I don’t make the rules. I just gleefully enforce them even though I don’t have to. Welcome to Night Vale.

There is no Ralph’s. There is Mother Lauren’s Pantry. There is no hole out back of the Ralph’s. There is Mother Lauren’s Soil Embrace. There is no Night Vale. There is Mother Lauren’s Brood. We are loved. We are loved. We are-

[radio interference with brief snippets of other broadcasts interspersed]

Sorry. It is difficult to break free of the malign influence of Mother Lauren.

We live in two realities. One in which all is well. And one in which we are teetering over an edge from which we cannot return. I speak from both realities. I speak from both sides of my mouth.

The conflict that roiled Night Vale continues, but in a strange slow way. Mother Lauren stands on a podium in what once was Grove Park, her tendrils snaking through every part of the town, and through many of the people. The buildings expand and contract like lungs. The trees are melting. The people of Night Vale still bravely fight, but like people fighting in a painting, smudgy and two dimensional. The boy, who is the younger version of Kevin from Desert Bluffs, stands next to Mother Lauren, holding her hand. His face shows exertion, as if the greatest battle is inside his body, but he cannot move.

The last time Lauren came to Night Vale, she came as a representative of Strexcorp, here to conquer us in the name of capitalism. This time is different. This time she fights with stranger, stronger stuff. I don’t think she is turning us into another Desert Bluffs. I think, if anything, she is making all of us part of her body. She is transcending, and we are fodder for her change.

Mother Lauren speaks, and her voice rings out from every part of her body, which is the entire city. “I am bored already of this,” she says. “It was too easy to defeat you. Your loss is not as delicious to me as I had hoped.”

But all is not yet lost. There is a plan. Our future lies with Alejandra Nuñez, Ronnie Sharma, and Nanako (NAH-nuh-koh) Barnes of Mr. Prescott’s 5th Period AP English Class. Otherwise known as the Library Tweens. These brave children have followed in Tamika Flynn’s footsteps, coming face to face with a librarian and emerging victorious. Now they must come face to face with something maybe 15% more horrifying than a librarian: a twisted cosmic god.

The kids told me they could not give me the specifics of the plan, only that it involved using ropes and grappling hooks to cross the dangerous city streets through the air, guerrilla-style strikes on Mother Lauren’s weak points, capturing Kevin, and finally attacking Mother Lauren when she least suspects it, at noon today. She’ll never see it coming.

As part of the plan, I have been asked to create a distraction so that Mother Lauren and Kevin won’t notice what they are doing, until it is too late. They told me it is vitally important that no one notice until the plan has been completed, and so I have been sworn to secrecy, a secrecy I will break for no one, except of course, you my listeners. I could never keep anything from you.

I’ve thought a lot about what a good distraction would be, and here’s what I’ve come up with.

Hey! Look over there!

[sound of Cecil running away]

[beat]

[sound of distant breaking glass]

[sound of sirens]

[sound of dogs barking]

[sound of car squealing]

[beat]

[sound of tornado warning]

[sound of crowd chanting, political rally or protest type thing]

[“oh the humanity” announcer clip, but distantly and under the crowd chanting]

[some sort of presidential address sounding thing, over the crowd chanting]

[the Indiana Jones theme faintly, followed by a rumbling sound like a boulder chasing Cecil]

[the sound of steps running up]

[Cecil breathing heavily for a while, it takes him a bit to get it together to talk again.]

So…uh….sorry….little out of breath. We’ll see if that worked.

Oh no. Despite what some might say is the best distraction anyone has done in the history of getting people to look away from something important, it appears that Mother Lauren somehow got wind of the plan. She flinched, and the world flinched with her. She glared, and the world swooned. She no longer even has to fight. Night Vale is her thick, sludging heart, her pock-marked lungs. She has made us part of her disease.

“I am the universe itself,” she howled, an air raid siren of a voice coming from all places at once. “To fight me is to fight the fabric of existence. A laughable effort.”

The library tweens were seized by Mother Lauren’s drones, who once were our own citizens, but now are pink spongy lumps, with no eyes, constantly screaming “help me, I still feel all of it, there is some vital part of me that remains untainted, I still have a soul” as they lumber comically toward the tweens. The tweens put up a valiant fight, but they were captured and thrown into the town prison, which now is covered in a pale flakey skin.

The Boy watched this all happen, holding onto Mother Lauren’s hands, enfolded in her multitude of oil slick wings. Something came over him, and he turned and struck out at Mother Lauren. With the effort of his entire soul, he resisted her influence, and he stuck a knife into her side. Without bothering to look his way, she weaved her tendrils around him, and he was absorbed into her being. The boy now stands at her feet, the tendrils fused with his skin, and pulsing sickeningly. His eyes are blank whites. His hands flap about, like they are playing an invisible piano.

Oh Night Vale, this is the moment of greatest despair. We have not only been defeated, but changed. We are no longer who we are.

And to make matters worse, here comes Kevin, unfolding himself from the crowd, strutting up to the podium of his victory. He looks around at the city that he has finally driven under his thumb. After years of resisting him, we can resist no more. He sees the bowling alley, enrobed in veins and arteries and malignant tumors, he sees town hall turned into a tongue covered in white fuzz, he sees my own station, my beloved radio station, now entirely made of the same stuff as toenails. He sees all the evidence of his victory.

And then he turns and looks at the boy. The boy that he came back for. The boy that is the younger version of himself. He looks at the helpless boy and he smiles.

Here, there is a heavy stillness. But somewhere, thunder. Somewhere, snow. Somewhere, far away, weather.

[weather]

Well. Ok. I don’t know what to do here, honestly.

Usually, when we go to the weather report, a great struggle or climactic event happens concurrently with it, and we come back to a problem solved. With my perspective now shifted to the past, I can then fill you in on how we made it through yet another dangerous day in our fair town. Now some people mistake this for the weather actually fixing the problem, but that’s not the case. The weather usually just happens at the same time as what fixes the problem, and then I, utilizing my expert narrative skills, tell you how that happened.

This time however, everything is more or less how we left it. The boy, still captive. Mother Lauren, still ascendent. And Kevin, still smiling.

There will be no victorious shift in perspective, only a terrifying march through the ceaseless present.

And in that present moment, Kevin turns to the boy. He kneels down, still smiling, and takes the boy’s hand. Gently, he untangles Mother Lauren’s tendrils from the boy’s skin. He guides the boy down from the podium. Mother Lauren, her eyes to the cosmos, is seemingly impassive to the final meager death throes of our little town.

The boy looks at Kevin. Kevin smiles at the boy. I do not like that smile, but then, I have never liked Kevin’s smile.

“The last time I was here,” Kevin says, “I said that this was a situation I would not be able to handle alone. And I was right. And I was wrong. Because I can handle it with just me, but I cannot handle it with only one of me.”

“I’m sorry,” the boy says, “but I don’t know who you are.”

It seems that his encounter with the body and mind of Mother Lauren has left him without his memories. He stares blankly at the world, like it was a book in a language he took a few classes in back in high school. Like he should know it, but he doesn’t.

“That’s ok,” Kevin says. “Because I remember enough for the both of us. I’ve never talked much about my father. He was a jovial man, but a stern man. He was a fair man, but with priorities I did not always understand. I think he did the best job he could. In fact I know he did, because, in this moment, I understand him better than anyone has ever understood their own father.”

“Ok,” the boy says. He clearly doesn’t know why this man is telling him this. He says, “I don’t have a father.” He doesn’t say this tragically, but like he was telling the time to someone who asked.

“Ah,” says Kevin, “but you do. My childhood was a strange riddle I never could quite solve. And here you are, a neat solution to the question of my life.”

Listeners, I am starting to understand what Kevin is getting at here, and I’m not sure I like it, but it does have a certain symmetry to it. Life is rarely fair, but it is often balanced.

“What are you saying?” the boy says.

“Your name is Kevin, and I am your father,” says Kevin, who is Kevin’s father.

“I am? You are?” says the boy, who is Kevin.

“Yes,” says Kevin’s father. “I will raise you well, or well enough, or well, ENOUGH. You know? I will see you through.”

He looks up at Mother Lauren. She finally looks down. Her tendrils weave through the earth and the bricks and the flesh of Night Vale. Her sunny smile clouds over.

“I thought I was through with you,” she says.

“You were wrong,” says Kevin, and Kevin’s father, simultaneously.

Kevin’s father stands tall, and Kevin stands as tall as he can, which is not nearly as tall as his father. Not yet.

“Dead wrong,” calls a voice from the crowd, and here steps forward Alejandra Nuñez, Ronnie Sharma, and Nanako (NAH-nuh-koh) Barnes of Mr. Prescott’s 5th Period AP English Class. Otherwise known as the Library Tweens.

I thought you were in jail, I say, from my radio booth, because this is all happening in the present moment so it just now occurred to me that I could be an active part of these events.

“We were,” says Ronnie. “But then this nice old lady busted us out.”

“I am not OLD. I’m in my early twenties for god’s sake,” says Tamika Flynn.

“She did a real daring and action packed jailbreak,” says Nanako. “I wouldn’t have known someone that ancient had it in her.”

“Ugh,” says Tamika, but she does look exhilarated about having once again taken part in an adventure. In one hand, she holds a rope, and in her other hand she holds a copy of the novel Autumn by Ali Smith. It’s the British first edition, the one that was printed on a working blowtorch.

“Point is,” says Alejandra to Mother Lauren, “you’ll have to stand against us.”

“And me,” says Tamika, shooting a menacing jet of fire from Ali Smith’s elliptical portrait of Brexit-era Britain.

“And me,” says Kevin’s father.

Kevin, the young boy that he is, looks around, unsure. This is all a lot of new information all at once. But he makes his decision. “And me,” he says.

Mother Lauren laughs, and the mountains laugh with her, hollow booms in canyons and passes. She swats at Kevin, but Kevin dodges. Mother Lauren’s face flickers with concern. She swats again. Nothing connects. The streets roil.

“I knew you before,” Kevin’s father says. “I know that somewhere in there is human vulnerability.”

“Laughable,” screams Mother Lauren. She is not laughing. Mother Lauren’s drones advance, but a few stop, and then human faces start to come out of their pink fleshy lumps. “We could neither breathe nor could we die,” the people inside the drones say. “We were trapped in the moment between breaths. It was torture without end.” Other Night Vale citizens give them thumbs up, indicating empathy.

“No, I am a god,” shouts Mother Lauren.

“Yes,” says Kevin’s father. “And like any god you are defined by the belief of your worshippers.”

Mother Lauren’s face screws up in fury, and then she scowls up again at the cosmos.

“Yeah ok, screw it,” she says. “This universe was getting too small for me anyway.”

And with that, she floats into the sky. The stars open like a door for her. She steps through. She glances back for a moment at the city below her. “One day I will return,” she says. “Or I won’t. TBD.” And then the stars swing shut behind her, and she is gone.

Gradually the city comes back to itself. The people shake off the influence of Mother Lauren. The buildings and the earth and the trees return to themselves. All is as it was, minus those who are dead or injured or missing, which is a good amount of people.

At the center of all of this is a boy, and his father.

The boy is holding his father’s hand. The boy is holding his own hand. Kevin is holding Kevin’s hand, and together, Kevin walks back to his home, to live, if not always happily, then at the very least, ever after.

After the Kevins pass through it, Carlos pulls the plug on the portal, deciding that science, while worth some cost, is not worth every cost. Science must be in service of humanity, never the other way around. It is a tool, not a goal. He says that the portal made a real cool zap sound as it turned off.

The Library Tweens, as they wish to be called, have declared the creation of a new teen militia, to protect Night Vale from any further incursions from Desert Bluffs Too, and anyone else who might want to mess with them. Tamika Flynn, who knows a thing or two about leading a teen militia, offered to be a mentor but the Library Tweens put out a statement saying, “uh, that’s ok, no thanks ma’am”.

What lies ahead for Night Vale? I cannot say. Our future is an unwritten slate. Our past is a diary scribbled in handwriting none of us can read. And our present is the view through a dirty window. Specifically, for me, the dirty window in this studio, through which I can see Amber Akinyi teaching her son how to ride a bike. I can see Michelle Nguyen and Maureen Johnson taking their poodle/earwig mix, or PooWig, for a walk. I can see a mysterious van with the symbol of a labyrinth on it, with a man who is not tall and a man who is not short inside, driving some unknown cargo out into the scrublands. In short, I see the day to day of a town that has been through a lot, but remained, through it all, very much itself. I see Night Vale. And I love it.

Good night, my favorite town. Good night.