LEONARD BURTON: The opposite of war is not peace. It is tedium. Greetings from Night Vale.

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Hello listeners. It's your regular host, Leonard Burton, welcoming you to yet another beautiful day in Night Vale.

There is a sun, of course. I don't need to tell you that there is a sun. You know this. You are so confident that a sun is there. Past performance is not a predictor of future results, folks. Yet, sure as I say it, there is a sun.

And near the sun are clouds. But they are not near, are they? Millions of miles separate those clouds from that sun. And yet our eyes measure mere inches of the space between. What deception, this human sight.

The air is crisp and cool. A slight morning breeze touches us. We feel it like cold fingers playfully caressing our shoulders, our hair, our skin. I see no breeze, but I feel it. That which I feel... that is my only truth, listeners. Wind is a verity.

I hope you will join me in closing your eyes, and walking naked through the invisible yet irrefutable air. Hold aloft your arms, widen your jaw, and feel the impact of atom upon atom upon atom against your body.

This day is beautiful. This day is crisp. This day is true.

This morning, I nearly died. I am always nearly dying. Proximity is subjective. This morning I nearly died in the same way I nearly die every day.

After waking, I showered. After showering, I drank coffee. After coffee, I ate a grapefruit and oatmeal. After eating, I walked. After walking, I walked some more. I do not own a car, and I live two miles from my work. I purchased a quart of whole milk, and then I climbed a tree. Atop a tree branch, I saw a grackle's nest and I drank my milk. I counted 4 eggs, each of them blue, each of them lifeless, abandoned for countless years. I did not finish my milk, because I cannot digest milk. I poured the remainder into the nest. Then I climbed down from the tree and walked again. I do this every day. It is, as the French say, "Vie sans signification."

As I approached the radio station, a cargo truck driven by a man who was not tall barreled down Mesa Boulevard. I stretched one foot outward from my body, like so, and here I demonstrate my leg extending outward, a tentative Pas de un, as the French dancers phrase it.

My head was turned away from the oncoming traffic, because I saw a municipal garbage can on fire. Gathered around the flaming bin were angels touching together their unusually long fingers and moaning.

The cargo truck honked loudly, but it was not as loud as the moans from the firelit celestial beings, so I did not alter my attention. I stepped into the roadway, like this.

[beat]

And then again, like this.

[beat]

And then again, like this.

[beat]

And then again several more times until I had crossed the road safely. Immediately following my final step, the cargo truck roared past me. I had not died. But I had a vision of my death. No, not vision. What do you call a vision without visuals? My vision was every other sense. I heard a dreadful snap. I felt my legs accordion beneath my neck. I tasted blood and asphalt. I smelled the pungent rubber tire against my nose. My vision halted me for what seemed like hours, but it was less than a second. I should have died, Night Vale, for it was in my vision, yet I did not.

The truck honked again, and the man in the passenger seat, who was not short, waved his fist and cursed at me. Upon the back of the truck were several wooden crates, emblazoned with a white labyrinth upon a black square. The crates glowed from within.

I do not glow from within. I am darkness from within.

Across the street, the angels moaned, and I wet myself. It is a beautiful day in Night Vale. How was your morning?

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And now the news.

There is peace in our time, Night Vale. We hold a parade today to celebrate the end of the Blood Space War.

The Blood Space War ended many years in the future, yet we celebrate armistice today. Time, you see, is not a line but a torus, which is kind of like a donut. And we are living within the donut. If we were to look out across the hole in the middle of the donut, we would see other times that have happened both before and after us.

This presumes we can see time, which we cannot. We can only describe visually the shape of things that have no shape.

Here is an incomplete visual description of things that have no shape:

One: Death is bottomless pool of clear water.

Two: Wind is a question mark.

Three: Morality is a Thermos.

Four: Love is an overfull shopping bag with a broken handle.

Five: Fear is a cinder block tower with a single door and no windows.

I hope that makes sense to you, dearest listeners, because it does not to me. I am neither a scientist nor a poet. I am a radio host. I merely repeat to you that which I have learned. And what I have learned is that time is shaped like a donut. Beyond that, I have no comprehension.

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When you woke up this morning Night Vale, did you remember a life you never had? Did you experience the faint memory of a conversation, of a smell, of a feeling that never happened? Jamais vu, I believe the French say. The French say so much, yet what do they know of peace?

Today I celebrate peace, however I do it alone. I broadcast my feelings to no one. Night Vale is empty and I its only citizen. Yet I have a vision of a town full of people. One of those people is a man, a radio intern named Cecil Palmer. But he is not here. No one is here. No one has ever been here. Has he died? I do not know. He simply is no longer here. You do not remember his years of fine reporting on this very radio station, because you never heard those reports.

I did.

I remember things that never happened. Yet I have no evidence of any of it.

Let me describe to you the shape of Cecil Palmer. He is a line of leafless mesquite trees. He is a glass factory. He is golf ball-sized hail. He has a voice like distant highway traffic. He loves coffee and handshakes. He wears tight clothing and has never once worked with modeling clay. He covers mirrors with cloth and has an irrational fear of glowing lights beneath locked doors in dark hallways.

You cannot know any of this because Cecil is my vision, not yours. He is real, all the same. He is to be my replacement when I retire. But he does not exist. So I can never retire. I am your permanent host.

I can still see his face. I have said it before, and I will say it once more: What deception, this human sight.

The parade for the end of the Blood Space War has begun. There is no one attending, because no one lives in Night Vale. Perhaps we will reach a day when no one has ever lived.

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An emissary has arrived in town to lead the parade.

The emissary is an astronaut, bloated white arms and a mirror for a face. The emissary walks slowly through our empty city streets.

I do not know why I broadcast this to you, dear listener, for you are not even here. No one is here except for me. And the emissary, who walks like a marionette under the wobbly control of a novice puppeteer. And the angels, whose moans are songs and whose fingertips are divining rods. Also there's the two men in the cargo truck who are driving far beyond our town. And somewhere, there are the French, who are inventing phrases to describe... I don't know what.

The parade of absent floats along empty streets led by a mirror-faced marshmallow of a grand marshall, approaches our radio station. I will enjoy getting to see the festivities up close and describing shapes out of the shapeless.

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And now the Children's Fun Fact Science Corner.

Kids, did you know everyone experiences time differently? Physicist Albert Einstein once said: "There's no business like show business, like no business I know." He said this while starring in Annie Get Your Gun in London's West End. He performed the title role 10 years before Irving Berlin even wrote the musical.

This is because Albert Einstein experienced time differently but only when it came to songwriting. He had the complete discography of both Leonard Cohen and Kendrick Lamar before either were born.

But perhaps while you and I only hear music after it is written, we experience time differently in other ways. Like, say, our births. Think about your birth. You don’t remember it do you? This could be because you have forgotten it. But how do you forget something that so powerfully impacted you? I would argue that your birth was the most important moment in your life, and you have forgotten it?

I cannot believe you are so cavalier as to allow the memory of your entry into this world to dissipate like steam from a screaming kettle. No, you do not remember your birth because it has not happened yet. I am sure this is scientifically true. It can be the only explanation. You experience time differently.

One day you will be born, and you will experience awe and pain and confusion. You will begrudge the lack of input you were given in this decision. You did not ask to be born, and yet pow, bam, squish. There you are. Or were. Or will be.

Birth is an overmatched levee during a flood.

Memory is the chipped bark of a cedar tree.

Time is a donut.

This has been the Children's Fun Fact Science Corner.

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The parade has ended. The streets, moments ago crowded with no one, are once again still empty. The celebration of peace has ended and another beautiful day comes to a close. The sun, like a shopkeeper with no customers, leaves work early.

And the radio softly reminds us the shapes of the shapeless.

[pause]

Oh, dear. You startled me. Listeners, the emissary has appeared in my studio without warning, without even opening a door. They are sitting in the chair next to me and slowly rotating. Their visor is open and I am being forced to stare at the ineffable darkness within the emissary's helmet.

This seems like a good time for the weather.

[WEATHER: “Subspace” by RAQIA]

Have you ever forgotten where you put your keys? You were certain they were on the mantel. But they were not. Have you ever missed an appointment because you were sure it was on Wednesday at noon, not Tuesday at ten? Have you ever remembered a life you did not lead? Has a carefully collated series of words ever made you uncertain? Unconfident? Or un. Just un. Un as an adjective unto itself.

The emissary arrived from the future, from space. The emissary told me changes were made, and those changes became mistakes, and those mistakes became truths, and all of it would need to be undone.

"Night Vale is a vibrant and full city, with tens of thousands of people," the emissary said. "Yet here you are, Leonard, the only person in Night Vale."

I nodded into the dark onyx of the emissary's face screen.

"How old are you Leonard?" the emissary asked.

I did not know. I still do not know.

The emissary revealed to me a newspaper clipping, from the Night Vale Daily Journal obituary section, dated November 1983. There was a photo of me and a story about my life, my childhood, my radio career, my wife, my children, my death. It was all true, and yet I remembered none of it. Except for the last part.

I looked at my obituary photo. I read how I died, under cargo truck wheels on Mesa Boulevard. In print, anything looks true.

"What deception, this human sight," I said.

The emissary lifted their thick gloved hands to their neck, unlatched the snaps and removed their helmet.

I saw the face of an old woman with sunken, tearful eyes.

"I am the General," the emissary said, placing her enormous soft palm on my hand, "I have tried to save myself, my soldiers, my town, my planet, through time travel. Everytime we lose a battle, I return to before it ever happened and fight it again. I fight each battle over and over until we have won."

"You are an excellent general," I told her.

"Of course I am," she snapped. "In battle. But each time I interfere in the timeline, I create a widening ripple of historical changes. And now Night Vale is empty, on the verge of never having existed at all. This must be undone. Do you understand me, Leonard?"

I nodded yes, to hide the fact that I did not understand.

The emissary pointed to the moon. An enormous piece of the moon was missing. I did not remember that the moon was broken, but also I rarely look at the moon, out of disdain.

"Like the moon, time has broken," she said.

"Night Vale should be full of people, and you should have died long ago, Leonard," she added. "Do you understand?"

I shook my head no, to hide the fact that I did understand.

"I am sorry Leonard," she said, "If Night Vale is repaired, you will return to the grave."

"But you have achieved peace." I argued.

"I have achieved peace," she said, “and in doing so I have made it so that no one in this city or this world or this universe ever lived. I have achieved an infinitude of emptiness. Leonard, look."

She touched my shoulder with one hand, and with her other, she indicated once more the moon. When I looked, the moon was again whole. I looked back at the General, and she was gone.

I hear now a voice not my own, like distant highway traffic. I do not think I should be alive, but I do not know what else to be. Am I a ghost? Am I a god? Am I at all? Whatever it is I am, I reject my end. I embrace my existence, even in a world with no one to acknowledge it. I never wished to die, Night Vale, and still I refuse to do so.

I am a broadcaster. I do not stop broadcasting simply because I do not live.

Stay tuned next for grackles hatching from long-dormant eggs. And anything else I wish to describe, real or not, for you do not hear me anyway.

And until tomorrow, "See ya, Night Vale. See ya."

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PROVERB: Ask your doctor about dogs. Have a long conversation about how good dogs are. Show each other pictures of dogs.