“Oh, hi, Jackie!” Steve Carlsberg said. “Diane’s not around. I’m just tidying up for a meeting in here.”
He gestured, and in gesturing knocked a cardboard box of files off a table, spilling them all over the floor.
“Whoopsie-daisy! Let me just pick those up. Now what can I help you with?”
Jackie sighed. Steve was fine. He was a nice man. But he was so… he was just… well, he was Steve Carlsberg. There’s always that guy. And Steve was him.
“Hi, Steve,” she said, and helped him pick up the files. As she did, her paper did its mystical yo-yoing bit, which she had ceased to even notice. Steve gasped.
“Woooow. So you got one of those papers? Luu-uu-uuucky.” He whistled, hands on his hips.
“Lucky?” she said. “I can’t work, I’ve been seeing visions, and some creepy blond dude is following me around town. Plus, some days I feel like I can’t walk, can’t hardly breathe. Yeah, so this paper is superlucky.”
Steve nodded. “That sounds like a blast. Nothing strange ever enters into my life, turning it upside down and forcing me to go on a journey of discovery in order to right things again. Not that I mind, of course. The PTA is rewarding in its own way, and it’s nice to get involved with what Janice is up to.”
Janice was Steve’s stepdaughter. Her mother was the sister of Cecil, the local radio host. Steve and Cecil did not get along at all. It was something of a local joke, although Jackie guessed it was less funny if it was your family that had that kind of feud in it. She’d always felt bad for Janice, but Janice wasn’t the type of kid who let you feel bad for her.
“So you know about these papers?” Jackie said.
“KING CITY,” the proffered paper said.
“Oh boy, yes,” Steve said. “Lots of folks have been getting those. Some fellow with a tan jacket, oh, what’s his name? I forget. I keep forgetting a lot about him. He’s been handing them out. I saw some folks at the bowling alley the other night. A whole team on lane nineteen just sitting there crying and clutching their left fists. I saw some of the stockers at the Ralphs standing in front of empty shelves, staring to the sky, small slips of paper hanging from their slack fingers. Every now and then I’d see someone shake the paper away, and it would spiral toward the linoleum floor, only to flutter back up into their hands, and collectively they would moan.
“Once you get one, you can’t let go of it. Suppose that guy handing them out has a reason, but it might just be a hobby. I’ve been thinking of taking up beekeeping, but, you know, bees need a lot of space to run around and they’re expensive unless you keep them on a farm, and then what’s the point of having a pet you can’t keep in your apartment?”
This was how it was what with Steve. The important bit buried in a lot of meandering digression.
“A man in a tan jacket?”
“Sure. Holding a deerskin suitcase. Don’t remember much more about him than that. I took a picture of him. I think I have it around here somewhere.”
He stuck the upper half of his body into a shelf and started shuffling papers around. As he searched, several other stacks of paper fell on the floor, and he came back up, sweating a bit from the exertion.
Jackie felt repulsed by Steve. She had no idea why. He had never been anything other than kind to her, kind to everybody. As the old saying went: “Not all windowless vans have residential surveillance equipment.” In other words, not everything can be as good as it seems.
“Well, isn’t that funny? I just can’t seem to keep it in my mind where that photo is,” Steve said. “It’s the darndest th——Whoa!”
He waved his arms at her. She held her hands up, fingers splayed. The paper dropped, and dropped again, and dropped again.
“You were almost leaning on the popcorn machine there,” Steve said. “Don’t want to do that.”
“It’s not even hot, man,” Jackie said, about to touch the machine to demonstrate.
“No, don’t!” His voice cracked.
She sighed at the oppression of conventional wisdom but dropped her hand.
“So the man in the tan jacket has been giving the paper to lots of people?”
“Not sure how many, but certainly a good amount. Old Woman Josie has one, but I suppose you know that. I hear even Stacy got one recently, and she’s a sentient patch of haze. Lovely being. Once told me the best way to pickle grapes. It was a fun recipe. Never did try it.”
“How well do you know Diane Crayton?” Jackie pressed.
He laughed, although not at a joke. He laughed because he was happy. Jackie winced, although she could not say exactly what it was that annoyed her.
“Great woman. Been working on the PTA with her for years. Never could get her to come around on invisible pie, but other than that we’ve never had a real difference on anything. We’ve talked a lot lately because she needs someone to talk through the whole Josh thing with. And all that stuff with Troy.”
“Oh?” Jackie said. She failed to make her voice casual or patient. “Who is Troy?”
“I really shouldn’t say.” Steve frowned. “Not my story to tell and all that. Hey, so can I see your paper?”
“Yeah.”
He sat down across from her, taking the paper from her hand. He studied it, admired it. His face was so full of excitement it was difficult for him to keep the words in order as they came barreling out of his mouth.
“So you know how we’re always being watched by agents of a vague yet menacing government agency right? (“Sure.”) And how they’re linked somehow with the World Government? (“Mm.”) Well. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in Night Vale who thinks about this stuff but have you thought about why the World Government is interested in us? Or why there are always lights over the Arby’s? Or what those ghost cars are that come roaring down Route 800 late at night at impossible speeds and angles? I don’t know why those questions don’t eat at other people. Cecil gets downright mad when I ask them. (“Oh yeah?”) No one else sees them. But I do. Glowing arrows in the sky. Dotted lines. The entire world is a chart telling you how to understand it if you just look for them. (“Cool. Sure.”) Anyway, so what I think is that the World Government was so unwieldy at first that the leaders, green-skinned, yellow-eyed creatures that do not blink and refuse to ever physically look at the world they rule, they got together and split it into eight committees. And those committees were split into six subgroups each. And each of those subgroups had three chapters. It was all done to keep things organized, but in this way everyone lost sight of what they were supposed to be doing. (“…” [Jackie had given up even trying to pretend she was paying attention.]) Instead of governing the world, the chapters and the subgroups and the committees just bickered with each other over who was in charge of what, and which Red Roof Inn the World Government holiday party would be held in. And all of their agents no longer understand whose agenda they should be following, let alone have even the smallest idea of what that agenda would look like. So these agents are as vague as their agency, practicing their skills without any direction but keeping whatever competing committee or chapter or whatever is in the area out of its way, even though they’ve lost track completely of what they’re competing over. What is terrifying, I think, about the World Government is not that the world is held under an iron fist, but that the world is sand scooped up in a sieve. The people running it have no more idea than us why there are lights in the sky above the Arby’s or why there are ghost cars. Terrifying, right? I think the grand conspiracy of our world is just an argument between idiots.”