Welcome to Night Vale - 166 - Delta

Episode Date: April 15, 2020

The passengers have been found, or rather, they have found us. (Part 4 of 5) Weather: “A Prayer for the Sane” by Danny Schmidt http://dannyschmidt.com Rescheduled tour dates for 2020: http://www.welcometonightvale.com/live/ Our third novel, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home, is out now: http://www.welcometonightvale.com/books/ Music: Disparition http://disparition.info Logo: Rob Wilson http://robwilsonwork.com Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin.  http://welcometonightvale.com Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Check out our books, live shows, store, membership program, and official recap show. Produced by Night Vale Presents.  http://nightvalepresents.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Howdy y'all. It is Jeffrey Craneer. I'm not sure which episode of Welcome to Nightville you're listening to, but I am speaking to you from April of 2026. And I'm here to tell you we're going to be in Europe. If you want to see Nightville live and you're going to be in Europe, come check us out at the end of May. We're going to be in Edinburgh on May the 27th. We will be in Manchester on the 28th, London on the 29th, and Amsterdam on May the 30th. Just go to Welcome to Nightville.com slash live to see the show dates and to get your tickets. This is. our newest Nightville live show Murder Night in Blood Forest. It is so much fun. Please come check it out. Also, coming up this month here in April, it is the return of Alice Isn't Dead, brand new episodes of our other crazy hit podcast. This is written by Joseph Fink, produced and with music by Dissin and starring Jacique and Nicole. So make sure you are still subscribed to Alice Isn't Dead and go get those on April the 13th as new episodes come out. Finally, speaking of other shows, do you want to hear us talk about other things? things. We have three other really great chat shows. First of all, there's Good Morning Nightvale for all of your Nightvale needs. You can hear Hal, Meg, and Symphony talk about every single

episode in order of Welcome to Nightvale. Also, we have Random Horror Number Nine. That is me and Nightville star Cecil Baldwin talking about horror movies one at a time in a random order. And then Joseph and Meg do best, worst, which is a really fun podcast where they look at hit TV shows and they review the best rated on IMDB, the worst rated on IMDB, and if you're a Patreon member, they will review the middlest rated on IMDB. So check out all of those at Nightvillepresents.com or just wherever you get your podcast. And hey, thanks. The stars tell us our future.

They're rarely correct, but yet there they are, blathering on night after night. Welcome to Night Vale. At the foot of a sandy hill, a woman explains to her son what a flower is. She's pointing at an orange starbursts the top of squat bulbous cactus. She says, flowers are beautiful, aren't they? I cannot hear what her son says. She answers, because bees like beautiful things and flowers want the bees to take their pollen, that little bit of yellow powder.

Right down there, inside, and give it to other plants, so they can grow up and be beautiful too. There's a long pause. Then she says, Nature wants to make more and more beauty all the time. That's all it wants to do. If it is not beautiful, it cannot live. She is upset at her son's next question.

Humans wish to make beauty too, but not for nature, she snaps. They want computers and airplanes and factories. Oh, Benny, don't touch, she sighs. Then she says, the cactus hurt you, didn't it? The cactus knows you are human, and it does not want you to touch it. And now it has let you know that you won't touch it again, will you? No, Benny, you won't. Underneath the scant shade of a dilapidated wing of an MD-90 aircraft,

a middle-aged man tells another middle-aged man about a time he went to New Orleans. He thought the French quarter was too crowded, and the jazz scene overrated. So he drove east along the upper neck of the Mississippi. Delta to a swamp shack, where he paid a man $50 to take him on a hovercraft to look at alligators. Such majestic and hideous creatures, the middle-aged man says to the other, you know, when I was little, I cried thinking about how I would never see a real-life dinosaur. All the world had left were bones, but right there in southern Louisiana lay dozens of living dinosaurs. It's an extraordinary world when you finally realize that.

that all life is magic, he says. The other middle-aged man had heard the story dozens of times, but still he replies, I hear you, I hear you. A young woman thinks about a job interview she never attended. She is happy without that job, yet she feels regret for what could have been. I cannot imagine myself behind a desk making spreadsheets and memos,

she says to no one. But I cannot imagine a five-dimensional horse, nor the width of the void, nor the language of whales. I cannot imagine a lot of things, but the pay. The pay would have been pretty good. Behind a blighted Paolo Verde tree, hidden between lush Acacia shrubs, two teenage boys kiss for the 50th time or so. It is brief, as one stops to look around, on alert for overbearing parents.

They kiss for the 51st time or so, and then laugh, their fingers clumsily fumbling over each other, trying to decide on the perfect grip, the perfect touch. They melt like marshmallows in the flame of inexperienced joy. This moment in their lives is as pure and powerful as they have ever felt, and may ever feel again. My mind is crowded with voices, with people living their lives all day, listeners. These are the stories. They are eating fruit and playing cards. They are arguing about who said what and when.

They are meditating and conversing, retelling old shows and books they remember from when they had such things. A copy of Tina Fey's memoir Bossy Pants was found in a suitcase seven years ago, and everyone in the group has read it at least once. Someone mutters that they used to have a copy of Karen Russell's Swamplandia. It was in her purse when they landed here, but someone won't own up to stealing it. Another says the book might have been used to make a fire one night because whoever made the fire might have thought the owner was done reading it, hypothetically. It's been several days since the voices came into my head, and at first it was new and interesting, but already, I have grown tired of it. I do not know how Amelia Anna Alfaro lived her whole life with these sounds in her mind.

It's unceasing, and I've not gotten much sleep. The teenage lovers sneak away Each night to hold hands and talk big dreams underneath the moon It's sweet and romantic but at 2 a.m. Give it a rest, boys I could try to talk back but none of the voices can hear me It's like asking the rain to return to its cloud But when I talk to Carlos the voices go away Thankfully I have my greatest peace when I am with my favorite person

I can't keep Carlos awake at all hours or have him skip work to be with me so I have have to learn to make peace with the voices, as they are noisy but permanent roommates in my brain now. I do have news to report, but it's mostly stuff you already know about. The high school basketball team has tryouts on Saturday. The library is doing open mic poetry nights on Tuesdays at 7, and we all know it's a trap. Don't do it unless you're well-armed. And the Opera House is extending its run of Verdi's Too Fast Too Furious. Starring Renee Fleming, through the end of the month. It's hard to concentrate on reading these news stories

with so much other language running through my head. Like this, there's a guy who's complaining about metal scraps that haven't been cleaned, and the woman he's talking to is explaining that they are conserving water for drinking, and the guy is saying that it's unsanitary to make dining utensils out of dirty metal, and she replies that they're not making any more forks or spoons.

They don't need any more forks or spoons. They need knives, but not for eating. What am I supposed to do with this information? It's been going on nonstop for days. You cannot possibly understand what it's like to listen to someone you don't know, who you've never even met, who you can't even see. Ramble on and on about their boring personal life straight into your head. It's awful.

I can hear another person saying he's found something. Good for you, pal. Way to find another rock or stick or lizard or whatever. Wait. We have found it. The voice says. I know this voice. It's the first voice that's been familiar to me.

Where do I know this voice? He is saying, First, we found you who are nowhere. Now we have found. And other men are barking in agreement. Listeners, that voice is dug Biondi from the asylum. And the voices around him are the agents from the National Safety and Transportation Bureau, all of whom escaped the nightbill asylum two months ago.

They are in nowhere. in an other world desert standing near a door. Attached to no building. Not far from a passenger jet. Long since rotted away. A jet that has been home to 143 passengers and crew members, one of those 143. The pilot.

Asylum warden Charles Rayner warned us of this. He had been a passenger on that plane. He became part of a small commune that grew into an angry cult, under the leadership and telepathic influence of the pilot. Charles told us that the pilot would find those who could help him find Night Vale, help him find the real world, and Doug Biondi knows the way back. The pilot found Doug, and Doug found the pilot. I know the way.

Doug Biondi says, laughing the laugh of a man whose smile is too big for his face. At the foot of a sandy hill, a mother tells her son at his time, Stop crying, Benny. Stop crying so that there will be more flowers, more beauty. Underneath the scant shade of a dilapidated wing of an MD-90 aircraft, two middle-aged men argue over which handmade axe is sharper. At last they agree that the one crafted from the rudder flap and held together with a fan belt is the better blade. No, you take it, one says. No, I insist you. I'm happy to use the smaller axe, the other says, because it is easier to manage what with my back spasms. And behind a blighted Paolo Verde tree hidden between lush acacia shrubs,

two teenage boys kiss the way you kiss when you think it may be your last. They whisper impossible promises and raise high their rusty shovels, the spades tips having already been sharpened to deadly points. They race toward the gathering crowd. A young woman who thinks often about the job interview she never attended, shouts, Nature is beauty, we are beauty, replies another woman. They repeat these calls. Nature is beauty, we are beauty. And now every voice in my head is chanting the phrases,

chanting and chanting and chanting. It's too... It's too much! Silence. They're silent. Suddenly. My head is clear. I can think my own thoughts.

Night Vale, I'm getting word that sheriff's Sam is barring all known passages into our town. This includes roads, trails, sewer grates, even the dog park, which is not officially an entrance to the desert otherworld, but, you know, let's be honest here. We're on lockdown night fail. No one enters or leaves. Good. This is good. If the voices can reach me, they can reach any of us.

In fact, if the voices can enter my mind, that the pilot and passengers of flight 18710,000, 3 may well already be here. Or some of them anyway. Or maybe the voices come and go. This is the first moment of silence I've had alone in nearly a week. Maybe the voices aren't always there. Like radio signals as you leave a city or a cell phone in an elevator. Maybe the voices can't permeate us under certain conditions.

Or maybe... Or maybe the voices are silent because... They are listening. Maybe they're listening to their leader. Their pilot, who is giving instructions on what to do next, when, and where to attack. But I must use my moment of clarity to tell you some news. Nope, the voices are back. A single voice is back.

I know without knowing that it is the voice of the pilot. He says, Uh, hi there. This is your pilot speaking. Just wanted to let you know that nature is beauty, we are beauty, we propagate our pollen, we spread our seeds, we grow new life over old life, we cleanse the toxins of technology, we depose the human king and return natural instinct to its rightful throne. If you can hear my voice, then you are chosen. You are chosen to join all who join our nature. All who join are beauty. All who refuse will be

recycled into the earth, destroyed and dispersed to fertilize new, more beautiful life. All those who are beautiful are chosen. All those who are not are a cancer. Blight, infection and disease. All who are not beautiful will be cut away, amputated so that the earth's wounds may finally heal, so the earth may grow beautiful once again. We have been found and we will return. Open the gates to freedom, end the tyranny of Artivus.

That's all for now. be arriving in just a few moments, Night Vale. There is going to be some turbulence. I'm sorry, listeners. I did not mean to do that. I did not want to do that. The voice of the pilot overtook me and I... I need to lock myself inside the studio. I have to protect you from me, but first... The weather. like hell to raise the phoenix to tear the world into the truths from the half the truth and the bad disguises from the facts and Nobel prizes yeah one's good lands neighbors and good to fight like dancers one call a different answer these were open

Strangers were our future friends, but offenses make for consequences We're prisoners of our own defenses, yeah Lost our way, we found it stolen In a storm of nothing, Whose men blushing Now, honest man with no reflections The choice, my sister Gentle warrior, fierce resistor,

resistor fill in the sky like blackbirds or sit and watch the world spin backwards the choice my brother old soldier different drummers march hard to break the borders or stand guard the old choice my child raise your hands and reconcile kneels down before us It's time for you to rise in chorus. It's time to sit our age. It's time for facts. It's time to name a new North Star. It's time for my friends.

It's time to make us hold again. Just as the world evolves. Let's get these broken days resolved. I brought Carlos to the studio. When I talk to Carlos, I don't hear the voices of the passengers from 18713. I don't hear the voices even now as I look directly at Carlos while I'm speaking. Like Charles Rainer's fishing hole or Amelia Anna Alfaro's puzzles, Carlos grounds me. Let's me be wholly me.

Thank you, Carlos. Oh, I also had Carlos bring a pair of handcuffs with him that he bought at Target on his way to the station. And use them to shackle me to my desk. If Charles Rayner is correct, then once the pilot can speak to you, he can control you. And if that should happen, it won't happen. But if it should, then now I won't be able to leave here and do harm to anyone else. From my window, I can see far down the street, a spiral of black smoke. There are flashes of emergency sirens.

Now I can see people coming up the road. They are long-haired, sun-scorched and nearly naked, wearing not much more than flat, wide-brimmed hats and short tunics fashioned from seat upholstery. These people are carrying large blades, roughly honed from scrap metal. Some have whittled down pieces of plexiglass windows into sharp points and tied them to ends of long sticks. They're deliberately walking up the hoods of parked cars and smashing windows and caving in the roofs with their bare. feet. It is no doubt that the passengers of 18713 are here, Night Vale. If you can hear me, stay inside and lock your doors. If you can hear the pilot, then do as I have done, secure your position so securely that not even your own mind can talk you out of it. Sheriff Sam has stubbornly

kept up all roadblocks in and out of town, so we have no choice but to stay. The long, unmoving, moving lines of traffic at the edges of the city are easy prey now for the 18713. The pilot offered a choice of joining or refusing, but it is not a choice. Not really. He either can control you or he cannot. Those whom he cannot control will be killed at the hands of those who can. Carlos, you don't hear the pilot's voice and thus cannot be controlled. But I do, and I can.

I have been controlled. We're in trouble, Carlos. I can't stay chained to this desk forever, can I? And if the pilot means to destroy you, he might make me do it myself. Just promise me you'll run. Leave me behind if that happens, okay? But for now, do not let me out of the time. these cuffs, not even if I use a safe word, which I hear is something quite a few people use

in healthy, fun, intimate relationships. The people of 18713 are climbing up storefronts and tearing off signs. I can see about 10 or 15 in normal street clothes in the crowd now, which means the group is growing. They are recruiting quickly. But something else is eating at me. In the asylum, in Doug Biondi's journal, and among the myriad voices in my mind, I still have not seen nor heard Amelia Anna Alfaro, the first person to make contact with the pilot.

She disappeared in 2012 and no one has heard from her since. I need to find her. Somehow. If anyone can solve this, it might be her. She was always the best at everything. Stay tuned next for the sound of me talking to Carlos forever and ever. Good night. Vale. Welcome to Nightvale as a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey

Kraner and produced by Dysperition. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin, original music by Disparition. All of it can be found at disparition.bancamp.com. This episode's weather was A Prayer for the Sane by Danny Schmidt. Check out his music at dannyshmit.com and hear his music featured on our new podcast, Our Play Gear. Comments, questions, email, us at info at welcome to nightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at nightville radio or live your most medium life check out welcome to night veil.com for more information about supporting us on patreon because honestly we really do need it right now. Today's proverb. People who live in glass houses shouldn't hire that realtor again. Hey it's Jeffrey Craneer speaking to you from spring of 2026 and did you know

we are on tour in Europe? Welcome to Nightville will be live on stage. in Edinburgh on May 27th, Manchester on May 28th, London on May 29th, and Amsterdam on May 30th. This brand new live show is called Murder Night in Blood Forest, starring Cecil Baldwin, Symphony Sanders, me, and live original music by disparition. These tours are so much fun and they're for the diehard fan and the Nightvale new kid alike. So bring your family, your partner, your co-workers, your cat, whatever. They don't got to know what Nightville is to like the show. Tickets to these shows are on sale now at welcome to nightveal.com slash live. Don't let time slip away. Get your tickets. Don't miss us when we're in your town because otherwise we'll all be sad.

Get your tickets to our Europe live tour right now at welcome to nightvail.com slash live. And hey, thanks.