Welcome to Night Vale - 170 - To the Family and Friends

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

To the family and friends of Intern Victor, we extend our condolences Weather: “A List for Spring” by Joseph Fink https://josephfink.bandcamp.com/ Black Lives Matter. Donate where you can to support social justice initiatives: https://www.thecut.com/2020/05/george-floyd-protests-how-to-help-where-to-donate.html You can also support the Night Vale Patreon, to help us keep making this show: http://patreon.com/welcometonightvale/ Sponsor: CATAN https://catanshop.com/nightvale 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.band 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 middleest rated on IMDB. So check out all of those at Nightvillepresents.com or just wherever you get your podcast. And hey, thanks. Love the winner, hate the win.

Welcome to Nightvale. I start today with sad news. I must inform you of the passing of intern Victor. To the friends and family of intern Victor we extend our condolences. Oh, that reminds me. Our intern program has a new open spot available. Hours are flexible, as is time itself. You must be fluent in at least three languages,

although one of those can be your own dream language, and another can be a future language that doesn't yet exist. This is an entry-level position. All applicants must have 30 years experience in the field of community radio and have been the managing director of at least two radio stations or equivalent unregistered stations broadcasting coded messages to our brave spies in the field. This is a non-paying position, but we do give you four credits to the institution of your choice. Please apply in person by groveling before the station management door and crying,

choose me, choose me, as their tendrils draw you slowly toward them. I look forward to meeting whoever gets hired. Always so fun when we get a new intern. And now for a look at the day's news. The Nightville Medical Association has ordered a review of the management of Nightvale Asylum, after a number of irregularities have cropped up involving a transdimensional missing plane and a pilot who could control people's thoughts. Honestly, we had a lot of cases like that back in the 60s, said Lonnie Chapman, chairman of the Medical Association. Mental institutions used to be cruel places where the fragile rift between dimensions was

regularly breached and telekinetic powers were exploited, and people were treated as less than people for the simple crime of having an illness that could not be found in the blood or the bile. Lonnie settled back into the sagging comfort of his old. old armchair, sighed and rubbed his forehead. We endeavor to help, not to other, he whispered. It should be common sense this kindness. Why is kindness not common sense?

He said this last so quietly that no one heard him. Dust moats circled tirelessly in the afternoon sun through the window. The Nightville Medical Association is looking to shut down the outdated asylum, and replace it with a brand new state-of-the-art treatment center, located near Grove Park. More on the story, as the story has more to it. I guess I should get into a little more detail about how intern Victor died, since some of you might be curious. You know, I think the story starts back in my very first days as host of this radio station. after the previous host, Leonard Burton, after, once I took over as host of this radio station,

Victor was one of my first interns, eager and earnest and always helpful. He was first in the station in the morning and last one out at night. His research was impeccable. That's not true, he would say, every time I said something that wasn't true. That's not true either, he would say. He would say stuff like that a lot. He was very diligent. It kind of felt like we were starting this great adventure in radio broadcasting together.

I thought that someday after I... After... Once I was no longer host of this radio station, perhaps Victor would be the one to take over. Someday, Victor, I would murmur in the quietest hours of the night shift. Someday, maybe you will be one. where I am now. Maybe, Cecil, he would say back into the intercom from the producer's booth,

but for now, please stop murmuring that into the mic. We're live right now. Then one day he told me he was leaving, that he appreciated all the time he had spent as an intern, that he had learned a lot, but that he felt his place in the world was not with radio after all. Not with radio, I sputtered. I simply did not understand the concept.

If there is not community radio, then what is there? What is there besides that? Will someone tell me what else there is? Thank you for our time together, he said gently. And then he left. It would be the last time I saw him for many years. And now a word from our sponsors. Today's sponsor is White Claw's new line of non-alcoholic

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I didn't finish with the story of how interned Victor died, I guess. Let me quickly wrap that up. So, a few years after he left, he came back again. He was older than me now with salt and pepper hair and a stiffness to his walk. When he had left, he had been several years younger than me, but time changes us all, I suppose. Cecil, I didn't know if you'd still be here, he said. I bristled at this, hearing a perceived implication that I should have gone on to something larger, that by staying put, I had allowed him to pull ahead of me in some intangible way.

So I responded with manic friendliness to compensate. Still here? I shouted, buddy, wow. What have you been up to? He told me that he had left Nightvale, gotten an apartment just outside of somewhere called Fresno, that it was difficult at first, and that he felt lonely much of the time, but that he had slowly made friends, so many friends, and had found a job that became a career that became part of his life. He worked with teenagers who were going through a tough time, seeing them through to best.

better times. He was very well liked for what he did, and he was very good at it. But I've decided to retire, he said. I'm getting up in the years, you know. But wow, you don't look like you've aged today. I haven't, I said. He was so much older than me then. I wondered where the years had gone and what I might have accomplished if I had aged as well. He had retired to Nightvale to be with his family and friends and the people who knew and loved him best, and to relax into the soft years of his latter life. So that, wait, well, that's not how he died, but I have to get to this next report. I'll finish it in a second. And now, traffic. There was a song once sung by sailors of an island in the west, where the sun would shine forever and not a minute less.

They say that on that island a sailor could find their rest, finally let slip shut their eyelids on that island in the West. But I've been searching, and been searching all my life as though some cruel test and have never found my way to that island in the West. There was a song once sung by sailors, and I believed it, I confess. A foul lie I still believe in, my sweet island. in the West. This has been traffic. Intern Victor lived in Nightvale for many years more. He was active in charities and

volunteer groups, continuing to offer counseling to students at the local high school. He lived in the hefty Sycamore trailer park, watering a garden of flowers that he kept in pots around his trailer. It seemed that Victor was even more busy in retirement than he had been in his long career, returning to his community seemed to invigorate him. He helped Carlos with experiments at the labs, donning goggles and lab coats and writing down numbers with hearts around them, all of that science stuff. Carlos said he was surprisingly good at it for someone without training.

He worked with Dana at City Hall, creating the No More Pit Initiative, which strove to keep one teen a year from entering that pit on Clemens Street and disappearing forever. Now, the initiative was unsuccessful and the pit continues to devour, but hey, it was the attempt that matters. He acted as a volunteer lifeguard at the waterfront recreation area, at which he saved a record five people in one day from drowning. A truly astounding record when you consider that there is no water at the waterfront recreation area, nightfall having an entirely arid climate.

Yes, intern Victor was accomplished and well liked. He would have made a fine host in this radio station someday, but he never showed much interest, which is a pity. Because after I... After... Well, who will take up that mantle? Not Victor. Not anymore. Oh, I guess I still haven't told the story of how he died. Uh, let me do you.

that just after the weather. There's a wall, and on it is a spider. There's a spider, and beneath it is a wall. There's a garden, and in it is a flower, the first flower of this garden of all, and I've been in here two weeks too long, There's a river and on it sparkles sunlight There is sunlight and it dances on the water

There's a tree And in it is a wasp's nass The robin and the robin squalling daughters And I've been in here two weeks too long I can't picture any after to this story. to this present, each not dreaming of futures even less pleasant, and I know that this will end, but I don't believe that this will end. There's a house, and in it is a man, and in it is a man, and in it is a man, and the man's still in the house.

There's a wall, and on it is a spider. There's a spider, and beneath it is a wall. And I've been in here two weeks too long. There's something else here now, something new. From, exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls Scary as Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. sci-fi vision comes

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Victor was in bed. The curtain over the window shifted slightly in the breeze, so the sun flickered in the room, shadow and bright, like a message from the world outside that he would never live to understand. His breath felt like a finite quantity, slowly drawn out of his chest.

He knew that the last of it was coming soon. He wanted to use the dregs of his breath for words that would sum up his life, but he couldn't think of any. He could only think of, he could only think of, thank you for being here. He could only think of, I wish I had more time, although he didn't know what he would have done with that. time if he had any. Around his bed were the people who had known him throughout his life. There was his sister, Carly, and his brother, Herman, and his aunt Ronnie, ancient and brittle, but apparently destined to outlive him. There was his friend from college, Norm, whose hands shook as he looked into Victor's eyes. There was former mayor, Dana, and her brother, leaning into each other

in sorrow, keeping each other upright as a family creature of grief. There was Carlos in an understated lab coat frowning. There was nothing more scientific than death, and yet Carlos hated the fact of it, and he wrestled with the contradiction within himself. Some natural processes feel unnatural, no matter how many times they occur to us. They are a surprise that our whole life spins. telegraphing. In the corner was Rosario, one of the teenagers Victor had worked with back in Fresno, who had eventually moved to Nightvale, after getting lost in the shelves of a strange antique shop and waking up in the vacant lot out back of the Ralfes. She was middle-aged now, her face glistened with tears. Everything I am is because of you, she said. Victor snored it. Don't blame me, he said,

with one of those last precious breaths, and she grinned despite herself. You were the first person that cared about who I was, she said, I'll never forget you. Already I'm in past tense, he said, but he grabbed her hand and clasped it in a fervent, silent thank you. Because she was testament that he had been useful, and there is nothing more important in a human life than to be useful to other people.

I was there too, and I stepped forward. You were the best intern I ever had, I said. I know, he said, and he winked. It can be strange. When we first meet someone when they are young and just starting out, and are in entry positions in the career they want, to realize that they have the potential for an entire life. Victor ended up a great man,

a man with deep roots in the community, a man who went from 10 years younger than me to several decades older than me. And I still think of him as an intern. And I suppose I always will, but his potential was realized upon the lives of everyone in that room. and many other lives still. A strong breeze came through the window and the flickering of light increased.

As though that incoherent messenger was getting more frantic to be understood, Victor knew that his finite breaths had reached their last view. And he did not use them to say anything at all. He smiled and met each of our eyes and then and then after. To the family and friends of intern Victor. To the family. To our families, blood were chosen. They are the net on which we can fall again and again.

To the friends, to our friends, the people who make life worth living, who help us when we need help. who we help when we need to help intern Victor was a good intern he was a good person he is gone we are here

let's make ourselves useful to all families to all friends stay tuned next for a tall glass of water greedily drunk by a person who did not realize

they were thirsty until the liquid hit their lips. Good night, Nightvale. Good night. Welcome to Nightvale is a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Kraner and produced by Disparition. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin. Original music by Disparition. All of it can be found at dispirition.bantam.com.

This episode's weather was A List for Spring by Joseph Fink. Find out more at josephink.bancamp.com. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at Nightvale Radio. Or eat mainly sweet potatoes and black beans and discover just how regular you can be. Check out Welcome to Nightvail.com for more info about our upcoming live stream production of our classic live show, Condos. Today's proverb,

Earth is technically a sandwich, where the upper bread is stars and the lower bread is stars, and the filling is rock and lava and a few incidental humans. Hi, we're Meg Bashwinner. And Joseph Fink. Of welcome to Night Vale,

and on our new show, The Best Worst, we explore the Golden Age of Television. To do that, we're watching the IMDB viewer-rated best and worst episodes of classic TV shows. The episode of Star Trek where Beverly Crusher has sex with a ghost. The episode of the X-Files, where Scully gets attacked by a vicious housecat. And also the really good episodes, too.

What can we learn from the best and worst of great television? Like, for example, is it really a bad episode or do people just hate women? The best worst. Available wherever you get your podcasts.