Money can’t buy you happiness. But it can buy you this blender. Do you want to buy this blender? I will sell it to you for money. Welcome to Night Vale.

I will get right to the news, because, well, it’s a doozy. It seems that the boy we found in Grove Park, who it turns out, and this is kind of a funny story, is a younger version of my old archenemy Kevin, has decided he must kill his double currently living in the desert other world, which is to say that the boy Kevin wants to kill the adult Kevin. Sorry to go over such basic, everyday stuff again, but sometimes it’s helpful to remember the mundane little details like this.

Anyway, the boy has broken into my husband Carlos’s science lab next door to Big Rico’s Pizza. He has barricaded himself in there, and is attempting to use the scientific equipment in order to enter the other world and confront himself. While I am no Kevin fan, we have been at a delicate truce with Desert Bluffs for many years now, and I am worried about what this kind of provocation could mean for Night Vale’s future.

Carlos is trying to negotiate with the boy using a megaphone, saying things like “hey, there’s some fragile beakers in there, please try not to smash them.” And “Maybe consider not causing a rift between universes.” Tamika Flynn has her own competing megaphone, with which she is saying “Kevin, this is not your mother but it is your legal guardian. Let’s talk about this. Do you also have a megaphone? They make your voice so loud. It’s fun.”

I will keep you updated on this stand off, as the standing continues to off.

But first, the community calendar

Monday is Band Practice at the Rec Center. So no matter what you hear from inside, don’t go in. You wouldn’t like what you’d see. The Rec Center will be closed for the rest of the week for cleaning and repairs.

Tuesday is All You Will Eat day at the Denny’s. It’s just $5 and you won’t be able to eat again for the rest of your life so you know, try to cram a lot in there while you can.

Wednesday, the Night Vale High School Theater Program will be presenting their production of Godspell. This is a new un-immersive presentation of the show, adapted to keep you as distanced as possible from the material. In it, a bored teenager will read you the Wikipedia summary of the play while simultaneously playing Call of Duty. All proceeds from the performance will be donated to the FBI, because they seem to be doing a great job lately.

Thursday is my day off, so please try not to do anything worth reporting on during that day. Maybe stay in bed with your hands tucked under your body and your eyes closed while humming to fully block off interaction with the world. Any events that happen on my day off that I cannot report on will be taken as a direct offense to me personally.

Friday is Volunteer Day at the Community Garden. They need someone to be buried alive in the rich loam, to ensure that the tall beans and the blooming flowers keep growing for another year. So head on down and volunteer. If there are no volunteers, someone will have the volunteering done for them by a gang of people in black hoods who will enter their bedroom on a cold early spring night chanting “The Soil Eater Has Been Chosen.” So maybe someone should just volunteer and get it over with.

Saturday is RC car racing at the Vague Yet Menacing Government Agency’s West Night Vale office. No one is allowed to attend, and results are highly classified. Merely knowing that this event exists puts your life in danger.

And Sunday there will be a lost little girl wandering in Grove Park. She will wear a bedraggled white dress, and her face will never quite be visible, no matter the angle or light. She will ask you to come into the woods with her, to find her mother. You hadn’t remembered there being woods in Grove Park, but there they are, hundreds of trees shrouded in fog, full of shadows and uncanny sounds. You will take her hand and her hand will feel like a brittle autumn leaf. And she will lead you deep into those woods, so deep, as the fog envelops you completely. So that’s on Sunday, if you want to clear your schedule.

This has been the community calendar.

Terrible news listeners. Carlos has confirmed that the boy has successfully opened a stable doorway into the other desert world and is now standing at the threshold calling Kevin’s name, which is to say his own name, as he is also Kevin.

“There can only be one,” shouts the boy. “The mathematics of reality demand it.” He is holding a knife.

Only the wasteland answers him, in that empty voice of the desert. The boy knows that if he goes into that other world, time will pass differently and so he does not step through the doorway. And no one emerges to confront him. There is a new stand-off now, between the boy and the complete absence of reply.

The boy goes red and furious. “You are afraid,” he shouts, although it is not clear whether he is talking to himself or the other himself.

And now for a message from the Night Vale Medical board.

Kids are just people. I know they look very small and not burdened with regret and sorrow like a normal person. But they are a kind of person nonetheless. And like any person, they occasionally need medical care. That’s where doctors come in.

Take Dr. Jennifer Newport. Or Dr. Jen as the kids, call her since they can’t pronounce her unusual first name.

Dr. Jen has her practice in that old factory out in the scrublands, the one that spews black smoke at night, the one that no one remembers having been built, it was just there one Wednesday eve, already looking old and abandoned. Dr. Jen wants you to bring your kids there. She has such wonders to show them. Such as making sure they’re up to date on their vaccines and checking their eyesight. She will give them a lollipop when they’re done. She’s just a normal pediatrician, no weird stuff. Real estate is expensive in Night Vale, so the old factory is the only office she could get, but don’t worry. Almost no one disappears in its long twisting halls, lured away by gentle whispers from dark vacant rooms. Hardly any at all. And most of the ones that have disappeared have returned, as frantic pale faces pressed against the upper windows of the factory, only seen in the corner of your eye on moonless nights. So nothing to worry about.

Dr Jen: “Your children’s health is paramount. If anyone calls your name from deep within the factory, please don’t follow its beguiling voice. We’re in suite 9F, right by the elevator.”

This has been a message from the Night Vale Medical Board.

An update on the boy.

The boy squints into the distance of the portal. A figure is approaching, at first smudge, then shadow, then silhouette, and finally resolving into the older version of the boy. This older Kevin gets to the edge of the doorway between worlds, and sits down criss cross apple sauce. “Put down the knife, little one,” he says in a gentle voice. “Let us talk like civilized people.”

“No,” the boy says. He is still standing, his entire body tense. “You get your own knife and you fight me.”

“Oh,” the older Kevin says, “I don’t need a knife.” His voice lowers, becomes dangerous. “I have my teeth.”

Tamika Flynn, worried about where this confrontation is going, and deeply concerned to hear that her nemesis Kevin has returned, has used her power as a member of city council to declare a state of emergency. All over town, sirens are going off. Sirens wailing from the windows of long abandoned farmsteads. Sirens from rusty speakers standing crooked in the remote windwashed desert. Low moaning sirens luring sailors to their death in a distant ocean. The sky has gone red, the color of warning, the color of gore. In the deep places, creatures stir. A state of emergency is upon us. Carlos, frantic, is tearing at the door of the lab with his bare hands, trying to get inside and stop whatever will happen next.

And through it all, Kevin the boy and Kevin the man are staring cooly at each other, each of them waiting for the violence that is sure to begin.

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Huge news listeners. Kevin has stepped through the threshold. He is holding out his hands, in defense or greeting, I am unsure. Perhaps a cautious mixture of both. The boy does not hesitate. He stabs at Kevin. But Kevin is too fast and slips away. “We don’t have to do this. There’s still time for you,” the older Kevin says, while simultaneously lunging at the boy with sharp teeth. The boy is not as fast as his grown self, and Kevin’s jagged canines scrape deeply into his arm. Blood wells. The older Kevin does not breathe any faster or slower. His heartbeat does not change at all.

The boy cries in frustration, and stabs again. This time Kevin plucks the knife from his hand and throws it away, and then with some wicked movement of his jaw the boy is once again bleeding. But the boy is not cowed. He grabs at beakers and flasks, hurls them at his older self’s head. Outside, Carlos yells “dang it, I said please don’t shatter my beakers!” The sirens blare. The sky is as red as the blood on the walls of the lab. The two Kevins lash and lunge at each other. “You are relentless,” the older Kevin says. “I understand relentless. Even as a boy, I was a true believer searching for something to believe. But.” And he draws blood again. “But,” he finishes, “I cannot let you end me.”

[beat]

Oh, they knocked out the security cameras, so I'm not sure what’s happening now. I’ll give you an update as soon as I have it.

Sorry to do this folks, but I just wanted to take a moment to do a bit of a “Cecil rant” as it were. Why do they sell hot dog buns in packs of 8, but nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt in tubs of one? Ok, so I’ve opened up my tub of nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt and I’ve slopped it onto a hotdog bun for a light afternoon snack. Now what am I supposed to do with the other 7 buns? Buy seven more tubs of nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt? How is that economical?

When are the fat cats on Wall Street going to understand that they can’t keep pulling this fast one on us? We want one simple thing, a hotdog bun absolutely glopped over with nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt, and if they won’t give it to us, well maybe they won’t like the alternative.

We can do this the hard way or the easy way, corporate America. So how about you give me a hot dog bun with an astonishing amount of nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt on it and we can all go about our days.

Rant over. I just had to get it off my chest, and I’m sure I spoke for a lot of you out there.

The door to Carlo’s lab is opening. Someone is emerging. It is Kevin. The adult Kevin I mean. I haven’t seen Kevin in Night Vale since…since… well the last time was a bad time for us all, as I’m sure you remember. Kevin is covered in blood, although I’m not certain if that is from the fight or just how he usually looks. He is holding up his hand to silence the crowd, although they were already dead silent in horror. He is smiling. My god. A terrible sight. And he is speaking. Let’s go right to hearing that. Just after we hear the weather.

[WEATHER]

KEVIN: Can a person change? That is the central question of our lives. So much of our time is spent trying to change. Trying to become small or big. Trying to become powerful or peaceful. Trying to find a center or throw ourselves into the wild borderlands. So many books and videos and gurus, all trying to answer the question: can a person change?

Which is funny, if you think about it. Because the main truth of our lives is that we do change. Obviously we are not the same person at two as we are at twenty two. Nor are we the same person at forty two, or ninety two. These changes happen to us.

So it was the wrong question, the one we were asking. Because we know that a person can change. The real question is: do we want to change? The issue is not method, but desire. In our hearts, we want everything to stay the same. That distance, from the change that is inevitable, and the stasis we desire, is the final tragedy of the human race.

This boy, a younger version of me. Maybe this boy could be saved, could be changed from the path I’ve taken. But I don’t think he wants to. In his heart, he wants what I want, because I am him, and so he will choose what I chose, because it’s what I did.

Well, Night Vale. I’ll see you again soon. And next time, I won’t be alone. This is not the kind of problem I can handle on my own. Many hands, after all, make light work.

CECIL: Kevin turned, walked back into the lab and then through the portal, returning to the desert otherworld. Carlos rushed in through the now open door. The boy was sitting against the wall, bloody but alive. He was crying, but his face was determined. The boy spoke: “I wasn’t good enough,” he said. “Next time I will be.”

I don’t like where this is heading. I don’t like it at all. If I’m honest, listeners, this whole situation seems worrying.

Stay tuned next for a clap of thunder which is weird, because the sky is cloudless and still.

Good night, Night Vale, good night.