Chapter Text
And now a word from our sponsors.
Stop what you are doing. Breathe. Direct your thoughts. Direct your thoughts towards... the Sun. Think about it. Are you grateful for the Sun? How has the sun improved your life today? In fact, would you have a life at all if not for the radiating light from that distant glowing orb? Of course not. Now ask yourself, what can you do to give back?
The Sun provides our tiny, meaningless forms with everything we need to continue our tiny, meaningless lives. And what do you do for the sun in return for everything you have ever known? That's right, nothing. In the grand cosmic scale on which the Sun exists, you contribute nothing. Do you feel small now, worthless? Well you should.
So take some time today to try and fight your inherent lack of cosmic worth through hard work! The futile effort will surely make you feel a false sense of accomplishment that is better than any material reward. Remember, productivity is your gateway to a happier, more effective delusion!
This message brought to you by Strex Corp Synergists, Inc.
Carlos glanced at his radio uneasily, distracted from his work. That was the third Strex-sponsored ad in this broadcast alone. Carlos set down the dropper he'd been using to prepare sample slides and stared at the radio on his lab table for a moment, tempted to just turn it off for today before there was a fourth. This was an unusual urge for him. He usually loved listening to Cecil's show, to his boyfriends smooth voice as he relayed the news about whatever strange disaster was occurring that day. It usually made him feel better, calmer, more grounded. He had never told Cecil, but he thought that the grounding force of that voice on the airwaves had probably saved him from going crazy more than once in this strange town that he now called home, and he listened to every single broadcast without fail. Recorded them, too. You know, just for future reference, as they were a valuable source of information, and definitely not for any other reason. He'd certainly never voluntarily skipped one before, not since his first months in Night Vale. But somehow, the way that Cecil did those ads, in that too-chipper tone that Cecil had said was explicitly demanded by his new bosses, was highly unsettling. It made Carlos' blood run cold.
It might not have been so ominous by itself. Night Vale advertising was always creepy by outside standards, and Cecil was often asked to do weird stuff for various sponsored segments. It shouldn't have been any different. It was only ominous because of who was behind it. Strex Corp Synergists, Inc. had come to Night Vale a couple months ago, and it seemed to Carlos to be nothing short of an invasion. It just seemed… off. Their arrival coincided with the complete disappearance of all the angels in Night Vale, who most had assumed to be Night Vale's constant protectors, for all that they did not exist. Strex had then immediately bought out the Night Vale Community Radio Station, which Cecil hadn't even realized could be bought. It had always been ruled by unknown forces, for as long as anyone could remember, and no one seemed to know how Strex had gained control, but there didn't seem to be any way to contest the takeover. Cecil's broadcasts were getting more and more censored. Almost every ad was for Strex now. Gradually, more companies and Night Vale landmarks joined the radio station under Strex control. It was creeping and slow, but inexorable, a kind of secret and silent coup de tat.
Worse, Carlos was terribly afraid that he knew how this invasion ended.
He remembered the sandstorm, and everything he had managed to uncover about desert bluffs that day. The hellscape that Cecil had described on the other end of that vortex. The strangely mirrored lives that the people seemed to lead. And the company that seemed to be behind all of it, the one that was now spreading into Night Vale. At the time, it had all seemed far too dangerous to even investigate further. It was too far out of his depth. He was just a physicist. Sure, he'd had to dabble in various other disciplines, like chemistry and xenobiology, in order to deal with the various emergencies and intriguing developments that came up in Night Vale, but that didn't make him any more qualified to combat some sort of deep seated supernatural corporate conspiracy. And since it wasn't taking place in Night Vale at the time, Carlos chose to let it go, and try very hard not to think about it again. And that had worked, right up until the day that yellow helicopters with the Strex logo had flown into Night Vale and changed everything.
The idea of Night Vale going the same way as Desert Bluffs filled Carlos with an unimaginable feeling of dread, and yet, he didn't know what he could possibly do. He was a physicist, a scientist. He worked with equations, and sometimes dabbled in chemicals. How was he supposed to fight a corporate takeover of an entire town? Cecil didn't seem to know either, and he usually seemed to know almost everything.
Carlos rubbed his eyes, trying and failing to focus on his work. He was doing some biology research today, his personal projects set aside as he took the time to examine samples he'd pulled from some sort of poisonous sentient plant that had been terrorizing old town Night Vale for the past two days, trying to see if he could develop an antidote. But his heart wasn't in it. He was too distracted. He continued to stare vacantly through his microscope at a slide full of cells that seemed to defy all previous biological knowledge, because of course they did. He didn't know why he would expect this to be simple, or logical at all. Nothing in Night Vale was. He sighed. His sample slide was just beginning to develop a sentience of its own and attempt to escape when the radio caught his attention again.
Cecil had just finished announcing where people should gather for the monthly burning of the public library tonight when things first went downhill.
Listeners, I've just been handed a flyer by our new employers here at the station, encouraging citizens to apply for one of the many open positions at Strex Corp Synergists, Inc. The flyer insists that Strex Corp is always hiring, and that all applicants are welcome! It also insists that you submit a thorough medical background and a blood sample for classification in addition to your resume. In fact, they don't care about your resume at all! Just make sure to get them that blood sample, and you'll probably be hired. The flyer goes on to explain that Strex Corp is a wonderful employer offering competitive pay and benefits as well as plenty of opportunities for advancement. The sticky note attached to the back of the flyer explains that this recruitment drive is in no way an attempt to gather test subjects for any variety of unethical medical experiments and psychological studies, and requests that I emphasize that working for Strex is completely saf- oh. Hold on for just one moment, listeners, one of my new managers has just entered the booth.
No, of course. Ah, I'm very sorry, I was simply reading what was put in front of me, that is my job-
Well yes. I mean I was going to say- what? No, I can fix it, just let me issue a correction-
What do you mean, leave? We're on air, I'm in the middle of a broadcast I - ow! Alright, alright, just let me go to the weather and I'll -
What? You can't do that. This station is - oof.
There was a sound like a brief struggle and the thump that might have been the microphone falling over before Cecil's voice came back through the radio, strained and filled with something that might have been panic. He sounded like he was shouting from far away. Carlos' nails dug into his palms as he clenched his fists, holding his breath as fear made him freeze up.
Listeners, I am being told by the suited men in my booth that I am done with my broadcast for today, and am being pulled out of the booth without even the ability to take you to the weather to fill this gap in our programing. I do not know when I will be able to return, but I hope -
There was the sound of static, and then the radio fell silent, cutting off Cecil's panicked attempt to bring his show to a conclusion. The silence rang in Carlos' ears like a bad case of tinnitus. He had never heard Cecil not finish a show. Not matter how bad the situation, he always managed to keep some semblance of a broadcast going, through to the final sign off. Always.
Carlos was standing up and heading for the door before he made the conscious decision to do so. He dumped the sample he'd been working on into a containment unit on his way out, grabbing his keys as he went. He probably broke a few speed limits on his way over to the radio station, but the secret police didn't seem to care. In fact, the few people he saw on the way seemed as concerned as he was, so unused to the silence on the air.
He squealed into the radio station parking lot and hopped out to see Cecil sitting on the front steps, head in his hands. Carlos let out a sigh of relief. He was safe, at least, alive. He had been worried that Strex might have done something to him, or that Station Management would punish him for the way the show had gone, but it seemed he'd just been kicked out of the building for now. Last time Cecil had made a mistake on-air Carlos hadn't seen him for almost two days, after he'd been called in for "HR re-training", which seemed to be a euphemism for brutal torture in a dark box of some sort that Cecil wouldn't discuss with him. Carlos was glad that wasn't where Cecil was now. That was good.
Cecil did still look more upset than Carlos had ever seen him, though, so he walked quietly to sit by his side, taking off his lab coat and draping it over Cecil's shoulders in a small gesture of comfort. They sat like that for a long time, watching the darkening sky as the sun went below the horizon, not speaking. Carlos didn't know what to say, what to do, so he just wrapped his arm around Cecil and waited. After a while, Cecil stopped looking so unbearably sad and simply looked tired, worried, worn out. He pulled his head up from his arms and looked at Carlos.
"They took me off the air, Carlos." Cecil said quietly, sounding both confused and hurt, like this situation was so completely unimaginable that he didn't know what to do besides just sit there on the curb outside the station.
Carlos didn't say anything for a moment, unsure how to respond.
"…What happened in there today?" He finally asked, starting with a question. He always started with a question, with an attempt to diagnose the problem, a need to know the situation so that he could form a hypothesis, start building a course of action. He knew what had actually occurred, of course, the whole town had heard it live and Cecil had just told him, but he needed to understand. It was the only way he knew how to function, even though questions just brought trouble more often than not in Night Vale. He still needed to know.
There was another long silence as Cecil looked up at the sky, eyes dark, unreadable.
"There's something wrong with Night Vale."
Carlos blinked, and bit back the questions that popped into his mind at that statement. What did Cecil mean, wrong? Wrong was too vague, and Night Vale was too big a concept. What part of the city was he talking about? The government, the people, the economy? Or was he referring to the city as a whole? If so, how would one even define a city as a single entity? How would you define wrong? Carlos let the questions flow through his mind but didn't say anything. Cecil wasn't through talking.
"This broadcast today was just the worst in a long line of problems! Strex has been messing with the show ever since they came here, censoring things, cutting out whole segments, limiting my reporting abilities. Station Management is furious. I've never seen them so agitated, and that's saying something, since they are usually in a constant state of at least minor agitation. By all rights the Strex thugs should be dead, but somehow they are not. They're still just there, messing with my show! I haven't even been able to send interns out into the field during the show for information! I mean, intern Casey has been really helpful, they've been doing some field work on their own personal time and intern Roderick has been slipping me notes in the blind spots of the new security cameras, but there's only so much they can do. And the rest of the staff has mostly been replaced by Strex workers already."
"It's just..." Cecil sighed, running a hand through his hair in a frustrated gesture, struggling for words in a way that was unusual for the usually effusive radio host, "I'm not sure how to explain it. This thing with Strex Corp... it's changing things. Things that weren't meant to be changed. Things that shouldn't be able to be changed. Like the entire town is shifting, mutating, being... corrupted. It's all wrong."
Cecil was quiet for a moment, head down. When he looked up to meet Carlos' eyes he had a serious expression on his face, his eyes filled with a look Carlos had only seen in them once or twice, something deep and unknowable and dark. The look was almost appraising, as if Cecil was trying to make some decision about him. Carlos felt a shiver run down his spine and he was reminded, as he sometimes was, of how little he really understood about the man he'd fallen in love with. Cecil blinked, and the moment passed. He looked around and leaned in to speak quietly.
"Let's find some place more private." He whispered, with a meaningful glance at the cameras above the radio station doors, and then to the bushes rustling unnaturally by the side of the building. Which meant that whatever he wanted to say, he didn't want to do it in front of Strex or the secret police. Carlos just nodded, curious. He didn't really understand what was going on, and he didn't know where in Night Vale they could possibly go without being watched by some nefarious force or another, but he'd learned to trust Cecil's judgment in cases like these. The radio host was surprisingly good at navigating deadly Night Vale politics.
Cecil pulled himself up from the curb, dragging Carlos up by the hand and tugging him towards his car. He was smiling, perfectly cheery as usual as they drove, Carlos in the passenger seat. Cecil talked about random happenings in Night Vale that day, which interns were still around and which ones made the best coffee, just normal small talk, but Carlos could hear that he was forcing it, and he still didn't know where they were going. Out into the sand wastes? Out of Night Vale entirely? Or maybe just somewhere secluded, like out by the abandoned missile silo. There were a few options, he supposed, though most of them were probably still within range of the secret police, like everywhere else in Night Vale.
When they stopped, however, it wasn't in any of those places. In fact it wasn't anywhere that Carlos might have possibly considered.
Carlos blinked, confused, as he found himself stepping out into the brightly lit parking lot of Big Rico's Pizza.
Cecil jumped out of the car himself and put an arm through Carlos' cheerily, leading him inside. "Uh, Cecil…." Carlos mumbled as he was dragged along, still more than a little confused. How in the hell is this more private?
Cecil shushed him before he could ask, still smiling. "Come on, Carlos, let's just relax! Get some food, think about something else. Drink to forget, that kind of thing." But he gripped Carlos' arm a little harder though his lab coat, and Carlos knew they weren't actually here to eat. He didn't say anything else. As they walked in he could see several people (or otherwise sentient creatures) already in line, with more sitting at various tables eating cheese wads and sipping bowls of stewed tomatoes. A couple were even braving Rico's nearly-unpalatable gluten-free pizza. At least one Erika was leaning against the jukebox; it was hard to tell if it was just the one, as the light was rather blinding. Rico himself stood behind the counter, glaring at everyone one by one. Most of the customers had turned to look at them when they walked in, fear and unease in their eyes. They had heard the radio today too.
All in all, Carlos thought there might not be a place in Night Vale less suited to private and possibly illegal conversation. He shot Cecil a questioning look, one eyebrow raised. It wasn't that he didn't trust him, of course, but… this was a pretty weird choice.
Cecil ignored the look completely and led the way past Erika and around a corner to a little-used part of the shop that used to be an arcade of some sort. From what Cecil cheerily explained to him, it had used to be a big hit with the kids, but then they had started disappearing one by one into the digital world of one of the games, so now everything was mostly just collecting dust. He stepped past an old racing game of some sort labelled "Fatal Crashing 2" as he talked and stepped up to what look like the door to a supply closet. Carlos hung back and watched as Cecil knocked twice, loudly.
A small panel in the door slid back, and Carlos could see the eyes of one of the Rico's waitresses glaring out from behind the door. Cecil smiled brightly.
"Hello Janice! Care to let us in?" he said, as if this was something that was normal to ask someone apparently hiding in a supply closet. Janice simply glared at them for another long moment.
"You aren't gonna report on anything, are you?" She asked, suspicious. The way she said report made it sound like it was the most deplorable thing she could think of for a person to do.
Cecil shook his head, palms out in a gesture of good faith. "No, no, of course not. We're just here as customers, that's all. No reporting. And no researching, either," he said, pointing back at Carlos.
Janice seemed to consider this, and then nodded. The panel slid shut, and a moment later the door swung open. Cecil gave a grateful wave to Janice as he and Carlos walked past her, down a short hallway, and then down a long flight of stairs. When they reached the bottom, they were met with what looked to be a whole separate restaurant, with dark, wood paneled booths and a dimly lit bar. On the whole, it was much nicer than the upstairs, and much less populated.
Carlos was struck a bit speechless, gaping as Cecil led them to a secluded booth in a corner. He sat down heavily and Cecil slid in across from him, gesturing to the nearest waitress, a woman who Carlos couldn't seem to quite look at except for out of the corner of his eye. She seemed to be real enough though, since she handed them two menus. Cecil picked his up and started to look through it, and when Carlos followed suit, he couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.
There was a whole section of muffins, various types of bread, whole wheat sandwiches, pasta, actual pizza….
Carlos set his menu down and looked at Cecil incredulously.
"Did you… did you just bring me to a wheat speakeasy?" he asked, his tone bordering on disbelief. He had heard that this place existed, on Cecil's show, but he thought it had been closed after the secret police raid. And the fact that it was Cecil bringing him here was equally confusing. Cecil was so… so law abiding. He was the model of civic pride, for the most part, excepting some minor information leaks on air. He'd never seen Cecil break the law on purpose. Then again, if they'd been looking for a place to talk secretly, he couldn't have chosen better. The secret police must not even know about this, or they'd have shut it down already. And if the secret police didn't know, Strex certainly wouldn't. It was actually pretty clever, Carlos thought, but seeing Cecil sitting there casually perusing illegal muffins was still fairly disconcerting.
"Wasn't this place shut down?"
Cecil set down his menu. "Yeah, but Rico has connections with the city council. I can't say for sure if it was a bribe or blackmail of some sort, but they dropped the case entirely, and it opened back up soon after, right back to serving illicit wheat products. With better ventilation this time. The secret police mostly just smell around for bread, so they haven't found out it's been reopened yet." he said matter of factly, casually, as if he hadn't just been talking about someone blackmailing the city council. He still wasn't mentioning why they were there. He smiled at Carlos. "Aren't you going to order?"
The items on the menu did look rather tempting, Carlos had to admit. It had been months since the council's ban on wheat, and he felt like it had been forever since he'd tasted actual, real, bread. His mouth was practically watering. He was still a little nervous at doing something so obviously illegal, but if Cecil was doing it… well, he might as well. He gave in and ended up going a little overboard, ordering a bowl of pasta, two orders of garlic bread, and a stack of flour tortillas. Cecil ordered three muffins of a flavor Carlos had never heard of before, and couldn't pronounce.
As soon as their waitress left, Cecil's smile fell and he looked at Carlos gravely. "Unfortunately," he said, finally starting the discussion they'd come here to have, "I didn't bring you here just to enjoy some highly illegal foods and their by products."
Carlos nodded. "I got that, yeah. Though I'm still not exactly clear why you did bring me here."
Cecil paused for a moment, seeming to be searching for words. After a long moment, he sighed. "There's things I need to tell you. About Night Vale and… about me."
Carlos felt his heart thud a little, nervous. This didn't sound like it was going anywhere Carlos would like.
"Actually, no one outside the radio station is ever supposed to hear this; secrecy is in my contract." Cecil continued, sighing again, his voice sliding into something that was almost a whine. "But...I need help. I don't think I can figure out what to do by myself. So if it's to help the station... maybe Management will let it pass, this once. Maybe. If not, then I guess I'll have a lot of re-training to look forward to in the future. But they probably won't kill me. Probably." He smiled weakly. "So I think I might tell you."
Carlos didn't return the smile. He hated the idea of getting Cecil into trouble, especially with whatever creature that Cecil answered to at the station. He could recall with great clarity the look that Cecil always had when he came home after a re-training session, like he'd been through more pain than his brain could process and thus just ceased to function. He hated it, and he hated Station Management for inflicting it on him. Not that Carlos ever told Cecil that; it would only upset him. Cecil was nothing if not unfailingly, enthusiastically loyal to his job. To be honest, his words now were surprising to Carlos, as Cecil had always discussed his station contract like it was a sacred vow, the idea of breaking it completely unthinkable. The way he spoke about it, Carlos had long suspected that there was more to Cecil's job arrangement than was obvious; Cecil had only said he couldn't say and asked him not to question it. And Carlos had respected that no matter how curious he was, because it was obviously important to Cecil, and that was all that mattered.
But now, if he was understanding the situation correctly, Cecil was offering to share all those secrets that Carlos had always wondered about as he sat listening to the daily radio broadcast. How did Cecil manage to report on things he had no way of knowing about, and do it with the kind of detail that he couldn't have gotten any other way besides witnessing it first hand? Carlos had recorded this phenomenon several times and there were glaring inconsistencies, but Cecil was always evasive when he asked and he never got a real answer. Was he going to get one now?
He'd also never figured out what exactly Cecil's relationship with the town was. Every single person in Night Vale listened to Cecil's show, even though it wasn't mandated. Every person, without fail. His show was a kind of constant in people's lives, something that everyone loved and relied on, and yet Cecil himself socialized very little outside of interviews and press meetings. He had some kind of political power, and far too much influence for just being a newscaster, that much was clear, but Carlos couldn't tell how far it went. All he knew was that when Cecil spoke, Night Vale listened.
Not to mention, what exactly was Station Management? What contract had Cecil signed with them and why was it so important? Carlos had managed to discover that the radio station itself seemed to be some sort of temporal anomaly, existing long before there should have been people here at all. It was listed as outside the influence of the secret police and the city council, which was strange in and of itself. How long had it really been there? And why?
What did it mean to be the Voice of Night Vale?
Carlos had asked these questions countless times since he'd arrived here. He had an entire notebook dedicated to his observations about Cecil, his job, and the strange features of both. It was in his faded, ripped-up backpack right this moment, sitting beside him in the booth. Carlos desperately wanted some sort of answer to all the questions sitting right there, between those pages. He wanted them so badly. But…
He might get Cecil hurt. And for what? Cecil seemed to think that Carlos might be able to give him some kind of guidance, but Carlos was just as floundering and lost as everyone else. He was a physicist, for gods sake. The only things he was good at were asking questions and working with equations. He was about as likely to have the answers to this crisis as he was to suddenly get super powers so he could wipe Desert Bluffs from the face of the earth. Less likely, really. If that was what Cecil was hoping for, what he was risking himself for, then it wasn't worth it. As much as Carlos wanted to know, it wasn't worth it. He took a deep breath.
"Cecil, I'm not… I can't fix this either. I know you seem to think that science is some sort of magic that I can use to save the entire town at all times, but… it's not. I'm not. I'm confused and scared and I don't understand anything that's going on. Even if you tell me, all that will happen is that I will know a little bit more than I did before, and still have no idea what to do about it. You… you're always so much better at all this than I am, you're the one who tells people how to deal with things, how to survive. I'm not sure I have anything to contribute besides a whole bunch more questions. That's really all I'm good at, asking questions. Just more and more questions. I've haven't found any answers since I came here; even the equations I've formulated for spacial-temporal rifts are more observational than explanatory. They're just distilling down data. I still don't understand the mechanics behind it, which is fine I suppose, I mean that's what Newton did, but it hardly qualifies as an answer, really. " He was mildly aware that he was rambling, as he often did when he was nervous or upset or in this case, starting to panic. He shut his mouth before he could continue any further into a tangent about the purpose of science and the inherent limitations to practicality in pure research, a line of thought he had pursued in his head far too many times over the past months. He could give quite the speech by now, and that wouldn't get them any closer to an answer, either.
Cecil just smiled, a little more warmly this time. He reached out to rest his hand on Carlos'. "Oh, Carlos. I don't need you to have the answers." He said gently, in a soft tone that made Carlos' heart rate calm, just a little further from panic. "I don't expect you to. No one can have the answers to everything, or really, to anything, as a matter of fact. I just need…" he paused, stopping to choose his words carefully. "I need someone to share this with. To offer support, to work with me. I need you with me for what comes next, whatever that may be. That's all. And it's worth the risk. Will you take the risk with me?"
Carlos took a moment to take in those words, to really consider it, before he nodded.
"If that's what you want, then I'm here." He said, trying to sound more sure than he felt.
Cecil nodded, and started to explain.
===============
There is a spirit to any place where people gather. It's not a concrete thing, not like the soul in your body, in a person or a creature, a spirit that can be observed or spoken to or destroyed. It's a more nebulous concept, a group of ideas and feelings and interactions that come together to create an atmosphere, subtle and pervasive. In a town, it's the routine of its people and the hum of activity in the streets and the way that each person in it lives and breathes as they pass through the structures that give a place its physical definition. It's the way a town changes over time, adapting and growing and decaying and being built, being lived in. It's the way the streets are shaped and the contour of it's skyline. Above all the spirit of a place is in a sense of community, the intricate web of relationships between every one of its inhabitants, woven together to create one being with a kind of soul of its own. It's not the kind of being that most people recognize, not a sentient god, or even an incorporeal entity; it has no power of it's own, no thoughts, nothing but a vague feeling imparted, unquantifiable.
Most of the time.
But there is a place. It's a strange place, newly formed and in it's infancy but already unlike any other place on earth. And there is a group, a group who wishes their new town to prosper and grow. They have powers that aren't from this world and they are well versed in using them; They have a plan, a plan to save themselves and the rest of the town's people from the terrible forces that haunt their home. They'll take that soul that every place has, that nebulous unreachable concept, and they'll make it into something real. Something solid. Something that can fight for them, protect them against the dangers they fear. They'll make something that can guide, can give words to what the people need, something that can speak for the town as a whole.
They'll give Night Vale a Voice of its own.
They choose a sacrifice, a vessel. Someone loyal to the town and dedicated to it's welfare. Then they call down their powers; preform the ritual, say the words. The vessel dies, and yet they live on as their memories and personality survive, merged with the force that had been called down to be given physical form.
They become the first Voice of Night Vale, but they won't be the last.
At first, it isn't a radio show. Radio hasn't been invented yet, wont be for long centuries. There is just a voice heard somehow through clear air and no one questions it. No one feels the need to; the voice is familiar, somehow, comforting. And the town is better now, different. People come together and there is a sense of purpose that had been lacking before, carried on those waves of sound. Night Vale is united by its Voice.
The system isn't perfect, of course. The Voice is still mortal, still a person with their own feelings and desires, and the third Voice of Night Vale proves that she has the capacity for corruption; a thirst for power unfettered by morals. Eventually, the crisis is averted, balance restored, but Night Vale suffers for it.
After that, the fourth Voice of Night Vale has a boss, a screeching eldritch thing impervious to the Voice's influence and capable of destroying them. They build a prison to hold it, to keep it from turning its wrath on the town and they trap it inside forever. There is a contract signed, a pact in blood to seal the Voice to his duties and to his new master permanently, a set of limits and rules and restraints. He sells his soul to the creature in that building and they own him, will kill him if he rebels, a high price paid in exchange for the power he has been given. But it's a price paid willingly.
Eventually things change, slowly, as all towns do. Night Vale expands, and the Voice gains employees of his own; the howling prison of his unknowable bosses becomes the base around which a headquarters of sorts is built, full of people bustling to keep up with the ever changing events of Night Vale. Radio is invented and it's the best possible medium; A tower is erected and their base becomes a radio station, the Voice comes from a speaker instead of the air but is otherwise still the same. Life in Night Vale goes on.
It goes on for longer than should be possible, because time doesn't work quite the same way there. It goes on right up to the present moment, to the 54th Voice of Night Vale, who has inherited the legacy of all his predecessors and serves as a reflection of the town, of everything it is, embodied in a person and a voice. In this form, nothing can harm the town, not truly. There can be wanton destruction and death and misery, but in the end, as long as the Voice exists, Night Vale will survive. Night Vale will continue to be Night Vale, permanent and existent. There is nothing that can corrupt it.
Nothing, that is, until now.
==================
Carlos is silent for a long time after Cecil finishes talking, lost in thoughts and questions and confused by the scale of it all. It's too much to take in at one time. It doesn't help that in addition to being overwhelming on a purely intellectual level, it's about Cecil, who is also someone he is in love with, in a relationship with, which makes it concerning on a deeply personal level as well. He doesn't know what to ask first, and he doesn't know whether some of his questions will be more hurtful than supportive. How do you ask your boyfriend what are you or are you even human without hurting them? He can't figure it out, and he is quiet for far too long; Cecil begins to look concerned and starts to pull away.
"Carlos?" he asks, looking terribly vulnerable. There's a realization that Cecil has probably never told anyone what he just told Carlos. In fact, Cecil himself only recently learned some of this, Carlos knows. He is thinking just clearly enough to realize how unsure Cecil must be feeling, how nervous. He wishes he could figure out what to say to make it better, but he's got nothing. No words at all. Cecil pulls away further.
"Carlos… I understand that this is probably a lot to take in, especially for someone who isn't… isn't from here, isn't used to these kind of…things." Cecil said haltingly, awkwardly, hurt evident in his voice. "S-so, if you don't want to- I mean, if you're not comfortable, being around me…" he trailed off, looking miserable.
The look on his face finally manages to snap Carlos out of it, suddenly desperate to do something, anything, to make that hurt in Cecil's eyes go away. He still doesn't have the right words, so instead he leans across the table to grab Cecil by the tie and pulls him in to meet his lips in a rough and sudden kiss. It isn't very graceful, but there's feeling behind it, and Cecil is surprised for only a moment before he relaxes and kisses back, hesitant but with the same strength of emotion. They stay like that for a long minute, Cecil's hands in his hair. It's a nice minute, a needed respite from the dark oppressive weight of all that they have to deal with. When they pull apart, Cecil still looks nervous, but now there's hope lighting his face. Carlos smiles and Cecil returns it softly after a moment.
"S-so you're not… you're not bothered, by this? You're… I mean, we're… okay?" Cecil said carefully, still sounding painfully unsure. It makes Carlos' heart constrict in his chest.
"Of course we're okay, Cecil." He said, trying to make his voice sound as forceful and sure as he possibly can, given the circumstances. "I mean, um, of course I'm bothered, in that this is all very confusing and a bit much for me to wrap my head around, right this moment. And dios mio, it brings up so many questions, I don't even know where to start. But that's… that doesn't change the way that I feel about you, I mean, in a romantic way. It's uh, something we will probably have to, discuss, of course. At some point. In more detail. But I'm still here, and I still want to be here so," he realized he was rambling again. "Yes. Is what I'm saying. Yes, we're okay."
Cecil grinned and hugged him and Carlos felt sure he had done the right thing. "I do have a lot of questions though."
Cecil sat back and looked at him and laughed a little. It was the first time he'd laughed in far too long, nearly since Strex had come into town. "Carlos, you always have questions," he pointed out with a small grin. "You are just so full of questions, sometimes I wonder how it doesn't kill you."
Carlos laughed in return. "It feels like it might sometimes, to be honest."
And then they talked for a while, taking a moment to recover from the emotional stress of so many secrets revealed. Just the two of them, holding each other's hands as they sat in the dim gloom of Rico's basement. Eventually the conversation stops and neither of them say anything, but it's a comfortable silence. It stretches on and Carlos wishes they could just stay like that, just forget everything else. But they can't. The moment can't last because there's still so much they need to figure out. There's a war going on, and they're losing, and there's not enough time for quiet moments like this one. But Carlos doesn't want to have to be the one to end it.
Luckily, their reverie is broken by their waitress returning with plates full of steaming wheat products, so he doesn't have to. They both snap out of their quiet contemplation suddenly, a little disoriented, as they accept plates of food. Carlos has never smelled anything so amazing in his life. He thinks briefly that his mother would kill him if she could see how quickly he is shoveling food into his mouth, but it's just been way too long and there are tortillas. He wonders if he can get away with eating here more often.
Cecil seemed to be enjoying his as well, savoring bites of muffin with a degree of enthusiasm that was… well, actually, it was a bit disturbing. And kind of distracting.
Carlos coughed and tried to restart the conversation, hoping to get them back on topic.
"Cecil, what about Strex Corp? If… if what you said is true, then how are they doing this?"
Cecil swallowed a bite of muffin and shook his head in an angry, frustrated motion. "I don't know! They shouldn't be able to! I should have been able to stop this a long time ago! I don't… I don't understand why I can't."
Carlos took in this information, nodding slowly. "Okay, so you don't know what they're doing. We do know some things, though." He pulled out one of the many notebooks in his bag, the one where he wrote down all the observations he had made during the sandstorm, and later from listening to the broadcasts of that day, both of them. He had gotten ahold of a copy of Desert Bluffs broadcast thanks to Steve Carlsberg, and it had turned out to be a useful resource, if a completely terrifying one. They were lucky, Carlos thought, that they had found somewhere reasonably certain to be free of surveillance to have this conversation, since he had a feeling even the small bits of data he had managed to collect were dangerous, and almost certainly forbidden. He pulled open the notebook and leaned over to show Cecil.
"We know that they're based in Desert Bluffs. That place is a whole mystery in and of itself. The whole town seems to be run by Strex, and I think we can safely say that this isn't a good thing, based on what you saw in the radio station there. Then there's the whole issue of who you saw in the radio station, your supposed double. Everything there seems to be strangely aligned with what occurs in Night Vale, as far as I could tell from my limited observation. The names and sometimes even genders of the citizens are different, but they play much the same role, and events occur in very similar fashion…" Carlos started to read off everything he had managed to deduce about Strex, and about Desert Bluffs, since the two were obviously correlated. Cecil nodded and listened intently, interjecting with questions or theories every once in a while, which they would discuss. They both agreed that however Strex was managing to invade Night Vale, it probably was connected somehow to the strange entanglement between the two towns themselves, but neither of them had a model for how that might work. They also agreed that Strex was awful and probably evil and definitely very bad for Night Vale. Beyond that, they didn't make too much progress.
Finally, by the time that Cecil's watch said it was nearly morning, they were both too exhausted to continue the futile effort. They had gone through about three plates of food during the course of the night, and they didn't really have any more ideas of what to do than when they started. The Strex employees at the station would be coming in to work in less than two hours. Carlos yawned, and started to pack up his stuff, gathering the notebooks and papers that had gotten scattered across the table during their discussion. He slid out of the booth and held out a hand to help up Cecil, who had been laying down across his seat for the past couple hours. They paid their check on their way out the door, adding money to the tip until the waitress stopped making her unbearable screeching noise. Then they walked up the stairs in silence, through the lobby of Big Rico's, which of course was always open and full of people, and out into the warm dawn air.
All in all, Carlos wasn't sure it had been a particularly fruitful night. I mean sure, they both knew more than they had yesterday, and Carlos always appreciated the value of knowledge of any kind, but in the end, they still didn't have enough to formulate a plan. And in this case, even a scientist had to accept that knowledge by itself was useless unless they could do something with it. He sighed as they walked to the car, Carlos driving this time.
"Where to?"
"The station." Cecil answered immediately, and Carlos pulled out of the parking lot. Really, he thought he might be too tired to be a safe driver, but considering the state of driving safety in Night Vale as a whole, he doubted anyone would ticket him if he swerved a little. Luckily the station wasn't to far off.
Cecil, meanwhile, was silent, thoughtful, as they pulled up into the parking lot of his work. Carlos glanced at him, concerned. He knew Cecil was probably as tired as he was, but there was something in that look that seemed like it was more than just exhaustion.
"Cecil, are you okay?"
Cecil was silent for a while, staring out the window at the radio station tower, not making any move to get out of the car. "I think… I have an idea." he said after a moment. "A way to get more information. Possibly the only way. I need more information. This is my job, I have to fight this it's… it's what I was made for."
Carlos nodded, confused as to why Cecil sounded so… nervous. Like he was apologizing in advance. Any more information was a good thing, right? He would have thought it was a good thing. And yet the look on Cecil's face made Carlos certain it wasn't going to be a good thing.
"Cecil, what are you planning on doing?" he asked as Cecil hopped out of the car, definitely not wanting to know the answer anymore. Cecil looked at him, determined, mind obviously already made up.
"I'm going to go talk with Station Management."