“Here, this next slide even brings us down to the level of horse and hiking trails, small ranch roads, stuff like that. I won’t try to trace it all out right now, but believe me: there is no sequence of walking or driving or any other kind of transportation that would take us from here to King City. Even though, and this is very strange, we could easily follow any number of roads to get to, say, Soledad, just a few miles down the highway from our target. Okay, so easy enough, now that you got to Soledad, just head down the highway to King City. Well, if you’re starting in Soledad you can do that. But if you start tracing the roads all the way back in Night Vale, then by the time you get to Soledad you can’t find any way to get to King City.
“Scientifically speaking, wow. Big wow. This makes no sense, right? Do you think this makes no sense? Everyone nod if this makes no sense. Everyone’s nodding. See, we are all in agreement that it makes no sense.
“But this is all laboratory work. And what does lab work tell you? Almost everything. Labs are very important.
“Something is wrong with King City. That’s the most scientific answer I could give you. And I think that it would be dangerous to go. Which you couldn’t do anyway. But even the attempt might do irrevocable harm to your person or to the consciousness within your person. Not recommended.
“You might try talking to our mayor. She’s had some experience with other worlds. I can’t think of anyone else who has. Besides, of course, me. I’ve had extensive experience. But I don’t like talking about myself. It’s personal and not scientific.
“Most people don’t leave here. Most people only come and then stay and stay and stay. Honestly, I have no idea how long I’ve been here. Time doesn’t work here and all that. But not long enough. I haven’t stayed long enough.
“Oh, sorry, I have to go. Or you have to go. I’m going to stay here, this is my place of business. But it’s just that Cecil’s show is almost on and I never miss it.
“No, I think I haven’t stayed long enough at all,” Carlos said.
Chapter 13
The Moonlite All-Nite Diner along Route 800 served okay coffee. Okay pies.
Some of the pies and coffee were invisible, and, for the people who like invisible pie or invisible coffee, this was a real plus. Here’s what: If you like a thing, and only one place in town serves that thing, you’re going to be pretty excited by that thing, regardless of quality.
So for people who like invisible pie, the invisible pie at the Moonlite All-Nite was perfect, despite being just okay.
Diane did not like invisible pie. Her friend on the PTA, Steve Carlsberg, was one of those people who championed the unpopular dessert. “It’s an underappreciated pie, Diane,” Steve would sometimes say between bites. “You develop a taste for it, like you do with scotch whiskey, or cilantro, or a salt lick.”
Diane remained unconvinced. Her issue was not with flavor (the pie had none) but with texture (it had none).
But Diane was not at the Moonlite with Steve now. She was there to meet Dawn.
They rarely interacted at work and even less often outside of work. There were a lot of reasons for this, none of them interesting. Not everybody gets to be friends with everybody.
Diane was not friends with many people. She had drifted apart from her childhood and teenage friends, because of age and changing circumstance and the high rate of mysterious disappearance and death in Night Vale. In her mid-twenties, she found herself at the funeral of what was her last remaining childhood friend (Cynthia Yin, whom she had met in Music Censorship class in third grade and who had survived three UFO attacks, a year’s incarceration by the City Council for voting incorrectly in a municipal election, and a direct encounter with a pack of street cleaners, only to die of a liver cancer which had gone undiagnosed for over a year), and she wondered whether it was worth it to have friends, to make any connections at all when the world so easily took them from her.
Since then, she had continued making friends, but they all, like Steve, were friends of circumstance. The people she worked with in the PTA. Regulars here at the Moonlite. Even the people and sentient patches of haze who often walked the same evening neighborhood route as she did, which was more of a distant nodding relationship than a friendship, but whose names she knew. (A few of them had even whispered some interesting secrets to her as they passed.)
Mostly she contented herself with Josh, who was not a friend, and was often not even friendly, but who filled her life until it couldn’t fit much else. She looked with excitement and unease to the day when he would grow old enough that her heart could empty a bit of him and there would be a space left where someone else could fit, although she couldn’t imagine who.
Anyway, Dawn was late. This was fine with Diane.
Laura, one of the regular waiters, was standing over a table, long leafy plants growing from her chest and arms and neck. The diners plucked the fruits from her branches, looking at each bright bulb for dents, smelling them for ripeness.
Diane had written down some things to talk to Dawn about. She wanted to know the obvious: how’ve you been, how’s the family, do you have a family (written in parentheses, as Diane did not want to presume that everyone has a “family”), how are you feeling, name every person you’ve ever worked with, and so on.
But this was all leading to the real reason for their conversation. Evan. Was his name Evan? She looked at her notepad. “EVAN,” it said in an unfamiliar hand.
“Evan,” Diane said aloud.
“Hey, Diane,” Laura shouted across the way, a family of five yanking blackberries and tomatoes from her sides. “Good to see you again. Somebody’ll be with you in a minute, all right?”
Diane smiled and waved. Laura was bleeding along her wooden limbs. The diners stopped taking the food from her and stared in discomfort.
“Oops, sorry about that, let me get you another server. Be right back.”
Laura bled her way toward the kitchen. A branch caught on a sink and snapped off. Laura begin to weep, still making her way toward the coffee machine, her face growing paler and paler as the stump of the branch spurted blood onto the coffee cups.
“Oh jeez,” she said, tears falling from her face and landing like dew on her already blood-spotted leaves. “Clumsy me. Just a real Sally Knock-’em-down.”
A blond man wearing a white apron, handsome in all of the expected ways (and in this way almost forgettable), followed behind her carrying a tray of used dishes. As he rounded the corner of the table, Diane saw it was Troy.
Diane got to her feet before she even knew that was what she was going to do. He did not look at her. He trotted with his dishes. She thought she was going to say something, but she didn’t know what to say, so she just followed him. It was definitely Troy. Would she follow him into the kitchen? She wouldn’t know until the moment came.
He was nearing the swinging silver door and they were well past the restroom arrow sign, well past the point where her presence could be excused, and still she hadn’t said anything to him.