19B - The Sandstorm

Hey y'all, it is Jeffrey Kraner speaking to you from the year 2025.

And did you know that Welcome to Night Vale is back out on tour?

We are.

We're gonna be up in the northeast in the Boston, New York City area, going all the way over to the upper Midwest in Minnesota.

That's in July.

You kind of draw a line through there and you'll kind of see the towns we'll be hitting.

We'll also be doing Philly down to Florida in September.

And we'll be going from Austin all the way up through the middle of the country into Toronto, Canada in October.

And then we'll be doing the West Coast plus the Southwest plus Colorado in January of 2026.

You can find all of the show dates at welcome to nightvale.com/slash live.

Listen, this brand new live show is so much fun.

It is called Murder Night in Blood Forest, and it stars Cecil Baldwin, of course, Symphony Sanders, me, and live original music by Disparition, and who knows what other special guests may come along for the ride.

These tours are always so much fun, and they are for you, the Die Hard fan, and you, the Night Vale new kid alike.

So feel comfortable bringing your family, your partner, your co-workers, your cat, whatever.

They don't got to know what a night veil is to like the show.

Tickets to all of these live shows are on sale now at welcometonightvelle.com slash live.

Don't let time slip away and miss us when we are in your town because otherwise we will all be sad.

Get your tickets to our live US plus Toronto tours right now at welcometonightveld.com slash live.

And hey, see you soon.

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 Woecast 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 2 official Wocast is available in audio and video on todoom.com or wherever it is you get your podcasts.

The future is what you make of it.

Just know that your supplies are limited.

Welcome to Desert Bluffs.

Good afternoon, Desert Bluffs.

This is Kevin bringing you all your news and good spirits for another gorgeous day in the Bluffs.

But before we get too comfortable, there is some news about that gorgeous day.

We're getting word that a sandstorm is moving in toward us.

Authorities are telling us that it is a doozy and that we should all stay indoors.

Nothing to worry about, just stay out of the way.

It will pass.

As with life and as with all things, it will pass.

The sun will be upon us again and it will be like two mornings in a day.

Yes, a two-morning day!

a rebirth, a re-awakening.

What do you think of that, Desert Bluffs?

Intern Vanessa did point out that sandstorms can do a lot of damage to cars, and if you have access to a garage, you should bring your car in.

Also get those pets inside, Desert Bluffs.

We don't want all those cute little puppies and spiders and baby raccoons getting lost out in the sandy breeze.

Bring those loved ones inside.

A little factoid for you.

Ted, our staff weatherman, says that no one really knows what causes sandstorms.

God, he thinks.

Or maybe they're just big gusts of wind that carry big things of sand.

How much sand do you think there is in the world?

There's got to be a lot.

A lot of sand.

Who even counts it all?

Wow, big questions today, Desert Bluffs.

Big questions.

So, keep your radios tuned in here, as we'll bring you all the latest reports from today's sandstorm and how you can make up for all this lost time.

Hiding from nature is taking away a lot of business productivity, Desert Bluffs, but I'm sure you'll find time to get done what needs to get done.

You won't disappoint your town, your home.

I believe in you.

So mark down the time you spend cowering from the weather, okay?

And we'll work that time back into your schedule.

Great!

And listen, get all that time in before the weekend, because this Saturday it's baseball season again.

Desert Bluffs has just a great team this year.

New manager Samantha Figgins is not only the first manager to get hired straight out of business school, but she also brings a powerful ethos of teamwork, fun, and responsibility.

Last year's Sunbeam's team had some excellent games, but they spent a lot of time just sitting on the bench with nothing to do, because only one person gets to bed at a time.

This season, Figgins plans to keep her boys active with customer orders and accounts receivable spreadsheets.

Baseball is not an individual sport.

They're all in it together.

As Figgins says, it's not about winning and losing or who you're playing, it's about building the strongest possible team brand.

The Sunbeams also welcome a new owner in 2013, Strex Corp Synernists Incorporated.

Look around you, Strex.

Look inside you.

Strex.

Go to sleep.

Strex.

Believe in a smiling God.

Strex Corp.

It is everything.

Let's have a peek at traffic.

The highway department says all roads are running smoothly.

Smooth roads.

Smooth concrete.

Smooth tires.

The slow, undulating buzz of cars over slight hills.

Hard-topped streets gently gliding us all to our jobs and back home.

The beat, beat, beat of society's healthy heart as we all play parts in its exquisite body.

Oh, I am getting one report that there are several stalled cars in the northbound lanes of Route 800 near exit 66.

Police are on the scene dealing with fist fights in the middle of the road.

Now, I can't imagine why in a beautiful town with so many kinds of yogurt stores and pony petting stations anyone would want to fight his neighbor.

So hopefully that gets cleared up soon with a song and a hug.

I want to thank all you listeners for your calls and emails.

The sandstorm came to town more quickly than expected.

Lawrence Levine, out in the Edgertown development, called in to say that the sand was like sand, but slightly different.

That if you touched it, you could feel it.

Twice.

Lawrence said he took a scoop of sand into his soft right hand and it was as if he had two right hands.

He then held the sand with both soft palms and felt four hands, like one of those foreign gods, or radioactive four-armed deer that seemed to be attracted to the new Strexcorp distribution center.

Lawrence said he was making a sand angel, and then he saw himself.

He said he just walked right up to himself and started making two sand angels.

He said that there were two of him just making sand angels, and that he would happily double his sand angel production today.

He hung up the phone, laughing like Vanessa had never heard him laugh.

Well, thank you, Lawrence.

That was a useful report.

Intern Vanessa also tells me she's keeping an eye on Facebook to see if our other neighbors have any news of the storm.

I see Grandma Josephine posted a photo of a lovely bouquet of white lilies outside her door.

Very pretty.

Oh, and look at this video, Vanessa.

This cat just jumps in and out of boxes.

That is adorable.

Vanessa, can you tweet that to me?

Let's have a look at financial news.

The markets are jumping today.

Really jumping.

The markets are up and down, but then back up again, like gravity and our fight to break it.

The violent force of impact, ground to heel, heel to shin, shin to knee, and then back up again.

Muscular might and the threat of flight.

A young boy heals his wounds as quickly as they form, jumping and pounding and hitting and soaring.

He reaches skyward, the drift of the body disconnected from its earth gives the flutter of wings not just on the back, but in the belly.

The moment between knowing you're mortal and bound to the ground, and then dreaming you have awakened a great power to fly like those hollowed-out rodents that clog our skies with feathers and fluids.

It's in that moment of knowing and unknowing, consciousness and bliss, that the boy sees all that can never be.

Upon his return to the flat, hard truth, he sees things, himself, others as they should be seen, as his equals.

He gives the jumping one more go, but the magic is gone.

Another.

Still none.

One more for old time's sake.

No.

It will never be the same.

Well, maybe.

One more.

Still another.

He jumps and jumps and jumps.

The jumping makes a sound like thunder, like drums, like steps.

Soon he is old.

The ups and the downs lack even the memory of the magic.

They have replaced nostalgia with creaking, painful bones.

He is old now.

Still jumping.

This has been Financial News.

This just in, Desert Bluffs.

Mayor Pablo Mitchell has declared today Sandstorm Day.

This massive sandstorm has already damaged several apartments and malls in the northwest part of town, and it seems to be on course for even more costly wreckage.

So Mayor Mitchell announced that we can all take today off of work.

Today is a city-wide holiday.

A second announcement, coming from a man that looked and dressed like the mayor, said that we can make up some of our lost hours by teaming up with our doubles.

The two joined together for an inspirational call to work together with these magical doppelgangers.

Is this true, Desert Bluffs?

If so, what a blessed and wonderful event to bring us doubles of ourselves.

I am stuck inside, doing a job I very much love, of course.

But if I were you, I would run outside into the sandy afternoon air and try to meet your other.

How exciting!

So make friends with your mirrored colleague, Desert Bluffs.

Think of what we could accomplish if there were two of all of us.

Oh dear.

What was that noise?

Vanessa?

Is everything okay in there, Vanessa?

Who are you talking to?

Vanessa.

Oh!

There are two of you.

What are you...

Oh, you're building a new shelving unit.

Let me help you with that.

I'm coming in there.

Let's go to an important message from our parent company.

Got something to say?

Need to say it?

Unfulfilled?

Never made sense of what you are, who you were, what you will be?

Unfulfilled.

Do you forget sometimes about your own skin, your own hair, or other people's hair and skin?

Can you make more hair, more skin?

Do you need more hair and or skin?

Unfulfilled.

Are you satisfied with it all?

Do you see it all?

What room are you in?

What room do you want to be in?

How big is your room?

Unfulfilled.

Have you ever said a thing inside your brain and then sent it to your hand to move a pencil to write it into symbols onto a paper which used to be a tree?

And then used your eyes to translate those symbols back into the thing you just said inches away in your brain and then reset it with your mouth into an ear?

Whose ear was it?

Unfulfilled.

Ever eaten things that made you think differently?

Breathed things?

Unfulfilled?

Feel things?

Felt things?

We are you.

Strexcorp.

Welcome back.

Listeners, I have some bad news and some good news.

Vanessa and her other Vanessa broke one of the parts of the new shelving unit, and I don't think we have anything to replace it.

One of the Vanessas cut her head pretty badly.

When I went in, Vanessa, I think our original Vanessa was standing over her with a staple gun and a clean wet rag.

She also handed me a printout of an email from one of our listeners.

Well, I presume he's a listener.

I've never heard of him.

He claims to live in Nightvale.

I had no idea those folks down in Nightvale could get our tiny little radio station, Vanessa.

How wonderful.

You know, in all my years, I have never gone to Nightvale.

I bet it's beautiful.

Really, this whole desert is beautiful.

I mean, when it comes right down to it, why would you ever leave Desert Bluffs?

How can it get better, really?

I wouldn't risk it.

So Steve writes, this sandstorm is clearly a cover-up.

I believe this was a government-created project.

Our government has long been participating in cloud-seeding experiments, and let me stop you right there, Steve Carlsberg.

You have hit the nail on the head.

Say no more.

The government is indeed covering up their involvement.

Or should I say, lack of involvement in this sandstorm.

Honestly, I don't think the government even knows how to orchestrate a project of this magnitude and of this quality.

You need a well-run private business like, say, Strexcorp.

that has not only the faculties and materials to execute a massive geologic and psychedelic storm, but to do so inexpensively and without tax dollars.

Why, without Strex Corp and companies like it, we wouldn't have trade schools or regulated behaviors or insurance or helpful pandemics or black helicopters.

Thank you for your email, Steve.

What a great guy.

And with that, listeners, let's go to the...

Oh my.

Look at that.

Listeners, there's a white, almost pink vortex that has formed along my studio wall.

Listeners, words fail me.

It is so beautiful.

I can't leave you as our show is not yet over.

But

there must be something beyond this something, Desert Bluffs.

I must see what it is.

I must go.

I will try not to be long, listeners.

I will try not to be long.

Hello?

Hello?

Night Vale?

What is this studio?

What is this damnable studio?

Nightvale, I do not know if you can hear me.

This is Cecil, and I do not know where I am.

It is clearly a radio studio, but the walls are covered in blood.

And instead of dials and buttons on the soundboard, there is just animal viscera glistening under the green LED lights.

I hope this microphone works.

Am I in hell?

Dana?

Dana, can you hear me?

Listeners, if you can hear the sound of my voice, please contact the sheriff's secret police.

There is so much blood, it is seeping into my shoes.

There are...

oh masters of us all, no...

teeth scattered across the floor.

The window into the control booth is shattered and there is a swath of skin and a fistful of long clumping hair hanging from a sharp glass point.

I do not know if this is even nightvale.

I know that I can hear the sandstorm raging outside.

There is a low buzz and deep hum that might be my own heart ready to tear itself from my chest in horror or grief.

I cannot know which.

There is a photo,

a single photo of a man on the desk here.

He is wearing a tie.

He is not tall or short, not thin or fat.

His hair and nose are like mine.

But his eyes.

His eyes are black as obsidian, and his smile.

No,

it is not a smile.

He must be wicked, this man.

Dear Nightvale, please pray in your Bloodstone Circle for me, and pray, too, that no one should ever have to meet this vicious wretch of a man.

I want to be home, Nightvale.

Oh, Cecil, you fool.

The vortex.

The vortex is still there, but here it is white.

Okay,

dear listeners, from this vile, vile place, I leave you to your prison.

But before I go, because I am a radio professional and it is sitting right here on this blood-spattered desk, I give you the the weather.

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 Veef or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

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.

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

Listen to Unschooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget to hit the follow button.

Hello there, Desert Bluffs.

It is Kevin again.

I told you I would be back.

I don't know where I went, but I think that I met my double.

The vortex is gone now, but as I was returning, I passed a man.

A man who looked just like me.

me.

I smiled and said, hello there, friend.

I hugged this man, and he hugged me back.

We shared a moment in this other world.

I am not sure to where that spiral of space and time took me, nor through where I traveled, but I am certain that there must be more to us than just us, and that there is another place, another time, where things could have been different.

Better.

Worse.

But let's not think on woulds, coulds, and shoulds.

I am just happy I am alive.

I am happy my other is alive.

You are alive.

We.

We are alive.

Outside, the winds are subsiding.

Our doubles have left us as the sand has left us.

The sun is rising again just as it is setting.

Our second sunrise collides with the sunset.

Let's reflect on this.

Let us reflect on our lives and where we will be tomorrow.

We lost our other selves, Desert Bluffs, but we gained new perspective.

Tomorrow, we'll wake again, work again, live again.

We are home, all of us, together.

My mouth, your ears.

We have each other.

And as always, until next time, Desert Bluffs.

Until next time.

Welcome to Desert Bluffs is a production of commonplace books.

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

The voice of Desert Bluffs is Kevin R.

Free.

Original music by Joseph Fink.

This episode's Weather was Eliezer's Waltz, composed by Larry Cardozo and Ron Fink, and performed by Disperition.

Find out more at disparition.info.

We would like to thank our Desert Bluffs intern, Adam Dunnells, who is just the best and is also super great and was also killed in an unfortunate accident.

Want to have your music featured in the weather section?

Want to contribute your talents to the show?

Just want to say hi?

Email us at nightvale at commonplacebooks.com or follow us on Twitter at nightvale radio.

Check out commonplacebooks.com for more information on this show, as well as our books on the unused story ideas of H.P.

Lovecraft and what it means to be a grown-up.

Today's proverb, step 1.

Separate your lips.

Step 2.

use facial muscles to pull back corners of mouth.

Step three, widen your eyes.

This is how to be happy.

Hey y'all, it is Jeffrey Kraner speaking to you from the year 2025.

And did you know that Welcome to Night Vale is back out on tour?

We are.

We're going to be up in the northeast in the Boston, New York City area, going all the way over to the upper Midwest in Minnesota.

That's in July.

You kind of draw a line through there, and you'll kind of see the towns we'll be hitting.

We'll also be doing Philly down to Florida in September.

And we'll be going from Austin all the way up through the middle of the country into Toronto, Canada in October.

And then we'll be doing the West Coast plus the Southwest plus Colorado in January of 2026.

You can find all of the show dates at welcometonightvale.com/slash live.

Listen, this brand new live show is so much fun.

It is called Murder Night in Blood Forest, and it it stars Cecil Baldwin, of course, Symphony Sanders, me, and live original music by Disparition, and who knows what other special guests may come along for the ride.

These tours are always so much fun, and they are for you, the Die Hard fan, and you, the Night Vale new kid alike.

So feel comfortable bringing your family, your partner, your coworkers, your cat, whatever.

They don't got to know what a night veil is to like the show.

Tickets to all of these live shows are on sale now at welcometonightvale.com/slash live.

Don't let time slip away and miss us when we are in your town because otherwise we will all be sad.

Get your tickets to our live U.S.

plus Toronto tours right now at welcometonightvale.com/slash live.

And hey, see you soon.