147 - The Protester

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.

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Hot singles in your area are staring into the forest and grinning absently.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Astronomers are frantically trying to determine why a chunk of the moon is missing.

Ragged and greedy, like a slice removed from a pie by hungry hands rather than a civilized serving utensil, the gap in the moon has been baffling professional skygazers for weeks.

Fun fact.

Did you know a group of astronomers is called a commotion?

Astronomers believe the moon could be eroding because people have stopped believing in it, like ancient Roman polytheism.

Others have theorized that the moon was damaged by enemy ships in the ongoing blood space war.

But people on the internet have countered that this is part of the Mandela effect, and that that that piece of the moon has always been missing and we're collectively misremembering.

Like how those beloved picture book bears that we all remember as the Berenstein bears have, by all physical evidence, always actually been spelled the Dog Pound Boys.

Boys with a Z.

Because of the 2016 city ordinance that proclaimed that anything can be true, if you say it loud enough, astronomers are forced to consider all sides.

I don't know any astronomers, but I do know a scientist.

My husband Carlos has been the leading scientific mind in Nightvale since we started dating almost six years ago.

Carlos says that he has been studying an interesting meteorite he found out in the sand wastes and scrublands beyond Nightvale.

He believes this particular rock is a piece of the moon.

Standing before a giant wall of blinking lights, flickering screens, and intermittent beeps, Carlos determined that this piece of the moon broke off only one month ago.

But this is impossible, because no one can remember seeing the moon breaking apart in the sky.

Well, maybe we were all asleep when it happened, I told Carlos as I dabbed away a small crumb from a cheese danish that had gotten stuck in his beard.

Oh, fun fact, Carlos grew a beard.

And I have never liked beards on men, but now

I do.

It's gotten two thin silver racing stripes down the chin, and the hair is so soft.

We've been married over two years, and every day, I fall more in love.

Oh, right, the moon.

Okay, good God.

Always with the moon.

Carlos has been studying an unusual number of empty homes and businesses about town.

He noticed that the houses on either side of us are completely empty, but he didn't remember them being empty before.

He remembers us having neighbors, but he couldn't name a single thing about them.

He believes this might be related to the damaged moon.

Whatever happened a month ago to the moon immediately caused us all to forget it, because something in our timeline changed.

Carlos said, perhaps we are not forgetting people and events.

Perhaps they never existed at all.

His eyes were cloudy with pensive thought, and I touched his furry cheek and said, You'll save us, hon.

I know you will.

He smiled and asked if I'd be willing to reach out to archaeology professor Harrison Kip again.

Carlos had been communicating with Kip about this very issue, but now emails to Harrison keep bouncing back and his phone number is no longer in the phone company's database of working numbers.

I laughed and said, Carlos, I don't know who Harrison Kip is.

Carlos looked worried and said that he wasn't sure he did either, but he felt like he should.

Protesters have organized a sit-in in front of City Hall demanding an end to the blood space war.

The City Council, seeing the crowd of about 150 people gathered around the front entrance of their building, took immediate action.

They announced they would be taking a long-planned family vacation to the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, until this whole protest thing runs its course.

We don't believe South Dakota actually exists.

the single-bodied multi-voiced council said.

When you look at a map, it seems like it exists, like it's just right there when you look at it, and it's between two other identical states, so it would make more sense for it to be there than not.

Anyway, this feels like a great time to take the kids to see Mount Rushmore.

As the city council said this, several small, childlike heads emerged from the city council's singular body and screamed in happy unison.

Or terrified unison.

It's hard to get an emotional reading on screams.

The organizer of the protest is 20-year-old Nightvale Community College student Basima Bashara, whose father, Lieutenant Fakir Bashara, returned home from the Blood Space War three years ago.

Basima greeted her father's return with joy, but that joy has since been replaced by confusion and pain.

Let's hear Basima's story in her own words.

Time no longer works correctly for my father.

I understand time does not work correctly for many people in Knightville, but it had always worked correctly for him before the war.

In December 2015, he returned home after 11 years of serving our city, our country, our planet, and a war that still makes no sense to me.

I was six when he volunteered for service.

He was 30.

11 years years later, when he returned home, I was 17.

My father was 19.

He did not remember joining in the war, nor having a daughter, nor meeting his wife.

He is a teenager, like I was.

I no longer am a teenager, but my father still is.

He has stayed 19 years old.

Time no longer works correctly for him.

My mother, Tahira, raised me.

She expressed reticence about the band I started, the music we played.

She grounded me when my grades slipped and shouted at me when I told her I had a girlfriend.

But she came to love Marina, and more, my mother came to understand us both as people, as women, not as rivers to be damned or levied.

My father's return has been especially hard on her because she is 45 and her husband is is a 19 year old stranger.

You probably know what it's like to have a father.

To have a man much older than you who changed your diapers or watched your diapers being changed, who taught you to speak or ride a bike, who helped you develop as a human from an animal, from a larva, from the simplest squirming wad of meat into an adult.

That father will always be a father, not a friend, friend, not an equal, a father.

You probably do not know what it's like to see your father at your age, to talk with your father when he is also barely an adult.

To have your father, lonely and inquisitive, think of you as his only friend in the world while you look to him for guidance and love.

But he is incapable of both, at least, not in the way you need to to be guided and loved.

It took two years for Fakir to open up about the war, and it still makes no sense to him, nor me.

The Blood Space War requires constant shifts through time, through wormholes, to change lost battles into one battles, to undo what has already been undone thousands, millions of times over.

The future does not look like a blank page.

It looks like a tattered sheet of paper, grayed and frayed from countless transcriptions and erasures of history.

Battles are won and then undone through time travel.

We lose our lives and then regain them by traveling backwards and fighting again.

We are winning the war by perpetuating the war.

Last month the Polonians attacked our Earth.

I am sure of it.

The only evidence is our broken moon.

I believe the general undid this attack with time travel, and this has changed our reality, changed who was born, who ever lived in the first place.

People are disappearing because they will have never existed.

People think we're crazy for protesting.

I'm 20, and my father is still 19.

I'm not crazy.

My mother, Tahira, is not crazy.

We are angry.

Our next protest is scheduled this afternoon at the corner of Earl and Somerset by the dog park near the Ralphs.

Not sure what Bassimo was referring to.

That's an empty lot by the Ralphs.

There was word of a dog park to be built there many years ago, but

it never materialized.

Let's have a look now at local news.

Earth sciences professor Simone Brigadeau announced today that she is scrapping all textbooks and lesson plans at the community college in favor of organized prayer to a god named Hunt Okar.

Several students and parents argued against such an extreme divergence from core curriculum in favor of fringe religious practices, but College president Sarah Sultan supported her staff member by saying, Cut Simone some slack.

She doesn't even teach classes.

She is a transient who lived in a storage closet inside the Earth Sciences building for 20 years.

The only reason she has the title of professor is because of antiquated squatters' rights laws.

Brigadeau donned rabbit furs and an old bicycle frame wrought into the vague shape of antlers and began spray-painting the Fibonacci sequence onto cars in the college parking lot, all the while singing a ballad about clocks.

The Intergalactic Military Headquarters released their first quarter earnings statement this week.

Investors were displeased to see that each of the board members of the privately owned space defense contractor had purchased 125-foot yachts and NFL franchises, but those fears were quickly allayed by the announcement of layoffs of more than 5,000 employees.

Stock prices for the Intergalactic Military soared to an all-time high this afternoon at $490 a share.

Senior strategic advisor Jameson Archibald said the intergalactic military has no actual earned income.

100% of their gross is from venture capital.

Archibald said, Some investors keep asking how we plan to monetize our military, which is a stupid question, man.

I mean, look at this Patek Philippe watch I bought.

It's encrusted with 10 pounds of diamonds, and the watch face was made using an actual piece of the Sistine Chapel.

We are doing

fine.

Archibald added that the Intergalactic Military is developing an app and a subscription service that allows people to engage in celestial warfare anytime they want for only $12.99 a month.

All right, listeners, I heard back from Bassima, and she said I was right.

There is no dog park.

Of course, I was right.

If I knew there was a dog park being built in this town, I would have reported it immediately.

Carlos and I have a dog.

His name is Aubergine because he is purple and European, and Aubi is adorable, and we love him dearly.

I mean, I wasn't into the idea of having to care for a dog, but Carlos strongly urged this case one morning over breakfast when he said, I think we should get a dog.

And 20 minutes later, we were leaving the SPCA with our adopted pet.

Bessima said she was positive there was a dog park next to the Ralphs, but when she arrived at the corner of Earl and Somerset, it was all empty lots.

To be honest, I don't remember her mentioning a Ralphs before, because I would have corrected her.

There's never been a Ralphs affiliate in Night Vale.

This is what Bassima had to say.

Hang on, let me just insert the tape I used to record her.

And there we go.

If a person never exists, did they

I asked him who my mother was.

I grew up with only my uncle Omar and did not know my parents until my father returned from the war.

Thakure did not remember my mother.

He did not remember his marriage or my birth because it has not happened yet in his timeline.

I asked, what if mother doesn't exist at all?

What if the general's time traveling has altered our lives so much that my mother was never born and you can never meet her?

My father, the teenager, said, If I never met a woman I do not know, I will not miss her.

I'll meet another woman.

I asked, what if I am never born

my dad said

Basy

he hid his tears and then he hugged me but it was not the hug of a father and daughter it was the hug of a son and mother

he buried his head into my shoulder and sobbed repeating Baszy Baszy and I comforted His heaving head with my palm.

I said, Father,

Fakir,

I think I shall no longer exist soon.

I think I...

Oh, okay.

Oh, sorry for the dead air listeners.

I was playing a recording of an interview I did.

Wait.

Nope.

I just checked.

There's no tape in the player at all.

I thought I had been talking with.

Ah.

Who would I have been talking to?

Maybe it was my husband Carlos reporting on his findings about the damage done to our moon, or

maybe it was nothing at all.

Well,

let us forget that we forgot and go now to the weather.

Turn it up, and I can feel you shake.

I know you love the song, you say it breaks you.

The music blows you like I never could.

So I keep it on, and we can keep our silence.

Oh, I feel it too right in my chest.

I wish that I could put it in a sentence.

I wish that I could open up your head

and rip out the things that I see make you nervous.

Come shake me so I know you're still

somewhere hidden back behind the covers and the things that make you ill.

Oh, I heard you in your sleep again.

Is that what you really think of me?

How can I still call myself your friend

when all we do is drink and talk of nothing?

Come shake me, so I know you're still

somewhere hidden back behind the covers and the things that make you ill.

Come shave me, oh, I know you will.

Please don't make me wait.

Somewhere hidden back behind the covers, and the things that make you ill.

Somewhere hidden back behind the covers,

but I can feel you still.

come

shake me, so I know you're still

somewhere hidden back behind the covers and the things that make you ill.

Come shake me, oh, I know you will.

Please don't aid me away.

Come, shake me so I know you're still.

Come, shake me, oh, I know you will.

Come, shake me, so I know you're still.

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We have an update on the Blood Space War Night Vale.

John Peters says his brother has returned home again.

When he left a month ago, James Peters was 22 years old, but he is now in his 70s, which is the age he should be.

John held his brother tightly.

crying in gratitude and relief that his own family could return to some kind of normalcy.

James, at first, was heartened to see John again, to see his home again, and to learn that he and the general had thwarted the Polonian attack on our planet.

But his tearful smile drifted slowly downward, and the evening shadow overtaken by night.

Upon James's face now was the sudden knowledge that he had made a grave error.

James looked around Nightvale, seeing empty lots and homes, abandoned buildings, and sparse streets.

According to James, thousands of people have gone missing from Nightvale because they never existed or never moved here in the first place.

The general had leapt in time to successfully stop the Polonians from ever reaching Earth, but the change in the timeline caused Nightvale to change too.

Listeners, this may seem strange,

but perhaps there are people

you once knew, family you once lived with, places you were in,

all of which are gone and without your knowing.

I have tried hard to think of any memory, of any experience or person I have lost in the last month, but

I can think of none.

I told James Peters that perhaps the change in timeline did not matter if no one knew what they had lost, if no one noticed any change.

James said,

Cecil, I just don't know.

I don't know.

Maybe If we had a scientific perspective on this, we could better understand how this is affecting us as a community.

And I said,

I didn't know any scientists.

Not personally, anyway.

There's the strange woman who lives in the storage closet at the community college.

I suppose we could ask her.

The important thing...

is that we are safe and that another veteran has returned home and it is another beautiful day in Nightvale.

Stay tuned next for Conspiring to Love, our new relationship advice show, which as a lifelong bachelor sounds like something

I should check out.

Good night, Nightvale.

Good night.

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

This episode was written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Kraner and produced by Disparition.

The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin.

The voice of Bossima was Ali Chan.

Original music by Disparition.

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

This episode's weather is Shake by Wednesday's Wolves.

Find out more at wednesdayswolves.com.

Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at NightvaleRadio or tell a horse your darkest secret.

Check out Welcome to Night Vale for more information on volumes three and four of our illustrated book collections out in just two weeks.

Today's proverb, nothing lasts forever, is a phrase with two meanings, and they're both true.

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 Dude 2 is overrated.

It is.

Anyway, despite this, we come together to host Unschooled, 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 Unschooled wherever you get your podcast.

And don't forget to hit the follow button.

Hi, we're Meg Bashwiner and Joseph Fink of Welcome to Night Vale.

And on our new show, The Best Worst, we explore the golden age of television.

To do that, we're watching the IMDb viewer-rated best and worst episodes of classic TV shows.

The episode of Star Trek, where Beverly Crusher has sex with a ghost, the episode of The X-Files, where Scully gets attacked by a vicious house cat, and also the really good episodes, too.

What can we learn from the best and worst of great television?

Like, for example, is it really a bad episode, or do people just hate women?

The best worst.

Available wherever you get your podcasts.