Chapter Text
Night Vale was as much an escape for Carlos as it was an opportunity of great scientific value. He’d get to study all the outright bizarre stories and phenomenon he’d heard about, right from the supposed source of them, but he’d also get away from all the people who told him he was wrong, a scientific improbability, a disgrace to his field of study. And that wasn’t even including the people who just didn’t care enough to change the name they called him.
Night Vale was a new beginning for Carlos, and he took great care with his responsibility over it. He hand-picked only the most accepting scientists for his team and ignored all the homophobic and transphobic applicants who just wanted their names on what would surely be groundbreaking papers about the small desert town. Carlos ended up with a team of four, Dave, Rochelle, Nilanjana and Stan, and after a week of final preparations and equipment orders they set out for Night Vale.
Carlos was the first to arrive in Night Vale, having driven more or less straight through the last two nights of travel, eager to reach the town and start setting their lab space up. The others had opted to stay in a motel each night, and Carlos had joined them at first, using the time for team bonding and talking about what each of them wanted to do when they reached Night Vale. The third and fourth nights of driving Carlos had pushed on instead, only pulling off the road to nap in his car when he physically couldn’t keep driving.
The fifth day was the day Carlos reached Night Vale. The town had appeared out of nowhere on the horizon around 11:30 and by 1pm Carlos was driving down the main road, blinking blearily at the pedestrians staring at him. He knew he looked a mess, the first thing on his to-do list was to find the lab building and shower, but he couldn’t quite work out whether that warranted everyone staring at him or if there was something else going on. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, tugging the seat belt away from his body and letting it snap back into place before he reached out and turned up the volume on the stereo, still playing the mixed 80s CD Dave had left behind.
Carlos tried to ignore all the stares as he continued down the road, nodding his head in time to the beat and taking the opportunity to check his directions while stopped at a red light.
After adjusting to the fact the instructions were written in terms of landmarks, rather than street names, Carlos found his way to the lab space relatively easily. The only real confusion came from the Escher-like geography that allowed him to take five consecutive right turns while ending up on a different street each time.
Carlos pulled into the lab’s driveway, taking a moment to dig a notebook out of the backseat clutter and make a note to investigate the street geography, and climbed out of his car, stretching out in every way possible and grimacing at the dry desert heat. Carlos locked his car and looked down the street, trying to find the place with ‘the bright neon sign, you’ll know it when you see it, promise’ that his directions said would have the lab keys.
The lab itself was a grey three-story affair, with tall windows on the front of every level and four huge ventilation ducts on the back of the roof. To one side of the building was the driveway, now with Carlos’ car parked in it, and an empty lot, with shapes in the dry grass indicating where walls and doors and lives used to be. Across the road were some low-rise apartment buildings, the kind that had five or six apartments spread across three floors, each one painted a different bright colour. There was a hot pink one, with flowers growing on each of the little balconies; a green one, with laundry hanging out on the top floor and someone staring at Carlos from the second floor; and a light blue one, where the bottom floor still had christmas decorations draped over the railings while the other floors looked empty and deserted. On the other side of the lab, sharing the sidewall of the building to halfway up the second floor, was a pizza place, Big Rico’s written on its sign in large letters that were probably brightly-lit neon at night.
Carlos gave his shoulders a long, slow roll, regretting his inability to shower before interacting with people, and waved at the person staring at him before he turned and walked up to the doors of Big Rico’s. The sign claimed the store was ‘Open and municipally mandated!!’ with a picture of a smiling pizza slice giving the reader a thumbs up, and it swung slightly from side to side as Carlos pushed the door open and stepped inside to the sound of a jingling bell.
Carlos shuffled in slowly, not wanting to bump into anyone or anything while his eyes adjusted to the new dimness of the indoors. He could hear people’s conversations slowly come to a halt as he walked in and he froze, feeling the prickle of many pairs of eyes coming to focus on him. As his eyes adjusted, Carlos saw the people staring at him, some with a piece of pizza in their hands, forgotten, others with mouths half-open, staring at him with wide-eyes, and even others, half-squinting with their heads tilted, like he was a puzzle that needed to be solved.
Carlos looked around them all, taking in the people of this small town and, after taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders, ignored them all and walked over to the service counter. He’s glad there’s no line in front of it, it meant he could walk right to the front and speak to the attendant immediately.
“Excuse me,” Carlos started before pausing to clear his throat and pitch his voice down slightly. “I’m renting the lab next door? I was told the keys would be here.”
The attendant nodded slowly, staring at Carlos’ hair, even while turning away, their eyes remaining on what Carlos was sure was a sweaty, matted mess.
“Rico! The lab guy’s here!” The attendant called into the kitchen, starting the slow turn back to face Carlos, their movement slow enough to make the scientist shift uncomfortably. “He’ll be right with you.” The attendant said, smiling dreamily while they waited.
It couldn’t have been more than five minutes of standing and waiting, but with each creeping minute of silence and staring from the attendant Carlos became more and more aware of his sweat-soaked body and matted hair and the bags no doubt residing under his eyes. He really was a mess and he mentally kicked himself for driving through the nights instead of stopping somewhere and showering.
“You the guy here ‘bout the lab?” Carlos was jerked out of his thoughts by a new voice, deep and echoing through the store.
“Uh, yes? I’m Carlos, I’m renting the lab next door?” Carlos’ voice pitched up in his uncertainty, looking up at the intimidating form of, presumably, Big Rico.
“Nice to meetcha, I’m Big Rico, but you can just call me Rico.” Rico offered a big grin and a broad palm that swallowed Carlos’ hand when he shook it. Rico gave an appreciative nod at Carlos’ firm handshake before crouching down to rummage through the cupboards under the counter, searching for something. Carlos fought the urge to rise up on his toes to get a look at what Rico was doing, settling for rocking back on his heels and tucking his hands into his pockets instead.
Rico straightened with a groan, clutching a set of keys in one hand and a stapled sheaf of paper in his other. “Here’s your keys, and here’s all the information about utilities, security sigils, bloodstone chants and your holiday insurance.” Rico said, passing the documents and keys over to a mildly bewildered Carlos.
“S-security sigils? Bloodstone chants?” Carlos stammered, eyes skimming the front piece of paper.
“Ah, don’t worry about it, I’m sure you’ll know all about that.” Rico laughed, reaching over the counter to slap a hand on Carlos’ shoulder. “And if you lot ever need anything, anything , just let me know. See ya around!” Rico waved and headed back to the kitchen, leaving Carlos with more questions than answers as he left the pizzeria and returned to his lab.
Carlos let out a small groan as he stepped from the cool interior of Big Rico’s and back into the heat of the outside, not wasting any time in his path to his car, briefly, to get his duffel from the trunk, and then to the lab’s front door. It only took a little fumbling from Carlos to find the right key and get the door open, and he was tripping across the threshold before he could blink.
From his position, sprawled on the floor with his duffle off to the side somewhere, Carlos could really admire the lab space. The back wall consisted of what looked like an industrial cold room next to four fume cupboards, all painted a garish mint green. In the corner a narrow set of stairs was tucked away between a small cupboard and the first of three offices lining the Big-Rico’s side-wall. The other wall was lined with cupboards all the way down, occasional sinks and gas taps coated in a thick layer of dust along the countertop. The ceiling was open in the middle, giving glimpses of a sectioned second floor and the water-stained ceiling above it.
Making a mental note to check for leaks in the bathrooms above, Carlos pushed himself off the dusty floor, abandoning his duffle temporarily as he walked around his lab space. “My lab space!” He said aloud, unable to believe it and letting out a breathless laugh that echoed around the room.
Carlos investigated each of the offices, finding them all dusty and stocked with a bench and cupboards as well as a sink and gas tap. One of them had shelves fixed to the wall and he grinned, mentally claiming it for himself already, even going so far as to write his name in the dust on the bench.
Carlos left his office and looked around again, already picturing how the lab would look filled with humming equipment and bustling scientists. Another grin settled over his face as he walked over to the door, pushing it shut and picking his duffel and the papers he’d dropped off the ground.
Slinging his bag over his shoulder and briefly flicking through the papers, Carlos started heading towards the stairs in the corner. He stopped skimming through the papers long enough to climb the stairs and take a look at the second floor. The majority of this floor was cubicles, just walled-off areas where a desk and chair would fit nicely, maybe a microscope too. They wouldn’t be hard to dismantle, but it would be worthwhile to keep a few of them, Carlos thought.
Carlos didn’t spare much time on the second floor, instead heading for the third floor, where the living spaces were. He already knew there were three rooms, one with an ensuite and one communal bathroom for the other two. They’d already talked room arrangements over as a team and it was agreed that Carlos would get the ensuite room, as the team leader, and that Rochelle and Nilanjana would share one room while Dave and Stan shared the other.
The stairs came up into a hallway that opened into a communal kitchen/living room, with the oven and stove in one front corner and an old couch sitting atop an ancient rug in the middle of the floor. Next to the kitchen was the first bedroom, which was outfitted with basic dorm furniture, with a door to the shared bathroom in the back of the room. The bathroom was wedged between the bedrooms, the only entry points being through either one of the bedrooms. Carlos passed through the bathroom to look into the other bedroom quickly, more checking that it had the right number of beds than any real concern about the room, and then headed through the living room to his own room, tucked into the front corner across the building from the kitchen.
Carlos’ room was dim when he stepped into it, the curtains closed over the windows that took up the most part of the outer walls, and dropped his duffel onto his bed, kicking up a cloud of dust that made him cough. He waved the dust from his face, giving a few big coughs to clear his airways before he unzipped his duffel and started searching for his towel and some clean clothes. Having found what he was looking for, Carlos nudged the bathroom door open with his foot and dropped his bundle of fabrics on the cold tiles.
A quick scan of the bathroom showed a basic sink, toilet and shower, as well as a mirrored cabinet mounted above the sink and a towel rack opposite the shower door. A quick fumble against the wall later and the fluorescent light on the roof flickered on with a low hum, casting Carlos’ usually warm tones in a sickly greenish light as he peered in the mirror, making him look worse than he actually did. Carlos quickly turned his back on the mirror, shutting the door and pressing in the lock in the handle, even though he logically knew there was no reason to.
Carlos stripped efficiently, tugging off his dirt-stained lab coat and throwing it aside before he toed off his shoes and threw his socks after the coat. He paused for a moment, searching for a fan switch on the wall and then, when he couldn’t find one, turning to the covered over window and prying it open an inch, just enough to let the steam out as he showered. Ventilation sorted, Carlos started the shower, giving the hot water time to arrive from wherever the water heater was hidden in the lab. While the water pattered against the shower floor, Carlos slid his glasses off and sat them beside the sink so he could tug his plaid shirt off over his head without undoing the buttons. The plaid joined the growing pile of laundry in the corner and Carlos focussed on that, the thought of buying a hamper and working out where there was a laundromat in town was, rather than the way he peeled his binder off, feeling both freer and more trapped as he tossed it aside and stretched out. Carlos could tell the water was heating up by the increased mugginess in the room and quickly kicked out of his jeans and underwear to all but dive under the stream of water, sighing at the feeling of days of grime slowly washing off his body.
Carlos gave his whole body a precursory rub down, focussing on rubbing away all the stale sweat and desert dust and not on what exactly he was rubbing. He always found something else to focus on when he showered, often it was task lists or experiment methodologies, but now he was so tired all he needed to think about was what he was washing away.
After the first rinse off, Carlos ducked back into his room to get his small bag of toiletries, mainly his shower gel and 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner, and set about giving himself a more thorough rubdown, this time while thinking about what the first things to buy would be. They had budgeted to have money when they arrived in town to buy things like a fridge and food and maybe a second hand washer/dryer, and they had double and triple checked the amount set aside to make sure it would go as far as they needed it too. But Carlos needed something to occupy his mind and so decided to spend his shower estimating how much, exactly, he would need to buy a vacuum cleaner, a fridge and enough sheets for everyone’s beds.
By the time Carlos was scrubbed clean from his hair to his toes, he had a full first-day shopping list and an estimate of how much it would cost the team, as well as an intent to go out immediately and get it all, or at least as much as possible. Carlos dressed as efficiently as he undressed, drying his body brusquely and then wrapping his towel around his hair to help it dry. He pondered how long his hair was while he tugged on his boxers, they had little beakers and conical flasks on them, and decided that as soon as he had time he’d get a haircut, but for now there were more important things to be bought. Jeans followed the boxers, and then Carlos’ binder, pulled on with a small groan but leaving a smile on his face as he felt his chest smooth out into what he was comfortable with. A quick spray of deodorant and he tugged his shirt on, following it with another plaid shirt, this time unbuttoned and with the sleeves rolled up.
Carlos left his bathroom rubbing at his hair with his towel, he’d need to go back and get his glasses and brush his hair, but for now he was getting a clean pair of socks from his bag. Carlos froze as he approached his bed, a piece of paper laid out next to his duffel where there had been nothing but dust before his shower.
‘Dear Lab Resident,’ the note started, the lettering spidery and written in a deep purple ink. ‘Your presence is requested at City Hall at no later than 3pm today to hold a Town Meeting about your presence in this town and what it means for our people.’ The signature on the note was illegible, but the chances were it was from the Mayor of Night Vale.
Carlos swore and ran back to the bathroom, digging through his pile of laundry to find his jeans, and his phone, to check the time.
“1:50. Fuck.” Carlos thumped his head against the bathroom wall. “One hour to put together a full presentation. Fuck .”
oOo
The town meeting was a success. Carlos managed to pull a vague presentation together and make it to the City Hall with a few minutes to spare to calm himself and set up. It was a little unnerving how everyone had turned to look at him as he bustled through the doors, laptop tucked under his arm and the lab coat he’d pulled on as he left the lab billowing around him, but their attentiveness helped him calm as he stood before them and spoke to them. Carlos told the people of Night Vale that they were living in what was by far the most scientifically interesting community in the US, between the nonsensical seismological readings and the lights in the sky they’d heard rumours of, and that Carlos was sure he and his team would have plenty to study while in town.
Carlos finished the meeting by taking questions from the audience, fielding a few about how long he and his team would be in town (two years, unless their funding was renewed), where his team was right now (still on their way to town) and what his first point of study would be (probably the seismological monitoring station on the edge of town). Carlos was in the middle of thanking the people for attending when a final hand shot up in the back of the room, a shirt cuff rolled up the arm and bearing an interestingly tattooed forearm.
“Excuse me,” The arm’s owner said in a deep baritone, standing and flushing when Carlos met his gaze. “Mr Scientist,”
“Please, just call me Carlos.” Carlos said, tucking his hands into his pockets while the asker grinned at him.
“Oh, Carlos ,” The man sighed, almost swooning where he stood and Carlos couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow in question, wondering exactly where this was going. “Carlos, I’m Cecil, from Night Vale Community Radio. I was wondering, for the sake of my listeners, of course, what you do to get your perfect hair to look so, well,” Cecil paused, giving a low chuckle and shaking his head, “perfect?”
Carlos felt his cheeks get hot as he stood there, staring at this man, Cecil, who had asked about his hair, his “ perfect” hair, which was no doubt actually a terrible mess from the frantic fingers Carlos had been running through it as he tried to prepare for this meeting. Carlos was frozen, stuck in Cecil’s eager gaze like a deer in a set of headlights, fighting the urge to scoff and run from the hall and this radio host who just had to be mocking him.
“U-uhm…” Carlos said, flinching as his voice came out high and strained. “I’m sorry Mr…”
“Palmer! But please, just Cecil is fine.” Cecil jumped in, all but bouncing on his heels.
“I’m sorry Mr Palmer ,” Carlos said slowly, forcing his voice down from his surprised squeak. “I don’t quite see the relevance of that question.” Carlos disconnected his laptop and tucked it under his arm. “Thank you all for coming today, please don’t hesitate to drop by our lab space, next to Big Rico’s, if you have any further questions.” With that Carlos gave a jerky bow towards the audience and breezed off the stage and towards the doors. Behind him Carlos could hear the sound of many conversations starting at once, as well as a single familiar baritone, slowly getting closer to him with each muttered ‘excuse me’ as he all but ran from the room.
“Mr Scientist, Carlos.” Cecil called, freeing himself from the last seat in his row and following Carlos as he left the hall, reaching out to catch the scientist’s shoulder with his fingers.
“Mr Palmer, please. I have science that needs doing.” Carlos said, shrugging off Cecil’s hand, but conceding and turning to face the radio host. “What can I help you with?” Carlos sighed upon seeing Cecil’s downcast face.
“Oh, well, I just wanted to welcome you to our lovely little town!” Cecil bounced back quickly, smiling and blushing as he spoke. “Also, well, everyone listens to my show, not to brag or anything but NVCR is the best source of local news, and I thought it might be helpful if you had my phone number? For if there’s any vital information you need to share with the town, that is.”
Carlos hesitated, his fingers slowly drifting towards his pocket as he weighed the pros and cons of getting the radio host’s number. “I’m not sure, Mr Palmer. Phones can be dangerous in lab situations, say if I received a message from you and I accidentally spilled some acid in my haste to read it,” Carlos paused, flushing as he realised how that sounded and rushing to clarify, “since it would, of course, be coming from a credible news source.”
“Oh, I understand.” Cecil said, eyes downcast and lips frowning. “Though…” The radio host paused, biting at his lip and seemingly having an argument with himself. “What if I didn’t initiate conversation, only responded to you? I can promise to do that if it would make your science safer.” Cecil nodded eagerly to himself, already smiling again and looking at Carlos like a pleading child.
Carlos gave a small smile and tugged his phone from his pocket, opening a new contact page and titling it ‘NVCR’ before handing it to Cecil to put the number in. “Okay, thank you Mr Palmer, I’ll be sure only to contact you in an emergency.” He said, watching Cecil’s deft fingers fly over the number pad.
“Of course Carlos, though... if you ever happened to want to discuss other things, say dinner plans, or coffee meetings, that would be more than welcome too.” Cecil gave a shy smile, cupping Carlos’ hand from below with one hand while his other pressed the scientist’s phone into his palm. “And please, I insist, call me Cecil.”
“Okay,” Carlos said with a sigh, gently disentangling his hand from Cecil’s. “Thank you Cecil. But I really should be going, I need to get the lab set up for the rest of my team.”
Carlos gave Cecil a final, slightly awkward smile, and turned to the front doors of City Hall, strolling through them as he heard Cecil calling a goodbye from behind him.
Carlos made a mental note to buy a radio amongst all his other purchases, if NVCR really was the best place for local news then he might be able to learn about all kinds of events that needed to be investigated from it.
oOo
Shopping in Night Vale was a whole new experience for Carlos, but one he managed to make it out of mostly unscathed. He’d had to abandon his labcoat in the white goods store when the salespeople turned vicious in the middle of taking down his delivery address, but he managed to sign on the line and escape with only a small scratch on his arm from when the salesman had jumped on his back. Visiting the Target was baffling, considering the bedding department was exactly perpendicular to the rest of the store, and without its own gravity to at least make browsing easier. The staff had set up a few ladders, presumably from the hardware aisles, so that customers could reach the top of the bedding, but it was hard to balance on the ladder and pick seven sets of sheets off the shelves.
The rest of Carlos’ trip through Target was easier, though no less baffling. The toy section was contained in a 1 meter square cage, the geometry that made it possible giving him a headache when he tried to work it out, and when Carlos reached the music section, looking for something other than Dave’s 80’s music to listen to, he found it filled with radios and alarm clocks. He picked out a radio for the lab, and a smaller one for his own room, and left the area, giving up on trying to understand anything for the time being.
“I can always come back later.” He told himself, ignoring the way his fingers were itching to take notes and walking towards the homewares section. “Tomorrow, or when the others arrive.”
The homewares section was surprisingly the most normal part of the store, featuring mops, buckets and vacuum cleaners, though the section dedicated to bloodstone circle maintenance and ‘how to use your bloodstones to prevent ichor stains’ was new to Carlos. He took one of the books off the shelf and flipped through the pages, a lot of them featuring large blocks of text under incredibly detailed diagrams or indescribable symbols that seemed to move on the page. Carlos shrugged and threw it into his shopping cart, remembering Big Rico mentioning bloodstones and figuring it was worth researching a little.
Carlos filled the rest of his cart with a full-sized vacuum cleaner, as well as a small hand-held one, a handful of cleaning cloths, two mops and two buckets. Nodding at his load of goods, Carlos turned himself towards the checkouts, passing shelves of cleaning products, clocks, clothes, blood ritual manuals that he stopped and blinked at, and eventually the medical section, which Carlos detoured through to pick up a well-stocked first aid kit.
At the checkouts Carlos muttered a brief greeting to the person standing at the counter and started unloading his cart onto the conveyer belt. The worker gave Carlos a crooked smile, showing blood-stained fangs as they started scanning his items. Carlos just shrugged the teeth off, already done with the town’s weirdness for the day, postponing any freakouts until the rest of his team arrived so at least they could all lose it together.
“I see you made it through the bedding department.” The worker commented, scanning the sheet sets and sliding them into a bag to be passed to Carlos.
“Yeah, is it always like that? It seems a bit inconvenient.” Carlos commented, pulling the Team debit card from his wallet to pay for his purchases.
“Nah, just every 5th Tuesday.” The cashier answered, tugging the receipt from the printer and presenting the bottom as well as a needle to Carlos. “Just a blood smear please, and you’re good to go.”
Carlos winced as he pricked his thumb with the needle and smeared it across the signature line before passing it back to the cashier and being passed his copy of the receipt. “Thank you, have a good evening.”
“You too Mr Scientist!” The cashier called as Carlos left the store.
oOo
The first things Carlos unpacked from his car were the bigger of the two radios, both vacuum cleaners and the cleaning cloths. It took him three trips, but he stacked the boxes beside the door and set about opening them all, starting with the big vacuum, which he immediately used to clear some of the dust from a patch of bench where he proceeded to set up the radio. He turned the radio on and searched the frequencies until he found something resembling music, deeming it good enough and tugging off his overshirt to tie around his waist as he started cleaning in earnest.
All the surfaces in the lab needed a good clean, most of them layered in dust as they were. The vacuum dealt with the most of the dust as Carlos moved around the room, methodically vacuuming the countertops and then the floors underneath them and opening the windows as he moved along, eager to get a breeze passing through. Carlos hummed tunelessly as he vacuumed, trying not to think about the attacks of the salesmen at the white goods store or the mind-bending geography of the Target. Those thoughts could wait, there was always a better time for breakdowns, and right now there was a lot of cleaning to be done. Carlos turned to the big, open floor and vacuumed across it, tugging more of the power cord out as he crossed the room and mentally recapped his town meeting.
For the most part Carlos was glad that people had been paying attention, though it was doubtful that the radio host, Cecil, had been listening all that much, considering his question.
“Perfect, my hair, ha!” Carlos laughed, a little bitterly, as he pushed in to vacuum what would be his office. “Like anything I have could be considered perfect.” Carlos frowned to himself, reaching to get the very corners of his office, making a small noise of disappointment when it proved too much of a stretch for the power cord.
Carlos rolled the vacuum cleaner out of his office, leaving it in the middle of the lab floor and replacing it with the hand held vacuum to finish the job. While he was in the main room Carlos took the time to turn the radio up, noting with surprise that it had changed from the music to a news program, with Cecil’s voice talking about a dog park. Carlos let Cecil’s words fade away, just taking the sound of the host’s voice with him into the other offices as he used the handheld vacuum to clear out the last of the dust from them.
With the last of the vacuuming done, Carlos jogged out to his car to get the mops and buckets, blinking and shielding his eyes as the late afternoon sun hit his face when he stepped outside.
“Huh,” Carlos huffed, checking his watch and looking up at the sun again. “ Huh .” Carlos dug his phone out of his pocket and looked up the sunset times. “That’s not right.” He hummed thoughtfully, frowning at the sun. He backtracked to his car, leaning close to the front window so he could read the clock on the dashboard which read a definite 7:20, matching both Carlos’ phone and watch, and denying the sunset time of 7:15.
Carlos opened the back door of his car, rummaging through all the bits and pieces he’d packed neatly but had been shifted on the drive, and found a stopwatch that matched all his other clocks.
“The sunset’s late .” He said to himself, squinting into the stubbornly-present sun. Carlos’ fingers twitched towards his phone, wanting to call his team and tell them about this discovery, this phenomenon he was seeing with his very own eyes , but he remembered being told about difficulties communicating with Night Vale and he sagged. It was a much less exciting discovery without someone to share it with.
Carlos collected the mops and buckets from where he’d dropped them and trudged back into the lab, beelining to the nearest sink to fill one of the buckets with warm water. He drizzled in some dish detergent he’d had in his car, still frowning about his unshared discovery when he heard the voice on the radio talking about him.
“Carlos told us we were by far the most scientifically interesting community in the U.S.,” Cecil was saying, and Carlos smiled, appreciating the realisation that Cecil had, in fact, been paying more attention than Carlos thought he had been. “And that he had come to study just what was going on around here.”
Carlos gasped, his phone in his hand and already composing a text before he’d even finished his thought. He did have someone he could tell. Through Cecil, Carlos could tell the whole of Night Vale about anything important, Cecil himself had said so. Carlos wrote a brief text summing up the discovery and laid his phone on the bench, turning back to his slowly filling bucket with a smile. He wasn’t expecting a response, but just knowing he had told someone filled Carlos with the renewed excitement of discovery.
Carlos turned the taps off and heaved the bucket of soapy water out of the sink, putting it on the floor and dunking one of the two mops into it. His phone buzzed on the benchtop, startling Carlos out of his preliminary experiment building thoughts. He glanced at the lit-up screen, managing to catch only the first word of the message before the screen dimmed again.
Carlos scooped his phone up and unlocked it, reading Cecil’s message quickly.
‘Carlos!!! Darling Carlos, are you sure the sunset was late??? What do you think caused it??!!’
‘Yes, Cecil, I am sure. I checked the time on at least 4 different clocks, and each of them said it was 7:20 and the sun was still up even though it was supposed to set at 7:15! As for the cause, I don’t yet know. I will have to run some experiments when the rest of my team get here and though I am already thinking of some ideas, a very important part of being a scientist, I’m sure they will have some great things to add to it.’
Carlos’ fingers flew across his phone screen as he wrote his message, eager to tell Cecil more in the hopes he would mention it on his show and thus possibly be able to get more information about it from the other townspeople.
Carlos put his phone back on the bench and started mopping the lab floor even while he started to yawn, he wanted to get the bottom floor clean so he could start setting up some proper lab equipment tomorrow. It didn’t take long for Cecil to reply again, but Carlos ignored the message in favour of finishing the mopping and emptying the bucket into the sink.
Cecil’s voice was still coming from the radio, talking now about NRA slogans, and Carlos let the sound wash over him while he looked around the freshly-cleaned lab and nodded to himself.
Satisfied with the state of the bottom floor, Carlos tucked his phone into his pocket, hooked his arm through the handles of the Target bag, which was filled with the sheets and the smaller radio, and bundled the vacuum cleaner into his arms, ready to take his cleaning to the top floors.
Getting to the second floor was surprisingly easy for Carlos, and when he got there he placed the vacuum cleaner on the floor and trundled it along the hall to the next staircase. For the second staircase Carlos decided to leave the vacuum cleaner at the bottom, taking just the sheets and radio upstairs to start with.
He set the radio up on the kitchen counter, tuning it to NVCR, and grinning happily when he heard Cecil talking about his sunset discovery. While he listened to Cecil talk about the sun, Carlos bustled around, setting the right number of sheet sets into the various rooms and hanging the now-empty bag on his bedroom door handle to act as a bin. Carlos paused a moment to wipe the sheen of sweat from his brow and check the message he’d received from Cecil while mopping.
‘Oh wow that does sound odd and scientific!!! I hope you and your team are able to work it out Dear Carlos!! Are you perchance available to meet and discuss this over coffee tomorrow????’ Cecil had ended his message with a handful of hearts and kissing emojis that made Carlos cringe and blush.
‘I am certain we will be able to work it out. We are scientists, after all. Working things out is what we do.’ Carlos replied, deliberately ignoring Cecil’s invitation to coffee.
Yawning again, Carlos tucked his phone back into his pocket and trudged downstairs to collect the vacuum cleaner. “I’ll just do my room tonight.” He told himself, hauling the machinery upstairs. “The others won’t need their rooms until tomorrow night at least.” Carlos nodded to himself, feeling his phone buzz in his pocket and ignoring it as he dragged the vacuum cleaner into his room, moving his duffel off the bed to vacuum up the dust that coated the mattress.
Carlos vacuumed his room quickly, yawning frequently as he went and desperately wishing for sleep even though it was barely 8pm. A soft guitar tune played on the radio as Carlos unpackaged his sheets and started making his bed, cursing softly halfway through as he realised he’d forgotten to get pillows and blankets for everyone. Luckily it was still warm enough on the top floor to be able to sleep without the need of a blanket, but it would be damn uncomfortable without a pillow.
“First thing tomorrow.” Carlos promised to the empty room, tucking his top sheet in and surveying his handiwork. He pushed the vacuum cleaner out of his room with a foot, following it to collect his small radio as he prepared for bed. The radio was set on the desk pushed into the corner of his room, and Carlos tugged his shirt off, laying it on his bed before he wriggled out of his binder and threw it to the floor, pulling his shirt back on hastily.
Cecil’s voice came back on the radio as Carlos shuffled into the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face before bed. He considered having another shower, to wash away the sweat of the day, but ultimately he was far too tired to deal with his dysphoria and instead he just prepared for bed quickly, looking anywhere but the mirror.
Carlos pulled a handful of clothes out of his duffle, laid it across the top of his bed, figuring it would work well enough as a pillow for the night, and settled in for the night, slowly falling asleep to the sound of Cecil’s sign off.