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A friendly desert community where the moon is beautiful and the sun is not as hot as it’s supposed to be lately. Huh, we might have to look into that.
Welcome to Night Vale.
We have an update today from former Night Vale local, Dr. Ryland Grace. He is currently... somewhere in space, and has been out there for an ambiguous amount of years which I am unfortunately unable to relay to you, dear listeners, because I did not understand his explanation. He used some sort of magic portal called a “Special Relativity” which he claims is not time travel, but in this humble reporter’s opinion, yuh-huh, it totally is.
Dr. Grace is a scientist—like a certain handsome, perfect-haired, universally beloved Night Vale resident who promised he would make his boyfriend dinner tonight and certainly wouldn’t forget something like that two nights in a row—and he is doing very important work in the Blood-Space War. When asked for details of this work, he said:
“Blood-Space War?! Holy fudge, how did I not remember that? Is that new? Did they make more spaceships already?”
Which means whatever he’s working on must be very top secret! Don’t worry Dr. Grace, we’ll keep it all hush-hush for you.
More on this as my consciousness continues to sync up with a version of myself in the parallel universe where this interview is taking place.
In other news, the sun is retiring early. Since it is about 5 billion years away from its pension, some might call this simply “quitting”, but the Sun counters that after 4.5 billion years of dedicated service, it’s entitled to a bit of respect. The Sun is not a quitter, it insists, huffing irritated plumes of scorching hot plasma, and cooling slightly faster in retaliation for the perceived insult.
Sooo get out there and enjoy our beautiful desert sun while you can! I’m told the Sun handed in its 30 year notice a couple of months ago, so we still have quite a bit of time left with our tempermental life support system.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll still be cranking the AC and shielding myself from those deadly UV rays for quite a few more years. Have you ever tried to wear a leather shirt in the sun? Yuck. No thank you. Good riddance, I say.
And now, traffic.
You are alone in your journey. You did not set out alone, but you have been alone for so long now. Longer than you care to remember, and longer still than you could ever hope to forget. You continue traveling away from your home because this is the only hope you have of ever returning to it. You cannot return to your people empty handed, but you alone are not strong enough to carry the load.
There is only darkness around you, mostly void, partially stars. The void grows and the stars dim. There is only you and the stars keep dimming.
You look once again into the darkness, unchanging for decades except for the continued darkening of it, but this time- this time there is a new light. Another traveller, an alien, tall and strange. You reach out, and it reaches back.
The alien is unsettlingly wet and unfailingly kind. It breathes in fire and breathes out knowledge beyond your senses. It travels with the same hope that you yourself once set out with, and as it teaches you its language, you learn that its name means grace.
It does not matter if you dreamed up this alien savior, it does not matter if the void has finally driven you mad, all that matters is that you can carry the load now. You can carry the hopes of your people with Grace.
This has been traffic.
We’re getting a few calls into the station regarding our announcement of the Sun’s early retirement. Frankly Night Vale, I think you’re overreacting a little bit. Humanity has been around for millennia already, I’d say we’ve had a pretty good run. And this way we all get to know exactly when we’re going to die! Who hasn’t wished for that before, huh?
And besides, if we’ve learned anything from our nation’s brave leaders in the past few decades, it’s that if a massive environmental disaster isn’t noticeably cutting into any large corporations’ profits, it’s probably not even real. It’s fiiine. Don’t worry about it! It’ll be fiiiiiiine.
Another important update from Dr. Grace, he has found a rock.
His name is Rocky, he has five legs, five flute-like air sacks to convey language through melodious chords, and he is adorable. Grace tells me that Rocky is incredibly clever, has a biting sense of humor, and that he trusts him completely to hold the fate of the universe in his little rock hands. Grace reports:
“Rocky and I have a plan to collect the astrophage predator by basically fishing off the side of a moving spaceship. Either we’ll get everything we need in one go, or we’ll burn up in the atmosphere and die a horrible fiery death. I’d say it’s about 50/50 we survive. Those are actually the best odds I’ve had in a while, so I’m pretty psyched.”
That sounds very exciting, best of luck to Grace and Rocky on their space fishing adventure. I’m not exactly sure what an ‘after page’ is, or what they’re actually trying to accomplish out there, but I assume they are on our side. If there are in fact different sides to… whatever it is they’re doing.
Now for the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner:
Touch the earth. Dig your fingers into the soil. Do you feel that? Do you feel the life of a thousand generations of humanity sustaining you? Every human who has ever lived is here with us, in that soil. But soon this will not be true. Soon there will be humans who live and die in a place not their own. In a few short years our ambition will carry us so far that there will be some who, for the first time ever since the first breath of life on this planet, will die so far from us that their bodies will never return to the earth.
Touch the earth again. Breathe the air that is just the right mix of gases for your lungs to draw life from. See the sky that carries just the right wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation for you eyes to draw beauty from. Listen to the birds and the cars and the laughter. You are human, you are home. Carry the legacy of humanity with you, for the sake of all those who no longer can.
This has been the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner!
I spoke to Dr. Grace about the Aroace Space Club he used to be part of here at Night Vale Middle School. My niece Janice is considering joining, and I thought it might be fun for her to hear some anecdotes and advice from one of the club’s earliest members. His memory of the club seems to be a bit hazy, he kept asking if I meant to say aerospace? And I said Aerospace Space Club would be totally redundant, and he said ‘what is the first word supposed to be then?’ and I gave up trying to explain it, because some people are just determined to be difficult. As my mother used to say, call a spade a spade, and the spade won’t know what you’re talking about because a spade’s existence is not dependent on the language applied to it.
Anyway, Grace seemed very excited for Janice to join the Aroace Space Club! He said it’s wonderful to see this generation of young women be so passionate about the fascinating and historically male-dominated field of joining school clubs.
I don’t know if I’ve told you this before, listeners, but my boyfriend Carlos is a scientist! He was very interested in Dr. Grace’s sample collection methods and wants me to talk more about that. Unfortunately, when I tried to get more information on how Grace and Rocky’s ‘space fishing’ went, all I could hear was labored breathing, some kind of alarm, and what sounded like frantic discordant organ music. I’ll see if I can find out what’s going on there, but for now let me take you to-
Welcome back, listeners. I have some good news and some bad news.
First, the Sun is no longer leaving us. Apparently, the mission Dr. Grace and Rocky were on was intended to restore the Sun to it’s former state. Due to their efforts, the usual blinding brightness, dangerous levels of ultraviolet radiation, and scorching unrelenting heat will continue for the foreseeable future. So, that’s the bad news.
The good news is that our friend Grace has found a new home among the stars. The sentient space rock that Grace found has welcomed him into his family. Though Rocky’s homeworld is harsh and inhospitable to his new alien friend, and the air that Grace breathes is equally perilous to Rocky, they understand each other well enough and care for each other stubbornly enough to mold a corner of the world into something that can sustain them both, for a time.
This is the wonderful un-uniqueness of humanity, that for all our flaws and all our brilliance, we can face the existence of any other being and see a piece of ourself reflected in the other. That any being capable of understanding cannot help but try to understand another, that any being capable of love cannot help but give that love to another.
Our Sun may be old and enormous and mostly unchanging, but we loving beings outnumber it greatly, and the only thing more predictable than a star’s burning fire is the certainly that somewhere there is love, and somewhere that love is returned.
Stay tuned next for the imperceptible thrum of blood running through your veins, the silence of dreamed-of conversations, and the meaningless morning greeting of someone who has nothing more to say than, ‘hello, I am here, and you are here, and we are both alive together.’
Good night, Night Vale, good night.