This is a no excuses zone. No reasoning is given for anything. Not a single consequence or chronology to be found here. Welcome to Night Vale.

###

Along the vertical rise of the Brown Stone Spire, between meter 183 and meter 207 sits an artist: Saad (pronounced Sod) Ibrahim. Saad etches ancient verses in long-forgotten alphabets into the stone. He does not know what he writes before he writes it, but as he chisels each glyph, the meaning becomes clear. This week he writes 5 symbols which look like:

- A giraffe lowering its head to graze

- A volcano erupting

- A coffee cup with human eyes

- The letter Y but circled and with a slash through it

- And, lastly, a Ford F-150 carrying a payload of stars and planets

Saad recognizes the phrase the moment he finishes it. It translates roughly to “Turtles go only part of the way down. Beyond them, it’s tortoises. A common mistake.” Perhaps it is the 20 years of working on meters 183 through 207 that has taught Saad this dead language. But in two decades of chiseling symbols into the Spire, he has not seen the same character twice.

The Brown Stone Spire does not speak to him, it merely informs him, in a method beyond language, beyond narrative. He cannot feel the Spire doing this, so he cannot be certain. He cannot be certain of anything, which is itself a kind of certainty that he cannot be certain of. It is all so confounding, life upon the Spire, but he is happy. He is content. Even on days like today, as the tower sways more than is normal, more than his guts can withstand.

Back in his youthful, wasteful days – back when he could touch the earth, Saad felt lost and without purpose. He had a job as a teaching assistant in the community college. He was respected and admired by the faculty and the students alike. He had a romantic partner, Hollis Templeton, whom he had known since eighth grade. They loved each other, though they never said the phrase. It was implied. It’s possible to know something without it ever being explained. Saad had a family. They were difficult but well-meaning.

But Saad lost all of these things. The tumult of academic politics left Saad without a job, as the school did not hire back the 23-year-old assistant who was more popular than the department chair. Saad’s mother and father divorced, and moved to opposite coasts. And Hollis. Well, Hollis needed time away from Saad. They told him that they had never explored the world, had never dated another person, had never really found themself. Saad understood and gave Hollis their space.

As Saad’s mother always said: “If you love something, let it go. If it doesn’t come back, it probably died alone, wondering why you didn’t hold on to it.” And as days turned to weeks to months and to years, Saad heard from Hollis less and less, and Saad wondered if letting Hollis go was the wrong thing to do.

Once the job and the family and the partner were gone, Saad had only himself. He did not like himself. He did not hate himself either. He simply did not know who he was without other people’s validation. He was his students’ instructor, his lover’s boyfriend, his parents’ son. He was his apartment’s lessee. He was not Saad Ibrahim. He was just a man in the way a leaf was just a leaf.

One day he saw a sign. Not a metaphorical sign like a shooting star or a deer with a third eye. No, he saw a literal sign. It read: “THERE IS ROOM FOR YOU. ENLIST TODAY” And in the center of the sign was a drawing of a tall tower spiraling up into the firmament. “Built of brown stone without a counterpart in the whole world,” he heard himself whisper to no one as he gazed upon the poster. In the lower corner was a phone number and the logo for the Wendy’s fast food chain: that famous girl in red pigtails holding a dove in one hand and the scales of justice in the other.

It was in that moment that Saad found not just a new job, but himself.

###

Saad always knew what he wanted to do but never what he wanted to be. In college he studied civil engineering, but the advanced math disillusioned him. He could pass his classes with great effort, but they took a toll on his mind, which soon took a toll on his body. And before long, a toll on his soul. And so he left engineering and began a major in religious studies.

He never felt so much as faith or even spirituality. He did not view religion as a path for his own life, but he loved ritual. He loved culture. He loved the beliefs and practices of whole continents, of nations, of nomads, of enclaves of families over time. And he wanted to learn more about the gods of civilization. But the anthropology of religion bored him. It all made too much sense, and his mind wandered in class and while writing term papers on topics like Astrology: Myers-Briggs But In Space or Real Gods Have Six Arms. He could do all of it in his sleep. And sometimes he did. He once got an A on a paper that was copied verbatim from his dream journal.

Eventually Saad left religious studies. Engineering was too hard. Religion was too easy. And Saad was at a loss for what he should do next. And so he closed his eyes and poked a finger into the college course catalog. When he opened them, his finger was on a class titled “SCULPTURE 110: HOW TO STAB BEAUTY INTO STONE.”

Saad had no experience as an artist. He had drawn pictures of boxy houses in elementary school. He had made clay ashtrays for his parents, who did not smoke. He had once spray-painted a heart on a brick wall in an alley with “S plus H” in the middle of it to impress Hollis, and because they were both 16 at the time, it seemed a grand romantic gesture equivalent to a honeymoon on a mountainside resort in Svitz.

Sculpture, though, seemed as likely a place as any to begin anew, and Saad enrolled. He struggled with visualizing three-dimensional shapes at first, but after a couple of months, he began to know how to look at a block of nearly any substance and see a bust or a tree or a truck or a chair. And his hands willed that image into existence. He could make anything.

Not anything. He could make simulacra of anything. He knew he was not a god. Having a mere two arms was proof enough of that.

So when Saad saw the sign for the Brown Stone Spire, he enlisted. He knew the Spire needed sculptors to carve its delicate shapes. And while he did not finish his engineering or his religious studies, he was sure that knowledge would also come handy.

Life on the Spire has been steady and uneventful for Saad, which has helped him focus only on himself, on his hands, on his work. It is a daily grind, both metaphorically, and literally grinding away at rock.

The Spire provides lunch and dinner for its employees. There are hammocks to sleep in with safety netting below. Mail is delivered once daily via white helicopters with orange stripes, though for Saad, the mail is mostly grocery coupons and credit card pitches. And the occasional corporate memo about needing to reset passwords or staff birthdays or Casual Friday dress code reminders.

Last year, the Brown Stone Spire added a breakroom at meter 192. It’s kept well-stocked with tea and coffee and juice. There’s also a TV in there, but the single available subscription is HULU. And even then, management only sprung for the programming free version. $3.99 a month, but it’s all ads.

###

Lately Saad has considered what need there is for such a tall tower. Ever-growing, the Brown Stone Spire has risen beyond the clouds. Even on a clear day, and even from his vantage point 180-plus meters off the ground, Saad cannot quite see the Spire’s peak. He used to think it was a Tower of Babel-type thing, something he learned about in his Biblical Parables course. But the Brown Stone Spire is not at all like the Tower of Babel. Sure, they are both towers. Sure they are both built in an attempt to climb to heaven. And everyone working on the tower shares a language and motivation. But in all other ways the two towers are completely different.

First off, the God of Genesis retired in 1983. He lives in a beach house on the island of Grand Turk in the Caribbean with his wife and several dogs. God’s son, like many 30-somethings at the time, moved back in with his dad after losing his job in the recession of 2008. Also, according to an article in BuzzFeed back in 2014, heaven is no longer in the sky. With the advent of work-share communities and video conferencing technology, heaven no longer needed to spend exorbitant amounts on a single office. But as WeWork floundered, heaven had to relocate again. As of today, heaven is in a corporate park deep below the Indian Ocean.

To Saad, the Brown Stone Spire is its own unique endeavor. It is not built for any reason other than to be built. Memos from management claim that the Spire is an effective marketing tool for Wendy’s, and that upon completion of the 2,000th meter in 2019, sales of the Baconator spiked, topping even the Whopper Jr. But meaning can be placed on anything by anybody, Saad knows. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Another way to say that: What if what I see as green, you see as pink? Interpretation is tethered to the individual, not the collective. And Saad can interpret his work, his carvings, however he wishes. And he wishes to see them as expressions of himself, of his purpose. Because he wishes them to be, they are.

Still, Saad cannot help but wonder What If? What if he had followed his family? What if he had fought for his job? What if he had asked Hollis to stay by his side. Saad is so much older than he was the day Hollis left. Saad is more mature. If he knew then what he knew now, he would have been more assertive, more loving, more understanding. He would have been a better partner, a better lover, a better friend. And would Hollis have stayed? It is impossible to say.

The younger Saad is not the older Saad. They are not the same person at different points in linear time. No, your younger self, whether 20 years ago or 20 minutes ago, is a separate entity entirely. Saad of today does not experience regret, only resentment against this foolish young man of 2 decades prior. The Saad of the present does not make mistakes. He corrects the mistakes of those Saads who came before him, all less wise than he.

Today’s mail drop arrives, and Saad tosses the postcards for discount lumber into the recycling bin. He reads a memo from HR about drug testing going into effect for all employees on June 1. The memo clearly states that there is no penalty for doing drugs, and that HR does not wish to judge anyone. It’s just that they got this new drug testing machine and it’s pretty cool and they want to play around with it. So if you’re not currently taking any drugs, the memo states, HR would be happy to provide you with some. The only catch is that you don’t tell HR which drugs you picked. They want to guess first based on how you’re behaving. And then they’ll use the drug testing machine to see if they’re right.

Saad tosses the memo into the bin as well and returns to his station to carve a glyph that looks like an elephant with wings holding a scepter with its trunk. He knows upon etching it that the symbol translates to “Righteousness is a glacier, adrift in a dark sea.”

###

The helicopters, or mail-a-copters has Saad thinks of them, circle the tower for longer than usual today. A multiple-mail day generally means a major announcement. Mail was delivered twice in a day back when the mayor of Night Vale abruptly resigned. Also when the Glow Cloud first stormed through the desert. And when Tom Petty died.

Saad thinks he knows what is happening though. In fact he fears it, for the entire afternoon he could feel a quivering within the Spire. He remembers his Engineering courses well enough to know a structure this tall will sway, but today’s sway does not feel right. He can hear faint crackling within the stone itself. Saad knew when he enlisted that the tower was too tall to stay. What rises must fall. As his father always said: “Gravity, my child. Hashtag Never Forget.”

And Saad has never forgotten. As the torque from the tower’s top bends, Saad awaits the breaking of his only home. His life’s work. He is afraid, but he welcomes his fear. He refuses to reject death as he would a stranger. Saad stares West and wonders what the weather will be like tomorrow, when he is gone.

###

Weather: “Euridice“ by HEATHERS, https://heathers-mtl.bandcamp.com/

###

The second round of mail-a-copters delivered their letters, and there were two missives for Saad. The first a memo from Wendy’s Director of Operations, Southwest Region, stating that their Plinth Expansion project is underway. The director apologized for the discomfort while the tower base is under renovations. By 2023, the new base will be just over 2 miles wide in diameter, and the psychic energy of the 2,100-meter-tall Brown Stone Spire will be able to reach 5 different US states and most of northern Mexico.

Saad is pleased that his company is doing well. He does not feel that Wendy’s or even the Brown Stone Spire itself is of importance in the course of humanity’s history. No, he is pleased with the company’s success because it is a reminder that he has contributed to something larger than him.

In 20 years, Saad has carved hundreds of complex symbols into the Spire between meters 183 and 207. While that alone seems very little, it compounds its influence with the thousands of other hard workers along the Spire. All Saad ever wanted was to matter (and to get on the union health plan). But upon reading the second letter in the second round of mail today, he understands that he could have wanted much more.

“My dearest Saad,” the letter begins, “I work on meters 859 though 872. I have been here 20 years, and believed I could never be happier, until I saw your name in the guild directory. I left to find myself, and I did. I thought in finding myself that I had lost you, but perhaps it does not have to be that way. Is it too late? Will I learn the answer to that question? There’s a new tiki bar just opened up at meter 542. What are you doing Thursday night? I have so much to tell you. I hope you have much to tell me too,” the letter concludes.

And at the bottom: “S plus H” circumscribed in a heart. Saad holds the letter to his chest and sighs. He will not get to see Hollis again. But his future self will. He wishes nothing but the best for that person and hopes that the future Saad will make the right choices and want the right things.

Stay tuned next for a creak, a sway, and a snap. And as always, good night, Night Vale. Good night.

###

PROVERB: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you again. What is wrong with you? Why are you like this?