185 - Fair

Come to the place where the fun never ends. Nonstop fun. Fun all the time. It does not stop. There are no exits. Where are the exits? Welcome to Night Vale

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Listeners, have you ever experienced a traumatic moment, say a car wreck, or a sliced-open finger on a mandolin, or a lost wallet? And in that moment you found focus? Everything slowed down and became clear? Have you ever felt this kind of resolve in the face of chaos?

Well, I hope you get that feeling again soon, because I have some bad news. Library Director George Hempstead informs me that the locks on the library cages were broken this morning, and all of the librarians have escaped. They’re slithering through stacks of science fiction, crawling along shelves of self-help, and leaving trails of slime atop the dusty tomes of the library’s rare books and old National Geographic issues collection.

Director Hempstead – who has always been a fair leader, a very patient man –  does not know how the locks were broken, but he assures the people of Night Vale that heads will roll. 

Not literally. He’s not a barbarian. He only means that he plans to dock the pay of his library staff for violating their employee handbook, which clearly states in the section titled “The Divine Text of Immutable Laws”, Chapter 8, Verses 14 and 15: “Remain in your cages until released, you lowly and foul beasts. For those who defy these commandments shall have their income docked and break time revoked.” 

The librarians are now gathering outside of the library, and I am panicking. They are the fiercest, most unrelenting creatures on earth. And if they are free, we certainly are not.

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Breathe Cecil. It’s fine. We’re all fine. You know what might make you feel better? A traffic report. Yes, a traffic report.

There’s an overturned tractor trailer on Route 800 just south of Exit 3, which is blocking the left lanes of northbound traffic. The delays are made worse by rubberneckers who have slowed, ostensibly for safety precautions as they navigate around the wreck, but honestly they’re slowing to gawk. 

A sliver of ghoulish hope that a man on fire will emerge, flailing his arms and screaming. Or perhaps a CareFlite helicopter will descend onto the median. Maybe everyone involved in this unfortunate accident is safe and also they own a dog, and that dog is safe, and the dog then stands on the roadside panting and wagging its tail. And maybe that dog will see those drivers who are so carefully slowing their vehicles and staring into the wreckage. “It would be no good to have a dog look at me and wag its tail if I never see the dog do this,” these rubberneckers think. So they slow more and more, until the line of cars grows and grows, each prying eye hoping to see anything from a friendly, uninjured dog all the way to the mangled corpse of a big rig pilot.

So avoid Route 800 if you’re not looking for anything like that. But head on out to Route 800 if you’re hoping to see a dead body. Or maybe a friendly dog. It’s a real grab bag, this life.

This has been traffic.

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That was sort of relaxing. I did feel better. for a short time, anyway. I’m thinking about the escaped librarians again, though, and my anxiety is rising. Fortunately, in a moment of clarity, I remembered what to do when librarians threaten to destroy our city and devour our book-loving citizens. Call for help.

On the line right now, we have 20-year-old bibliophile and leader of a powerful teen militia. A woman who protects our town from the predatory librarians. We have Tamika Flynn. Welcome, Tamika!

TAMIKA: Hi Cecil. So I disbanded the teen militia in January. New year. New me. 

CECIL: Oh no. Tamika, why?

TAMIKA: I’ve spent the last couple years trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. I’m not a teenager anymore, so I decided that I needed to leave behind childish things like armed vigilante justice, and participate in more adult things like Robert’s Rules of Order. So, I’m focusing more on my work with the City Council now. 

CECIL: Did you hear about the librarians escaping? It’s terrible. I was hoping you could assemble your teen militia and protect our city. But if you don’t have the militia anymore…

TAMIKA: I heard about the librarians, Cecil. And the City Council is doing everything it can at all times to protect Night Vale. We’ve put together a task force to study the problem, and there’s even a preliminary meeting scheduled next week to analyze the risks.

CECIL: It sounds like the risk is that we’ll all be eaten. The only hope is that the librarians will kill us swiftly before they devour us whole.

TAMIKA: That’s certainly one of the concerns we’re looking into. Cecil, we want everyone in town to remain calm. We are developing a plan of action and as an unelected official, I am accountable to the constituency which never gave me my leadership role. Government is dope.

CECIL: You really are maturing, but listen: I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, Tamika...

TAMIKA: [under her breath] it sounds like you’re about to…

CECIL: [continuing] but while government is, indeed, dope, it’s also a bit slow. We have an emergency outside the library right now.

TAMIKA: I’ll get Pamela Winchell right on it then. She’s our Director of Emergency Press Conferences. She’s great at situations like this. She owns her own podium and electric bullhorn and everything. A real pro.

CECIL: If there’s no teen militia specially trained in fending off ravenous librarians, maybe we could send the Sheriff’s Secret Police.

TAMIKA: Oh Cecil, when have the police ever solved anything? Never. They never have. Police do not solve anything. I need to be clear on this point. No, we’ve got this all in hand. If it’ll make you feel better, though, I can give Sheriff Sam a call, say on Monday.

CECIL: Why do you have to wait until Monday?!  

TAMIKA: Did you not get our flyer? There’s the Book Fair this week. I put this whole event together, and it’s taking up all of my focus right now. Oh hey, since we’re live on the radio, do you think I could do a little plug for it?

CECIL: I mean…

TAMIKA: Great. The First Annual Night Vale Book Fair runs from tomorrow to Sunday at the Community College. We’ll have vendors from all over the country, from small bookstores, to independent authors, to fringe publishers. There’ll be panel discussions featuring talented young writers from across the world, like Alyssa Cole, Emily St. John Mandel, Pablo Neruda, and Salena Godden. They’ll also be signing special hardcover editions of their latest novels, each of which contains a sapphire amulet that lights up whenever a lie is told.

CECIL: It sounds wonderful. So I’m getting word from the Library Director George Hempstead that the librarians have left the library parking lot and are skittering north along Galloway straight into the center of town. So while this Book Fair sounds exciting and…

TAMIKA: Oh it will be exciting. We’ve also booked a very special keynote speaker for our inaugural Book Fair. Bestselling author of Fight Club: Brett Easton Ellis!

CECIL: Ooh, I loved Fight Club. That’s such a memorable line: “The first rule of Fight Club is I didn’t come here to make friends.”

TAMIKA: Totally. But you’re thinking of the movie adaptation. That line doesn’t appear in the novel. In fact, the original novel has nothing to do with a secret fighting club. It’s about a young orphan girl living on a farm on Prince Edward Island who deciphers a code printed on the back of an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, which she found hidden behind a painting of horses hidden in the attic. The code describes a map which leads to a great treasure, but she never goes to find it, because capitalism is oppression.

CECIL: I feel like Christopher Nolan captured that spirit in the film, even if his story was a little different…. Wait. Tamika, the Book Fair sounds fun, but I’m worried that we won’t get to have a fair at all if the librarians are not subdued. They are attracted to the smell of readers. This whole event will be a buffet of blood.

TAMIKA: Buffet of Blood by James Patterson is one of my favorite thrillers.

CECIL: Well it’s going to be a reality if we don’t do something.

TAMIKA: Cecil, I am doing something. It’s just not what you want me to do. You want me to grab a crossbow and strap on some leather vambraces and launch myself into a double backflip, with a spiraling kick to the thorax of these librarians. You want me to twirl my dual daggers on my fingertips while standing over the whimpering body of a mortally wounded beast and issuing some clever quip like “SSSShhh. There’s no moaning in the library.”

CECIL: Exactly! Yes!

TAMIKA: Cecil, you know I love books, which means this Book Fair is important to me. It also means that I read a lot of books. And if books have taught me anything it’s empathy. Trying to understand what people want, where they come from, and why they are the way they are. Violence begets only violence. As a member of the City Council, I want to extend the same courtesy to our librarians that I extend to all citizens, and that is the right to not be arrested or accosted without valid reason.

CECIL: Okay, so go talk to them without any weapons. See how that goes for you.

TAMIKA: You go talk to them. See how that goes for you.

CECIL: Look, I respect your change in attitude, Tamika, but you’ve seen first hand just how deadly and bloodthirsty librarians can be. Director George Hempstead told me just last week, he had a contractor come by the library to patch and repaint some damaged drywall, and within 5 minutes, the librarians had already wrapped the repairman in a webbed cocoon. George managed to free the handyman before the librarians liquified him with their venomous fangs. They were planning to drink him like a juice box. I think that’s a valid reason to use force against them.

TAMIKA: They were probably just hungry. I’ve heard that the library director has some very strict rules about lengths of lunch breaks. And that he also got rid of the microwave and fridge in the employee break room. 

Listen, we’ve made some great strides here at the City Council. We introduced counselling services for unhoused people. We opened a new wing at the Museum of Forbidden Technologies which every person in town will have the opportunity to never see because it is so securely hidden deep underground and hundreds of miles away. And just last year, we officially decriminalized writing utensils. I hear your concerns and I will pass them along to the rest of my fellow Councilmembers, all of whom are on vacation in Cabo San Lucas this week, due to the imminent danger of escaped librarians. But as soon as they return, we’ll get right on this.

CECIL: Tamika. You won’t have time. I’ve just received word that the librarians are already downtown. They’re clattering along their thousands of spiny legs toward City Hall. Tamika, get out.  

TAMIKA: Oh. I hear them approaching now. Wow, I always forget just how disturbing the sounds of their rattles are.

CECIL: Please hurry, Tamika. I don’t know if you can fight all of them at once. Maybe you still have that copy of Isabel Allende’s (pronounce Ay-YEN-day) The House of the Spirits. It’s the limited edition 25th Anniversary hardcover. All of its pages are hollowed out in order to hide a flash grenade. Maybe you can use that to stun the librarians as you make your escape.

TAMIKA: No, Cecil. As a City Council member, I must listen to all our citizens. I will face the librarians directly. And I will find out what they want.

CECIL: Tamika. It’s too dangerous.

TAMIKA: I’m walking out there right now, Cecil. Do I need an umbrella? What’s the weather like today?

CECIL: Oh. Well, let me tell you.

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WEATHER: “I Will” by Emischramm http://emischramm.bandcamp.com

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CECIL: Listeners, I have not heard from Tamika Flynn. I fear the worst. George Hempstead, our town’s Library Director said that librarians are truly awful and that they should never be trusted. If Tamika thought she could simply talk sense into these untamed and aggressive monsters, I think she might be… oh dear. I can’t even bring myself to say it.

TAMIKA: I’m fine.

CECIL: I thought you were gone, Tamika. I kept calling your name, but there was no response. I assumed your line had gone dead, because… you had… gone dead.

TAMIKA: Oh yeah, no. Sorry about that. I just had my airpods muted while I was talking to the librarians. We’re good now. Everyone come on out to the book fair starting tomorrow. Our opening night party is gonna slap. We’ll have special guests Michael Chabon (SHAY-bon), Catherine Lacey, Carmen Maria Machado (muh-CHOD-oh), and Jonathan Franzen is going to DJ. He doesn’t own any music and doesn’t agree with the concept of “songs”, so that should be a trip.

CECIL: Wait. How did you get the librarians to go away. Did they go away? Are we safe? Are you safe?

TAMIKA: Oh, that? Yeah, so the librarians just had some forms to file. Real boring stuff. Worker protections, things like that. We’ve put it all into our system. Everything’s fine.

CECIL: It was just paperwork?

TAMIKA: Not quite that boring. They just had some complaints about mistreatment in the workplace, and they also had to file with the city before establishing a librarians’ union. According to one of the librarians – I think his name was Randall – they’ve been unhappy with their treatment under Director George Hempstead. He’s been keeping them in cages, docking their pay for very minor violations, and in the last year, he’s started changing their job descriptions without so much as an employee review or even a pay raise. Those are some really terrible conditions over there if the allegations are true.

We’ve started an ad hoc exploratory committee to investigate the Director, and to do a full audit on labor practices. And in a couple of months, the librarians’ union should be finalized and fully recognized by the city. No wonder the librarians were always so cranky.

CECIL: That’s it. You just talked to them? You didn’t have to fight for your life or subdue any of them with a tranquilizer gun or anything?

TAMIKA: Oh, a few of them caught these hands. Librarians don’t communicate passively. You gotta stand your ground, and by stand your ground, I mean kick a few faces. But that’s just how librarians are. Not everyone communicates like you and me Cecil. Empathy is understanding.

CECIL: So they’re locked up safely?

TAMIKA: They’re back at the library, if that’s what you’re asking. I gave them some flyers for the upcoming Book Fair. They said they would be happy to hand them out, but they’d have to get permission from Mr. Hempstead first. I offered to make a call to his office for them, but they promised they’d deal with him themselves.

CECIL: Oh no.

TAMIKA: All right Cecil. I gotta go. Pamela Winchell just came in, and she said her cat has an abscessed tooth and she wants to hold an emergency press conference about it. So I need to call the media. Thanks again for letting me promote the First Annual Night Vale Book Fair. We’ll see everyone there this weekend. Don’t forget. On Saturday, billionaire media executive JK Rowling will be conducting a workshop on how to disenfranchise your readership. 

CECIL: Thank you, Tamika. And I want to say how proud I am to know you. You’ve really grown up in the last few years.

TAMIKA: That’s kind of a backhanded compliment, but ok.

CECIL: What I’m saying is I think you have a bright future in diplomacy and leadership. 

TAMIKA: Thanks, Cecil. But you once told me that figuring out who we are takes time and that there are no short cuts. Maybe this is what I”ll always be. But maybe I’ll be a novelist. Or a green beret. Or maybe I’ll get lucky, and someone will turn me into a vampire. I have to be open to all possibilities. 

CECIL: I know you’ll make the right choice. Bye, Tamika. 

That’s all for our show, listeners. Stay tuned next for loud, slow footsteps in the other room, followed by petrified silence, because you’re the only one home.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

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PROVERB: Always tip your dentist. A standard gratuity is 10% of your remaining teeth.