Within the Wires: Relaxation Cassette #2

Did you know that Nightfall is not just a podcast, it's also books?

That's right.

It's like movies for your ears, but in written word form.

We have four script collections that are fully illustrated with behind-the-scenes intros for every single episode.

And then we have three novels.

The first Welcome to Nightfall novel, in which two women have their lives turned upside down by a mysterious man in a tan jacket.

We reveal the origin of that, the man man in the tan jacket, and that one.

Then the New York Times best-selling thriller, It Devours, in which we really try to get to the bottom of a certain smiling god.

Finally, my favorite, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home.

Part Pirate Adventure, Part Haunted House, all Faceless Old Woman.

Find the three novels and four script books wherever you get books.

Okay,

enjoy this episode of a podcast.

Running a business comes with a lot of what-ifs, but luckily, there's a simple answer to them: Shopify.

It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses, including Thrive Cosmetics and Momofuku, and it'll help you with everything you need.

From website design and marketing to boosting sales and expanding operations, Shopify can get the job done and make your dream a reality.

Turn those what-ifs into.

Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/slash special offer.

Hi, it's Jeffrey Kraner.

Happy Nightvale hiatus Month.

The next new Night Vale episode is coming up August 1st.

For now, here is episode 2 of our newest podcast, Within the Wires, which runs every other Tuesday through October 25th.

Only the first three episodes of this show will be available on the Welcome to Night Vale feed.

So, if you like what you hear and would like to hear the entire 10-episode first season and future seasons, please go over to iTunes and subscribe to Within the Wires directly.

Hey,

we appreciate you.

Welcome to Cassette 2 on your journey to understanding, to being understood,

to relaxation and total body freedom.

In this cassette, we will explore inside you.

Indeed, we are always exploring you.

You are here to be explored.

and to explore.

It is not dangerous.

No one needs to get badly hurt.

Listen to the things I say, for they are crucial to your freedom.

Remember what you learn, for what you learn is a path.

Comprehend your instructions, for they shall guide you truly.

Listen to this cassette in your own assigned room.

Close the door.

You do not need to think about redress sirens and who is being sent to the extensive studies lab or what is being done there.

This cassette is about calm.

Lie down on your your bed.

Make sure you are alone in your room.

And now we will begin cassette two: side A: Calming Anxiety.

Close your eyes.

Breathe in.

Feel the air enter your chest.

Feel your stomach atop your other organs, which are atop your spine, which is parallel to the ground.

Keep your eyes closed, but open another eye.

An eye inside your mind and outside your body.

Let yourself see what you have not seen before.

Let yourself think what you have not thought before.

Breathe out.

Keep your eyes closed.

Keep the eye that is your mind open.

The eye that is your mind is outside your body.

It floats above your head seeing what you cannot see.

It sees you, too.

It looks at your face.

Feel the prickle in your forehead as your skin recognizes that it is being observed.

Feel the eye upon your belly.

Feel the pulses in your gut, your veins vibrant highways around and away from your stomach.

Breathe into your stomach, your gut.

Feel the gentle press of someone's fingers upon your abdomen.

Feel the skin bristle at the intrusion, but do not open your eyes.

You are alone.

Say aloud: My body is alone.

My body is alone.

The fingers press and retreat, your skin constricting and relaxing.

Feel your blood slow.

Smell the fading musk of your cooling skin, your stomach being softly caressed.

This is not to calm your body, but to digitally observe it.

There is no reason why we can't have both pleasure and understanding.

The Institute is interested in your physical well-being.

You are completely safe here.

Say aloud, My body is safe.

My body is safe.

Let the eye that is your mind linger on your face, ignoring the face of the one who stands above you.

There is no one else standing near you.

Linger on the slant of your eyebrows, on the brown of your eyes, on the width of your nose.

on the scar on your chin, the long, thin scar.

The scar is your your childhood.

It is the skip in your feet and the joy in your heart as you ran, the shock in your mind and the pain behind your eyes as you fell.

The scar is your body reminding you it has always been there.

You were careless then.

You were free.

What an entertaining word, free.

Say aloud the word free.

Inhale.

Say it again.

Exhale as you say it.

You felt free and safe.

You thought you could run forever without harm.

You thought you could sing out loud.

You thought you could fly just about.

And so you ran as fast as you could.

You ran for sheer joy.

You ran through trees and past fences and over streams.

Your body letting you know that it would always be there with you.

And then you tripped and fell, and the world of freedom through which you had been running ceased to exist.

And blood pooled upon the ground, reminding you that your body would not always be there with you.

If that is how you got that scar, if you even have a scar there, I don't know.

How would I know?

I'm just a voice on a cassette.

On a standard issue, relaxation, cassette.

Inhale.

Feel the air flow through your chest, through your stomach and your intestines.

Feel it wash over your liver, your kidneys and your spleen.

Feel it caress your appendix.

The air you inhale seeps through the spaces between your organs.

It trickles along your bones.

It fills you up until you are more air than person, rising from the ground slowly, slowly,

slowly,

slowly rising.

You are above the Institute now, and you can see it as a whole being, as an arc of interconnected white rectangles, a boxy, crescent moon.

Inside, there are rooms and corridors, and wardens, and security teams.

Inside, there is you and

no, no one else.

You cannot see anyone else.

You can only feel them.

High up, you only see the building and the path that leads away away from it into the forest heading to the south.

You see the forest dark and dense.

You see the river, a scar running from the mountains in the east toward a harbour in the south west.

And still you rise.

You see the edges of the forest.

You see fields speckled with tiny dots.

Cows, horses.

From this height it does not matter.

You see the grey smudge of a city in the distance.

There are people in the city, but from this distance, individual humans are merely abstract concepts, like cells.

At the edges of the land, at the edges of the world, you can see the ocean.

Now exhale.

Exhale and let the air that leaves you take with it the toxins in your lungs, your organs.

The damp, warm air leaves your mouth in a dull hiss.

You are in a strange place, a new place, and you are anxious.

Let the air that leaves you take with it the anxious bubbles that have been crowding your stomach.

Let it leave you calm.

The air you exhale rises above you and pushes you down.

You are like a leaf falling from a tree, falling softly, falling gently, slowly spiraling down,

down,

down,

down.

You can no longer see the ocean or the smudge that was the city.

You watch the fields for as long as you can until they too are gone.

The mountains that a moment ago seemed so small rise above you, but just for a moment before they are hidden by the trees.

You see the Institute grow larger below you, its angular kidney shape showing shingles and billowing exhaust stacks.

You wonder what is burning, but that is the wrong question.

The roof dissolves at your touch and you float back into your room.

And still the air is leaving your body.

It pushes you to the ground and the floor dissipates at your touch.

You sink through concrete and stone until you find soft, loamy earth.

You see ants burrowing along tunnels.

You see worms pushing along through the earth.

Through you.

Inhale.

Exhale.

With each breath, you rise, ocean, and fall.

Soil.

Rise.

Mountains.

And fall.

Insects.

With each breath, you relax a little more.

Unfurl each muscle.

Are you holding tension in your shoulders?

Let it go.

Are you holding tension in your calves?

Breathe and let it go.

Are you holding tension in your toes?

Relax

and let it go.

Once more, in

and out

open your eyes you are alone your room is empty

do not close the eye that is in your mind never close the eye that is in your mind you will need that eye

you have completed your breathing exercise before continuing to side b please note down the degree to which each of your muscles is now relaxed and report this number to your security nurse

Inside A

We love podcasts here at Nightvale Presents.

We love listening to them, talking about them, finding new ones, revisiting old ones, and wearing t-shirts of our favorite shows.

I have t-shirts of 99% Invisible, the Reed, Tannis, the Black Tapes, Hello from the Magic Tavern, of course, Alice Isn't Dead, and Welcome to Nightvale, and a whole bunch more.

And now we have t-shirts for this very podcast.

So, if you also like wearing t-shirts of podcasts you like and this is a podcast you like, go over to withinthewires.com to get yourself Within the Wires t-shirts or even Within the Wires posters if that's your kind of thing.

I mean posters, they're t-shirts for your wall.

T-shirts, they're posters for your chest.

But it's only your second episode, you might say.

That's kind of presumptive to already have merch, you might add.

You're totally right, I might reply.

It absolutely is.

But I really love podcast t-shirts and I really love Rob Wilson's beautiful Within the Wires logo, and I hope that others will too.

So go on over to withinthewires.com to get your shirt and/or poster.

Now, side B

Cassette to side B.

Turn the stomach,

close your eyes,

breathe in,

and out.

In through your nose, in until there is no more room, in until you are completely full of air.

Out through your mouth, out until your body strains, out until there is not a gasp or gap left in you.

Breathe in

and out.

Keep your eyes closed.

Open only the eye that is your mind.

See yourself

alone in your assigned room.

But see that another eye is looking now from high in the top corner of the room.

It sees in black and white.

It records everything.

It does not blink.

It does not sleep.

Watch the eye watching you.

It watches you in many places, in many times.

The eye watches you in an earlier time, a different place.

In a cobbled square as you sat having coffee, or having tea.

The detail is unimportant to the eye.

It was probably important to you at the time.

The eye sees you were young, full of energy, that you could have been dancing and shouting, but you were not.

There were books open in front of you and you were reading them.

You were writing down what you read.

You were still.

You were mostly still.

It was your right foot that gave you away.

The eye sees the rest of your body focused on studying while your foot tapped, fidgeted and wandered off on its own adventures, running through fields, dancing down pathways.

The eye watches from a distance, from a time.

It watches you in black and white.

It knows who you are.

It sees the dark cloud of your hair.

It sees your shoulders, linen-clad and slight.

It sees that you were curious and that you saw no reason why your curiosity might not be answered.

It has always watched you like this.

It still does.

You feel fingers pressing against your abdomen now.

Your eyes remain closed.

It watches as you looked up from your books for a moment.

You looked up from your books for what was supposed to be just a moment.

It would have been just one small moment, but...

but you saw something.

Someone.

The eye sees that you saw someone.

The eye is curious.

The eye wants to know why you are looking at this someone.

She was slightly older than you, she was twenty at least.

You saw the dark cloud of her hair and her shoulders, bare and strong.

You had seen her here before, but you had never talked to her.

Had you?

Had you ever talked to her?

Had you talked to her every day, once upon a time, before you were ten?

You feel fingers press into your stomach.

You feel your heart beating in your gut.

You don't remember anything before you were ten?

No one remembers anything before they were ten.

You cannot remember her.

Could not, cannot, should not

do not.

You did remember her, but you were unsure wherefrom.

Only that she shared the slant of your eyebrows, the brown of your eyes, the width of your nose.

She was like you, but also not like you.

You wanted to talk to her.

The eye sees and suspects.

You wanted to talk to her.

You would talk to her.

You will talk to her.

And the eye is curious.

The eye wants to know why.

The eye wants to know how.

Breathe in

and out.

You are in the place you are now.

The eye in the corner of the room that is not the eye in your mind watches you here now as you listen to my voice.

Allow the eye that is in your mind to see what the eye in the corner of the room sees.

It sees you.

It sees that your eyes are closed.

It sees you breathing.

It sees gloved fingers feeling about your belly.

It sees you are alone.

It sees the distance between you and the safety barred window.

It sees your thin clothing and your cheap slippers.

Indoor slippers.

Slippers that are suitable for the rooms and corridors of the Institute.

Slippers that would not be suitable for paths, for forests, for rivers or roads.

Listen.

Pay attention to what the eye does not see.

Remember, it does not see the space under the chair, the top of the shelf, the door.

It cannot see what you might be keeping under the chair or on top of the shelf.

It cannot see who may come in or go out through the door within four feet of it.

Comprehend, the eye is not alone.

The eye is connected.

The eye is connected by electrodes and pulses.

Its vision is connected to signals that run up and down wires.

It is not the only eye.

It is part of a community, part of a network, part of a sprawling web.

There are others.

There are many others, centrally connected.

Each room has one camera.

One eye.

Each room has one eye.

One eye that observes the room.

One eye that observes as much of the room as it it can.

It cannot observe the whole room.

Each corridor has two cameras, two eyes.

Each long corridor has two eyes.

Two eyes that are high, at the ends, too high to see detail, too high to see a person's face.

They see figures.

They see uniforms.

They see security nurses.

They see patients.

They see coats and smocks.

The The eyes are not perfect.

They see what they see.

They record everything.

Like all eyes, they can be avoided.

They can be fooled.

But they are everywhere.

One camera in the room you are in.

Two cameras in the corridor outside it.

Five doors down, you remember, you comprehend.

One camera in the next room.

Two cameras in the next corridor.

one big door with one camera.

Listen.

Remember.

Comprehend.

Open the eye that is in your mind and see everything.

Breathe.

Are you still breathing?

We got away from the breathing.

Breathe.

This is key.

If you stop breathing, it is difficult to do other things.

Visualization exercise complete.

Open your eyes.

You are alone.

No one is touching your stomach.

Remember the exercises.

Practice the techniques.

Remind yourself of the visualization exercises.

There was a hallway in one of the visualization exercises.

Do you remember which door you entered in the visualization exercise?

These exercises are for your own progression.

There is no need to discuss what you hear on these cassettes with your unit mates or security nurse.

You have completed cassette two toward relaxation, understanding, and total self.

Please fill out the cassette two questionnaire.

The answers are B, C, D, D, D, A, C, A.

Cassette 3 will commence once blood work is approved by your security nurse.

End side B

Within the Wires is written by Jeffrey Kraner and Janina Mathewson and performed by Janina Mathewson with original music by Mary Epworth.

Find more of Mary's music at maryepworth.com.

Within the Wires is a production of Night Vale Presents.

Check out our other podcasts, Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn't Dead.

Both are available on iTunes or wherever it is that you get your podcasts.

Okay,

our time is done.

It's you time now.

Time to draw a a bath, play some music, and light an aromatic candle.

Today's scented candle is the end of days.

Today's relaxing music is scratching noises in the walls.

Today's bath is filled with maple syrup.

This has been a production of Night Vale Presents.

Find out more about us and our shows at nightvalepresents.com.

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 Ludlin 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.