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Even a stopped clock is right twice a day — which is more often than most clocks. Remove the batteries from all of your time-telling devices today and live a life free from the tyranny of expectation.
Welcome to Night Vale.
I’d like to begin our broadcast today with an update on the summer reading program. This year’s competition has been uncommonly bloodless, for which all credit and blame should go first to this year’s front-runner, Lyfrassir Edda, whose stunning displays of sportsmanship and speed-reading have been keeping the summer reading program a gripping viewing experience even in spite of the unexpected lack of dismemberment. We managed to secure a brief interview with Edda before the show began. When we asked them what the secret to their success so far had been, they said, “Really, it’s a question of quality over quantity. You get a lot of younger kids, they think they can game the system by reading a lot of shorter books and finishing early, but the real power comes from the classics. Do you know how hard it is to penetrate War and Peace with a dagger?”
Edda was last sighted barricading themself and a gang of younger children in the bunker beneath non-fiction, pursued by a roving band of hungry librarians.
The other person responsible for the low student-mortality rate this summer, of course, is notoriously human librarian Ivy Alexandria who, as the organizer of this event, has of course been playing the role of referee over the proceedings. Now, I don’t want to sound like some kind of old crank, but back in my day, we didn’t have a human librarian calling fouls every time a regular librarian took a bite out of a sleeping child. And you know what? Those of us who survived learned from that experience. I, for one, learned never to sleep in an unsecured location a librarian might be able to track my scent to.
Moving on with the headlines, there have been several reports of residents seeing …themselves. Not pictures of themselves, not close relatives, not independently-mobile reflections in mirrors, but just themselves, external to themselves. Responses to these apparitions have varied. Let’s just say that the meme about whether or not you would — have relations which would be censored from the radio — with your clone isn’t a hypothetical question anymore. We have no evidence that these other selves mean any harm, but the city council recommends stabbing your double anyway. Just to be safe, they say.
We don’t know where these doubles come from, and we don’t know what they want. The city council says: DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM FOR THEY ONLY TELL LIES. LAY THEM TO REST LIKE THE CRIMES AGAINST ALL THAT IS NATURAL AND GOOD IN THIS WORLD THAT THEY ARE. KILL YOUR DOUBLE. KILL YOUR DOUBLE.
So there you have it, listeners. Sensible safety advice from a reliable source. And now, traffic.
There has been an accident at the intersection of Hemlock Drive and Arsenic Lane. Alice Liddel turned a corner and almost walked right into General Cat, of Cat’s General Store. Then Alice tried to move to the left to allow Cat to pass, but Cat was also stepping to the right to let Alice go by, and they almost collided again. Then Alice laughed a little, in that awkward way, you know, where she mostly wanted to diffuse the tension, even if she didn’t think the situation was very funny? But General Cat was kind of spaced out and just smiled a little vaguely and—
Listeners, we interrupt this story for a piece of breaking news of public safety importance. Intern Rose tells me — she really is a good intern, Intern Rose, which I was not expecting when I hired her, since she wrote on her application that she only wanted to work here to wreak her vengeance upon me for allowing her sister to be disappeared and, in all probability, killed in a grisly and unlikely manner. But anyway! Intern Rose tells me that only a vocal minority of the population of the town has listened to the city council’s sage advice and killed your doubles. For shame, listeners! When the governing body of your municipally beloved locale says that the being who wears your face and speaks with your voice and calls out to you, asking for your help, must be dealt with in the form of cold-blooded murder, it is your duty to sharpen your knives and get to it.
Intern Rose has killed her double, listeners, and her courage should be a lesson to you all! Anyway, I’m pretty sure it was Intern Rose and not her double who prevailed — the fight was a rough one, and both Intern Rose and her double were equally scrappy, so it was a little difficult to keep track of which of them was which in the heat of battle, but I am almost certain, I am sure within a fraction of a percentage, that it is the original Intern Rose standing over her double’s corpse and telling me that a troubling number of you have been having polite conversations with your doubles, and that a truly alarming number of them remain unstabbed.
I have not yet been discovered by my double, but I assure you that when I do, I will lead by example, and record for you all the gruesome sounds of his bloody demise. I would have thought that our town’s most recent professional hired killer would be a bit quicker on the draw, if you know what I mean, when it comes to killing his double, but instead Tim is—
—You can’t see this, listeners, but Intern Rose, or her double, is doing a slashing movement across her throat. No, Rose, his weapon is a long-range rifle, I don’t think throat-slitting is really his style — although I can see what the appeal of the increased intimacy of it would be, if it was your double… oh. Listeners, Intern Rose, or her double, has just whispered into my ear that her gesture meant that she thought that I should shut up. She says, and I quote, “Maybe stop doing stories about Tim the beautiful sniper, because if you actually want to get to know him, it will make things kind of awkward.” I told you she was a good intern, didn’t I, listeners?
On that note, let’s return to the news.
Yesterday marks the sixth time the Toy Soldier has missed bowling practice, and even the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna — proprietress of Nastya’s Auto Repair and Dry Cleaning, which holds its Happy Hour on Thursdays, drop by for an excellent deal — is starting to get annoyed. Nastya said, “Come on, Jonny, I want to get home some time tonight, obviously TS isn’t coming, it’s still manacled to the city council’s endless water-wheel of sorrows pending its arraignment next week, can we just practice without it?”
Do you hear that, TS? Before you know it we’ll have to start auditioning ringers to take your spot, it we’re going to have any shot at the title.
Finally, an announcement. Drumbot Brian — you know, the necromancer? — will be hosting a symposium on the subject of the externalization of the self as a tool for psychological self-actualization. The symposium will be held at the edge of the old gravel pit out behind the elementary school tomorrow night, at whatever time it is that enough people have gathered to start to have a proper conversation.
And that’s it for our show tonight, listeners! It’s perfect timing, too, since I’m pretty sure I can see —
[The sound of the opening violin solo of “Tales to be Told” can be heard faintly in the distance.]
Yes, that’s my double there, scaling the window with a mad grin on his face and a knife between his teeth. I’m off to do my civic duty and get him in the jugular, so for now, good night, Night Vale. Good night.