3
" As a last resort, with the orange nearing my face and my back pressing hard against the sharp edge of my broadcast table, I grabbed my phone to tell Carlos that if I didn't make it home tonight, it wasn't because I didn't love him, or didn't want to watch a documentary on special scientific graphs, or was too obsessed with my job to relax and enjoy a good meal and some television. It was only because I was zapped out of existence by a lunatic Non-John Peters. And that, in fact, I do love Carlos, and I would want nothing more than to watch a documentary on scientific graphs over some homemade linguini, or go out to eat again, or whatever.
But then, as I grabbed my phone, I thought: That's way too long to write for a text. So I just hit John Peters upside the head with it... "
― Joseph Fink , The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe (Welcome to Night Vale Episodes, #2)
7
" I looked over at the dresser and saw a new issue of Zoobooks sitting there.
On the cover was an owl. I love owls. Owls are beautiful and fierce. There was an owl right there on the front. A close-up of its face. Two big black eyes, bulbous, shiny, and empty. A brown-and-black feathered face. And its beak. I didn't see its beak. What were those two things coming out of its neck?
I stepped closer.
And in the lower corner of the cover, in white all-caps sans-serif font: "SPIDERS." I looked back into that face, brown and black fur, two big black eyes, and more eyes, and pincers. And oh god.
I screamed. I screamed and I ran. I am still screaming and running from this, only on the inside now. "
― Joseph Fink , The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe (Welcome to Night Vale Episodes, #2)
13
" The cardinal directions are north, west, south, and east.
The cardinal temperatures are 35º Fahrenheit, 67º Fahrenheit, 3º Celsius, and 10º Kelvin.
The cardinal locations are a cave, a long-abandoned cabin, the bottom of an oceanic trench, and City Hall.
The cardinal emotions are wild abandon, guarded affection, directionless jealousy, and irritation.
The cardinal birds are hawk, sparrow, finch, and owl.
The cardinal names are Jeremy, Kim, Trigger, and Jamie.
And, finally, the cardinal sounds are a door slamming, slight movement in still water, popcorn popping, and a standard guitar G string being snipped with wire cutters.
This has been the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner. "
― Joseph Fink , The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe (Welcome to Night Vale Episodes, #2)
16
" The universe is unraveling. It still is. We won the day. We won the battle. We won whatever unit of measurement you care to say that we won. We returned to the dangerous equilibrium we had before, which we can only assume, or hope, or wish is better. But, of course, we did not stop the unraveling of the universe. The universe is not a thing that is, it is not a thing at all. It is the very action of its going. It is, in fact, its own dissolves and our lives – the entire span of human existence going back and back and, if we are lucky, forward and forward – the entire span is spent within this dissolve. "
― Joseph Fink , The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe (Welcome to Night Vale Episodes, #2)
18
" When you die, the surface of the moon will not change.
The difference between the landscape and lighting of that barren little world from a moment where you exist, to a moment where you do not, will be minimal, and unrelated to your passing. From a car window driving on a highway, looking up at a moon framed by incidental clouds, the surface will be the same muddle of mystery and distance it always is.
And even a methodical study of your absence as it pertains to moon geology and cartography will find nothing. Searching through a powerful telescope, and analyzing with computer algorithms built around your nonexistence – even that study will find that all craters and rocks appear to be where we left them a few years back, that it is the same distance, orbiting at the same rate, and that the researches feel just the way they did about the moon as they did before you died.
Nothing will change about the moon when you die. It will be the same – still the moon, still there.
Still the moon. "
― Joseph Fink , The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe (Welcome to Night Vale Episodes, #2)
