Which came first? The chicken, the egg, or airplanes? Welcome to Night Vale

Hello Listeners. This week is National Alternate History Week, in which we celebrate our rich history that could have happened if what actually happened didn’t happen. The Night Vale Historical Society sorts through the local submissions, and the best story gets placed into the elementary school curriculum. It’s a fun activity that helps boost creativity and obfuscate the past.

Today, for my version of history, I will be looking at the Kennedy assassination, and trying to answer the question: what if he had lived?

Well, here’s a start: he would have eaten lunch. Did you know he was on his way to a lunch when he was killed? He was. He was probably hungry. If he had lived, he would have eaten, big bites, full of gusto. Later that day, he would have gone to Austin. He would have breathed. Deep, healthy breaths.

He probably would have been reelected if he lived. Sure. Handsome charismatic guy like that. Four more years. No Lyndon Johnson. Or, Lyndon Johnson, would, as far as I know, continue to exist, but no President Johnson.

Without the pressure of having to win another term, perhaps he would have pulled us out of Vietnam in 66 or 67, saving countless lives and forever altering the cultural and artistic landscapes of the late 60s and early 70s. Our art would be different. There would be more of us. And he would go on living.

Jackie Kennedy would feel no grief. She would never have to feel grief again. She would stand, ageless and smiling, on bandstands, on stages, waving, her smile distant, not even a smile but a performance of a smile, waving, on bandstands, on stages, griefless, waving, ageless, smiling.

More on our story of if he had lived soon, but first, this news.

I know that some of our listeners were worried about the Beatrix Lohman Memorial Meditation Zone, that state of the art and enormously expensive institution that reopened this spring. There was concern that the meditation zone may have been damaged or even destroyed in the attack by the evil beagle and his army of unmoving strangers that nearly erased our town from the map just a couple months ago.

But the good news is that the meditation zone is entirely undamaged, and it is ready for you to meditate in! What a tragedy it would have been to lose such an important aspect of our community, and also how frustrating it would have been, given that large parts of our city government were facing huge budget shortfalls, while more and more city money was heaped on the rebuilding of the zone. All of that money for nothing.

But no! The zone still stands. Celebrate by coming on down to the Beatrix Lohman Memorial Meditation Zone and hooking yourself up into one of the state of the art meditation machines, that will have you calm and harvested in no time at all. What a stress reliever!

The National Weather Service has released a statement saying that the thunderstorms that have been going continuously for the last several months to the west of Night Vale might not be thunderstorms, but instead the movements of the terrible court of the Distant Prince.

They explained that when warm, moist air enters a low pressure system, sometimes it does so around the barely understood and all-powerful Distant Prince, flanked by his Harbingers, and served by the Court Shriekers, the Mangled Servants, and the Hollow-eyed Weepers, all of which can result in some lightning, thunder, and, of course, localized atrocities.

It’s also possible that they’re just some particularly persistent thunderstorms. Either way, the Weather Service said, best to just avoid the area entirely, because being struck by lightning or being skinned alive by the Mangled Servants are both real and deadly threats that should be avoided.

The year is 1973. Kennedy had not died, and is finishing his third term. An embargo in somewhere called the Middle East results in soaring gas prices, but the confidence America has for their president is high. He saw us through many other crises, including the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Svitz-Franchia Standoff of 1967, and the rise of the Blood Space War in 1971. We wait in long lines at gas stations, but he comes by, to each gas station, thousands of gas stations at once, multiplying himself, as he has learned to do, and smiling at us, and we feel at ease. Broke but at ease.

He continues as president through the turbulence of the 70s and into the 80s. A bio-pic is made of his life, starring the mid-level movie star Ronald Reagan, who will soon be washed up and entering his late life career of narrating commercials for frozen food and insurance. The movie doesn’t even mention Dallas. Nothing happened in Dallas except a short drive to lunch. This is mostly what happens in Dallas.

Paul Simon releases his classic album Graceland. It is about the time that President Kennedy visited Graceland in 1982. The album is a huge flop, due to its limited subject matter and aural motif of pained moans and lawn mower engines.

Jackie Kennedy has not aged. In fact, she appears younger than before. At night, she walks among the monuments of DC, serene and alone, not even a secret service escort with her. Anyone who tries to approach finds themself pushed back by a faint mist that smells of apple and spice and feels like thousands of needles. Witnesses claim her feet are not even touching the ground. Her arms seem longer than they used to, as though they were the only part of her body continuing to change.

If JFK had lived, listeners, if he had lived. More soon. First this.

Remember the phases of the moon: new, crescent, quarter, gibbous, gelatinous, full, very full, swirling, angry, unsure of itself, mad with power, disappointed in the newest Marvel movie, very very full, feeling like an imposter, jealous towards the sun, being extra nice to the sun to make up for the jealousy the sun is unaware of, trying to sabotage the sun’s happiness but only succeeding in sabotaging its own happiness, and, finally, new again.

This has been the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner

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But deep down, we know the truth. We see it sometimes, driving at night through a rain storm, or when the phone rings at the wrong hour, or when the plane starts to shake. There are no smooth flats. It’s all precipice, always. And sometimes we are facing the precipice and sometimes we are turned away, but it is always there and we are always teetering.

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The year is this year. The day is today. The time is now.

President Kennedy calls a press conference. His salt and pepper hair is neatly combed. His hands are steady. He has been president for decades.

He opens the conference by issuing a warm birthday message to cinematic treasure, Lee Marvin. Mr Marvin turns 30 today, and is perhaps the nation’s most beloved performer.

This pleasantry aside, the President announced that we have a grave national problem that must be addressed. He then said your name several times and shuddered for five silent minutes

An aide showed some pictures of you, while the President pointed at them, saying “here we see the problem”. Finally he said your name again, visibly blanched, and said “right? Right?”

Congress widely agreed with the president’s message, and several bills were introduced with the goal of solving the problem that is you.

Jackie Kennedy had no comment. Not only had she never felt grief, it seemed to her that she had not felt anything at all since that day she had lunch in Dallas. It was as though some real human part of herself had experienced something so intense and sincere that all feelings had diverged from this false version of herself, leaving her hollow. It had been an ok lunch.

The President complained of headaches. He was experiencing more and more as the years went on.

A continuation on our story soon.

If, hypothetically, angels existed, which legally of course I cannot say that they do, but if they did, then the angels would have let me know that Old Woman Josie fell in her garden and broke her hip this week. The hypothetical angels, who are all named, oh let’s say, Erika, said that she is fine and in good spirits but will have to spend a few days in the hospital. They are a little worried about that, since the hospital is a barely understood and terrible place, where doctors lurk and nurses flit from patient to patient. Rumor has it that on the darkest night of the darkest month, if you stand in just the right place, you can see ghost ambulances carrying ghost patients into the ghost ER, which is the best and most up to date ghost ER in the region, much better even than the ghost ER available over in Pine Cliff, the town nearby that is entirely populated by ghosts.

Pine Cliff residents often come to our hospital for treatment, rather than going to their understaffed and underfunded ghost hospital. It’s just not right, them straining our resources and taking away medical attention from our own local ghosts, instead of fixing the ghost problems in their own ghost city.

Anyway, here’s wishing a quick recovery to my good friend Old Woman Josie. That sounds like a painful slip, but hopefully the sheer desire to escape a place as baffling and terrifying as a hospital will help her push through her recovery as soon as possible.

Back to “If he had lived”.

The year is 2080. Coastal cities all over the world are succumbing to the water that had long sustained them. The basic elements of each city, like streets and burger shacks, slowly disappearing below the sea foam. The eighth siege of the Great Night Vale Temple rages on. The Scion of the Dark Order makes his prophesied appearance, at the exact correct prophesied time, after several false starts where he had arrived too early and had to leave again.

President Kennedy offers a steady hand to the nation, even as his beloved Massachusetts is swallowed by the rising seas.

He brokers a deal with the Sino-Soviet Superstate that provides safe passage for the masses of climate refugees and also those fleeing the Shrouded Armies of the Dark Order.

He addresses the country with inspiring words that people will remember for decades afterwards. “The sea levels will not rise another inch. Instead, the American people will rise to meet the sea levels.”

Everyone applauds. The sea levels continue to rise. Millions are displaced.

Jackie Kennedy lies in the White House Rose Garden. She lies there for years. Moss grows on her face. She is trying to remember what really happened. She is trying to understand what that even means. Isn’t this all really happening now? But it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like what was real was left behind long ago, and now even the raindrops on her upturned face are a series of tiny lies.

Speaking of rain, the finale of our alternate history in a moment, but first, the weather.

[WEATHER: "Opposite House" by Cass McCombs]

We bring you now to the final installment of our “If He Had Lived” alternate history story.

It is the heat death of the universe. Everything that ever was has broken down to the most basic particles. And those particles have reached a perfect stasis of temperature. There will never again be change. Without change, there will never again be anything at all. The universe has ended, not by ceasing to exist, but just by finding perfect balance. An armageddon of zen, not fire.

President Kennedy, never assassinated, floats in the nothing. His hair is neatly combed, and he projects an optimistic but vague expression that gives nothing away.

Jackie Kennedy floats near him. She has never felt grief. Her smile is a forged copy of a painting of a smile, many layers removed from the emotion it is meant to convey.

“What shall we do today?” he asks her.

“Oh, whatever you want to. I have nothing particular in mind,” she says.

Everything around them is beige. This is the average color of the universe, and the universe has been reduced to its average.

He winces. She smiles, feeling concern but not knowing at all how to show it with her face.

“The headaches again?”

“Yes,” he says. “Just here.”

“I’m sure they will pass.”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

He has a vision that feels like a memory, of a moment that never happened on a sunny afternoon in Dallas, billions of years ago. A flash of red and then a nothing deeper even than the nothing they float in now.

“I don’t know if this is right,” he says. “I don’t know if this is what was supposed to happen.”

“Everything happens as it was meant to,” she says, even though she is unsure of that. She is, in fact, sure of the opposite.

They float silently. Later, nothing happens.

If he hadn’t died. If he had lived. Lived on and led on. If he had continued and continued and continued, and nothing changed, if no one else ever got a chance, if the country never moved on. If he had lived. Maybe this is what would have happened.

Or that’s how I imagine it anyway.

Thank you for joining us on this celebration of Alternate History Week. We’ve heard some exciting ones, like what if Germany had won WW2, what if the South had won the Civil War, what if bathmats were never invented, and what if, somehow, Germany had won the Civil War.

The Night Vale Historical Society has chosen as their winner an alternate history where the Beatrix Lohman Memorial Meditation Zone was never built. It will be added to the curriculum of all history classes from here on out, and the Meditation Zone will be destroyed so that reality can match the story we have decided to tell about it.

Well, that’s a shame, but it’s just how history works sometimes, you know.

Stay tuned next for a hypothetical history that we are all making up together, continuously, just by living it.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.