Welcome to Night Vale - 231 - The Terminal

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

Exciting new developments at the Randy Newman Memorial Night Vale Airport Weather: “Sudden Fall“ by Aleah Hyer Original episode art by Jessica Hayworth Read episode transcripts NEW Night Vale live show. Dates/Cities/Tix Our newest podcast, UNLICENSED, available now! Patreon is how we exist! If you can, please help us keep making this show. Music: Disparition Logo: Rob Wilson Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor Narrated by Cecil Baldwin Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Check out our books, live shows, store, membership program, and official recap show at welcometonightvale.com A production of Night Vale Presents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Nightville, it is Jeffrey Craneer speaking to you from April of 2026 with a couple of cool things coming up. First off, we're going to be in Europe touring our newest Nightville live show, Murder Night in Blood Forest. We're going to be in Edinburgh, UK, on May 27th. We'll be in Manchester on the 28th. We will be in London on May 29th, and we will be in Amsterdam on May the 30th. You can get tickets for these shows at Welcome to Nightville.com slash live, and hopefully we'll have more. shows coming up later this year. Who knows? Just get on our newsletter. Go to Welcome to Nightville. Sign up for our newsletter. We will send you emails twice a month to let you know all of the news that you need to know about Welcome to Nightville. One of the big news things to tell you right now

is that our other hit podcast, Alice Isn't Dead, is coming back on April the 13th, written by Joseph Fink, produced by Disparition and starring Jacica Nicole. More episodes of Alice Isn't Dead return on April the 13th, so make sure you are still subscribed to that podcast. Finally, do you want some cool Nightville merch? Go to Welcome to Nightville.com, click on store, and we have all kinds of cool t-shirts, things for the summer, tank tops, beach towels, and if you like coffee mugs, if you want calendars, if you want backpacks, all kinds of cool stuff there. So check out Welcome to Nightville.com and click on store, click on live. If you want to see our live shows, we will see you in Europe. And hey, thanks.

Hey, Jeffrey Kraner here. We've got new news about a new thing and new news about an old thing. First, the new thing. We're touring again. Starting September 26th, you can see our brand new live show. It's an all-new script, perfect for you, nightveiled diehards and new listeners alike. And it stars Cecil Baldwin, Symphony Sanders, Disparition, and a musical guest to be announced real soon. So for this first fall tour, we'll be in Woodstock on the 26th and 27th of September Philly on the 28th, Brooklyn. on the 29th and 30th, October 1st in Boston, 3rd in Chicago, October 5th, Madison, St. Paul on the 6th, Omaha on the 7th, Iowa City, the 8th, Lawrence, Kansas on the 10th, Fayetteville, our first Arkansas show on the 11th, on the 12th, Oklahoma City, the 13th in Dallas,

San Antonio on October 14th, Santa Fe on the 17th, and Boulder on the 18th. We'll have live shows throughout November as well, also January and April, so if you didn't Here, your city listed, there's two dozen more dates and cities on our website. Just go to Welcome to Nightveil.com, click on live shows to see a complete listing of where all we're going so far on this tour of this new live show. Also, if you missed our old live show, The Haunting of Nightvale, we have a recording available now. Just go to nightvail.bandcamp.com and get this album. In fact, you can get all of our previous live show albums there.

These shows are so much fun to perform, and I enjoy the heck out of these live albums. because they really capture the energy, love, and excitement our audiences bring. So new tour dates at welcome to nightvail.com and click on live shows, and you can get old live shows at nightvail.bandcamp.com. And hey, thanks. All dogs go to 11. Welcome to Nightvale. We're back to normal, Nightvale.

Science is legal. Dr. Janet Lubel is gone. Well, not gone. She's still here. Physically, anyway, under a cow that fell from the sky. Yeah, it's been six weeks since that happened, and no one's cleaned up the mess yet. But, you know, to be fair,

I'd rather have a pile of flesh on the outskirts of town than street cleaners. Geez, Dr. Luppel. Couldn't you have explained those monsters away? But it's a net positive, listeners. Science is back, and so are we. Ecstatic citizens are running through the streets, solving fair mats, last theorem, peer-reviewing every flower, and donning their hottest summer lab coats by the pool.

And of course, since it's summer, we're all eager to go on vacation. You know, get away to exotic destinations, and no one understands that excitement more than the friendly folks in the air travel industrial complex, which brings us to today's big news. The Randy Newman Memorial Nightvale Airport finished construction on a new terminal featuring international flights to nearly anywhere in the world. Belize, Senegal, Svitz, Vietnam, Ireland. Ireland. Sorry. I think that's supposed to say Iceland. I must have missed a typo there. I've never heard of an Ireland. Who'd want to go there? That place sounds mean. Anyway, the point is that this is our time to see the planet. Soak up the sun in Sydney. Drink a Mai Tai and Mali. Play the ponies in Poland and

Franch Kiss in Francia. The new terminal will feature executive lounges, a food court, daily pickleball tournaments, tarot readers, and a 24-hour sensory exploration chamber. So let's enjoy ourselves wherever our travels take us this summer. But first, a word from our sponsors. How many ants are there? You've never really thought about that, have you? Or you've thought about it, but you didn't really pursue the matter further. To you, how many ants is nothing more than a hypothetical to ponder with friends late into the night. Definitely more ants than humans, one of your friends said.

And you all agreed like this was a good point, but you knew it to be a point so obvious as to be perfectly meaningless. So, how many ants are there? Have you Googled it? Or tried counting a small sample, say, your front lawn, and then multiplied it out to the relative area of the earth? Have you considered whether or not there are sea ants? I bet you didn't think of that. Back to the calculator point, Dexter. Now, you're not a lazy person, not generally, no.

You're definitely a good person, a productive person. You can tell just by looking at yourself, can't you? But when it comes to certain tasks, you cut corners. You put them off. Or you go beyond the limits of procrastination. and don't do it at all? I mean, we can hear you right now typing out the question

how many ants into your preferred search engine. Stop, just stop, it's too late for that. Someone already figured it out. 20 quadrillion. You could have helped in this project, but you didn't. Maybe you should do something about this condition of yours that prevents you from helping people count ants. Now, there's Chaxlidrill.

Chachsla Drill may cause nausea. spooning or a new metal revival. Stop taking Chaxla Drill if you can no longer see birds. Chaxlidril is far less afraid of you than you are of it, and those are the benefits. You don't want to hear the side effects. It's got nothing to do with ants, but I will say it's still in the arthropod phylum? Ask your doctor why. Ask your doctor what he's doing with that hook. Ask your doctor while you can still move your lips. Chaxleadryl. You had your chance. Now hold still.

Back to our top story. Nightfail TSA representative Martin McCaffrey has just held a press conference calling for air travelers to plan for long lines at airport security. McCaffrey asked for patience as they're still working through some kinks at the new terminal. Not all of the computers are networked properly. Plus, they're a bit understaffed. And most importantly, they all forgot the new terminal was opening today. We had it on our calendars for August 8.

Every single TSA staff member said, totally our fault. We think we just had a case of the sausage fingers when we went to put it into our calendar apps, and then we all just pressed the 8 instead of the first. So we just slept in thinking we didn't have work today, but our bad. McCaffrey also reminded travelers that security checkpoints require you to remove all liquids and gels from your carry-ons. Place all laptops, tablets, and other electronics into separate bins, and to remove your shoes,

belt, wallet, and any partially chewed meat you may have on your person before advancing through the screeners. For frequent airline passengers, you can also make use of the TSA Precheck program where a microchip is planted in your skull, and you are prevented from ever committing any kind of criminal or terroristic activity on an airplane. And thus, you're a null risk. and you can bring knives, guns, tarantulas, whatever, on board your flight. Because you now belong to the state.

You couldn't be bad if you tried. Finally, McCaffrey said the new terminal was built atop a fallout bunker for the world's wealthiest elite. So while you're waiting in the security line, you'll need to keep clear of all trap doors so that the billionaires can climb out and use the bathroom or get a shake-shack burger. And now a public service announcement from the Nightvale SPCA. It's one hot summer. So remember that a parked car is no place to leave your dog alone. Too often we tell ourselves, I'll only be away from my vehicle for mere moments.

Nothing can go wrong. Or maybe you think it'll help to crack your window to keep your four-legged friend cool. This is dangerous thinking, Nightvale. Dangerous. Did you know that within only five minutes your car could be stolen? Criminals are getting smarter and quicker at hot wiring automobiles, and your dog is one of those criminals. Your dog. Bandit, a blue healer terrier mix that you rescued from our downtown shelter two years ago, was imprisoned for a reason. We named her bandit for that same reason, but you just thought it was cute because she had like a little black stripe across her eyes. Oh, like a bandit, you said and smiled.

But you got it all wrong. If we were being cute about the black stripe across the dog's eyes, we would have named her Rocket Raccoon or Zorro or something adorable. We named her bandit because she's a car thief. Looking back, we should have been more communicative about bandits' rap sheet, but we were just so shocked that you would adopt such a malicious felon. Do you know she ran a chop shop at five points in Queens from 1988 to 2002? After a federal sting and 12 years in Rikers, she got back to her crime ring. Only New York was too hot. Hotter than a desert summer, so Bandit moved west to Nightvale, where she established a whole new syndicate.

Until she was caught by the SPCA in September 2020. And we had her safely locked away until you showed up. You, who was so fixated on the idea of getting a new pooch, But had it been only five months since Moxie died? You've already moved on. Huh? Okay, fine, fine. We all grieve in our own ways, but who knew that grief would lead you to adopting one of the FBI's most wanted criminals of the 1990s?

Apparently, you did. So yeah, don't leave that dog alone in your parked car in a hot summer day or a cool autumn morning. Don't let that dog out of your sight at all. She's a bad dog. A very, very, very bad dog. No. This has been a message from the Nightvale SPCA. We're getting word that the security line at the new Nightville Airport terminal isn't moving at all.

And for those who managed to get through the lines, they've been waiting hours for their planes, but nothing. The terminal is packed shoulder to shoulder with anxious and frustrated passengers and not an airplane and site. This situation led to a statement from Nightville Airport CEO Archie Lavery. Lavery says, Oh, dang. So yeah, wow, wow, yeah. So I did not book any airlines into this new terminal. I didn't know you were supposed to do that. Lavery said, I kind of assume that building an airport terminal was like buying a bird feeder. You just put one up and they come to you, but apparently...

Lavery continued. It's more like a business thing where you contract out the slots to different airlines, and they basically pay for usage of the facilities and staff. Lavery said he was totally embarrassed and more than willing to make it up

to all stranded travelers. He announced that he has chartered dozens of buses to drive people to their vacation destinations. Las Vegas? No problem. Just a few hours away, he said. Seattle?

Ah, sure. Okay. Prince Edward Island. Woof. Okay, that's a toughie. American Samoa. I'm going to need to check my GPS on that one. And on and on he went,

trying to sort out bus availability, not to mention capacities for every single passenger. More on this soon. But since it's legal to do it again, let's bring back the children's fun fact science corner. Today's an interactive one, kids. We're going to make slime. Ew! Ewee-goey slime that you can squish between your fingers or pour on your little sister's head while she's quietly doing something else.

Slime's the best. And it's super easy. The first thing you'll need to do is wait till your parents are out of the house. The most basic tenet of science is no parents allowed. Do you think Albert Einstein invented the speed of light with his mom and dad around? No, because Albert Einstein was cool.

And also married his first cousin, but we're not going to talk about that right now. So, once your parents are gone, you'll need to grab a large bowl and any leafy vegetables you can find. Just dig through the fridge. If anyone asked later, what happened to the watercress? Just tell them, you made yourself a salad, and they'll be very proud of you.

I'm proud of you, child, they'll say, and you will, for the rest of your life, subconsciously seek this feedback from your parents long after they're gone, even because our brains are terrible, terrible places that don't ever really get over our early childhood. So now that you have the leafy greens, place them in a bowl and cover with a damp towel. Set the bowl in a warm, humid, dark place. Wait about two weeks, and you will have a maroonish black slime that you can throw at walls or make shapes with or put on your face to stay looking younger. Whatever you kids do with slime, it doesn't matter. Nothing does.

This has been the Children's Fun Fact Science Corner. The security line at the new airport terminal is now flowing out of the front door of the building. Anoyed passengers are demanding to be taken to their beach destinations, their families' homes, their big city cultural getaways, yet no planes have even arrived at the gates. Inside the terminal, people are shouting at TSA agents. They're toppling over kiosks of phone accessories, they're smashing snow globes in the gift shops, and they're refusing to purchase a single copy of Prince Harry's memoir. It's utter chaos. And that's not even taking into account the slowly growing shadow forming across the tarmac, the runways, and the parking garages.

The glow cloud has arrived, hoping to catch a flight back to California to finish their summer coursework at Stanford. Upset at the long line, the glow cloud is thundering and pulsing with every color of the spectrum. Skycaps are being blown sideways. Half of the hurt. Hertz rental car fleet was sucked into an F-4 tornado. All stranded travelers have craned their heads up and begun to chant, All hail, all hail! Airport CEO Archie Lavery has called for calm and patience, but unfortunately, what's happening right now is the weather.

You know the secret U.S. Air Force Base up Route 800. Not the one next to the Burger King, the one off exit four next to the all-you-can-eat-eat-a-de-dert buffet, which was based on the design of the building you can clearly see used to be a circuit city. That secret Air Force base. You know where they do the alien autopsies every Saturday for the tourists? Anyway, they heard about the shortage of planes at the new terminal, and they helped out. An unnamed representative from the Secret Air Force Base said, Hey, we've got nothing else going on this week.

happy to send over a few F-18s for people to fly around in. So now the gates of the new terminal are filled with fighter jets. Now, unfortunately, each plane only carries two people. And that number includes a pilot. But as famed aviator Amelia Earhart once said, If you know more than one person, that's too many people. So these jets should do just fine. The Air Force did provide a few stipulations for using

their planes, though. First, they don't have any pilots available, but they did include user manuals in each cockpit. How hard can it be? The Air Force representative said, what's the worst that could happen? Another restriction on the planes is that they need all of them back by Saturday afternoon. No exceptions. We have huge plans for those planes first thing Sunday morning. The Air Force representative said, it's a secret, because we are a secret base after all, Also, I can't tell you what we need them for, but oh man, it's going to be rad. The Air Force representative then paused for a long time, a smile spreading slowly across his face. He couldn't hold back anymore.

Okay, okay, fine, fine. I'll give you a hint. We're going to make Spain the 51st state. Don't tell anybody. Oh, man, I'm said too much. The representative then whispered something to one of his aides, and they both snickered so hard that milk came out of their noses. So the skies over Nightvale are now filled with satisfied travelers zipping this way and that.

They're doing barrel rolls and loop-de-loops and kickflips and all the other cool tricks you do with a fighter jet. It's difficult to say if they're doing these things intentionally or not, but hopefully they all make it on time to their resorts, their hotels, their cabins in the woods, and their family homes. It's the final few weeks of summer, and I think we all deserve a little. break. Say to next for the shattering of the sound barrier and probably your windows too. Good night. Nightvale, good night. Welcome to Nightvale as a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Craneer 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 Sudden Fall by Aaliyah Higher. Find out more at the link in the show notes. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com. Or follow us on Twitter, I guess. Or X or whatever. We're at Nightvale Radio. And on Instagram at Nightvale Official. We now have a TikTok at Nightvale Official as well, if you like short videos by a fictional radio station. Most importantly, check out Welcome to Nightvale.com, where we have a twice monthly mailing list that is the best way to keep up to date with us without it being ruled by a billionaire. You can learn things about our upcoming brand new live show, The Attic, and the new live album of our last touring live show, The Haunting of Night Vale, which is now available on band camp and other digital music stores. Today's proverb, make him an offer he can't refuse. Like a really good offer, he's a nice guy.

You know the secret U.S. Air Force Base up Route 800? Not the one next to the Burger King, the one off exit four next to the all-you-can-eat-eat-eat-a-de-usert buffet, which was, like, based on the design of the building you can clearly see used to be a circuit city. That secret Air Force base? You know where they do the alien autopsies every Saturday for the tourists? Anyway, they heard about the shortage of planes at the new terminal, and they helped out. An unnamed representative from the Secret Air Force Base said, Hey, we've got nothing else going on this week.

Happy to send over a few F-18s for people to fly around in. So now the gates of the new terminal are filled with fighter jets. Now, unfortunately, each plane only carries two people. And that number includes a pilot. But as famed aviator Amelia Earhart once said, If you know more than one person, that's too many people. So these jets should do just fine. The Air Force did provide a few stipulations for using their planes, though.

First, they don't have any pilots available, but they did include user manuals in each cockpit. How hard can it be? The Air Force representative said, what's the worst that could happen? Another restriction on the planes is that they need all of them back by Saturday afternoon. No exceptions. We have huge plans for those planes first things. Sunday morning. The Air Force Representative said, it's a secret, because we are a secret base after all, so I can't tell you what we need them for, but oh man, it's going to be rad.

The Air Force Representative then paused for a long time, a smile spreading slowly across his face. He couldn't hold back anymore. Okay, okay, fine, fine, I'll give you a hint. We're going to make Spain the 51st state. Don't tell anybody. Oh man, I'm said too much. The representative then whispered something to one of his aides, and they both snickered so hard that milk came out of their noses. So the skies over Night Vale are now filled with satisfied travelers zipping this way and that. They're doing barrel rolls and loop-de-loops and kick-flips and all the other cool tricks you do with a fighter jet. It's difficult to say if they're doing these things intentionally or not, but hopefully they all make it on time to their resorts, their hotels, their cabins in the woods,

and their family homes. It's the final few weeks of summer, and I think we all deserve a little break. Say to next for the shattering of the sound barrier, and probably your windows too. Good night, Nightvale, good night. Welcome to Nightvale as a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Craneer

and produced by Dysperition. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin. Original music by Dyspiration. it can be found at disparition.bancamp.com. This episode's weather was Sudden Fall by Aaliyah Higher. Find out more at the link in the show notes. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvail.com. Or follow us on Twitter, I guess.

Or X or whatever. We're at Nightvale Radio. And on Instagram, at Nightvale Official. We now have a TikTok at Night Vale Official as well, if you like short videos by a fictional radio station. Most importantly, check out Welcome to Nightvale.com, where we have a twice monthly mailing list that is the best way to keep up to date with us

without it being ruled by a billionaire. You can learn things about our upcoming brand new live show, The Attic, and the new live album of our last touring live show, The Haunting of Night Vale, which is now available on Bam Camp and other digital music stores. Today's proverb, make him an offer he can't refuse. Like a really good offer, he's a nice guy. Are you squeamish about horror movies but kind of want to know what happens?

Or are you a horror lover who likes thoughtful conversation about your favorite genre? Join me, Jeffrey Kramer, and my friend from Welcome to Nightville, Cecil Baldwin, for our weekly podcast, Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number Nine, where we watch and discuss horror movies in a random order. Find, here's the short version, Random Horror Nine, wherever you get your podcast, boo.