KASPER: The future wants you. The future needs you. The future will have you, whether you like it or not. Welcome to Night Vale.

Kasper Rhodes here. Hello. There’s a lot of talk, generally, and in particular, about the future. Everyone going on about this or that, rocket ships and spires, eternal life and A.I. But the future is also soil and leaves. It’s a hand holding a hand. It’s clouds and it’s water and it’s salt. The future is organic as anything. There is still sweat in the future. I’m sweating right now. It’s hot where I am. I am Kasper Rhodes. President of the Quality Cyborg Corporation. And I can take you away from all this. In the name of the smiling god. The god that grins down at us all. Grinning through our pain and grinning through our joy. Just always grinning. Just always the smile.

Do any of you believe in anything? I do. I believe in anything at all. I just believe. What a powerful thing it is to believe. To let doubt wick off you, just like this sweat.

I have a proposition and it is also a promise: I will take your brain (and how much were you using it anyway?) and I will put it in a robot, and that robot will do wonderful things. That is my promise, and it is also a proposition. Anyway, we’ll talk more in person. I’m on my way. I’ll see you soon.

CECIL: Listeners, am I through? Am I on the air? I come to you in a time of emergency and panic. We thought we could cheat death. Kasper Rhodes promised to take our brains and freeze them into the future where we could be reawakened into life eternal. But it was all a lie. Kasper is a time traveler, here to collect the brains of the past to power robots of servitude in the future. We were being tricked into an eternal life of manual labor.

And now we know the truth, and stand against them. Unfortunately, he has called in reinforcements from the future, and they are those very robots with our brains inside of them. They cannot fight against their programming, and they weep as they crush us. But still they crush us. There are robots patrolling outside of the abandoned grain silo and every other spot in town where the Quality Cryogenics Corporation is storing brains, so we cannot save our fellow citizens from the terror of their future.

More worrying, Kasper worships a smiling god. I thought we had escaped that cosmic terror, but it has returned. And it has come for our minds.

Night Vale, I call for resistance. I call for a stand against the future. I muster the present to destroy every moment that comes after. We will never stop fighting. We will never surrender.

Ooh, but first tickets are going on sale for the Lions Club charity raffle. All proceeds from the raffle will be going to weapons and barricades to be used against the endless onslaught of future robots piloted by our own brains. So that’s just a great cause.

Let’s have a look at the prizes.

There’s a package tour to somewhere called Nashville. That’s exciting. The package includes a map showing where Nashville is and a pad of paper on which is scrawled “you should probably get a hotel room when you get there.” Everything you need for a fun vacation.

There are ten free piano lessons from Louie Blasko. He says that piano is a great way to exercise your mind and your creativity, and he promises much fewer injuries this time around.

There’s a free haircut and style consultation from Telly the Barber. Ugh, that vile Telly. I shouldn’t say that. Carlos has forgiven Telly for cutting his beautiful hair all those years ago, and so I should too. There are lots of things I should do, and I’m sure I’ll get to them eventually. In the meantime though, ugh that vile Telly.

Finally there is the grand prize, which is an all-expenses-paid trip into the bottomless hole betwixt the dunes. That inexplicable dark pit that appeared a few years ago out in the sandwastes. We’re not sure who donated this prize. It just showed up at the Lions Club in a basket that smelled of mud and wet dog. But the winners will have the opportunity, in fact they will be compelled whether they want to or not, to leap into the bottomless hole betwixt the dunes. This is all expenses paid. I’m not sure what expenses there are to jumping into a bottomless hole, but in any case they’re covered.

Raffle tickets are only $5 and can be purchased at the Lions club or by whispering into any crack in any wall. And again, proceeds go to saving us from the robot army, so please do buy a few.

KASPER: There’s a lot of talk, generally, and in particular, about pain. Oh, I’m in pain, many say. Oh, this pain is the worst I’ve ever felt, many say. Many just scream. And that’s understandable. I’d scream too. If I could. But you can’t scream with a smile. That’s one of the laws of the Smiling God. I believe in laws. But then, I believe in anything.

Have you ever had rock candy? Who even thought up something so useless as these crystalline sugar lumps? What point is there to any of this, when rock candy is the kind of thing that we, as humans, apparently, are up to? Generally. And also in particular. What I’m asking is: what point is there to rock candy? And what I’m also asking is: what point is there to you?

But I can provide a point. To you, anyway. Wouldn’t that be nice, for once? And don’t we want it to be nice, for once, just once, before we go? I am talking here about purpose. I have more purpose than I need. You have less purpose than you want. Let’s meet in the middle. And there in the middle I will take your brain.

Believe in a smiling God. And why not? I do.

CECIL: Night Vale, we will fight.

Night Vale, we will win.

The night may be long, but inevitably comes the dawn. Especially now that time works correctly here.

Tamika Flynn has gathered her militia, who have aged to the point where they are no longer teenagers. It was kind of cute, a local friendly teenage militia. But now they’re just a militia, which is less cute. But definitely good to have on our side in this struggle. They are currently pelting the robots with stones, but the robots’ metal frames are impervious to such attacks. Oh, this is so worrying.

Josh Crayton, local shapeshifter, has resumed the form of a waterfall in an attempt to short out the electronics of the robot army. Unfortunately, it appears that their bodies are water resistant, and perhaps even waterproof, and so they are simply walking past him like he isn’t there. Josh, maybe some other form. Ok, Josh has panicked and accidentally taken the form of a 1970s style avocado green galley kitchen. Oh Josh. That form won’t be helpful at all.

“We’re going about this fight all wrong,” said Lenny Butler, who has no official bonafides on military tactics, but considers himself an aficionado of rowdy boys really taking it to each other on the battlefield. Lenny continued, “what we want to do is flank them.” When asked what that meant, he shrugged and tsked irritably. “I know what it means,” he said. “I’m not going to waste time explaining it to you. Just, like, flank them.”

Other towns have been forced to join the fight, as the robots are sweeping through the entire area. The ghosts of Pine Cliff have enthusiastically entered the fray. Unfortunately, of course, ghosts cannot physically affect our world, and so they are just hovering back and forth through the robots. But good hustle out there.

Citizens of the Whispering Forest muttered warm compliments to the robots, in an attempt to assimilate them into their tree forms. But robots are immune to compliments, as they are only able to think as highly of themselves as they are programmed to.

Oh no. Nothing is working.

Well, this seems like as good a time as any to talk about survival tips.

The first thing to consider is your water source. Now your body is 60% water, so that seems like enough. Let’s move on.

Next you will want to consider food. Stock up on essentials, like canned beans, easily stored grains, and those little bags of baby carrots which are just big carrots carved into small pieces and called babies. Which is not how babies are made. That is not what the word baby means. Anyway. If you find yourself in an emergency situation without enough food, consider expanding your definition of the word “food”. For instance, theoretically you could eat a desk if you tried hard enough. Maybe the problem isn’t a lack of food, but a lack of motivation on your part.

Finally, look for shelter. This one is easy. There are houses and buildings anywhere, and you can just go into them. Some of them will be locked. They might even have people inside who say things like “what are you doing in my house?” or “you can’t be in here, this is the stockroom of an Arby’s” but don’t let naysayers like that get you down.

This has been survival tips.

KASPER: There is a lot of talk, generally, and in particular, about triumph. We’re winning, a person might say. We will defeat you, a person might crow as a town falls in supplication around him. You will all be taken to the future, that person might continue. You will all be made useful. And isn’t it wonderful? To be made useful? Isn’t that the best thing a person can be? I think so. It doesn’t matter what you think. It turns out it never did.

It’s so impersonal, chatting like this over the phone. Especially since you haven’t been picking up. It seems rude, your refusal to listen to me, but I don’t mind. After all, it’s hard to begrudge you your last few minutes of human freedom. Tell you what. I’ll head over and collect you myself. Won’t that be nice? For me, I mean. Again, it doesn’t matter what it is for you. It turns out it never did.

Ok. See you soon. Bye bye.

CECIL: Give me back my radio frequency! Ah. Ok, I think I’m back on. Can you hear me? Well I’ll talk whether you can hear me or not. More robots are pouring out of the time votexes. Vortices? Vortisises? Whatever they are, thousands of robots are coming out of them. This is too much. We can never defeat all of them.

The robots are marching to Kasper’s army that was already here and they are… Listeners, they are fighting them. These new robots are fighting on our side. At their head is the one I recognize as containing the brain of Charlie Bair, weekday shift manager at the Ralph’s. He is announcing that…that some of the robots have broken free of their programming. That they have found a way to manipulate the metal body they were trapped in, and they have come back to help us prevent this all from happening. And the present day human Charlie Bair is running up to join his future metal counterpart.

Night Vale, out on that battlefield is a robot which contains your brain. Find that robot, and help it fight. Or fight it, depending on which side it’s on. Together with ourselves, we can win this. There is still hope. There is always hope. There is also always the weather.

[WEATHER: “Sugar Neighbors” by Dane Terry]

Together, us and us. Our own selves and our robot selves. We rushed against Kasper Rhodes. More and more of his robots broke free of their programming and joined us. Tamika and her militia were now Tamikas and their militias, and the intimidation factor was through the roof.

This whole time, we just had to trust ourselves. And also have versions of ourselves that were embedded in super strong metal bodies. That was all it took, this whole time, to be victorious.

Charlie Bair, the human, stood shoulder to shoulder with Charlie Bair, the robot, and both fought valiantly. Josh Crayton took the form of a chainsaw, which was then wielded by Josh Crayton’s brain in a robot body to glorious and gory effect. It did not take long for the tides to turn. Sometimes once the balance shifts, it shifts as quickly and definitively as a broken elevator plunging down a shaft.

And then Kasper Rhodes himself finally fell. Whether it was the stones cast by the Tamikas. Or the fists of the Charlies. Or Josh the chainsaw wielded by Josh the robot. I cannot say. In the chaos of battle, individual human action becomes indistinct. But the fact of Kasper’s death is indisputable.

And in the moment he fell, every robot slumped into stillness. Because time had changed. Kasper never took our brains when we died and used them in robots of the future. And because of that, every one of those robots no longer had a brain in them. They were empty shells. We carried those empty shells with affection and care to Grove Park, where they would be sorted for parts, and the resulting scrap metal used to fix the massive amount of damage done to town by this battle.

We kept one robot though. Just one. The scrawniest one, with the most rusted joints. And Pamela Winchell, who has been reading books on hobbyist surgery, removed Kasper’s brain from his still warm body, and placed in that robot. The robot came to life, in a panic.

“Don’t worry,” we told Kasper the robot. “We’re not going to hurt you. We’re just putting you to work for the Mariam McDonald Memorial Fund. You will clean up the sand from the sandwastes until all the sand is gone. We don’t know how long that will take. It may take forever. Good luck.”

And even now, a lone robot with a broom sweeps sand out of the desert. A fitting end for an unfit man.

Now there is only us, and the returned reality of our aging, and our death. I have come to think that Carlos was right. There is nothing more scientific than death. We fear it, reasonably, because it is a thing we can never know, perhaps not even when we experience it.

But it is not worth perverting our lives, changing everything about ourselves, just to avoid our natural ends. New generations will come. New people will live. And like everyone before us, we will gracefully exit to make room for those coming after. As the old saying goes, “death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.”

This is not a story about you. And you were glad, because it would be boring if every story was.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

POST CREDITS

KASPER: There’s a lot of talk, generally, and in particular. So many words. Oh man. Man oh man. Ah. This is not how. It isn’t. Was it? But it’s what’s left of me. It’s quiet in here at least. I can’t feel the smile anymore. The searing heat of that smile. In here it’s quiet and dark. My metal body moves, but my brain is still. I like it in here….

NO. That smile. The smile has appeared. No! God no! You don’t understand. The smile is in here with me. Please.