A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

Cassette

Summary: Carlos has to make an emergency trip to the radio station, Ellie and Jeffries stalk Hiram McDaniels and Natalia tries to contact Dana.

The sun was already creeping above the sky when Natalia woke. She stretched out with a yawn, all three of her eyes blinking sleepily. She reached for her phone and sighed. Still no word from her friend. The last text from Dana had been from several months ago.

'Sure. Coffee on Friday sounds good, I'm looking forward to it!'

But she had never showed. She'd gone to the Dog Park and never come back. Natalia had gone through two new phones trying to contact her since then. Each time she tried to call her, the phone had mutated. Or attacked her. Or mysteriously set on fire. It was very inconvenient, Natalia mused. Inconvenient, she smiled to herself. When did that become the word to describe disasters in Night Vale?

"Dr Johnson? You 'wake?"

"Yeah." She murmured tiredly. "I'll be down soon, Brent."

She buried her face back into the pillow. Five minutes more wouldn't hurt.

~

"I was digging through some of the stored-up belongings clogging my closet – you know, childhood toys, blood-soaked rags, a gem the size of a fist that shows you visions of yourself as an old man staring wistfully back at the past that is your now, that kind of thing – and I came across these cassette tapes marked: CECIL RADIO TEST – AGE: 15. You know, listeners, I have no memory whatsoever of making these tapes. Isn't that so weird?"

Carlos hummed to himself as he worked in the lab through the morning. He knew Cecil had been sorting out his belongings in preparation for moving day. He'd started early because he had so much stuff. Things he'd collected over the years. Cecil seemed enthusiastic about discovering things he'd forgotten about, so that was fun for Carlos.

Carlos was in a peppy mood, as well. His experiments had gone better than normal that morning, and himself and Ellie were making great progress studying a...well the closest thing it resembled was a goldfish, and it had belonged to Old Woman Josie.
Carlos got a small lump in his throat thinking of Josie. She'd been so nice to him the whole time the team had been there. To all of them. Ellie had been especially upset, so working on the project with Carlos had cheered her up. Josie had had a lot of confusing property. After four days, the Sheriff's Secret Police had gotten bored of seeing if she would come back and put Cecil, as one of her closest friends, in charge of what to do with her things. There had many intriguing items, which Carlos had politely asked to borrow for experimentation.

"So, in local news: A new pizza place opened, and I went to it. It's called Big Rico's, and it's pretty good! I mean, I prefer Sammy's Ultimate Sliceria by the Ralph's, but it burned down last week, and that's too bad. Oh, well. I'm sure it'll be rebuilt soon. Wait, what is...that?...Huh. It went away when I hit Stop. Oh, but now it's back again. It's kind of...it's this kind of flickering in the corner of my eye, like someone's waving their arms right next to me, but when I turn, there's nothing there. Oh, well."

Carlos furrowed his brow. Hearing a younger Cecil was adorable. But something seemed off. If it was a live broadcast instead of a tape recording, he'd have immediately been concerned. Even though it was a tape recording, it unnerved him that Cecil didn't remember any of what had happened to him.

"Wow, you guys sure are perky for this time." Natalia commented as she came down the stairs, shortly followed by Jeffries.

"Time isn't real." Carlos said, his face pressed against a microscope. Ellie was exchanging the Petri dishes as he looked and wrote down observations.