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The face that stares back at you in the mirror is not your own. It is on loan to you, and its owner wants it back. Be afraid, and also begin looking for a new face. Welcome to Night Vale.**The City Council has called a press conference to state that there is no dog in the Forbidden Dog Park. This non-existent dog did not engage in any large-scale digging project last night which required the assistance of a crew of fifteen smaller dogs, all of whom wore yellow work vests over their fur and carried shovels in their mouths. The lawns of the houses near the Dog Park are not covered in dirt, the City Council said in unison, hissing into the iPhone 5 they were crowded around in lieu of a microphone. There was no dog that did anything in the nighttime, the city council said. There is nothing curious about the dog, nor has there been any incident.The non-existent dog was not available for comment.In other news, Carlos and his team of scientists are adding a new member. Carlos—my beautiful, perfect Carlos—explained in an interview that no new help in the lab was needed, and that the new member has only been added at the request of his boss, a mysterious man who performs a minor role for a vague, yet menacing international organization.Carlos’s boss arrived in Night Vale last Monday. He has the face of a disgruntled toad, and he was carrying an umbrella even though everyone knows that the Sheriff’s Secret Police would not allow it to rain on a Monday. The boss questioned Carlos about the progress he has been making, expressed dissatisfaction to the lack of answers as to why no one in Night Vale feels the earthquakes that Carlos says are occurring every day, and said that clearly Carlos has too much responsibility and needs a new team member to help him out. More on this matter as it develops.The Night Vale School District has forbidden children from bringing in cupcakes to school to celebrate their birthdays. Students will also be forbidden to invite classmates to parties celebrating their births after school, or to mention when they have become a year older. It is not currently known if half-birthdays may be celebrated. The decision to ban birthday celebrations was reached at a school board meeting last week after heated debate.The Glow Cloud, who recently joined the school board, said that although some members of the board wanted to keep throwing birthday celebrations, making odd-ball arguments such as “parties are fun” and “cupcakes taste good”, in the end those with the more reasoned approach to the situation prevailed. Birthday parties are hazardous to children’s health, the Glow Cloud explained. Cupcakes frequently come to life and attempt to eat the children who were trying to eat them, and besides, a child always gets over looked, even if you try really hard to remember to invite the entire class, and then someone’s mother calls to complain. It’s all such a hassle and isn’t it easier to just take the family to the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex to celebrate instead? the Glow Cloud told us.Friends, listeners—time for a station editorial. Have you ever known that you can’t do a job all by yourself but have been too proud to admit that you need a little bit of help? I myself was in this exact situation several years after I first started hosting this show for all of you. I could do it all, I told myself. Sure, I may have been so busy trying to cover everything from high school sports to local politics that I barely had time to do any ritualized chanting on Fridays. And yes, the spider that lives on my body at all times did say that I was carrying a lot of tension in my shoulders and the Faceless Old Woman Who Lives In Our Homes told me that that the misspellings in my Google searches showed that I was under too much pressure. But did I listen? Did I admit that I needed help to cover the events in our community? Never!It was only when I missed two Throw Rocks at Your Relatives holidays in a row that my mother finally put her foot down and said, Cecil, you need to ask your bosses to get you some help. And since then we’ve had two hundred and five interns dedicate their time and lives to aiding the cause of community radio here in Night Vale—sorry, correction, two hundred and six interns. Our thoughts and sympathy go to Charles’s family. The box with the soapy froth that is all that remains of his body should be arriving in the mail any day now—and my work-life balance has never been better! The spider says the tension in my body is all cleared up, I don’t misspell anything when do I Google searches, and I haven’t missed a Throw Rocks at Your Relatives Day in years.But surely, this isn’t still an issue, Cecil? You ask. Why the editorial now, after you’ve clearly learned when it’s time to ask for a little help? Well, glad you asked, listeners, glad you asked. Because not everyone has learned to be comfortable letting new staff members assist at work. Not even when they are clearly under a lot of pressure already. See, when someone says that he’ll be coming home on time and then has to work late in the lab for three straight days in a row, it’s time to admit that some extra scientists to help conduct experiments might be useful, and that he actually can’t investigate the scientific activity in a whole city himself with such a limited staff and carry on a romantic relationship. When someone has been laboring in the kitchen to make a certain scientist's favorite meal so they can eat together and then spend some time watching the void before bed, well, then, it’s just rude to—Ah. Listeners, listeners. Station Management is becoming restless. They are pacing in their office and I can hear moans emitting from under their door. A strange odor has filled the station. It’s a mixture between pineapple and that gluey scent that you get if you hold an envelope very close to your face and breathe in deeply. I think they don’t like me getting too much into personal matters.Let’s turn to a message from our sponsor.**You are in a forest. You know that you are dreaming, but you don’t know how you know that you are dreaming. You walk through the trees. Presently you come upon a house. There is a man at the door. He is wearing a sharp, clean suit, and he has sharp, clean features. You don’t like the way his teeth look when he smiles.He tells you that there is something you lost in the house, and that you must find it before the sun sets, or you will die. He says this in a bored, sing song voice, and you understand why he is bored. You already know this. Everyone knows this. The dream comes once before death, or it is death. This is the way it is for everyone.You walk into the house. It is bigger inside than it looks from the outside. It is filed with phones, keys, books, pots, jewelry, a stairway that goes to nowhere and piles and piles of mismatched socks. You begin to panic. You dive into a pile of books stacked untidily on a piano. How will you be able to find what you’ve lost in the midst of the lost things of everyone else?Don’t look out the windows, the man says with a sinister smile, and he closes the door behind you. You look away from the windows, but out of the corner of your vision you see eyes in between the trees, watching you.This message was brought to you by Rosetta Stone.**Back to our regularly scheduled programming.Update on the new member of Carlos’s science team from earlier in our broadcast. Erika, one of the angels who live at Old Woman Josie’s house, says that she saw him personally while she was shopping in the Ralph’s! She says that the new scientist is a tall, thin man with luminous pale eyes and a face that appeared to have been crafted by a master sculpturer. He was standing in the pet food section, looking at the cans of dog food. His cheekbones were so heavenly to look upon that Erika questioned the stranger as to whether he, too, was an angel. The new scientist responded rudely, telling Erika that angels did not exist and if they did he would not be one of them. Then, after allowing a flicker of emotion to soften his severe features, the new scientist added, confusingly, that he was still on Erika’s side, even though he was not one of them. The stranger did not explain who "them" was and he did not buy any dog food. The new scientist, Erika says, speaks with an accent and has a voice that sounds like a cat purring inside a Jaguar. I would take this report with a grain of salt, listeners, since as the new scientist and the city council agree, angels do not exist and are unreliable tellers of the truth besides.And now, a look at the community calendar.Monday, the employees at Dark Owl Records will be speaking like pirates. If you would like to hear the employees of a record shop that is miles from any ocean try to replicate the speech of sea-faring law breakers from two hundred years ago, head on down to Dark Owl Records. Major credit cards accepted for purchases over twenty dollars.Wednesday is Opposites Day! Do the opposite of what you usually do. Be sure you know what you would usually do before you act. Mistakes will not be forgotten. Friday has been rescheduled to appear in the middle of next week, just when everyone wishes that the end of the week could get there sooner.Sunday is bimonthly Throw Rocks at Your Relatives Day. Start gathering stones from your lawn now, and get ready to have a smashing good time on Sunday.New call in from John Peters—you know, the farmer?—who says that the new scientist stopped by his farm earlier today to inspect his crop of imaginary corn. The new scientist was dressed formally, in a long black coat that he refused to take off despite the desert heat. The new scientist spoke rudely to John Peters. He knew everything about John Peters, including the incident in third grade with the hamster and the pencil sharper that no one knew about except the substitute teacher who had promised that she wouldn’t tell anyone, especially not John’s parents. The new scientist, John Peters told us on the phone, claims to be in exile after faking his own death.John Peters reports that the new scientist has eyes that are bottomless pools of sadness. The new scientist could not speak John Peter’s first name without moisture gathering in his eyes, as if John’s name brought to mind some unimaginable loss. The new scientist claimed that certain things were obvious when these things were not obvious. The new scientist knew things he should not have known, and told John Peters he had survived a fall from a great height.I do not know how the new scientist knows the unknowable. I do not know if he will work skillfully in the lab so that his supervisor Carlos—perfect, beautiful Carlos—will return home for dinner on time. I fear for myself. I fear for the timeliness of my dinners. I fear for Night Vale.Let us turn, trembling with awe at the immensity of the things that we know and the things that we do not know and the things that we do not yet know how the new scientist knows, to the weather.**Hello listeners. Interesting update on the new scientist situation. Well, I admit that I had my doubts that he had arrived in Night Vale at all, given that Erika’s eyewitness account is not very convincing since Erika is an angel and angels do not exist. And after hearing how unpleasant he was to John Peters, I was not sure if, even if he was real, that the new scientist would be a positive contribution to Carlos’s lab.But the new scientist stepped into the station for a chat during the break, and now all my doubts have been allayed! Now, I don’t want to risk the wrath of Station Management by sharing too many details—our discussion got rather personal at times—but I can tell you briefly that the new scientist spoke candidly with me about his past and why he has come to work in Night Vale.His name is Sherlock Holmes and although he is from London and a consulting detective and I am from Night Vale and work in community radio, we actually have a lot in common. We both know what it’s like to fall in love with someone instantly, for one thing. We’ve both left handed, too! And we both understand how it feels to tell someone about our affections and wait with almost unbearable anticipation to see whether they will be returned. For me, of course, it was broadcasting my feelings about my dear Carlos on the airwaves for months, only to receive calls from him for only non-personal reasons and red carnations on my doorstep from the Sheriff's Secret Police. For Sherlock it was telling his roommate in a thousand little ways every day how he felt, only to have his roommate remain infuriatingly obvious of Sherlock’s desires. But that was all right, Sherlock told himself. These things take time. They had plenty of time to figure it out. Until they didn’t, because Sherlock had to fake his death and disappear so that he could take down a criminal mastermind.Can you imagine how that would feel, listeners? The pain of being apart from one’s beloved, of not knowing whether he feels the same way about you as you do about him? Can you think of the loneness, the agony of unknowing? To have the person who you care about most believe that you are dead when you are not? I don’t know if I could have had the courage to walk away from Carlos if—Ah. Hmm. Well. Station Management is not moaning yet, but the Station is starting to smell of pineapple and glue again, so I better wrap things up here. Let’s just say that Sherlock Holmes refused to give an official interview on the air—he says he’s had issues with the press before—but based on our conversation I can assure you that he is an upstanding, moral person who will be a welcome addition to Carlos’s lab and to the larger Night Vale community.And for those of you who were wondering about the dog who did not do anything to the Forbidden Dog Park last night, wonder no longer. Sherlock Holmes launched an investigation into this matter, and he says that the dog was digging up the earth in the first step of a project to bring electricity and television to the Forbidden Dog Park. The citizens trapped in the Forbidden Dog Park are tired of making do with books and magazines and screaming into each other’s starved, shaking faces for entertainment. How is it that the prisoners in the abandoned mine shaft outside of town have HBO On-Demand, they say, and we don’t even have CNN? Well, the injustice will not continue for much longer. Soon, the Dog Park will be hooked up with electricity and television so that citizens trapped there can enjoy quality programming such as Modern Family, Veep, and Two and a Half Men. Probably not HBO though for a while, so if any of the citizens trapped in the Dog Park ever return from the unimaginable horrors to which they've been subjected, be polite, and remember not to tell them who has died on the latest season of Game of Thrones. And in breaking news, listeners: the sun. The sky. Stars. Your friends. Your family. Those whom we love, and those who love us. Think on all of these people, listeners, and be grateful for them, because you never know when they will be taken from you. Tomorrow someone you hold dear may jump off a tall building and fall to his death before your eyes. But do not despair, listeners. Your friend may be the target of an elaborate plot to make him appear a fraud. He may have faked his death and have moved to somewhere strange and far away to protect you. Do not despair, for he has not forgotten you. You have not forgotten him. The sun rises and sets and rises and then sets again, and the sky fills with stars. All things are impermanent, except our memories of those whom we love. Above us, the void hangs, empty of light and full of soundless screaming. Never stop hoping for one more miracle and remember that those who you love can never be lost to you forever. Stay tuned for our next program, which features a wound-up mechanical bird chronicling his adventures in the insurance industry.Goodnight, listeners. Goodnight.