Archive of Our Own

Orwellian. That's the only way to describe the radios in Night Vale, ubiquitous and constant. Carlos notices them almost as soon as he enters the city limits, the A/C in his car finally dead after laboring for the last two days. He turns off Route 800 with all the windows down, coasting through the outskirts of town with his tie loosened and the top two buttons of his shirt undone, the sleeves of his lab coat rolled up to his elbows. He's in the middle of the desert in the middle of June, and he would have stopped two days ago and found a mechanic except that this is the first project he's ever been in charge of. He doesn't want to be the last of the team to arrive.

The road into Night Vale is lined with two gas stations, a truck stop and a rental shop for heavy equipment, the buildings all showing their age in scabs of paint flaking away from welts of rust. With one eye on the fuel gauge, Carlos eases up on the gas, one hand tapping unconsciously against the steering wheel as music catches his ear and fades, only to grow louder again. He drives past the diesel station, past a tiny convenience store with its doors standing open, the music following him. The truck stop's loudspeaker blares the next verse tinnily over the parking lot as he passes, and at the gas station where he finally stops, a teenager with a facial tic plays the same station inside at the cash register.

When he gets back in his car, Carlos turns the radio on for the first time all morning, inching the dial slowly up and down and hearing nothing. Static. More nothing. Then a thready snatch of song.

Everyone on the team is young. Lodged halfway between hard-nosed skepticism and bright-eyed curiosity, they've collectively been turned down for more projects, ignored for more job interviews, and hazed out or nearly out of enough classes to justify writing up the numbers in scientific notation. None of them are certain why they've been picked for this plum assignment, a study of localized phenomena that on the surface appear to violate every physical law known to man. More, the study is being taken seriously. The lab they've been given might be situated right next to a pizza parlor that sells by the slice, but the equipment is top-notch. Better.

Carlos doesn't let on, but he distinctly hears their particle physicist inform their bioanthopologist that she has just had an orgasm. It's not remotely professional, but he's a mass spectrometer from joining her.

He finds the mass spectrometer in the basement. Their chemist looks like he might burst into tears, possibly a hymn of praise. Carlos is entirely relieved he kept his thoughts to himself.

After touring the lab like a pack of starry-eyed freshmen, running their fingers guiltily and worshipfully over machinery most of them have only dreamed of having at their personal disposal, hunger eventually forces them out of the lab. They have rental houses somewhere--Carlos isn't the only one who has yet to set foot inside his new home--but the pizza place next door is as far as they can bear to go. It's just too new.

The radio is playing at Big Rico's Pizza, but instead of music, there's a man droning out a public service announcement in the smoothest voice Carlos has ever heard. It's so hypnotic it takes a moment for the DJ's words to sink in.

"The City Council announces the opening of a new dog park at the corner of Earl and Somerset, near the Ralph's," the DJ says in that clear, utterly professional tone that can only be found on public radio. "They would like to remind everyone that dogs are not allowed in the dog park."

Carlos frowns as Lindquist steps up to the counter to order a slice of double pepperoni, a slice of chicken alfredo bacon, and to ask with some puzzlement whether 'brined armadillo' is really a thing here.

No dogs?

"People," the DJ stresses firmly, "are not allowed in the dog park. It is possible you will see hooded figures in the dog park. Do not approach them. Do not approach the dog park. The fence is electrified and highly dangerous. Try not to look at the dog park, and especially do not look for any period of time at the hooded figures. The dog park will not harm you."

Carlos looks at the others, but they aren't paying any attention to the radio. Maybe the show is meant to be a spoof. That must be it.

"And now," the DJ says brightly, "the news."

"Are you ready to order, sir?"

The new voice startles him back to himself, and he smiles automatically, hoping his distraction hasn't made him look foolish. "Ah...a slice of pepperoni," he says, "and--did anybody get breadsticks?" He looks at his team--his!--and they all shake their heads. He's suddenly reminded of a neighbor's dogs: all those pleading stares, clearly on the edge of starvation. "And three orders of breadsticks. To go."

The kid behind the counter has a different facial tic than the kid at the gas station, this one centered around the eyes instead of the mouth. He makes small talk as he swipes Carlos' debit card, remarking on Carlos' coat. Carlos is the only one in uniform, as he thinks of it.

"I'm a scientist," he says with a shrug, taking back his card.

He steps away from the counter, tucking his wallet away and shoving his hands into the deep pockets of his lab coat while he waits. He suspects he ought to be making an impression here, taking a seat instead of asking for a takeout box. He should be observing his team, watching to see how they'll interact now that they're in a group, encouraging them to talk, get acquainted. Honestly, he just wants to get back to the lab.

"A new man came into town today," the DJ says as Carlos stares out the tall windows onto the street. Carlos snorts quietly, more certain than ever that the DJ means to be humorous. Night Vale isn't anywhere near small enough to be that desperate for news. "Who is he?" the DJ asks, voice dropping to something almost conspiratorial. "What does he want from us? Why his perfect and beautiful haircut? Why his perfect and beautiful coat? He says he is a scientist," the DJ announces, and Carlos freezes, heart thumping unpleasantly hard behind his ribs.

"Well," the DJ says with a strange sort of dignity, "we have all been scientists at one point or another in our lives. But why now? Why here? And just what does he plan to do with all those breakers and humming electrical instruments in that lab he's renting? The one next to Big Rico's Pizza," he adds, and it makes Carlos feel horribly, self-consciously paranoid to wonder if someone is watching them, all the more when the DJ's voice suddenly drops again with a sexy drawl. "No one does a slice like Big Rico," he almost purrs. A heartbeat of silence. "No one."

He nearly has a heart attack when the parlor employees suddenly set up a hooting racket, the two cooks high-fiving each other while the others laugh. Carlos' team look at each other and then at him. It's clear they missed the broadcast altogether, and now the DJ has moved on to exhorting parents to keep their children hydrated and their eyes peeled for helicopters. Black ones, blue ones...mural-painted ones. Joke. It has to be a joke.

He sends the others back to the lab without him and makes inquiries about calling a town meeting.

On the way there, he buys a radio.

After the meeting, he sits in his car with the engine running and tries to tell himself he didn't see what he thinks he saw. Or rather, he knows what he saw, but he tries to put a different spin on it. There are plenty of reasons for men in black suits and black sunglasses to prefer standing in the back of a room, speaking quietly into their cuffs with two fingers pressing earpieces into place. He's not so sure about the men in leather balaclavas and short capes, but the suits? Government agents, obviously.

No. Can't have been.

The radio hums. It's the same DJ as before, only his deep monotone sounds...different. Lighter. Admiring?

"That new scientist we now know is named...Carlos...called a town meeting. He has a square jaw and teeth like a military cemetery. His hair is perfect, and we all hate and despair and love that perfect hair in equal measure."

Carlos stares at the radio, eyes going wide and then wider. That's...not what he expected to hear at all.

"Old Woman Josie brought corn muffins, which were decent, but lacked salt," the DJ continues, voice edging back into conversational tones once more. "She said the angels had taken her salt for a godly mission, and she hadn't yet gotten around to buying more. Carlos told us--" and oh God, had the DJ been there? "--that we are by far the most scientifically interesting community in the US--and he had come to study just what is going on around here. He grinned, and everything about him was perfect."

Perfect? He's listening for the threat, another hint he's being watched, maybe even right--

"And I fell in love instantly."

Carlos wants to gape like an idiot, wants to turn the radio off and forget he ever heard that, wants to call the station and do a little shouting about harassment and privacy. He knows he won't. He's dealt with bullies before.

He tunes the DJ's words out instead, hates how the man's soft voice still curls around him as warm as an old quilt. He doesn't want to be lulled by someone determined to ridicule him.

He doesn't make it halfway back to the lab before he pulls over in front of a little mom and pop store. He still hasn't made it to the house he's renting--and he probably should; the owner is likely cursing him right now, wondering where he is--but he doesn't care about the house. What he wants is information.

There's a large display behind the counter with a hand-lettered 'DISCOUNT BLOODSTONES' sign. Local minerals are the sort of oddity he expects to see in a shop like this, alongside silk roses and 'Welcome to Night Vale' T-shirts. The old woman behind the counter peers at him myopically as he approaches and suddenly breaks into a smile.

"You must be Carlos," she says with a shy titter. "My goodness. He's certainly right about your hair."

"The man on the radio," Carlos says; it's not a question, but he feels like it should be.

The old woman laughs. "That Cecil," she says, shaking her head. "I've never heard him in such a tizzy. Are you really a scientist?"

He opens his mouth, closes it again. She sounds like she thinks this Cecil's teasing is real.

"Yes," he says after a moment. "There's a few of us. We're here to study your town."

"Well, I'm sure you'll have lots of fun," she says in a grandmotherly way. He almost expects her to pat his hand.

There's a radio inside the store as well. Cecil is announcing the opening of a new waterfront recreation area, and Carlos feels the strangest twinge, there and gone so fast, it's easy to ignore.

He steps out into the hot desert air and reminds himself he is a scientist, not a psychologist.

The town's delusions don't fall within his field of study.

Carlos and his team are professionals, but they're only human. Confronted with so many tools and gadgets and switches and levers, they spend their first day in Night Vale doing remarkable impressions of children turned loose in a toy shop. They begin dozens of experiments, claiming and rearranging office spaces with a kind of giddy happiness that spills over onto everything they do. One or two of them take quick field trips just to test out the equipment, and that's where the trouble begins.

Morris finds a house in a development nearby that isn't there. It looks like it's there--a white and orange ranch-style house in the middle of a classily xeriscaped lot--but the readings are clear.

"It...seems like it exists," Carlos says haltingly, standing with the others on the sidewalk, unable to resist a look of his own after Morris came rushing back in to grab more equipment. "Like it's...just right there when you look at it. And it's between two other identical houses, so it would make more sense for it to be there than not."

Morris laughs nervously. "I dare you to knock on the door," he says to Borowicz.

In the driveway at Carlos' back, a man is washing his car. A radio sits just out of splashing range tuned to NVCR. Cecil is telling Night Vale about the house that doesn't exist.

He quotes Carlos word for word.

It's only the first day, but it's been a long day. There was the long tedium of the last leg of the drive, the excitement of the lab and the confusion of the town meeting, where no one seemed particularly disturbed when he recounted the already-known anomalies that had brought him and his team to investigate. There was the shock of discovering that house, or optical illusion, or whatever-it-is within hours of their arrival, followed by their trip to the seismic monitoring station near Route 800 and realizing that the entire town should be collapsing into the yawning maw of a giant crack into the bowels of the earth from the force of a quake that none of them could feel. He may have fired off a panicked call to the US Geological Survey for a second opinion, and he can only hope that won't come back to haunt him; Night Vale remains perfectly, peacefully composed.

He gets into his car, air conditioning mercifully fixed on the way to the town meeting. When he convinces his still-shaking hands to turn the key in the ignition, he hears Cecil advising the town to put in an earthquake insurance claim anyway.

"See what you can get," Cecil says with an audible smile, "right?"

Carlos drops his head onto the steering wheel and closes his eyes. He's worked on difficult projects in the past, important projects, but never important enough to be monitored so closely. Somewhere there must be cameras trained on all of them. Somewhere there must be microphones picking up every word they say. It doesn't trouble him that he can't spot them or even the monitoring itself. They're working for the community; they have nothing to hide.

He's just never expected being spied upon to be so...public.

"Traffic time, listeners," Cecil says as Carlos sighs into the steering wheel. "Now--police are issuing warnings about ghost cars out on the highways, those cars only visible in the distance, reaching unimaginable speeds, leaving destinations unknown for destinations more unknown. They would like to remind you that you should not set your speed by these apparitions, and doing so will not be considered following the flow of traffic. However, they do say that it's probably safe to match speed with the mysterious lights in the sky, as whatever entities or organizations responsible appear to be cautious and reasonable drivers."

A startled, half-hysterical giggle bursts from Carlos, but he doesn't lift his head. It's his first day in Night Vale, and he doesn't know what to think. The anomalies that brought them here are all well-known to the Night Vale's residents. Maybe they're proud of their city's reputation for the unusual and unexplained, playing it up for the tourists, a live broadcast version of Punxsutawney Phil. Clearly nothing he hears on the radio is meant to be taken with any seriousness at all.

The background hum of the news music grows hushed, leaving a pause that pours the warm bedrock of Cecil's voice straight into Carlos' ears. "And now," Cecil says, "the weather."

He's waiting for word of rains of frogs, emerald green tornadoes, but it's a guitar he hears instead: acoustic and unaccompanied by anything but an untrained male voice, slightly too rough around the edges. He feels a little that way himself, trying so hard to present a professional front but certain he's betraying himself in a million small ways.

Like now, slumped in his car with his head still resting on the steering wheel, so that the knock at his window startles him upright in an embarrassing burst of panic.

"Sir?" Lindquist says uncertainly as Carlos rolls down the window. "I'm...sure it's probably nothing, or--well, I'm sure there's an explanation; the curvature of...or maybe, uh...do you have the time?"

Carlos blinks. The clouds that had been rolling in before are gone now, and though he suspects the desert night will be all the colder for it, he can't say he minds. He likes the heat, but he's not used to this much of it. A cool night will be a relief. New guy weather, he thinks and resolves not to say; he's been told more than once that his sense of humor is regrettably lacking.

"Eight forty-two," he says after a glance at his watch. For some reason, this doesn't reassure Lindquist at all. "Why?"

"The sunset," Lindquist says. "It's late."

Carlos looks to the horizon where the sun has already vanished, leaving nuclear streaks of blazing orange and gold behind, and looks back at Lindquist with an arched brow.

"It was supposed to happen at eight twenty-nine," Lindquist says, hunching a shoulder. "It was ten minutes late. I thought maybe it was just my watch, but I asked all the others, and...."

Carlos tightens his hands on the steering wheel. "We need to get back to the lab," he says.

When he gets the call on his cell phone later, he doesn't look at the display before he answers it. He assumes it's his sponsor, maybe his mother--but it's Cecil, asking if he has any explanation for the sun or the clocks or...anything at all. In that moment it sounds like a challenge, like that unflappable voice is laughing at him. He keeps his answers short, not wanting the entire city to hear him flustered if Cecil plays the call back on the radio.

Here is another thing he's learned: if ignoring your tormenters doesn't work, sometimes getting right up in their faces will.

It's late, nearly ten, but he gets in his car anyway and drives out to the NVCR station, following the blinking red light of the radio tower. He has no idea when Cecil's shift ends; it seems like that smooth, deep voice has been following him since he drove into town. Surely that means he'll be leaving the station soon, and Carlos means to be there before he does.

An intern greets him at the door, looking surprised but pleasantly so. "You must be Carlos," the kid says with a dawning smile before Carlos can even introduce himself. "Wow, um...hi! I'm Chad. One of the interns. Man, Cecil is going to be so stoked to see you. Come on in!"

Chad doesn't sound like a shadowy government agent or even a cog in the soulless government machine. He sounds like an intern: a little nervous, a lot helpful, and nearly stumbling over himself to look like he belongs. He offers to get Carlos a coffee while they wait for Cecil to go to commercial, but Carlos refuses. He's too busy wondering how they can call themselves a community radio and still run advertising for national chains.

When Chad shows him into the recording booth, grinning like an approving parent only pretending to chaperone, Cecil turns without looking, taking off his oversized headphones, and nearly falls out of his chair. He's a stunningly average man, neither tall nor short, his fairish hair cut in the classic style that's probably the first one learned by every barber for the last two hundred years. He's fit enough, in a way that points more towards good genes than any regimen of exercise, and though he's wearing a tie, his white shirt and khaki slacks are the blandest examples possible of office casual. The only striking feature he appears to possess are his eyes, so pale a blue his pupils seem to float on an unbroken field of white.

And there's his voice, of course...only he doesn't sound at all like the smooth, controlled man on the radio when he squeaks with nearly star-struck surprise.

"C-Carlos! I mean--what a surprise! You're here! In the studio! I mean--come in, come in! Is there, uh...is there anything I can do for you?"

He nearly snaps at Cecil not to bother pretending to be surprised, nearly asks if Cecil doesn't know why he's here already, but something stops him. It might be the distinct feeling that he'd be kicking a puppy if he did. There's something almost painful in how delighted Cecil is to see him, and he finds himself warily reworking some of his theories. Maybe there's no conspiracy behind Cecil's up-to-the-minute knowledge of his whereabouts and words. Maybe Cecil simply has access to too much technology, is some sort of budding stalker.

He's not sure that comforts him in the slightest.

"We've been running some diagnostics on the lab equipment," he says instead, lifting the modified Geiger counter he'd brought mainly for its portability and looks, "and I was wondering if I could run some tests on the studio. For materials," he adds, purposefully vague, only to watch Cecil light up more brilliantly than before.

"Well, of course! Make yourself at home!" Cecil gushes, rolling away from the microphone to give Carlos better access to everything in the room. This surprises Carlos until he realizes Cecil will hardly have bugged his own recording studio. He's not even certain he'd know what a listening device looks like, to be completely honest. He may be an occasional inventor, but he's more of a physicist, really.

"It's such an honor to have you here at our little station," Cecil is saying, sounding for all the world like he means it. "I think this may be a first--to have a scientist actually stop by! Well, there was that one time after the unscheduled sandstorm, but it wasn't what you'd call a neighborly visit, so I don't think it counts," Cecil says as Carlos switches on the counter.

He frowns as the needles all jump, the multiple displays coming to life as the audio feedback begins to whistle and chirp. The sound is slightly less grating than the clicking he'd replaced, but he doesn't like hearing it now. Not this steadily.

He prowls the booth, running the two-pronged probe over the walls and cabinets, the mixing console itself as the chirping grows louder. The particle count keeps ticking higher, well beyond safe levels, and the other readings his modified unit are giving him are off the charts. Cecil continues to chatter away, blithely unconcerned, asking Carlos if he'd care to give a live interview, of all things.

"No," he says shortly, following the chirps that merge into a sort of twittering wail as he hovers the probe over Cecil's microphone. That...is not good. The microphone is so saturated with radiation from every end of the spectrum that he's surprised it hasn't simply melted across the desk. Cecil ought to be a wasted husk, hair a distant memory, bleeding from every orifice--he ought to be dead. But when Carlos glances at him nervously, Cecil just smiles a little wider, pale eyes fixed on his with a sort of dumb adoration that makes Carlos distinctly uncomfortable.

Carlos despises stereotypes with a passion, but he's perfectly aware of how strong their hold is on the psyche. He knows he looks more like an actor playing a scientist, suspects that may be at the heart of why men like Cecil are exactly his type. It's Cecil's unabashed worship, like a teenager mooning over a movie poster, that puts him off.

That and the blatant surveillance Cecil has him under. That's a little unsettling, too.

"No," he says again as Cecil's face falls, "we need to evacuate the building. All of us. Now."

Cecil looks surprised. "Whatever for?"

"These readings--they're through the roof," Carlos explains, backing for the door. "I'm not sure what this place was used for in the past--"

"Well...nothing, actually," Cecil says, hunching a shoulder. "It's always been a radio station."

"It's not safe," Carlos insists. "We need--decontamination. Treatment. The local hospital--"

"Oh, I wouldn't go there. You're much better off joining a bowling league; Teddy Williams is a licensed doctor, you kn--"

"This isn't a joke!" Carlos barks, torn between horror and a sudden anger he can't explain. "I'm telling you you're in danger and you need treatment--now, before it's too late." There's a heaviness in his limbs, terror a leaden ball in the pit of his stomach. He knows how decontamination procedures work in the lab, but he has no idea how they work in the real world, whether the local hospital is even prepared. "I don't know if they'll even have potassium iodide," he mutters, one hand groping automatically for the door knob.

Cecil looks bewildered. "You can get that at the 7-11," he says earnestly, carefully, like he's the one placating a madman. "It's on the vitamin display. With the Band-Aids and things."

Carlos leaves. He gets in his car and starts the engine, and for reasons he can't explain drives straight to the nearest 7-11. The kid behind the counter twitches at every sound, but he smiles when Carlos walks in and points him at the vitamins.

He picks up three packets of potassium iodide and a blister pack of Prussian Blue capsules, hesitates over the Diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid and buys that too. He can have Teasdale run it through the spectrometer if nothing else.

His combined purchases run to $24.87, plus tax. The kid behind the counter has the radio on. Carlos almost wants to cry.

"Carlos," Cecil says, "perfect and beautiful, came into our studios during the break earlier, but declined to stay for an interview. He had some sort of blinking box in his hand, covered with wires and tubes. Said he was testing the place for 'materials.' I don't know what materials he meant, but that box sure whistled and beeped a lot. When he put it close to the microphone, it sounded like, well...like a bunch of baby birds had just woken up. Really went crazy. Carlos looked nervous. I've never seen that kind of look on someone with that strong of a jaw."

He suspects he might be blushing, and that makes him start, makes him realize he's still standing in front of the counter at the 7-11, with a twitchy teenager who is now staring fixedly at his jawline. He has to get out of here. "He left in a hurry. Told us to evacuate the building. But then--who would be here to talk sweetly to all of you out there?"

He gets back in his car, turns the key in the ignition, and--he forgot to turn off the radio.

"Settling in to be another clear night and pretty evening here in Night Vale," Cecil says, his voice dropping, slowing, smoothing out like warm caramel. "I hope all of you out there have someone to sleep through it with." In the close space of the car, all the windows closed, Cecil's voice, echoing in the studio's quiet, echoes through Carlos as well. "Or at least good memories of when you did."

He clutches the steering wheel to distract himself from the way his hands refuse to reach for the volume knob.

"Goodnight, listeners," Cecil purrs into the silence. "Goodnight."

Carlos tries. He does. He gets his hair cut, first thing--it's been too long since he's remembered to go in for a trim as it is--but that doesn't turn out the way he planned. Cecil isn't put off; he's mortally offended on Carlos' behalf, filled with a righteous fire and fury that culminates in a witch hunt that drives an innocent barber into the sand wastes.

Slowly but surely, his team is starting to pick up on the radio station's import, listening in for longer and longer stretches when at first it seemed they hadn't been able to hear it at all. When they learn of Telly the Barber's fate--when they find Carlos frozen in shock, sitting at his desk and staring blindly at the wall--a few of them give him commiserating smiles. Maybe it's his imagination, but for a week or so, they keep their distance, like they're afraid of him now, afraid of upsetting Cecil.

He's a little afraid himself, but he won't let it rule him. He keeps saying no--no to coffee, no to hesitant inquiries about his weekend plans--and Cecil never pushes. Not any more than he already does, waxing poetic on the radio about Carlos' dark, delicate skin, his mysterious eyes, mourning his tragically-shorn locks. He'd avoid Cecil entirely if he could, but the Voice of Night Vale also has the ear of Night Vale, and he's always willing to pass along the warnings Carlos keeps trying to give a population who manifestly does not care.

He's seen things he can't explain. He's seen things he can't remember. He's seen things he can't remember why he wanted to explain in the first place and things he's grateful to know will be forgotten as soon as the shock of existential horror wears off. And through it all, Night Vale has survived.

Maybe they don't need his warnings. But he's a scientist. What else is he supposed to do?

He thinks it may be the clocks that break him. The clocks that aren't clocks at all--or resemble clocks only on the outside, which he's beginning to realize may be a metaphor for Night Vale itself. The clocks are Night Vale in a microcosm: normal on the surface, maybe with a few fanciful embellishments, but filled with teeth and mysterious goo.

When he does the numbers, tries to triangulate their temporal position with regards to the rest of the world, he learns that Night Vale has either lost a day or that time itself is slowing down.

He calls Cecil that weekend. It's his first instinct these days when confronted with both gibbering soul-terror and simple bafflement. He suspects he needs the crutch of believing that somebody, somewhere, will hear his warnings and benefit from them. And Cecil is always delighted to hear from him.

He says no to coffee again, but he knows Cecil will get the word out anyway. Sometimes he feels like he's playing a dangerous game, that one day Cecil will get tired of his constant refusals and...he doesn't really like to think about what comes next. When even the children in Night Vale carry automatic weapons, he's pretty sure he's a lifetime behind in the arms race to fend Cecil off if it comes to it.

And then Monday comes around, but he can't get his mind off the clocks. He cuts out of the lab at five--early for him--stopping by a thrift store and the Target on the way home. He's already dismantled all the clocks at the lab and around his house, a cheap digital watch he uses for experiments and several more expensive mechanical ones, and gotten the same results. He comes home with three digital alarm clocks, a mechanical wall clock made last month in Taiwan, a wind-up pocket watch and a twenty-pound table clock festooned with carved wooden birds and coils of ivy. He would have brought the grandfather clock home as well if it would have fit in his hybrid coupe.

The mechanism that should be powering the cheap wall clock is maybe an inch and a half by two inches wide, and nearly half of that should be taken up by the battery he hadn't needed to install to begin with. But when he opens it up, there's just this miniature...well, Borowicz calls it a teratoma. Teratomas are not known for being precise timekeepers.

He knows it's foolish, but it's become a habit. It's like Stockholm Syndrome. Pacing his house, the detritus of several failed clocks strewn across the kitchen table--with plastic sheeting down, because he does eat there on occasion--he pulls out his phone and calls Cecil, not particularly surprised when it goes to voice mail or when he doesn't hang up. Cecil may be a potentially dangerous and highly-disturbed stalker, but he listens.

He's spilling his frustrations into Cecil's voice mail when...there's...someone...someone he doesn't know, someone at the door, and he can't--think....

Remember.

He calls Cecil. He thinks he may have just called Cecil, and oh God, it's going to voice mail (again), and there's someone, a man in a tan jacket with a leather briefca--

He calls Cecil, not particularly surprised when it goes to voice mail, or when he doesn't hang up. Cecil may be a potentially dangerous and highly-disturbed stalker, but he listens. If it feels a little like déjà vu, spilling his frustrations into Cecil's voice mail, he does tend to call Cecil...often.

He asks at the end of his message if Cecil will be free the next afternoon. It makes his stomach twist uncomfortably to know that asking is just a formality. Cecil always makes time.

He goes and gets the portable radio from the kitchen, takes it outside to sit on his back porch, feeling oddly better now that he has a plan. He'll meet with Cecil tomorrow, get in touch with the mayor and the police through Cecil's contacts, see if he can interest them in the problems with the clocks, time.

He groans when he turns the radio on in time to hear Cecil gush, "Did you hear that, listeners? A date!"

But he doesn't turn it off. Cecil cuts to the weather. He usually does the weather right about now.

Today's weather is another song--they always are--light and a little wistful. Carlos closes his eyes and sits back in the plastic chair that came with the rest of the house's furnishings. As far as Carlos can tell, Cecil does the weather twice a day, at high noon and sunset; it's the only time Carlos really hears music anymore.

Though the sun is going down, he'd swear the sky is getting lighter. In a way it is, the clouds fading away in ragged streamers, the air glowing. The sun lingers for long minutes more, a few stray shards of brilliant orange flickering at the edge of the horizon as if it's considering reversing its course. Carlos would pull out his watch, check the almanac online to see how late they're running tonight, but he doesn't trust the clocks anymore. Or time. Or that the sun will, in fact, return in the morning.

There's not a lot that Carlos trusts these days, but he does keep his appointment with Cecil.

It's still not a date.

On June 15th, 2013, the sun is nearly twenty minutes late in setting over Night Vale. It's been a busy evening, a revelatory evening, and as Carlos staggers out of the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Center into the fire of a sunset instead of the chill of late dusk, all he can think as he leans against the door is, Thank God he hadn't run the weather yet. He blames that delirious thought on the pain of a hundred tiny wounds, possibly radiation poisoning; some of those miniature warheads might have been nuclear. He is definitely stopping at the 7-11 on his way home.

The tape on his bandages tugs as he takes a deep breath, and he swears he can smell jasmine on the air despite being in the middle of the desert. The sky is radiant, clouds thinning to wispy chains that blaze the sky with the colors of Pompeii, of a cretaceous-tertiary extinction event. It's the most incredible sunset he can remember seeing in his life.

It isn't habit that makes him reach for his phone. It isn't Stockholm Syndrome. It's not a warning he needs to pass on in hopes that somewhere some faceless stranger might need him. It's the memory of a halting broadcast delivered in a broken voice, played over the loudspeakers of the bowling alley as he lay on the pin retrieval area floor, realizing with slowly dawning shame that he wasn't bleeding alone.

He calls Cecil, knowing even as it rings that it will go to voice mail. If Cecil even remembers he has a phone right now, it'll be a miracle...but it won't be long before he notices the message. Cecil always notices him.

"Cecil," he says, closing his eyes against the impossible sunset. "I need to see you. Meet me at the Arby's parking lot when you can. Please."

The evening broadcast is running long, at least twenty minutes over its timeslot, but he knows Cecil won't be long. At least Carlos' house is on the way; he has time to duck in and change, certain that a blood-stained lab coat isn't something Cecil needs to see right now.

And Carlos...Carlos really needs to see him.

There are things he thinks he knows about Night Vale, but eventually he scraps those theories, pulls their pages out of the book he tells the Sheriff's Secret Police is his dream diary when questioned.

One of the first real, true things he knows about Night Vale is that the weather and The Weather are in some way connected.

The day of the sandstorm should have been his first clue. He hadn't wanted to admit it at the time, but hearing that other voice on the radio in Cecil's place--too bright, too cheery, nothing like Cecil's smooth, sonorous tones at all--had disturbed him greatly. It had pulled him away from an experiment to first stare at the radio and then practically attack the dial, spinning through frequencies though some part of his mind was grimly insisting that his actions made no sense. He'd been on the NVCR station frequency. Searching for Cecil on other stations was just...unhinged. Until Carlos had found him.

Cecil had sounded shaken, afraid, and that had shaken Carlos too, even then. And then Cecil had played The Weather.

And the wind had died down. And that night had been very still and very small and shook a little at the edges, but Carlos hadn't made any connections at the time.

Cecil gets his hands on a sort of bolero for the noon forecast one day, and suddenly the entire desert goes sharp and clear-edged, colors popping with cinematic brightness as Andalusian breezes waft through the streets, swirling the cloaks of the hooded figures like matadors' capes. That should be a clue as well, but he misses it, the way he notices the stunningly perfect weather they have one day late in July and notices that the noon Weather was the first song Carlos had heard on entering Night Vale more than a year ago, but never quite adds up the evidence that should be glaringly obvious.

In fact, he can't say he truly notices the correlation at all until one of the locals takes him aside with a nervous grin, saying, "Hi, there! I'm John Peters--you know, the farmer?--and listen, it's not like the sun isn't great for my crops, but we're in the middle of a desert, okay, so we need all the rain we can get. Think you could maybe stand Cecil up for coffee or something?"

He doesn't mean to do just that, but he just has to check the records, and the pattern is clear.

Clear skies. Clear skies every time he calls, every time they get together even briefly, unless he's been sort of a jerk. Like today. And then it rains. Right after The Weather.

"Cecil," he says into the phone when he hears the first thunderclap, "I am so sorry. I was doing some research, and the time just got away from me."

"Oh, Carlos," Cecil sighs understandingly.

Cecil, Carlos thinks, has been entirely too understanding all along.

"Let me make it up to you," he says. "Can I bring you dinner at the station?"

That night is cool and cloudless, but a gift basket of imaginary corn is delivered to the lab regardless. He gives it to Cecil. His own imagination runs more to buzzing-shadow-neutralizing equations and double-barreled reversal rays, and Cecil considers it his civic duty to shop local.

One night it starts raining ten minutes after the nightly Weather, which frankly sounds like a techno bagpipe dirge, and this time it's not Carlos' fault. It does worry him, of course, so he drives down to the station and finds Cecil staring despondently at nothing, the new intern wringing his hands and hovering at Cecil's shoulder.

"That poor cat," Cecil intones hollowly.

Carlos pulls the intern aside and eventually divines that YouTube is somehow to blame. Carlos sighs. Cecil knows that clicking on random videos is like playing Russian roulette; Carlos just can't understand how a man so good at failing to see what he's forbidden to notice is so patently weak to YouTube. Just another of Night Vale's mysteries, he supposes.

As far as the weather goes, the damage is already done, but Carlos hangs around the studio anyway, trying to cheer Cecil up. Though the show is almost over, he offers to do a live interview and Cecil leaps at the opportunity. It hurts Carlos sometimes to see the absolute joy in Cecil's eyes whenever he agrees to do something together. It takes so little to make Cecil happy, but Carlos still feels like he misses most of the chances he's given, only seeing them in hindsight.

It doesn't occur to him that he's totally missed an invitation to follow Cecil back to his place and maybe stay the night until he's already home, and then he feels like an idiot.

Well. He is a scientist. He's good at damage control.

He puts on a fresh white lab coat the next morning, leaving the house at half past eight like always, but he stops at the lab only long enough to let the others know he's taking a personal day. "You should have him watch the one with the kitten attacking its own reflection," Morris suggests with a wry smile, proving firstly that he's not unaware that attacking one's own reflection might just be considered good sense in Night Vale, and secondly that Carlos isn't fooling anyone.

It's early enough in the day that Cecil is probably still asleep, what with the late hours he keeps, and Carlos' first thought is to bring him breakfast. Food is a thing in Carlos' family--some sort of frustrated hunter-provider instinct, an anthropology major boyfriend had muttered once--and Carlos has to admit that he...likes...taking care of Cecil.

He suspects he'd make a lousy hunter, but he knows Cecil's favorite bagel place, and the lady behind the counter knows exactly what Cecil usually orders. He's ambushed by a brief mental image of himself dressed in furs, bringing Cecil bagels on a crude, knapped-flint spear, and spares a moment to pray he wasn't being mind-scanned just then.

He's just about to get in the car when he glances to the sky and notices something...odd about the low-hanging cloud cover. Though the rain has tapered off to nearly nothing, the clouds themselves have gone a deep bruise-black toward the edge of town, smears of violet and a deep, aching blue pooling where the sun tries to break through. He's fairly sure this isn't typical Night Vale weather, but he's been proven wrong on that account before. Unlocking his car door, he pulls it open and takes a last look at the clouds, telling himself this is Night Vale. It's probably...well, not nothing. It's definitely something. But it's probably something expected, known, something that will make the rest of the town look at him like he's the crazy one if he comments on it.

He keeps telling himself that until he sees something fall out of the sky. A bird, he thinks, but it was pretty far off; it must have been a pretty large bird. Then another one falls and another after it, close enough or large enough for him to tell that the third one is still moving. Something tells him this isn't just a larger relative of the Glow Cloud coming to visit.

Dropping into the driver's seat in a hurry, he tosses the bagel box into the passenger seat and slams the key into the ignition, barely stopping to check his mirrors before tearing out into the street in a squeal of tires. There's probably nothing he can do, but he doesn't know that. He'd helped with the buzzing shadow people, hadn't he? And anyway, things are...different now. He doesn't just want to study Night Vale. He wants to help.

He calls the lab first, because he'll have to stop there anyway, but this way he can save time. "Morris," he says when the other physicist picks up, "I need the field kit ready to roll. Curbside, please; ETA five minutes. Upgrade the alert status to taupe and get the lab primed."

"Will do," Morris says without asking questions. Learning when not to ask is probably the number one factor in what's kept his team alive so far; he only wishes he'd set a better example before this himself.

His next call is to Cecil.

"Cecil," he says to the sleepy mumble he gets; imagining Cecil's unfocused look brightening into a slow, lazy smile makes him run two stop signs in a row. His speed probably has something to do with that as well. "Sorry to wake you," he says, "but were you aware of any scheduled meteorological phenomena involving bruise-toned black clouds and falling oh, fuck--"

He's just coming up over the hill on Howard Street when something massive slithers out of the clouds on the edge of town: black, scaled, with too many limbs and spiny frills to be called a snake, though that's what his brain insists on reporting. Maybe it's because the jumbled collection of disjointed legs and frills don't stop midway along its body, its tail no different than its belly. The ground doesn't shake when it lands, but its descent is a controlled one, as if the clouds are a solid shelf for it to clamber down from.

"Carlos?" Cecil urges, sounding completely awake now.

"Sorry," he says automatically, hand gripping the steering wheel more tightly. "Falling colossal...serpentipedes," he continues, knowing Cecil will correct him if he's misclassified some horribly common local species. "And its young," he amends as a veritable deluge of writhing black shapes follows the big one down, the individuals of the new outpouring roughly the same size as the first few he'd seen.

"No," Cecil says slowly as if waiting to hear the punch line. "Where are you?"

"Just pulling up at the lab," Carlos says as Morris comes tearing out the door with the field kit in his arms, a collection of their most portable diagnostic and detection equipment and what he suspects is a streamlined flamethrower with a more efficient canister. Thankfully he's never had to find out for certain. "I'll be heading out to the edge of town and--rendezvousing with the Sheriff's Secret Police," he says as Morris throws the equipment in the back seat and gives him a shaky thumbs-up.

Overhead a flight of blue helicopters goes thundering past as Carlos nods to Morris and pulls away from the curb. For all of five seconds he considers leaving this to them, but his assistance has been welcomed before. The City Council and the vague yet menacing government agency that may or may not be working with them have their own teams of scientists, but they never go out in the field. Carlos doesn't mind getting his hands dirty.

There's a lurching sound on the phone, no doubt Cecil sitting bolt upright and lunging out of bed. "I'll check the news feeds at the station," he says, which Carlos finds interesting. He's gained the impression over time that Cecil is clairvoyant, but maybe that isn't so. Or maybe Cecil simply doesn't know; he doesn't seem to be aware of his effect on the weather, either. "Be careful," he says, so strained and quiet Carlos knows Cecil is thinking of that night at the bowling alley again. He'd rushed in without thinking then, for reasons he can barely make sense of even now.

He's promised himself never to do that again, but Cecil has never asked it of him. He suspects Cecil thinks it's a scientist thing when really it's just Carlos.

"I will," he says and then, because he knows it will make Cecil smile, adds, "and I'll keep the radio on."

It's chaos on the ground. The swarm has landed in the scrublands just outside of town, flattening the school bus depot and overrunning Mike's Auto Repair and Hospice. There are a few fading screams coming from the bus depot, but they cut off before Carlos can even think of trying to help. Just off the highway, the biggest creature turns purposeful circles, winding in on itself as its fins dig deep into the loose, grainy soil, kicking up sand plumes as it scoops out a burrow, ignoring the staccato fire of the blue helicopters' gun turrets. Worst of all is the thick pall of darkness that hangs over everything, the dead-black clouds overhead casting shadows thick as early dusk.

The Sheriff's Secret Police have cordoned off as much of the highway and surrounding area as they can, but the young serpentipedes are quick as eels. There must be hundreds of them, a seething, hissing mass that encircles the largest one, which may be the nest mother and may be the hive queen, or even the king. Carlos has learned not to make assumptions based on resemblance to things he's more comfortable with. For all he knows, the giant serpentipede could be their duly-elected president.

The Sheriff's Secret Police don't immediately order him away from the area, so he takes that as permission to stay. Fishing around in the back seat of his car, he brings out the Argus Mark III, a stable upgrade of his original hybrid 'counter that picks up both particles and rays--gamma, X-ray and cosmic--measures the rate of neutron decay, and gives out winning lottery numbers if left too close to Cecil's microphone for any length of time. Set to wide-band, it's accurate to nearly five hundred meters, but he needs barely half that distance to get a clear reading.

"Damn," he sighs. This isn't an experiment gone wrong or something that can just be shoved back into the dog park from whence it came. The readings those things are giving off are more like NVCR's station management than he's ever wanted to see with his own eyes.

"What have you got?" one of the sheriff's men asks, firing into the swarm over the hood of his cruiser.

"A flamethrower," Carlos replies, knowing this is no time to bore them with scintillation counts and density sampling.

"Well, strap it on," the sheriff's man says with a curse. The curse doesn't stick, unfortunately; it just makes the nearest serpentipedes smoke a little, and that makes them angry.

Bullets slow them down, at least, but the flamethrower seems to work even better. The creatures start screeching and knotting in on themselves before the flames or the wash of heat hits them. Even those not in the direct path of the fire stream flinch away and squall as if wounded, skittering away into deeper shadows.

The idea that hits him then is a little ridiculous, but he doesn't let that stop him.

"Your cruisers," he shouts over the din of automatic weapons and the challenging roar of the mother-creature. "Turn on your searchlights and aim them into the swarm!"

He'll be gratified later at how quick the deputies are to follow his suggestion, but for now he only bites his lip, watching anxiously as serpentipedes writhe and split, some boiling into smoke that quickly vanishes, but only if the lights are held on them constantly. The others flail and slink away, seem to be slowly pulling themselves back together as he watches...and now they've identified the police as a genuine threat.

For one brief moment there's a break in the cloud cover, a single shaft of sunlight burning through the muffling dark and sweeping over the scrublands. Serpentipedes pop like overripe fruit where it passes, their howls cut short as they smoke away to nothing. The hole in the sky scabs over almost immediately, new clouds jostling in to fill the gap, but Carlos is already doing the math. The police spotlights are maybe fifteen hundred lumens and his flamethrower has the benefit of incendiary fuel, but raw sunlight is over a hundred thousand lumens and it is right overhead, just beyond the clouds.

The mother-thing burrows deeper. It's half-buried already, soon to be completely covered, possibly nesting. Its numberless young draw closer, chittering furiously.

It's nine-oh-four, three hours before noon, and Carlos knows just what he has to do and has no idea what the consequences will be.

Shrugging frantically out of the harness straps, he grabs the nearest deputy and thrusts the flamethrower into his hands, stopping only to point out the trigger. "I know what to do!" he shouts and gets a rapid head-nod in return. He can only see the deputy's panic-wide eyes, the rest of the man's expression hidden behind a leather balaclava, but no one curses him for a coward when he sprints for his car, throwing himself behind the wheel and wrenching the gear shift into reverse.

His tires squeal as he stomps on the gas, but he doesn't go far, just far enough away to be heard over the roar of gunfire and screeching monsters. As he slams on the brakes, it's finally quiet enough that he can hear Cecil's voice through the speakers, three hours early, smooth voice trembling only a little as he announces a special bulletin.

"...and it appears, dear listeners," Cecil is saying as Carlos gropes for his phone, "that station management may be preparing an editorial of their own. You may wish to place your radios inside your bloodstone circles, board up your houses, and evacuate to the shelter beneath City Hall until the unpleasantness has--oh," Cecil interrupts himself as Carlos hears the phone begin to ring. "And now, listeners, we go to this breaking news bulletin from--"

"Cecil," Carlos says urgently, jerking the phone away from his ear with a wince as he hears his voice echo around him. Cecil has put him directly on the air, he realizes, and he reaches to turn the car radio off with a snap. "Listen," he says as he watches the line of deputies begin to break as serpentipedes swarm the cruisers, too many to be cut down with spotlights and flame alone. "I need you to do me a favor. I need you to go to the Weather."

"The Weather? But--"

"Please," Carlos breathes. The blue helicopters have caught on at last, shining their own searchlights over the scrublands and the writhing mass of black bodies, but it's not enough. It's not nearly enough. "For me."

"I--dear listeners," Cecil says haltingly, uncertain but trusting, "we now go to--"

"I love you," Carlos says, not because he knows--needs--what will happen next, but because there's a hungry black wave maybe fifty meters from the car and closing fast, and he'll be damned if he leaves another thing unsaid.

"--the weather," Cecil says, more breath than sound, and Carlos closes his eyes.

Clouds tear apart. The highway thrums beneath him, rattling the car, but the earthquakes shivering just beneath the crust stay buried. A brilliant light burns the thin skin of his closed eyelids red then orange, growing brighter by the moment as the scrubland erupts in terrible shrieks. Through the phone he can hear faint snatches of whatever song Cecil is playing, and even that much cracks his heart open with joy then breaks it into pieces, knowing he'll never hear that song whole and complete, or ever again.

He could turn the radio back on, but then Cecil says, "Carlos," and there's nothing else he needs to hear.

When he opens his eyes again, the scrublands are empty but for a few circling helicopters. There are deep gouges in the paint on his car's hood and the glass of the windows is scratched, but there's nothing moving on the ground for as far as the eye can see. The sky above is a perfect robin's egg blue, utterly cloudless from horizon to horizon, and the dashboard clock reads twelve o'clock. Maybe three hours really have passed while he was sitting there. He's had his eyes closed. How should he know?

Cecil makes an inarticulate sound that makes Carlos smile, even though he knows that will never do. Station management is generally lenient with Cecil, but they have standards they expect to be upheld, and Carlos doesn't want to get Cecil in trouble.

Clearing his throat, he says, "And now an update on the situation just outside of town."

Various agencies are probably going to want to talk to him. He may just call a press conference--one that will never be seen outside of Night Vale--to get them all out of the way at once. Only he'll take Cecil his bagels first, because after all that's happened....

Carlos smiles and slumps back in his seat. "There's nothing to worry about," he says. "Everything is fine.

"It's going to be a beautiful day."