If it walks like a duck, and sings like a duck, and excretes slime like a duck, then it’s a…you know I don’t think that’s a duck. Welcome to Night Vale

The future is here. Listeners. The future is now. Dying has become a bad joke, and we wonder how we ever put up with it. The Quality Cryogenics Corporation, run by one Kasper Rhodes, is offering a simple solution: they will remove your brain upon death, freeze it, and then revive you hundreds of years from now, when the technology exists to live eternally. The town was recently traumatized by time working correctly, and us all having to deal with aging, so this solution is exactly what we were all looking for. And it only costs ten thousand, in cash, no refunds.

I am currently getting together the funds to purchase this service for both myself and my husband Carlos, because I believe that the two of us can live together forever. No more is there this awful time limit ticking down from the moment of our meeting until the moment of our parting. Now our brains will sit snugly next to each other until we are awakened anew to a bright future.

Carlos says he is a little unsure about this, because he thinks that death is one of the most scientific processes of all. But he’ll come around. We’ll just talk about it, and he’ll see it my way. After all, we have the rest of our lives, and our lives will never end.

Here’s the news. Now that we all know we’re going to get to live there, all any of us can talk about is the future. What is it going to be like? Will there be trees? Will we still have that insufferable moon? These are the questions we are all having to consider now that we will live forever. And one person is claiming to have those answers. A professional futurist and digital prophet named Enzy has released a lengthy report outlining what the future is like. Apparently skyscrapers will be twice as tall but also twice as thin. Each floor will only hold about one medium room or three very small rooms, but also skyscrapers will have thousands of floors.

The biggest revelation in Enzy’s report is that, in the future, menial labor will be done by robots. Robots will wash our cars, clean our toilets, and cook our food, leaving us all the time in the world to quietly boil with existential dread. According to Enzy, these robots first enter the market in about a hundred years, and then really catch on, until everyone has three or four at their disposal, and also everyone is so, so bored. Man, the future sounds great. I can’t wait to get there. This has been the news.

Let’s have a look at today’s horoscopes.

LEO: This is a fantastic month for new business plans, travel, meeting new people, and breaking out of the windowless prison cell you woke up in this morning. Good luck on all of those exciting ventures.

VIRGO: I hope you are not too attached to your left hand. Either way, you won’t be soon.

LIBRA: You will walk out from your house. The sun will look strange to you, even though you think perhaps it always looked like that. It will look like it always has, and it will look so strange. As you walk down your street, you will see a path you’ve never noticed before, leading away from the familiar into a dark and twisted wood. You will follow this path, the warm dirt softly crunching under your feet. At the end of the path you will come to a small and cozy home. In the window will be a boy, and he will give you a sign. A hand to the side means it is safe to go on. A hand by the ear means The Burrowers are hungry tonight. A covered mouth means the time is nigh. You may proceed accordingly. Even the stars do not know what happens next.

SCORPIO: You’re a great brother in law, husband, father, and friend, and if it’s up to me (and let’s be honest, it is) the stars will never say another mean thing about you again.

SAGITTARIUS: You are really walking on thin ice here, buddy. No, really buddy, you are walking on thin ice. Buddy, look down, the ice is about to crack, and the waters below are so cold and clear. You have never seen anything so beautiful.

CAPRICORN: You have spent your life searching for your soulmate. Finally, having given up on love, you will volunteer to board a starship destined to never return to our world. You will live out decades on that vast ark, developing close but platonic relationships with the few fellow humans that are with you. Finally, in your 83rd year, you will land on a planet that’s surface will appear to be made entirely of silver. You will step out onto that foreign terrain, and waiting for you will be an alien being made entirely of vapor, a wisp of a creature, whose droplets will curl around you, and you will smile and realize that you have finally found your soulmate.

AQUARIUS: Your lucky number is five! Which is also how many days you have left. That’s an auspicious coincidence.

PISCES: Everyone knows your terrible secret, and they think it’s really boring.

ARIES: This just says SPIDERS in increasingly large fonts for about seven pages. Aww…cute.

TAURUS: Turn your eyes to the heavens. Honestly it’s better not to see what’s approaching from below.

GEMINI: There will come a day in which you will have to go to the ocean. Who knows when that day will come. You might be hundreds of miles away from the ocean. You might be in an airplane, or working on a farm in Ottawa, but there will come a day in which you will have to go to the ocean. And so you will travel, in whatever attire you were wearing when you were called, barefoot and groggy, walking day and night, until you see the glitter of water, until you hear the hush of the waves. And then you will walk into the ocean until only your head is above the surface, and you will laugh and laugh and laugh and the ocean will laugh with you. But today is not that day. Who knows when it will come.

And lastly, CANCER: Uh, huh. Ok. Yeah. Everything is basically fine with you. Yeah, you’re good. Nothing to report.

This has been horoscopes.

Demand has become so high for the services of the Quality Cryogenics Corporation that Kasper Rhodes announced that he has run out of space for brains. “Gotta stuff these head blobs somewhere,” he said. “But where to toss ‘em?” City Council agreed that this is an important problem, and immediately requisitioned large swathes of Night Vale real estate to serve as eventual brain storage locations. There are rumors that this move was made in exchange for free use of cryogenics services by the city council, but the council vehemently denied the allegation and said to prove their innocence they would arrest anyone who tried to say that they were guilty.

Initially the public library was one of the buildings intended to be converted to brain storage, but a single librarian scuttled out from the front door and stood eyes to eyes with the City Council until the council whimpered and backed down. At which point the librarian silently retreated, their deadly point made, their library safe.

This is quite a change from when the only customer of Kasper Rhodes was Charlie Bair, weekday shift manager at the Ralph’s. Now there are only a few people left in town who haven’t signed up. I am a little ashamed to say that Carlos and I are one of those few. It’s just taking me longer than I thought to scrape together the money, and Carlos still wants to talk about it more. But don’t worry. We will definitely join you all in the future. I will see you there!

Speaking of which, local futurist and digital prophet, Enzy, is giving a seminar on the future, but attendance is expected to be low. Frankly, people find Enzy’s predictions a little silly. After all, what does this Enzy know about the future that we don’t? All any of us know about the future is that someday we will end up there, and that by the time we get there it won’t be the future. In any case, we expected more exciting predictions: frequent space travel, miracle cures to disease, and contact with more alien species than the three we know about in our primitive time. But Enzy just won’t shut up about robots and how much of the future is defined by robots serving us hand and foot. Only three people showed up to Enzy’s seminar, one of whom was your faithful reporter, and one especially upset attendee even threw popcorn and led a chant of “boring” during the part about the robots. And I’m not sorry I did it either. It was very boring.

The family of missing person Frank Chen has filed a lawsuit against the city, declaring criminal negligence in allowing a five headed dragon to claim the identity of their one-headed human family member merely because the dragon carried around Frank’s ID.

“You all are monsters,” said Frank’s sister, Lauren. “Monsters. Monsters.” She said this through a bullhorn as she drove her convertible up and down the city streets.

“But how could we have known?” the city council fumed. “What? Are we supposed to look into every suspicious disappearance in Night Vale? We only have 18 hands. We’re doing the best we can.”

The lawsuit will start with a document review and depositions. Currently they are seeking all records on the suspected killer of Frank Chen, one Hiram McDaniels, who has not been seen in town for a couple years now. They also want to interview friends of Hiram, including a radio host who wouldn’t describe himself as a friend. More a dedicated observer.

And now, a look at the stock market. Wheeee! Hee hee hee! Oh! Oh! wooooooooooaaaAAAAA WOW. This has been a look at the stock market.

Now, let’s go on over to…hello?

Sorry. What are you doing in here?

Listeners, the futurist, Enzy, has entered the studio. They are waving at me frantically and holding up signs. Let me just put on my reading glasses. Embarrassing, but I suppose we all eventually reach that age. I never thought I would, but now time is working correctly, and I have aged. Yes, yes, I see you pointing at the sign and screaming, Enzy. Give me a moment. Now where did I leave those glasses. In my pocket. Ah, now there’s some sort of metal man next to Enzy. Yes, you have a sign, ok, here’s my glasses.

Enzy’s sign reads: I AM NOT A FUTURIST. I AM FROM THE FUTURE. A TIME TRAVELER SENT BACK TO WARN YOU ALL.

They are still pointing at the metal man. Ah! This is one of those robots that Enzy is always going on about. Enzy is saying that everything they told us about the robots was true, and they brought one just to prove it. Well, hi robot!

Oh, the robot has something to say. It’s saying, “I’m hardly a bear.” Well, no, I’d say not. You’re more of a robot. No, I misheard. It’s saying “Time card a pear.” Enzy, I think your robot is malfunctioning. Wait, no, it’s saying….it’s saying…. “I’m Charlie Bair.”

Charlie Bair? He’s the weekday shift manager at the Ralphs. This makes no sense. The robot is saying again, “I’m Charlie Bair.” And then it is saying “help me.” It is saying help me over and over in a hollow digital moan.

Listeners, I….let’s check in on the weather.

[weather: “Good Intentions, Bad Advice” by Nicky Flowers]

The robot told us everything. Once the robot was Charlie Bair, weekday shift manager at the Ralph’s. And then a man named Kasper Rhodes came to town. Kasper offered the idea of living forever. Freezing Charlie’s brain after death so that he could wake up in the future, once mortality was a bad dream, once sickness was a memory. So Charlie signed up. He took out his life savings plus a couple loans and paid the ten thousand dollars. And Charlie became the first customer of the Quality Cryogenics Corporation. Charlie was so happy. He is so happy. Somewhere in town, even while this robot tells us its story, Charlie is unaware and he is happy. Because Charlie believes he has defeated death. And Charlie will continue to believe this for another fifteen years until the unfortunate whistlepig incident. After that, his brain will be removed from his mangled corpse and will remain frozen for centuries in the grain silo outside of town.

And then one day Charlie will awaken. It will be the future, as promised. And, as promised, he will not be dead. But all will not be well. He will have awoken as a brain in a metal body, chained to that body’s programming. It will be explained to him that he was brought to the future by the Quality Cyborg Corporation in order to take care of any errands or busy work needed while the humans of that future relax and watch him toil.

You see, when we deny death and toss ourselves into the future, we do so with the strange delusion that the future feels it owes us life. That in the world of the future they would want nothing more than to devote time and money into resurrecting each of us into eternal wellness. But the future does not feel any obligation to us at all. The past means only one thing to the future: the past is a resource. Every brain saved by Kasper Rhodes is a resource. It is a trick. We are being used.

We must put a stop to this. We were all wrong, trying to fight death this way. To put our trust in the future as though it would be anything but some other person’s present. Carlos was right. I was wrong.

Who is this Kasper Rhodes? And why is he doing this?

Oh, oh, Kasper is calling into the station. He must be calling to confess or otherwise explain his crimes. Kasper. Is that you? What have you done? What have you done?

KASPER: Hi there Cecil. Was listening to your show, and really disappointed to hear what you were saying about me, buddy. But as the smiling god says: When your enemies try to bring you down, just smile, wider and wider, until your smile eclipses the sun and then all other light in the universe. Believe in a smiling god, buddy. Believe in a smiling god.