Welcome to Night Vale - 88 - Things Fall Apart

Episode Date: May 15, 2016

Things fall apart. Weather: "Palestine" by Sam Baker, featuring Carrie Elkin (sambakermusic.com) The voices of the automated phone tree were Erica Livingston & Christopher Loar. The voice of Carlos was Dylan Marron. The voice of Sheriff Sam was Emma Frankland. The voice of Michelle Nguyen was Kate Jones. The voice of Intern Maureen was Maureen Johnson. Music: Disparition, disparition.info. Logo: Rob Wilson, robwilsonwork.com. Produced by Night Vale Presents. Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin. More Info: welcometonightvale.com, and follow @NightValeRadio on Twitter or Facebook.   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 9. 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. Citywide utility failures continue to haunt us, but not as much as the strangers who do not appear to move. Welcome to the Nightvale Public Utilities phone line. If you're calling with

water, power, gas, phone, or surveillance camera malfunction, please press 1. If you just called to chat, Night Vale is currently experiencing citywide power outages, as well as polluted water supplies and several gas leaks. It's not our fault, but HR says we should apologize for the inconvenience. Sorry, I guess. It's not like we're not experiencing the same thing, though, so maybe you could reciprocate the sympathies. I'm sorry? Thank you. To pay your bill, press one.

To complement the fine work of the utilities department, press two. To whine about your personal problems. I'm not complementing the fine work of the utilities department. I can repeat that last option if you need. To complement the fine work of the utilities department, press two. Okay, fine. To whine about your personal problems, press, To schedule a service technician, press...

You pressed four. I didn't give you an option for. You just assumed the next number and then cut me off mid-scentive. Oh, good God. I'm sorry. Is this hard for you? Do you need a hug? Do you need me to sing you a lullaby and feed you? Here comes the airplane spoon to feed the hungry, hungry boy.

Tasty carrots, feel better now? Wow, the phone tree is getting snipped. Don't be rude. I am a person, not a phone tree. This is my job to record every possible phrase for every possible person's possible need. I recorded all of it. I'm a real human with a body and needs and a family. And I have a name. I am Maggie Pennebaker. I'm not a disembodied lady voice who will passively ignore your whiny entitlement. I'm sorry, Maggie. Are we speaking live? You selected schedule a service technician. Please hold. Our next available service date is between the hours of 1.5 p.m. On September 4th, 2005. In the Common Era.

That was 11 years ago. To have time explained to you like you were a 5-year-old, please hang up now and give up on ever having realistic expectations. To confirm this appointment, press 1. To speak to a customer service representative, press 2. All operators are currently shouldering the immense burden of societal displeasure. Please continue to hold.

Current wait time is super long. Ah! Hey, Pooh. Hey, Bunny, listen, Carlos the power is out here at the station. I can't even do my show. I've been trying to get through to the utilities, but they're slammed with calls. Oh, I talked to my friend Maggie, who works there. She said her cousin has an extra generator we can borrow.

You know Maggie? Yeah, she used to work with me part-time as a lab assistant. Also, Josie came by with her friends and dropped off some bottled water. Even John Peter stopped by. You know John Peter. Yes, John Peter's the farmer, I know. No, John Peter, remember? the pharmacist. Anyway, he dropped off your prescription this morning. Oh, well, that was nice of him.

Listen, since you don't have to work today, you should come back home. It's bad out there, and if you're going to get killed or possessed by one of the strangers, I'd rather you do it here with me. I'll make us some lunch, and we can play cards in favor of humanity. Oh, that sounds great, but I still need to get to the bottom of what is going on in this city. Intern Karim pulled some documents for me that he says I need to read through, and I have some calls to make. The invasion by these strangers is a big story, and even if I can't broadcast it, I still need to find some way to report it. I'll call you later. You're so good at your job.

You are too, Carlos. Oh, how's your research going? Well, I've been examining some of the places where the strangers have been spotted. I have a meter that makes squawking sounds sometimes, you know, and I'm uncertain if those last two sentences are related. Cecil, be careful. And if you see one of the strangers, just get out of there quickly and call me, okay? We've survived one at the station before. I think I'll be fine. Oh, past performance is not an indicator of future results.

but I love you. Okay, bye. Howdy, Sheriff Sam. Sheriff, hi, this is Cecil Palmer, over at Nightvale Community Radio. What I just said was off the record. Don't play it on air. You only said howdy. No, I didn't. Okay, Sheriff, I'm not even on the air right now.

No one is listening to this call except the secret police. The City Council, the mayor, and, well, some neighborhood espionage clubs, but they have our community's best interests at heart. Look, I'm calling because I wanted to find out what the secret police know about the strangers who are showing up all over town. Are the structural failures related to their presence here? Now, by strangers, do you mean the foreigners from Desert Fluffs

who are taking over our beautiful city after they managed to run their own city into the dirt? Or are you referring to the people who don't seem to move except for their bruce? breathing, who stand and stare at seemingly nothing, and who, without any noticeable motion, suddenly appear much closer, and who cause our citizens to stand trance-like until they're taken or killed or subsumed or converted into non-moving strangers themselves? The latter.

Cecil. There are two sinkholes opened up on Route 800. The dam along Night Vale Lake broke. Fortunately, our lake is just an empty dust hole, but it still broke wide open. Also, I have a caffeine headache, even though I don't drink caffeine. That just sounds like a headache, then. Look, I don't want the media dictating to me what is or is not a caffeine headache. The point is, things are falling apart, but not in the fun way. In the awful way. Is a fun way?

Yes, like, during a scheduled earthquake, or... Oh, when the lizard people dig new tunnels below old buildings. Oh, oh, of course, of course. Oh, what about the former Desert Bluffs residents who moved to Nightvale? Are the strangers doing the same to them? Who cares? Well, I care. The people who know them care.

They're humans, Sheriff. And as a reporter, I will report that you said that. Well, I'm the sheriff of a secret police force, so no, you won't. You won't do that at all. Ha-ha, I'm just playing with you. I have a dry sense of humour. You might have missed that. I was delivering a real threat to your life, but in a teasing way.

You definitely won't report anything I tell you. Some of those desert bluffs people, we can't even track. Not all of them stayed here. Some of them moved away. In our regular interrogations and detentions of these non-citizens, we've learned that a lot of them move to some other place, which they say feels a bit more like home. I don't know anything about that,

except that I'm happy to get them out of here. They can set up all the joyous congregations of the smiling god that they want some other place. Just tell your listeners that everything is fixed and everyone is safe. The sheriff saved the day. But you didn't do anything. Got to go, Cecil.

Just got some new calligraphy pens. I need to break in before the press conference to announce that all is lost. Uh, it's Cecil. Thanks. Dark L Records, please shut up about music before you embarrass yourself. Michelle, hey, it's Cecil. I hate to bother you, but I'm trying to track down Maureen. I heard that you two are friends. I only talked about Maureen privately into my audio journal. Did you listen to the monologue I recorded? Yes, I played it on the air six weeks ago. I didn't want anyone to hear that. That was personal. Michelle, you mailed me a cassette with a new.

note that said, here's my monologue to play on your show, Ziesel. But that was me from more than a month ago. I hate that me. Haven't you ever made mistakes in your youth? Yes. Many. Michelle, you've talked to Maureen recently. How is she?

She's fine. I mean, she's not that into leading an army or whatever, but it's just a thing she does for a living. I sell records. You talk on the radio. Maureen leads the army of unmoving strangers. She's the leader of the strangers? Or whatever.

Maureen was sweet, and let me see one of the strangers up close. They smell like compost and are all gray, and they make you feel cold. They're really beautiful, but they'll devour your soul and turn you into one of them. Maureen says it's super painful when they do that, and the transformation is for forever. That's why they can only stand and breathe and not really move, because they're in so much pain for so long, trapped in immortal bodies. It was cool. Kind of cool.

I mean, I don't know. Will you hate me if I like something? Michelle, how did you get up close to one without being devoured? Maureen said she'd keep me safe from them because we're each other's only friend. Maureen's a kind person. She does like country music, but I think friendship is sometimes about compromise. If it means getting to be around her, I'm perfectly happy covering my ears and humming the Bob's Burger's theme. What about the boy in the hoodie who hangs out with Maureen? Chad? Chad's okay, I guess. He's just Maureen's boss, though. She has to hang around him a bunch and watch his evil dog. It's just work, you know?

Michelle, I... Cecil, music sometimes calms me. You want to hear a song I really like? Sure. Okay, here you go. She'll not to say in palace shall The name Her people came from Nineveau His people came from rural shade

They met in the tent Of the traveling Nazarene She took his big hand in her She led him from the tent to the piney woods They both 16. A few months later, they got married. A few more months, Rose to Sharon got born. While he was out, he's cutting pulp.

A-log and chain whipped. He'd never walk again. It was an accidental thing, so he'd drank. When they had money and sheet worked as a servant girl, in the rich folks houses in town grew up she's cutting pictures of magazines of houses big and she ran away with a boy selling bibles a cross line at streetport turn 16 she calls her mother from a payphone Alon Jemate down in Natchez. It's not exactly what I dreamed.

Palestine, Palestine. Oh, we got Satan on the night. Oh, we got Satan on the night. Yeah. We got Satan on the run. That was a wonderful song, Michelle. Are you still talking about that song I started playing five minutes ago? I've moved on from that. Glad you like oldies so much.

Anyway, Maureen's new phone number is Old Town 57614. Thanks, Michelle. Hi, this is Maureen. I am probably at work or asleep or somewhere else. Somewhere listening to the sound of the moon, slowly trying to peel off our oceans with its gravity, pulling its weak little chalky speck of a body grabbing this blue giant and tearing away at its watery skin. A futile fight. A spinning bottle of large and small. and in the sky you can hear the whirling of the battling siblings. Or maybe I just don't want to take your call.

Or maybe I'm dead. Or maybe you're dead. And this is the voicemail you get when you die. Hi, Maureen here. Sorry you're dead. For some reason, I'm the one person you wanted to call the moment you left behind your short life. And I'm not even here to take it. So sorry, newly dead person.

Make sure you leave a phone number where I can reach you because I certainly don't know how to call dead people on the phone. Or maybe I lost my phone. And it's in my car, or under a pillow, or I left it in a movie theater, or a raccoon ate it. Maybe there's a raccoon somewhere in the brush, or in a trash can behind a house, walking with a limp, because it just ate a phone,

a rectangle of glass and metal and electronics. That's a quarter the length of the raccoon's body. And now that phone is inside the raccoon's guts, stretching its tiny tummy impossibly long, pressing against the masked pro-sion's little heart and lungs as it walk Tenderly to one side to alleviate the discomfort of such an intrusive foreign object. The raccoon, and this is kind of cute, kind of sad to think about, walks diagonally, all the while omitting a little do-d-d-do do-d-do-d-do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-tonged-ring tone,

all muffled from within its quivering torso and questioning its eat everything it can find dogma and thinking perhaps to just limit that life philosophy to trash cans. Of course, I bet people throw away phones all the time, so that's probably not a big help. Although in my case, I'm positive I didn't do that because my job is too important to just throw my phone away. Too, too important, too many evil beings to manage, too fragile, portled into another dimension. A dimension which is probably how? I'm not a religious studies major, although if I were, I bet I would have graduated by now. means so much can go wrong if I lost my phone. Like no one could get hold of me to help me fix it,

which is not to say I know how to fix an interdimensional portal between hell and this world, but just that I could be a person to be like, oh no, I'm sorry to hear the portal is malfunctioning. Let me panic a little bit and make some phone calls to feel like we're all doing something about it. And that would be helpful because sympathy is critical to good teamwork, and if you don't care about your job, you're not going to make anything of yourself. I am. I am making something of myself. Just sculpting away. Here's a clump of Maureen. Let's work it a bit with these hands. Yeah, this is looking great. This is a really nice Maureen here, all ready to be put in a fire and cooled and painted and set up on an alabaster pedestal in the foyer. So leave me a message and I'll get back to you.

Maureen, I finally figured it out. Chad Bowinger. Boy, I've seen you with. He used to intern here, just like you. He went to report a story on that used sporting goods store that we thought was a front for the world government and never came back out. I guess it was something much worse, he found in that shady old building. Now the two of you have a really successful startup. I'm proud of our internship program here at the station. I'm also proud of you for becoming a professional. You're leading an army, Maureen. that's very impressive, much more so than filing papers, fetching me lunch, and updating my erotic fan fiction blog. It sounds like a great job with good benefits. It's a tough job market

for you young people these days. Lots of changing technologies, making old jobs like print journalism, cardiology, and computer programming obsolete. Plus, all these new people moving here from Desert Bluffs? Cudos to you, Maureen. Here's my question, though. and it's an important one. So, Carlos, my boyfriend, earlier when I talked to him, I forgot to say, I love you at the end of the call.

I was preoccupied. No big deal. My love was implicit in the way we talk to each other. Love needn't be verbalized when it exists in intuition and physical contact. He knows I love him. But part of me wonders, What if one of those rare times I forgot to hug him goodbye or fail to say I love you turns out to be the last time I have that chance?

Lots can go wrong in an indifferent universe. I'll see him in a couple of hours, right? I'll see Carlos later. Right, Maureen? Please call me back. I want to talk more about what you and Chad are doing to my town. I, oh, I'm getting another call from an unknown number. I'm hoping this is the sheriff.

Call me back. Hello? Hello? Who is this? Welcome to Nightvale is a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Kraner and produced by Joseph Fink. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin. The voices of the automatic phone line were Erica Livingston and Christopher Lour.

The voice of Carlos was, Dylan Marin. The voice of Sheriff Sam was Emma Franklin. The voice of Michelle Wynne was Kate Jones. The voice of intern Maureen was Maureen Johnson. Original music by Dysperition. All of it can be found at disparition. info or at disparation.bancamp.com. This episode's weather was Palestine by Sam Baker, featuring Carrie Elkin. Find out more at Sam Baker Music com. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at nightvail radio. Check out welcome to nightfail.com for more information on this show as well as all sorts of cool nightfail stuff you can own like a horse. Just kidding. We don't have a horse.

We should get a nightfall horse. And while you're there, consider clicking the donate link. That'd be amazing. Today's proverb. Want to feel old? People born in 2014 have already graduated college, don't know what a trombone is, and are all named after gourds. Hi, Jeffrey, it's Maureen again. You don't know it's me again. I'm doing this over and over an attempt to nail this thing in one. Here we go one more time. And I'm not going to f*** it up this time. I'm definitely going to fuck up this time. Here we go. Hey, Jeffrey Kraner here to tell you about another show from me and my Night Vale co-creator Joseph Fink. It's called Unlicensed. And it's an L.A. noir-style mystery set in the outskirts of present-day Los Angeles. Unlicensed follows two unlicensed private investigators who small jobs looking into insurance claims and missing property are only the tip of a conspiracy iceberg.

There are already two seasons of unlicensed for you to listen to now with season three dropping on May 15th. Unlicensed is available exclusively through Audible, free if you already have that subscription. And if you don't, Audible has a trial. membership and if I know you and I do you can binge all that mystery goodness in a short window. And if you like it, if you liked Unlicensed, please, please rate and review each season. Our ability to keep making this show is predicated on audience engagement. So go check out Unlicensed, available now only at audible.com.