them will be locked.

They might even have people inside who say things like, what are you doing in my house?

And you can't be in here.

This is the stockroom of an Arby's.

But don't let naysayers like that get you down.

This has been Survival Tips.

There is a lot of talk generally, and in particular, about triumph.

We are winning, a person might say.

We will defeat you, a person might crow as a town falls in supplication around him.

You will all be taken to the future, that person might continue.

You will be made useful.

And isn't that wonderful?

To be made useful?

Isn't that the best thing a person can be?

I think so.

It doesn't matter what you think.

It turns out it never did.

It's so impersonal chatting over the phone, especially since you haven't been picking up.

It seems rude, your refusal to listen to me, but I don't mind.

After all, it's hard to begrudge you your last few minutes of human freedom.

Tell you what.

Tell you what, I'll head over and collect you myself.

Wouldn't that be nice?

For me, I mean, again, it doesn't matter what it is for you.

It turns out it never did.

Okay, see you soon.

Bye-bye.

Give me back my radio frequency.

Oh, I...

I think I'm back on.

Can you hear me?

Can you hear me?

Well, I'll talk whether you can hear me or not.

More robots are pouring out of the time vortexes.

Vortices.

Vortis vortices.

vortexes.

Whatever they are, thousands of robots are coming out of them.

This is too much.

We can never defeat all of them.

The robots are marching to Casper's army that was already here and there.

Listeners?

They are fighting them.

These new robots are fighting on our side.

At their head is the one I recognize as containing the brain of Charlie Bear, weekday shift manager at the Ralphs.

And he is

announcing that some of the robots have broken free of their programming, that they have found found a way to manipulate the metal body they were trapped in, and they have come back to help us prevent this all from happening.

And the present-day human Charlie Bear is running up to join his future metal counterpart, Nightvale.

Out on that battlefield is a robot which contains your brain.

Find that robot and help it fight.

Or fight it, depending on which side it's on.

Together with ourselves, we can win this.

There is still hope.

There is always hope.

There is also always the weather.

While

as a young Mars,

I held

your hand

under

the halos

of blue argon light

and holy

rollers and a few

scanning roles

deep in the green gum

of the night

And old ways of the water hour

bodies

in that mirror

Stars were exploded in rings

around our lakes

And we stopped in shallows and below us

those stars

were once

again

made

And for a moment I

thought I could see

things

get better

than we ever

thought they

could be

Dura

Sugar

neighbors, maybe that's what we are

standing in the wet clothes

of all of our tribes,

first comes the flower, and then

comes the fruit,

the fall and the

flies.

All I can give you is the

name on my door.

But I

know what I need

and how long

I need it

for.

During

Dur

Dura

Dura

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.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was queer.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now.

Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Together.

Us and us.

Our own selves and our robot selves.

We rushed against Casper Rhodes.

More and more of his robots broke free of their programming and joined us.

Tamika and her militia were now Tamikas and their militias, and the intimidation factor was through the roof.

This whole time, we just had to trust ourselves

and also have versions of ourselves that were embedded in super strong metal bodies.

That was all it took, this whole time, to be victorious.

Charlie Bear the human stood shoulder to shoulder with Charlie Bear the robot, and both fought valiantly.

Josh Creighton took the form of a chainsaw, which was then wielded by Josh Creighton's brain in a robot body to glorious and gory effect.

It did not take long for the tides to turn.

Sometimes, once the balance shifts, it shifts as quickly and definitively as a broken elevator plunging down a shaft.

And then, Casper Rhodes himself

finally fell.

Whether it was the stones cast by the Tamikas or the fists of the Charlies or Josh the chainsaw wielded by Josh the robot, I cannot say.

In the chaos of battle, individual human action becomes indistinct, but the fact of Casper's death is indisputable.

And in that moment he fell, every robot slumped into stillness because time had changed.

Casper never took our brains when we died and used them in robots of the future.

And because of of that, every one of those robots no longer had a brain in them.

They were empty shells.

We carried those empty shells with affection and care to Grove Park, where they would be sorted for parts and the resulting scrap metal used to fix the massive amount of damage done to town by this battle.

We kept one robot.

though, just one, the scrawniest one with the most rusted joints, and Pamela Winchell, who has been reading books on hobbyist surgery, removed Casper's brain from his still warm body and placed it in that robot.

And the robot came to life in a panic.

Don't worry, we told Casper the robot.

We're not going to hurt you.

We're just putting you to work for the Merriam McDonald Memorial Fund.

You will clean up the sand from the sand wastes until all the sand is gone.

We don't know how long that will take.

It may take forever.

Good luck.

And even now,

a lone robot with a broom sweeps sand out of the desert.

A fitting end for an unfit man.

Now there is only us

and the returned reality of our aging.

And our death.

I have come come to think that Carlos was right.

There is nothing more scientific than death.

We fear it, reasonably, because it is a thing we can never know, perhaps not even when we experience it.

But it is not

worth perverting our lives, changing everything about ourselves just to avoid our natural ends.

New generations will come.

New people will live.

And like everyone before us, we will gracefully exit to make room for those coming after.

As the old saying goes, death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.

This is not a story about you, and you were glad because it would be boring if every story was.

Good night, Night Vale.

Good night.

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

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

The voice of Nightvale is Cecil Baldwin.

The voice of Caspar Rhodes is Rob Neal.

Original music by Disparition.

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

This episode's weather was Sugar Neighbors by Dane Terry.

Find out more at thedane Terry.com.

Dane also made a beautiful podcast with Nightfale Presents called Dream Boy.

It's a surreal noir musical mystery set in Cleveland.

It's definitely for adults only, but if you want more of that beautiful musical storytelling, check out nightfalepresents.com.

Comments, questions, email us at info at welcometonightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at nightvale radio or buy a new earth for yourself.

You deserve it.

Check out welcome to nightvale.com for all the holiday gifts you could need for the lovable weirdo in your life.

Today's proverb, every friend group has a joyful chasm.

If you don't know who the joyful chasm is, then I have news for you.

You are the joyful chasm.

There's a lot of talk,

generally,

and in particular.

So many words.

Oh man.

Man, oh man.

This is not how.

It isn't.

Was it?

But it's

what's left of me.

It's quiet in here at least.

I can't feel the smile anymore.

The searing heat of that smile.

In here, it is quiet

and dark.

My metal body moves, but my brain is still.

I like it in here.

No!

That

smile!

The smile has appeared.

No, no, God, you don't understand.

The smile is in here with me,

please.

High above Paris, near the very top of the Eiffel Tower, lives its janitor, whose job it is to clean the tower by night.

But...

I have no idea how I came to be at the Eiffel Tower.

He simply found himself here one night, able to recall nothing except for one childhood memory.

He looked at me and he said,

Tonight, I'm going to attempt a stunt.

And he whispered in my ear and told me,

I'm going to hypnotize all Paris.

And

then there's this.

The janitor has never left the tower.

Very pale.

Coco, do you have a cigarette?

Thank you.

That was the only two people who have ever seen the janitor.

It was his boss, Mr.

Chinard, speaking to the tower's 90-year-old night watchman, Coco.

And Coco might be the only one who can save the janitor.

The janitor had told Coco a story about a ballroom he said was at the top of the Eiffel Tower and a strange show that goes on inside of it.

Now there is no ballroom.

Yet when the janitor tells of it, Coco can really picture it.

He tells of crew chief Letitia, who runs that show.

Lift with yours!

Okay, I got it, I got it.

Here she's carrying a giant backdrop with stagehand Jacques.

Because my mother, she always tells me if I get lost, I shall look for the Apple Tower and know exactly where I am.

Hey, mine too.

Oh, really?

Yeah, my aunt, but yeah.

That's nice.

That tower with that personality.

Almost like it was haunted with a benevolent presence.

Oh, hey, what was that?

Oh, I tripped over something.

It was a mop.

You alright?

Yeah, I'm alright.

Then there's the drunken, out-of-control diva who hosts the show.

Flattery will get you nowhere except my dressing room.

John Cameron.

You know, John, you've been drinking a lot and it's not like you.

Lots of people like me.

You know, when it's especially nice is when they don't know who I am.

That's when I know it means something.

That's what I need.

I don't need fans.

I don't need friends.

I need people who have no idea who I am, and I need millions of them.

And somewhere hidden in all of this may be the truth that can save the janitor.

In the grand ballroom at the top of the Eiffel Tower, the red velvet curtains part, and suddenly, the giant on-air sign above the stage lights up.

Broadcasting from the top of the Eiffel Tower, the orbiting human circus of the air.

The orbiting human circus in Naughty Till New Year's.

A brand new adventure.

The perfect place to begin.

It all starts November 6th from WNYC Studios and Night Vale presents.

this

never.

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, 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 along on our cinematic adventure.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget to hit the follow button.

Hi, I'm here to tell you about Good Morning Night Vale.

Welcome to Night Vale's official recap show and unofficial best friend food podcast.

Join me, Meg Bashwiner, and fellow tri-hosts, Hal Lublin and Symphony Sanders, as we dissect all of the cool, squishy, and slimy bits of every episode of Welcome to Night Vale.

Come for the insightful and hilarious commentary, and stay for all of the weird and wild behind-the-scenes stories.

Good morning, Nightvale, with new episodes every other Thursday.

Get it wherever you get your podcasts.

Yes, even there.