Before They Were Night Vale #1: How To Improve Your Worldwide Conspiracy (Patreon)

Welcome to "Before They Were Night Vale", our new feature in which Night Vale creators Jeffrey and Joseph share writing from before their Welcome to Night Vale collaboration, along with commentary. Come explore their early writing, both good and bad.

Today we start with one of Joseph's first attempts at the kind of story that would eventually become Welcome to Night Vale.

Joseph Fink: I've always been obsessed with conspiracy theories. Not because I think they're true (except for the true ones) but because they're great stories. For a long time I dreamed of telling a story about a world where every conspiracy theory was true.

At the time of this piece of writing, I was in my last year of college and working for the comedy site SomethingAwful.com. I had a slot every two weeks, and basically complete freedom of what to write in those slots. So I decided to give a shot at writing the story I had always wanted to tell. I planned to make this a serialized novel over the course of a few months, but I quit after only two chapters because, as you'll see below, it just wasn't very good.

I think this work is interesting as a failure. You can feel me trying to reach for the things I would later find in Night Vale, but here I just don't quite reach them. What's missing is some ineffable feeling in the gut. I felt it with Night Vale. And here, for whatever reason, I just didn't feel it.

(One interesting note is that I used King City, California as a location in this piece, which of course would later become a major part of the first Night Vale novel.)

**************

A great nebula of pop-culture debris. A white dwarf dense with years of compulsive collecting arranged in a compact sphere around its hunched over, living core. A bedroom devoted more to the needs of its plastic occupants than the comfort of its one human.

Bert Reilly was bent into his computer, gripping it like a jockey grips the reins. He sat fenced in by shelves populated by every action figure he had ever laid eye on, by video games, fantasy novels, trade paperback collections. Everything he used to measure his life and give it value.

Within the year, Bert would be president of the United States of America.

He did not suspect this yet. No one did. Very few people even knew his name.

Yet here Bert Reilly was, bent into his computer. He had just watched a YouTube, rated it a five, and Dugg it. Somewhere, far away from what we might accurately call his nest, wheels he couldn't possibly imagine were starting to turn, gears he would never be able to understand were locking together, a global conspiracy was pulling him closer and closer to...

...his destiny.

When: Recently

Where: Headquarters of Worldwide Conspiracy Inc.

Mr. Carlyle entered the room and the ten men seated at the table sprung into action, which is to say three of them shifted slightly in their chairs and one of them even made the effort to raise his head and yawn at the door.

"Gentlemen," said Carlyle, "this is a sorry excuse for a conspiracy."

The men in suits slowly shook themselves awake and squinted at the intruder. Two blinking red dots appeared on the map projected on the wall, one in the mountains of Guatemala, the other just outside of Des Moines, indicating that Project Centurion had advanced to the next stage. A fly buzzed listlessly between the overflowing ash trays on the table. Carlyle paced around the table, his back perfectly straight and one hand laid on his chin for maximum effect.

"What we need," he said, "are some fresh ideas."

"Why don't you go fuck yourself?" Junior Agent Henderson suggested helpfully.

Carlyle sighed. He had been a lifelong conspiracy man. He had kept his nose down, assassinated world leaders and innocent civilians alike when ordered to, manipulated at least one US President into office, and now found himself stuck in a dead-end middle management job in an aging conspiracy that was rapidly losing ground to newer conspiratorial competitors.

A green line appeared on the map between Maui and Thailand. Entity #233 was on the move. Carlyle was on the move as well, walking right past those useless do-nothing agents of a global conspiracy and out the door. Where was the passion that had once fueled their unified desire to secretly manipulate world events for obscure motives? Where was the endless cascade of shadowy, illegal plans to control even the most minor details of the lives of ordinary people?

When had the Worldwide Conspiracy become so lazy?

It was time somebody did something.

"It's time somebody did something," he said. Looking around to make sure one of the Conspiracy's professional lurkers weren't lurking nearby, he reaching into his pocket and pulled out his phone. His plan was error-proof, and he only needed to make one call to set it off.

He dialed a number.

 When: Slightly more recently.

Where: Two miles outside of King City, California.

Junior Junior Agent Brad sat on a metal folding chair between a pile of lettuce and the roaring highway. He had been tasked with manipulating a nearly deserted produce stand. A shit detail. Small time stuff just to test him. But this is what it takes to become a high-ranking member of the Worldwide Conspiracy, so Brad would wait it out, slyly control whatever boring little corner of the world his bosses told him to control, and hope for his career to make the promised upswing.

Every once in awhile, he dragged his ass out of the chair and rewrote the sales figures while the owner was busy helping a customer. Brad would quietly break open the sturdy lockbox and add or subtract a few bills. Then he would trudge back to the chair and slowly count to a hundred before randomly changing everything again.

At least he had some competition to keep things interesting. A man from Conspiracy Global Inc. sat in a second metal folding chair on the other side of the produce stand. The man pretended to never notice Brad, but would occasionally slip into the stand and undo everything that had just been done, replacing the made-up numbers with other made-up numbers and then helping himself to a potato. He had taken a potato every time he got up. There was a large plastic bag of potatoes next to his chair by this time.

Brad was just about to take his turn at changing the increasingly confused owner's sales records when his phone loudly rang. Both the produce guy and Agent Potato looked over as he dug into his pocket and answered.

"Yeah?"

"Is this Junior Junior Agent Brad?" said a friendly voice that could best be described as mysterious, and not just because Brad didn't know who it was.

"How did you get this number?" said Junior Junior Agent Brad. "Who are you?"

"Who I am is not important."

The produce guy went back to double checking his sales notebook and swearing. Agent Potato had put on sunglasses, and now appeared to be staring straight ahead, ignoring him completely. Brad tried to talk quieter, but the passing cars made that difficult.

"Ok, fine, what do you want?"

"What I want is not important. What's important is that what you want is to do everything I say, exactly when and how I say it. Or something might happen to Sarah, understand?" The voice had not changed tone or level of excitement for even a moment. It was as though the man on the phone thought he was asking the time and had simply gotten all the words wrong.

"Not Sarah!" said Brad. The other two looked over again. Agent Potato impressively managed to convey rolling his eyes without ever taking off his huge mirrored sun-glasses.

"Yes," said the voice, "I said Sarah. Now get in your car and drive down towards Las Vegas." The line was disconnected.

Brad sat frozen for a moment, his nondescript, black cellphone next to his ear, hanging like a question. Then it sank into his pocket and he got up casually, as though he were merely having another run at the produce stand. Instead he strolled over to his car. He was about to unlock it when he felt a sudden pressure. Agent Potato was holding a gun to his back.

"Why don't you tell me exactly what conspiracy information you were just given so I can take it from Worldwide Conspiracy Inc. and use it for Conspiracy Global Inc," said the guy.

"What kind of conspiracy is it if you announce what you plan to do? Especially before you do it?" Brad said. "But ok, I'll give you the information. Here it comes."

He spun around like a politician who has been threatened to change sides by a member of the conspiracy community, and jabbed his fist right at the Potato Guy's throat. The man started back reflexively, and, in the same moment, PULLED THE TRIGGER.