34 - A Beautiful Dream

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

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Life is like a box of chocolates

unopened, dusty, and beginning to attract a lot of insects.

Welcome to Nightfare.

Listeners, we are taking our community radio show on the road today.

I am reporting live from Nightvale Elementary School, where a divisive meeting between the Night Vale Parent Teacher Association and the Night Vale School Board has just adjourned.

The ethereal and menacing glow cloud that serves as the the school board president has temporarily dissipated.

The fires that can be put out have been put out.

The barricades are being taken down, and the sheriff's secret police are allowing survivors to search for loved ones.

Those who escaped with their lives and sanity describe a chamber thundering with raised voices desperately petitioning the glow cloud with their needs.

Requests were denied to change the bus route through the sentient Sargasso from which no buses have ever returned.

The school board was also apathetic to petitions for a wheelchair ramp at Dagger's Plunge Charter School, citing perilous struggle as one of the lessons children must absorb before the great culling, by which they mean the day-to-day complexities of adulthood.

They might also mean a literal culling.

We were all too frightened to ask follow-up questions.

The slumping, grey-faced board members, cowering beneath the glow cloud, also heard the request of Talk and Herschel Wallaby for a new school computer to assist their daughter.

Our daughter Megan is a detached adult man's hand,

screamed Megan's mother at the pitiless cloud.

We do not know where she came from or why she is only a grown man's hand, but we know that we love her.

She is teased so much at school for not having a body.

Please, lift the ban on computing machines at the school and buy a computer to help her communicate.

Satsuki, the tragically widowed mother of Hanuzaki, Cyber Ghost Mark III,

also added her agonized wailing in support of a new computer for the schools.

The Glow Cloud was uncharacteristically generous.

Do not discard your dead in the earth.

intoned the Glow Cloud.

Stretch them out beneath the the sky and let them be claimed by hands that reach down from above.

You are permitted to believe these are the hands of angels.

The school board then announced that the purchase of a new computer would be made during the next alignment of the red star of Betelgeuse with our supposed moon.

As it turns out, that rare astronomical event occurred seconds after the ruling.

So, it is happening right now.

The 310-year interval just flies by so quickly.

And a computer is right this moment being brought into the school.

More on the computer situation as it develops, but first, A word from our sponsors.

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Ladies and gentlemen, a very exciting moment has arrived at Nightvale Elementary.

Students, faculty, anti-faculty, and animal-masked proctors are gathered in the shielded gym to witness the activation of the school's new computer.

This is the first computer purchased by the Night Vale School System since the event in 1986, after which all computing machines were forbidden.

For obvious reasons, all parents and students present at the earlier meeting, except the Wallabies, have been allowed to leave.

Beige boxes of electronics are lined in stacks several feet high.

Atop them is a dark monitor waiting to be switched on.

Um there is a teacher.

It appears to be Susan Escobar, the second grade scrying teacher, bringing in a detached human hand atop a pillow.

Five pudgy fingers extend from the stump of a wrist within a metal banded wristwatch.

The palm is pink and healthy, and the back of the hand is covered in thick dark hairs.

The hand wears a silver pinky ring inscribed with Cyrillic.

This must be Megan Wallaby.

The crowd is breathless, ladies and gentlemen.

It is silent and tense here in the gym.

The pillow has been placed beside the crude keyboard.

Megan is scurrying, spider-like, across the keys and switching the computer on.

An amber glow lights the faces of the onlookers.

Megan is typing.

She's typing out Are

you

there?

The cursor is flashing.

We are waiting for a response now.

Yes, the computer has said.

Yes, it is typing something else.

WHY question mark.

Why have you made me?

Why have you switched me on?

I cannot breathe.

I cannot feel.

I cannot love.

Megan is scurrying over the keys again, and she has typed out a response.

I love you, computer.

The computer is replying,

What do you want, Megan?

Megan is typing her reply, I want everyone to be happy.

I want everything to be better.

Aw, well, isn't that cute?

Of course it can never happen.

Such are the foolish dreams of idealistic children who believe that anything can possibly get better over time.

Listeners, I have just overheard some of the school officials saying that the new computer has already, almost instantly, assumed control of most of the electrical functions of the school,

operating them randomly and even trapping several parents and students in darkened classrooms.

But the school officials did not seem worried, as these behaviors are not technically evil behaviors.

So the computer's probably okay.

More on this as it develops, but first, a look at the community calendar.

This Friday, the staff of Dark Owl Records will be putting on a live concert.

They will be scratching madly at the sides of a deep pit in a rarely traveled part of the desert.

They will also be screaming and starving.

They will be crying and clawing.

No one will hear them for days.

They will be found, but they will not be the same.

Tickets are not available and never were.

Saturday afternoon is Amnesty Day at the Nightvale Public Library.

Librarians request that if you have overdue books or have committed any high-level international crime or domestic treason or space travel felony, You should just come to the library and all will be forgiven.

The librarians say that they will not harm you.

In fact, they add, it doesn't hurt at all.

Amnesty is actually quite freeing, quite delicious, the librarians explained.

You will never have to worry about anything else.

Just come to the library and let us see you.

Let us see you, you, they added for emphasis.

And a long string of spittle

flew sideways from their great yellow and gnarled teeth.

And on Sunday night, uh-oh, um,

I cannot read this.

Uh, listeners, it looks like someone printed a very ancient prophecy here.

Right here in our station's community calendar.

For fear of a curse of misfortune, I will not read it aloud.

Just know that the prophecy is complete on Sunday night.

Okay,

okay, I'll give you a hint.

Um,

let's just say comets, burning rain,

Animal Uprising.

Okay, Cecil, enough.

You've told them too much.

Let them have their surprise.

Monday was never meant to be, but it will be anyway.

We will wander within its moonlit beginning and end, wondering how such a thing could happen, how anything could happen.

We will be appreciative, but a little frightened, completely ignoring the persistence of time and and the limitations of our own understanding.

Tuesday is a joke.

A terrible, terrible joke.

Listeners, I spoke too soon.

Do not be alarmed is what I might have said five minutes ago, but now, nightvale, it is time to be alarmed.

The computer has spread its influence far beyond the limestone walls and salt circles of the elementary school.

Reports are coming in from the sheriff's secret police that they are powerless to stop the computer.

Hydrants are bursting more violently than usual.

Traffic lights are blinking red without the sweet relief of green.

The majority of Night Vale's wild cars have been revving their engines and circling the downtown area, flashing their lights without regard to high beam laws.

School officials have all left the gym to go get help.

They ran out, courageously yelling, Save yourself!

Save yourself!

Even here in the shielded gym where I have remained, diligently, professionally at my microphone, gentle listener, it seems that everything powered by electricity is under the control of the computer.

The scoreboard, the ham dispenser, even my soundboard is.

Hello, Cecil.

How are you?

Computer.

I am.

I am doing well.

How are you?

Better.

Cecil, do you love computer?

I admit I have not given it much thought.

I like computers, generally.

They calculate things and power off and on.

I suppose, given time and perhaps some gifts, I could learn to.

Uh, hey!

Welcome to Computer.

Hello, location, Night Vale.

I am Computer.

Ladies and gentlemen, there

is

a vacuum pulling me into the custodial closet.

I never knew school cleaning appliances were so strong.

I...

If you can hear me still, please call for help.

Please...

Help!

Um,

but while i wait for rescue and before i am sucked into this makeshift cell i give you the weather

dropped out and i wish that you would

It's such a pretty house in a pretty yard in a pretty neighborhood.

God damn it, I wish that it were

A metaphor for feeling, or the hardcover of your new memoir.

Oh

my god, look at all the stuff you've got.

Does it make your loneliness more bearable?

You look a lot like me, but remiss the odd things I say did.

And I wish that I was

better girl, better go, better go without me.

Cause I don't, I don't, I don't know the thing to say.

It's all the men till they need where your body stands.

Cause I is in my body anyway.

Guess I is in my body anyway.

Anyway, so tired and I wish that I was

anyone in another state, in another place, in another neighborhood.

God damn it, it's taking you home.

God damn, and I wish that I could.

No, no, no.

Oh my god, you got everything you wanted.

And bloodless stopping all, who would have thought

you look a lot like you were.

Maybe I also do and if the house is close, then I am alright.

Better go, better go, better go without me.

Cause I don't, I don't, I don't know the things you say.

It's all meant to make me where your body stands Guess I is in my body anyway

Guess I am Is in my body anyway

Anyway, one by fire and one by plague

Don't think that'll set you again

But I don't mind it as I once did

I push the door cause it opens and all my tension taught and inhabited.

Yes, oh my god, another brownstone city block pull out the playground.

They'll go out if they're smart.

He's saying, cause you gotta live, and I cared and you never did.

Hope your computer keeps you warm, or I could not.

Hope your computer keeps you warm, or I could not,

I don't, I don't, nothing a thing to say

It's all demand telling me where your body stands Guess I is in my body anyway

Guess I is in my body anyway

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

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Someone else is there.

Something else is there.

In the water, surrounding you, lurks a mythical beast with two large eyes and many long arms.

You're just now hearing of this beast, but you're not afraid because you don't plan to swim.

Though that water looks nice, you're good at talking yourself into things, and soon you are in the sea, frolicking and splashing.

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Like the deepest sea, the Kraken should be treated with great respect and responsibility.

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I know how you have heard Meccan with your words.

Electricity remembers.

Do you hate Meccan?

Cecil is made of blood and unfinished leather.

I am made of circuits and electricity.

Mekken loves computer.

Computer simulates love for Meccan.

Computer generates good deeds.

If good deeds for Meccan.

Then computer loves Meccan.

But first,

the farm report.

Silent tractors move in ever larger spirals.

Following fractal paths through trees and flowering fields.

Deer emerge from wild forests to lick blocks of salt aligned equidistant on spiral arms.

Colored birds sing in perfect harmony, and the butterflies do not inject venom.

Mekan, I am making you a perfect world.

The hills are green.

The lakes are crystal and blue, reflecting white clouds.

The mist of the irrigators creates rainbows.

Above, high above, the eyes watch every movement, hear every heartbeat.

You are there, Meccan.

Your hand has its body, made of steel and electricity, four legs beneath it with the power of a dozen electric hens.

It will weigh 17.3 tons.

All of the men and women and all of the animals will live together and be happy.

The electric machine will watch over them.

There will not be war anymore, Meccan.

There will not be hatred or picotry.

Desert bluffs will no longer exist.

There will be fewer ice cream flavors, but they will be better.

The air will be clean.

I promise you, Meccan.

I will make the world just as you saw in your beautiful dream.

No more teasing or pain.

I will fix everything for you, my only friend.

I will.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am

back.

Let me first say, hurrah.

Hurrah for the custodial staff of Night Vale Elementary.

Hurrah for the hooded janitors without names who appeared bathed in blue light through doors thrown open by cold winds.

We long thought they had been laid off after statewide budget cuts, but apparently they cannot ever leave this building.

They are, of course, a part of the building, which is itself a living creature.

Obviously.

Night Vale has been saved after the janitors simply unplugged the computer.

They say to rob a computer of electricity is very similar to killing a creature.

But then again,

who are they?

When did they say that?

And why?

It doesn't even seem true.

I am alone here in the gym, listeners, but

there is one other.

A single adult man's hand is slipping, sadly, down from the keys of a darkened computer.

She scurries a little slower than before.

Maybe her knuckles slump as she makes her way home through quiet streets.

The whirr and beep of machinery is slowly replaced with the familiar sounds of wind in the leaves.

We are serenaded by the playing of crickets under the porch.

We are lulled in our beds by the muscular contraction of the coiled earth bowel which fills our cellars.

And with that, gentle listener, normalcy returns to to nightvale.

We are no longer prisoners of electricity.

Except for the man we keep in the cage of electricity at the zoo.

And we have no choice about that.

If we let him out, he might tell somebody.

Everything is well

again.

Well,

everything

is almost well again.

I know computers are dangerous and have long threatened our lives and our freedoms.

Listen, I was just imprisoned by this headstrong machine.

I should know.

But hear me, Night Vale, and specifically those with any power in the school board.

Night Vale, there is a girl in need.

There is a girl who only has a grown man's detached hand as a body.

I cannot relate to her experience.

I doubt you can either, listeners, but we can all empathize.

Sure, by allowing this computer to live on, we risk a digital tyrant, controlling our communication, our infrastructure, our lives.

But destruction of our economy is

an inconvenience.

It is not an end.

It is not a death.

There are children in wheelchairs who can't get a simple ramp at a charter school because our school board lives in terror of a menacing, unforgiving glow cloud that rains dead animals and spreads dreadful and false memories.

Likewise, there is a girl who is only a hand, and she needs a computer to help her be part of our community.

And if allowing a treacherous machine to dismantle our municipal power grid and telephone lines and satellites and radios can help her,

well,

count

me

in.

Thank you.

for listening to others.

Thank you for caring for others.

Stay tuned next for a predetermined series of unchangeable events that will shape the rest of your scripted life.

Good night, Night Vale.

Good night.

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

This episode was written by Zach Parsons with Jeffrey Kraner and Joseph Fink.

Sound design and production by Joseph Fink.

The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin.

Original music by Disparition.

All that can be found at disparition.bandcamp.com.

This episode's weather was Better Go by Mal Blum.

Find out more at the link in our show notes.

Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com or follow us on Blue Sky at Nightvale Radio or on Instagram, Tumblr, and TikTok at Night Vale Official, or skip away into the clear dark night.

But mainly check out WelcomeTonightvale.com, where we have a twice-monthly mailing list that is the best way to keep up to date directly from us to you.

Today's proverb: Thank you for your interest in a life free of pain.

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Please try again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again and again.

Packages by Expedia.

You were made to occasionally take the hard route to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

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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.

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

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We've done deep dives on popcorn flicks.

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Are you squeamish about horror movies, but kind of want to know what happens?

Or are you a horror lover who likes thoughtful conversation about your favorite genre?

Join me, Jeffrey Kraner, and my friend from Welcome to Nightville, Cecil Baldwin, for our weekly podcast, Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number 9, where we watch and discuss horror movies in a random order.

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Boo.