Love hurts. Love scars. Love depletes bone mass over time. Ask your doctor if love is right for you.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Before the industrial revolution, sleep was divided into two phases. In the middle of the night, people would get out of bed for a few hours and do little chores before going back to sleep again. Stoke the fires. Check on the farm animals. Tend to the sewing. Write a letter by candlelight. Chant an incantation. Conjure the dead. Whittle.

In modern times, many of us still wake up suddenly at around, say, 1:42 AM. And we know that, for some unknown reason, we’re going to be awake for the next couple of hours. But we don’t do little chores or write letters anymore. We lie there with our eyes closed, helplessly waiting for sleep to return. We listen to fake crime podcasts or ska music on low volume to keep us company in the dark. We battle thoughts about mortality, debts, responsibilities. Regretting stupid things we once said even though we’re pretty sure no one but us remembers that we said them in the first place. We think about different points in time where we could have made choices that might have completely altered the trajectory of our lives. We don’t necessarily know what those choices were, or what might have been different, or even if it would have been better or worse—but it haunts us just the same.

Sometimes, if we get too restless, we do get out of bed in the middle of the night, like our ancestors did. We wander into the living room, stumbling over our son’s electric train set. We pause as the caboose clatters across the tile floor, and we hear echoes of coyotes howling in the gulch through the open window. We grab the 2-day-old leftover cassoulet from Tourniquet out of the fridge. We sit down on the couch. We turn on the TV.

Which brings me to last night. Listeners, around 1:42 AM, I turned on the television to local ABC affiliate Channel 7. At first I didn’t understand what I was looking at. Then I realized I was looking at myself. Specifically myself at age five.

Sitting next to me was my sister Abby, age nine. We were in a group of about a dozen children, all clapping along with a strange song. Then the song became familiar to me. I started mumbling along to the words and found that I knew them all by heart.

(mumble-chants some lyrics) Plagues of insects, bursts of flame, it’s time to play a little game…

More on this after the headlines.

###

There’s a yellow warning in effect from the Water Department, which means Do Not Drink. The reservoir has reached hazardous levels of algae, toxins, and animal blood. Residents may still use the water to wash dishes, water lawns, and brush teeth. Children may still run freely through the sprinklers, innocent and heartless, but remember to provide them with extra towels before they run back into the house so they don’t track gory footprints across your nice white carpeting. Those stains will never come out.

In other news, the Night Vale Zoo suffered a security breach last night, resulting in all cages being unlocked and opened wide. Be on the lookout for tigers, bears, snakes, venomous spiders, crocodiles, killer bees and one pterodactyl roaming loose in the streets and skies, respectively. Also, if you’ve used a credit card at the Night Vale Zoo lately, be sure to check your accounts for unauthorized purchases.

And finally, a huge explosion has occurred in the vacant lot out back of the Ralphs. A gas leak from the boiler room is thought to be the culprit, judging from the smell and shimmery air and frenzied insistence by the gas company that someone let them into the building immediately. But as the Ralphs is closed due to Manager Gary’s vacation, that's not gonna happen anytime soon. More explosions are expected throughout the day, probably with increasing force and impact.

Witnesses report that following the explosion, a second hole opened up in the pavement of the vacant lot and distorted voices can now be heard calling for help from deep below the earth. Ralphs Corporate has urged citizens not to attempt communication with these voices. Subterranean cries for help are almost always predator decoy behavior. It’s called aggressive mimicry. It’s meant to lure you in, using your own sympathetic nature against you. Do not fall for it. And don't confuse it with the preexisting hole in the lot, where voices invite passersby to come inside and nestle. That hole is fine and normal, and it's perfectly okay to listen to those voices.

###

Well, looks like a pretty slow news day, so I can continue to leisurely describe my television viewing experience last night.

As all the children, myself and Abby included, sang the final verse of the strange song, a man appeared on screen singing along with us. His arms were raised up as if he were conducting a great orchestra instead of a grubby circle of tone-deaf children. He wore a false beard, a monocle, and a felt hat with a turkey feather in it. A matted fur vest over a stained tunic. A walking cane with a glowing orb on top. In the orb, the swirling mists of the creation and destruction of planets. Tears spilled onto his cheeks as he grinned with a toothless mouth.

“Who’s ready for the riddle of the day?” he asked, and the children, myself and Abby included, screamed with such intensity I had to mute the television.

By this time, I knew what I was seeing, listeners.

It was a decades-old rerun of Uncle Jasper’s Wasteland, a local kids’ show that my sister and I were obsessed with as children. Regardless of our squabbles and misunderstandings, Uncle Jasper was the one thing Abby and I could always agree on. We were even chosen to be in the live studio audience several times, including the episode they were airing last night. I remember now that it was taped 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, where Dr. Jennifer Newport currently has her pediatrics practice. You know, that old factory that suddenly appeared about six weeks ago but has also always existed, even before there was a town or people here.

“Today’s riddle is a visual one,” Uncle Jasper said as I unmuted the television. “Which means you have to use your…?”

“OPTIC NERVES!” all the children shouted.

“That’s right,” said Uncle Jasper. “I’m going to show you some pictures and you have to tell me what they all have in common. The winner gets to pick a prize from The Bottomless Box of Shiny Things.”

Before I continue this story, I better get to this story about product safety recalls. I’m told they’re time sensitive.

###

Recalled: all prescription drugs from the CVS at Skillman and Central Drive. Arlo DeCardenas (de-CAR-de-nas), lead pharmacist, admitted that they do not have any actual medical training and have just been putting random pills into random containers and hoping no one would notice.

They just really needed a job, Arlo said, and they’re blessed with the ability to talk a good game in an interview. They expressed their sincere apologies to anyone who has experienced unwanted side effects or died recently as a result of this fake-it-till-you-make-it approach to pharmaceuticals. Arlo has been dishonorably discharged from the CVS and is seeking new employment if anyone knows of anything. According to Arlo, they’re very good at everything.

Recalled: bacon. Independent laboratory tests via 23AndMe revealed that the DNA profile of the current stock of Night Vale bacon meat is all a match for a man named Adrian Nicolau, born in Bucharest, Romania in 1910 and died in Chicago, Illinois in 1971. The bacon contains neither pork nor turkey nor rattlesnake meat as advertised.

Recalled: a nightmare you had two nights ago. Not the specific details, but the feeling of mounting dread escalating to a sustained and overwhelming terror with no release.

Recalled: Pink Lady Apples. Absolutely chock full of razor blades.

Be safe out there! And remember, the same rule of thumb applies to consumer products as it does to your relationships: When in doubt, throw it out.

Now, back to Uncle Jasper’s picture riddle.

###

All the children in the studio audience hushed as the camera began rapidly cutting between different images, almost faster than the human eye can comprehend. I could only make out a few of them myself. A melting ice cream cone. The final moments of a dying star. An ancient city shimmering in the heat. A pocket watch, ticking. An old woman staring hungrily at a bowl of soup. A group of vultures circling a cloudy sky.

When the images finally ceased, a small child in the group raised his hand.

Listeners, it was me.

Uncle Jasper grinned even wider, tears pouring freely down his face now. He pointed at me with the strobing orb of his cane.

“Yes? What do you think the images have in common, little boy?” he asked me.

“Is it, um…entropy?” I guessed in my small five-year-old voice.

Uncle Jasper wiped his red, glittering eyes. “Of course, of course,” he murmured. “The universal state of randomness leading to a chaotic descent into disorder. Mr. Randolph! Get The Bottomless Box of Shiny Things for this clever young lad to choose his prize.”

As some of you may remember, Mr. Randolph was a character also played by Uncle Jasper, which involved him putting on a different hat and a second monocle. He had at least thirty different characters on the show and he played all the parts himself. Incredibly talented guy.

Now listeners, I have very little memory of this moment in real life. But the adult me watched through the screen in my living room as the young me put my hand in the box and pulled out my prize. It was a shard of silver metal from a jet engine turbine, crudely fashioned into the shape of a bunny rabbit. Uncle Jasper was famous for upcycling scraps of the airplane wreckage that litter the Sand Wastes and handcrafting them into fun prizes for the kids. It wasn’t exactly pretty, but it was special.

“Ouch,” the small me said, smiling with pride as the jagged rabbit nicked my soft flesh. Abby reached over and carefully took the figure from me, wrapping it up and placing it in her neon green fanny pack. She patted me on the head and told me I’d done a good job. I beamed up at my big sister. She put her arm around my shoulders. “I’ll file down the edges for you when we get home so it’s not as sharp,” I heard her murmur through the TV screen. My eyes misted up a little. Not the me on TV, but the me in the living room.

Then Uncle Jasper introduced some cartoons, which he had hand-drawn himself using grease-translucent napkins from the Moonlite All-Nite Diner as animation cels. A true renaissance man.

Anyway, I watched the rest of the show, ate the rest of the cold cassoulet, and went back to bed. But the experience got me thinking. Where is Uncle Jasper now? His show was canceled over twenty-five years ago and we’ve never heard anything about him since. I searched through the obituary archive and couldn’t find his name. Same thing with the property records. He was such an important figure to the children of this community for decades. He was definitely my first role model, and probably many of yours as well. I’d love to track him down if he’s still around and maybe have him on the show, or at least interview him off the air. Or just buy him a cup of coffee. And if he did pass away or leave town, I’d like to know that too. So I’m just putting it out there in case anyone knows anything.

Uncle Jasper, if you’re listening, please give your old pal Little Cecil a call down at the station.

[phone ringing fx]

Wow. That was fast. Fingers crossed, listeners! While I answer this, let’s go to the weather.

###

[The Weather]

###

Welcome back, everyone. I won’t keep you in suspense, that was not Uncle Jasper on the phone. It was my sister Abby. We haven’t spoken since our last family game night, so that was a nice surprise.

It’s a funny thing. She told me that she actually woke up at 1:42 AM last night and happened to catch the exact same rerun of Uncle Jasper’s Wasteland. We talked about our memories of the show. She asked me if I still had that metal rabbit. I said I vaguely remember playing with it so much that it finally rusted through and disintegrated into orange dust in my hands.

We came up with our own theories about where Uncle Jasper is now. Abby thinks he lives in one of the airplane hulls out in the Sand Wastes, surrounded by a lifetime’s worth of his own handmade metal sculptures. I suggested that he still performs his show every day for legions of crows instead of kids. I mean, that would at least explain why all the crows in town constantly recite children’s songs and riddles.

Either way, we both believe that Uncle Jasper is still alive and still around here somewhere. You can kind of just feel it in the air, don’t you think?

I wanted to talk with Abby about some other memories from our childhood too, but she’s always so touchy on the subject that I decided to avoid it this time. Instead, I asked her about what she’s been up to this week. She seemed happy I’d asked. “I don’t think you’ve ever asked me about my life in the present tense, Cecil,” she said. “You usually only want to talk to me about the past.”

I almost started to argue with her. But then I realized—she was right. When I look at Abby, I often see her as a symbol of my past instead of a person living her own life.

So instead of arguing, I apologized. Well, no, I didn’t actually apologize. I asked her if she wanted to meet up after I’m off the air and take the kids out for ice cream. And instead of nagging me about how ice cream causes microscopic brain holes, she said yes. Of course, Janice is a young woman, not a kid anymore, but no one’s too old for ice cream. Esteban just adores ice cream. His favorite flavor at the moment is Nacho Cheese. Just like his dad. Me, I mean. Carlos’s favorite flavor is Cool Ranch.

Oh, there’s Esteban running around out in the studio parking lot now. He just got dropped off by his after-school babysitter. Aww. Hi!!! He can see me through the window too. He’s playing with something out there. Looks like a twisted animal figure of some kind, metallic and glinting in the sun. Walking away from the parking lot is an older man, hunched over, using a cane. I’m waving at him too. Hi! He didn’t notice me. He’s gone now. But it’s always good to see our senior citizens getting out and about for some exercise and fresh air.

Wow. It’s a nice evening, isn’t it? The sun is setting. The crows are riddling. A distant silver airplane is silently plummeting into the Sand Wastes. Just beautiful. I hope you can all enjoy it by spending some time with your families too, whatever that looks like for you. Even if that just means yourself. After all, we contain multitudes, as processed meat tycoon Oscar Mayer famously said when asked about the ingredients in his ballpark franks.

Stay tuned for the next rerun of Uncle Jasper’s Wasteland, possibly on ABC affiliate channel 7, possibly around 1:42 AM, possibly co-starring a small forgotten version of yourself.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.