Summary: Carlos has an extended interview on Cecil's radio station, the rumbling returns to Night Vale and Natalia frets over an important question.
Note: The cover for this chapter is this incredible fanart of Ellie and Natalia done by my friend Oswald. Check out sirmimsypompingdon.deviantart.com for more of their awesome stuff!
Carlos sat on hold as he stood outside in the sweltering heat of the sun. Cecil's radio show had started and he had asked Carlos to be a guest. Carlos wasn't overly fond of Cecil talking about their private life on the radio but for once he supposed he could make an exception, as the radio host had promised him that he could talk about his scientific findings on the show.
Carlos had really begun to settle down in the Desert Otherworld and had begun to set up a temporary lab and working space so that he would have somewhere to record his findings whilst he was there. He missed his team terribly, however. Something about working in this new lab was unnerving, despite the fact that he had gotten used to his new situation. It was just not the same without Dr Green bustling around excitedly talking about her research with Dave. Or Natalia simultaneously catching and/or picking up all the things Ellie was dropping around the lab as well is doing her own physics research. Nor was it the same without Jeffries murmuring over his rock formations in the corner of the lab whilst Rochelle dissected something next to him on her own bench.
Carlos had almost lost himself in these nostalgic thoughts when he was sharply brought back to reality by the sound of his boyfriend's voice down the other end of the phone.
"Oh, listeners! Guess who we've got on the phone line now? I'll give you a hint: he saved Night Vale a few weeks ago by shutting out a great terror trying to invade us from another world!"
Carlos sighed. As usual, Cecil was doting over him in the way that only Cecil could. "It wasn't just me!" He said with a smile.
"Also, he's my boyfriend. And a scientist. And I miss him."
"I miss you, too." Carlos said softly down the phone.
"That's right! My boyfriend is a hero. Please welcome to our show, Carlos the Scientist." A hero? Oh dear.
"You're too much!" Carlos had to hold back a giggle at the mental image of himself in a spandex suit flying through the air with Cecil in his arms, cape flapping behind him.
"Listeners, Carlos had to stay behind in whatever strange desert Other World, which was very brave of him, even though he's now very far away from people that love him. Any luck getting back through to Night Vale?"
"Not yet. Oh! But, I've been exploring this strange rumbling noise here. It's the same rumbling noise we heard when that terrible light was coming into Night Vale." He explained, just in case Cecil's audience had missed his show during the absolute chaos of the revolution.
"Are you safe? Is everythi-" Carlos' attention was immediately shifted from Cecil's voice as a deafening rumbling sound came from the distance to his right.
"Actually, there it is again. When we shut the doors the rumbling and the unbearably bright light went away. This empty desert, with the mountain and the lighthouse and the large wandering army, all seemed so normal, you know? But last night the rumbling returned." He explained hastily, not caring to correct any inaccuracies in his speech.
"There it is again. I need to grab my instruments." He held the phone away from himself as he began to run towards the lighthouse. "I'll call you back!" He said before ending the call.
Carlos sprinted towards his temporary lab at the base of the mountain. Some of the members of the masked army were waiting for him, including Alicia. They called to Carlos urgently over the nearly deafening rumbling.
"Carlos! The red light. It's stopped!"
Carlos turned his gaze upward towards the lighthouse. The rumbling was continuing and the red light had paused altogether and just shone red without its usual blinking. For as long as Carlos had been in the Desert Otherworld, the red light had blinked on and off all the time. To see the lighthouse with the red light on constantly was unnerving to say the least.
"Are you alright?" Carlos asked Alicia. They shook their head.
"This all makes us nervous. It's strange and frightening."
"I concur." Carlos murmured. It was beginning to frighten him as well. The rumbling was like an earthquake. He'd had his fair share of earthquake experience when he had studied in San Francisco for several months. Never had Carlos been more afraid of what his own planet could conjure up. Well, that was, until he moved to Night Vale.
Night Vale...ah. He should call Cecil back. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialled Cecil's number again. It was answered almost immediately.
"Carlos? Hello? Carlos, are you back on the line?"
"Yes. So...there's a lighthouse here in the desert. It's on top of a tall mountain, and there's a blinking red light on the top of this lighthouse, and this blinking red light always blinks, OK? That's what it does. But now that the rumbling has returned..." He had a sudden thought as the loud noise continued in the background. "Can...can you hear the rumbling from your end, Cecil?"
"No."
Hm. Carlos rubbed his chin in thought. "It's very loud! But when the rumbling happens, the blinking red light stops blinking. It just stays on."
"What do you think that means?"
"I don't know! I've talked with some of the army of men and women and others who roam about this desert, and they look frightened. They have never seen the blinking light stop blinking! It is what a blinking light is supposed to do, and fear is what happens when a thing that has always behaved one way does not behave that way at all. They run and hide now when they hear the rumbling and see the static red light up on the mountain. I, too, am starting to feel scared." He admitted.
"Carlos? Remember how you got into that desert in the first place. You went through a door in a house that did not seem to exist. Have you found any of those doors yet?"
The doors. Ah, Carlos thought. I haven't had a look for them in a few days. All the excitement and scientific opportunity of the last couple of days had led him to forgetting about leaving.
"Not yet, no."
"Carlos? Look for those doors. There must be at least one left somewhere!"
"I'll start looking very soon, OK? But listen, Cecil? I'd really like to figure out this rumbling/red light thing. I'm a scientist. I need to discover/understand things. It's what I do!" He didn't want to leave a scientific mystery unsolved, after all. For one, it was bad form. Secondly, Carlos found the Desert Otherworld so fascinating. It was crazy. Some of the odd phenomena rivalled that of Night Vale.
"But...couldn't you look for the door while you figure it out?" Cecil's almost pleading tone came down the other end of the line.
"I'll look for the door some tomorrow. For sure I will." Carlos said. There was too much on his plate today to deal with. He had to make sure everyone was safe, for one.
"The rumbling's gone! Did you hear that?" He exclaimed as the silence now washed over the small group outside of Carlos' temporary lab. Maybe it meant that there could be an opportunity to discover where it came from. The masked army could help if they spread out to cover more ground, but they only really listened to one person. "I've got to run. I need to find Doug!" He hung up again, throwing his phone haphazardly into his lab coat pocket, before setting off to find the giant leader.
~
"Your boyfriend is trapped in an alternate desert dimension. It is difficult to say when he will return. Perhaps take up drinking while crying in a quiet room. Wow! That's a very specific and...PAINFUL horoscope. Thanks for nothing, stars!" Cecil's voice came miserably from the radio.
"Yowch." Ellie winced. "That's rough. I'm starting to think we should have Cecil around a little more than we do."
"Carlos needs to call him more." Natalia said with a frown. "I know it's not really my place, but he is really not being the best boyfriend at the moment."
"Speaking of being the best in a relationship..." Dr Green grinned. "You up for a movie night tonight?"
"Um." Natalia returned the smile, but was internally freaking out a lot. She had had a plan for them tonight. She'd even made sure Ellie's schedule was free. But she still found herself replying "What did you have in mind?"
"Well, I was thinking maybe you'd like to pick tonight."
Natalia blanched. Ellie was going to let someone ELSE pick a movie?! It would be almost WORTH cancelling said plan. "Who are you and what have you done with Ellie?"
"Hey!" She pouted. "I just thought you'd like to pick this time..."
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry."
"....."
Natalia fiddled with her fingers. She had been meaning to ask Ellie if she'd like to come out with her tonight, to a restaurant, for a proper date. Not just a movie night, but an actual date. But the anxiety involved with asking was really messing with her head, even though she'd had the reservation for weeks. She'd just kept pushing it back as she fretted over asking. Ellie was so open with her feelings and if she was going to protest, she would do so openly.
"Ellie...I...ah...." She began awkwardly. Gah, get a grip, Natalia! She cursed internally.
"Hm?"
"I was wondering if instead...ah, you'd maybe like to...ah..."
"Like to...?" Ellie asked after Natalia trailed off.
"Liketogoout. Ah, l-like for a meal."
"Sure!" Ellie said cheerfully, as if it was the easiest question to ask in the world. Natalia looked at her relaxed expression. Was there ANYTHING that made Ellie stress out? Natalia's mind sharply reminded her of when they watched the Batman vs Superman trailer together and the biochemist gripping her sleeves with wide eyes and excited bouncing.
"Just meet me back at the flat by half 5 ready to leave at quarter past 6?" Natalia asked, more confident this time.
"Sounds good."
"Great."
"Cool."
"Can you pass me that pair of plyers?"
"Sure."
The two quickly fell back into their work, their fluid movements holding all the visual evidence one required to tell that they were used to working across and next to each other. They passed things back and forth, leaning over each other's work and fist bumped as the last results of the day printed lazily from the computer.
~
Carlos clutched desperately to the straps of his rucksack as he tried to keep his ground. The ground was moving around almost in waves as he fumbled with his phone to call Cecil. After a brief explanation of what was happening, Carlos made his way to a rocky outcrop where Doug and the other members of the masked army were gathered. The rumbling was getting even louder and the earth below his very feet was shifting erratically.
"Carlos, I don't think it's safe there!" Cecil was speaking into his ear. "Listen, I want you to find a way to–"
"Cecil?" Carlos cut him off. This was tiring him out emotionally. But he needed Cecil to understand that this was a great opportunity for his career whilst he was here. "Nothing and nowhere is safe. But there are things greater than us. Greater than all of this! So, you can't see it, but I just made a big sweeping hand gesture to indicate everything in the universe, and there are people who must learn about it all. How it all works, and why. This is what we call science!" Yes, that quite explained it, Carlos thought proudly. He had communicated his feelings, just as Cecil had asked him to do and talked about science.
"Yes, I know what science is..." Cecil's velvety voice came from the other end of the phone.
"And I am a scientist."
"OK, I understand. Ugh. It's just...it's just that I miss you, and–"
Whatever Cecil said next was either drowned out or interrupted by an increased sound of rumbling. Carlos pulled his head away from the phone, before pulling an expression of acute confusion. It didn't sound as loud when he was away from the phone which meant...
"Oh! Oh my! The building is shaking!" Cecil cried from the other end.
"You can FEEL it? You can feel the rumbling? Ooh, this is EXCITING! Wait, this is new!" He bounced up and down excitedly at the prospect of the rumbling crossing dimensional boundaries. Oh, what a phenomena! He had to see how the ground was moving. Carlos inched away from the wall and walked towards the ledge.
"The ground is moving very quickly. There is a large lump churning the sound up and down, I'm leaning out over this ledge to get a better view of this fantastic event, and....ow!" A rock fell down and sliced Carlos' shoulder, sending a jolt of pain through his arm.
"Carlos! What happened?"
"I got hit. What is that? Is that a rock?" Another hurtled down and fell on his pinky toe. "OW!"
Carlos moved towards Doug, who was picking up a giant rock to hold over their heads as the rocks tumbled towards the group. "Cecil, the rocks are coming down. They're coming down the side of this hill. I need to take cover, I need to find a–" Carlos tripped suddenly over a rock.
The next few horrifying moments seemed to happen in slow motion. Carlos felt his phone slip out of his grip and fly slowly towards the ground. He gasped and without a second thought, dived to catch it. He crashed to the ground, new grazes forming on his knees and elbows as he reached the earthen ground. But there in front of him was his phone. Smashed in half.
"NO!" Carlos cried out. "No, no, no, no!" He scrabbled to the phone, ignoring the grit scraping over his trouser legs. He picked it up gingerly. The screen was utterly destroyed. He pressed the unlock button frantically. Nothing worked.
"No...." He despaired, slumping back to the floor. His way to reach Cecil was gone. The way to reach his team, gone in an instant. All that was left of Carlos' only way to reach the people he loved was shards of shattered glass and a useless shell of a phone.
At least so he thought for approximately eight seconds.
Carlos watched in both shock and awe as the shards of glass began to wiggle and shift back to their original position. After the whole odd process was finished, his phone lay in his palms looking like it was factory new. Carlos hesitantly pressed the unlock button. The familiar selfie of himself and Cecil outside their apartment flashed up on the screen as it always did.
"It....it fixed itself." He breathed, before turning round. "Look, Doug, it fixed....um....Doug?" The members of the masked army were nowhere to be seen. Carlos' musing as to where they were was interrupted by his newly healed phone buzzing and a little picture of a grinning Cecil holding Khoshekh came up. He immediately answered.
"Carlos, are you there? Carlos?" Cecil's voice had a tone of urgency to it.
"I'm here." Carlos replied, almost in astonishment that it was working again.
"Are you OK?"
"I'm fine. A scientist is always fine. Doug was really helpful!"
"Who is Doug?"
"He's one of the members of this great masked army. He must be a captain of some sort, given his size and the respect he appears to garner. As the rocks and boulders came down, Doug picked up a large, flat stone and held it above us. The rocks bounced off his makeshift shield. I-Unfortunately, I dropped my phone. I smashed the phone something good. I thought I lost you for a while there, Cecil. I was despairing that my one way to reach you would be lost for who knows how long. But then, you know what? Something really amazing happened! Something tremendous! The phone HEALED ITSELF!" He could barely contain the squeal in his tone.
"Oh! That's...that's great!"
"It is great!" He agreed. "But phones don't just heal themselves. This is another scientific mystery I can't wait to get to the bottom of."
"Where is Doug now?"
"Oh, I don't know. He's probably back at the encampment. They're a nomadic army. Sometimes they are here, sometimes not. I don't really have time to make new friends. They're nice people, but there is a lot of work for me to do here. And...the only person I truly care about isn't in this desert anyway." He really hoped that his team weren't listening to that one. He didn't mean it of course, but 'person' rather than 'people' had slipped out the moment he had suddenly thought about how much he missed his boyfriend. After the phone had smashed, all he'd really wanted was Cecil's arms wrapped around him, telling him that everything would be alright again.
"I do not know what the rumbling is. I do not know why some doors work and others do not. I do not know why my phone never loses battery power and can heal itself. I do not know how long it will take me to pursue this knowledge. But I do know two things." He said softly.
"What is that?"
"I love you." Carlos nearly choked back a sob saying it.
He didn't say it often enough, he knew he didn't. But it was important that he told him. Especially after all that had happened that day.
"I love you, too. What's the other thing?"
"You just said it." Carlos smiled. Ellie would be proud of that one.
"Cecil? I have to go. Be patient with me. We have our phones. We have our voices, and you have the best voice of them all."
"Thanks for being on the air with me. We did almost the entire show together!" Of course. He was still on the air. Time for a little bit of payback for broadcasting all of Carlos' phone calls on the radio, even the ones where he nearly cried. "We can still do things together, even in absence." He purred with a grin, before getting back to topic. "I'll be back again soon."
"Find that door, Carlos!"
"I will. But first I need to see if the red light is blinking again or not."
"OK. Bye, Carlos..." Cecil said as Carlos ended the call.
The scientist took a deep breath and began to walk up the mountain, whilst privately smiling as he imagined the reaction of some Night Vale residents, including his beloved boyfriend, to the mere existence of a mountain, which Cecil still insisted weren't real.