For the Record

One of the advantages of being a latecomer is that I had access to a lot of spoilers while I was playing catch-up, but I had wondered about the possibility of the cassettes being from an alternate reality (among several theories) even before that was confirmed.

…..

"Cecil!" Carlos rapped sharply on the door of his boyfriend's apartment. Cecil's car was parked somewhat haphazardly outside – a bad sign in and of itself. For all that Cecil seemed utterly incapable of complying with the Council-mandated rules of self-censorship within the relative sanctuary of his recording booth he was usually meticulous in observing every aspect of Night Vale's convoluted, draconian, and sometimes outright self-defeating laws in every other context. He never exceeded the speed limit or requested the 'special' base at Big Rico's, would fashion all manner of rudimentary writing implements out of whatever happened to be to hand before accepting Carlos' offer of a pen, and his car was usually parked perfectly.

Receiving no answer, Carlos dug in his pocket for his keys and let himself in. Cecil was sitting at the kitchen table, sleeves pushed up, hair dishevelled as though he had been raking his fingers through it, and an open bottle of vodka in his hand. He glanced up when his boyfriend entered.

"You heard the show?"

"Yeah." Carlos retrieved two tumblers from the cupboard before sitting down opposite him and gesturing for the bottle. Cecil slid it over without comment and Carlos poured for both of them, a full tumbler for Cecil and half for himself. He slid Cecil's glass back to him but kept a hold of the bottle.

'If you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget.'

He had thought it was a gimmick when he first arrived in Night Vale, bad-taste advertising by one of the many liquor stores that dotted this strange community. When he had realised it was official Council policy he had been shocked. When he had realised how seriously Cecil took that advice, and how often, he had been worried. And then… well, there had been that incident, which had shaken him to the very core of his being, and he had found himself at Cecil's apartment, where his are-you-even-my-boyfriend-yet (are-we-at-the-putting-labels-on-this-stage)? had promptly poured him a rather large glass of vodka and encouraged him to down the lot, and at that point he had understood, because while alcohol couldn't actually make you forget what had happened it could provide a sufficient level of numbness in the immediate aftermath to stop you from clawing your own eyes out or running screaming into the sand wastes, never to return.

"That wasn't me. On those cassettes. That was. Not. Me."

"I believe you."

Cecil's head came up sharply at that, as though he had been expecting a different response, and after a moment he launched into what was probably a mentally-prepared rebuttal to that imagined reaction.

"I mean, my memory isn't perfect. Not if I'm completely honest. There's the Lyme disease, and the black-outs, and I've been re-educated… well, it's happened a few times. And of course there's…" Here he broke off to gesture at the vodka, of which he then took a healthy gulp. Carlos nodded encouragingly. Cecil was the Voice of Night Vale. Cecil processed things by talking. Cecil was talking about what had happened. That was good. Probably.

"But that doesn't mean I don't remember things. Lots of things. I remember people. And events. I just don't always remember context. Dates. Sequences. But I know when I've forgotten something, at least if it was something important, I can feel the shape of where it should be, even if the shape itself is gone, and I know I haven't forgotten this. This never happened."

If this were anywhere else, he would worry that Cecil was delusional. That he was having some sort of mental health crisis, a psychotic break, or, or… Hell, he was a scientist, not a psychiatrist. There was a lot of 'or', most of which he didn't understand except to know that it didn't apply to Cecil. Cecil had PTSD – or he would, if the trauma ever ceased to be a rolling event and actually allowed him to get to the 'post-' stage – and a tendency towards existential crisis-induced depression, but that was fairly normal by Night Vale standards and not worth worrying about, mainly because he could worry all he wanted but it wouldn't actually change anything so there didn't seem to be much point.

"Cecil." He reached across to lay his hand over his boyfriend's, drawing his frantically wandering gaze back to meet his own. "I believe you."

This time his words seemed to register, and Cecil heaved a deep sigh and slumped with apparent relief, closing his eyes tiredly for a moment.

"Then what do you think it was?" he asked when he opened them again.

Now it was Carlos who drew breath, because he was a scientist and he had been hypothesising frantically ever since he realised that something was badly off about Cecil's broadcast.

"Could someone have planted them?" he asked. "Some kind of psychological manipulation, making you doubt your own past?"

Cecil considered this for a moment, taking a sip – not a gulp, so clearly Carlos' efforts to calm him were having some effect – of his vodka as he did so.

"That doesn't seem likely," he said slowly. "I mean, who would, and why? They would have had to break in here, and the Sheriff's Secret Police wouldn't let that happen."

Carlos raised an eyebrow and cocked his head, asking, in the kind of silent communication in which he was rapidly becoming fluent in the totalitarian hellhole that was Night Vale, whether the SSP themselves could have planted the cassettes. Cecil shook his head minutely and mouthed 're-education'. Of course. If the Council wanted to mess with Cecil's head they'd just call him in for a bit of good old-fashioned state-sponsored brainwashing.

"A prank?" he asked. "I mean, you did say you remembered practicing with a tape recorder when you were first starting out at the Station, and teenagers do do some pretty weird things. Maybe it was meant to be some kind of spooky radio play, and that's why you don't remember it? Because it wasn't a big deal at the time."

This time Cecil nodded slowly. "That's possible, at least. Although I don't know that I'm that good a voice actor, even now. I broadcast facts and opinions, not fantasy."

"Don't sell yourself short," Carlos chastised mildly. "You have an amazing voice. You're very talented."

That earned him his first smile of the evening and a flush of colour to Cecil's cheeks. "Why, thank you." He paused. "Any more theories."

Carlos frowned. His last two suggestions would be perfectly plausible explanations just about anywhere, but this one was pure Night Vale.

"You remember I told you about multiverse theory?"

Cecil smiled again, softly. He loved it when Carlos talked nerdy to him. "Yeah?"

"What if this did happen, but to another you, a different you, in a different reality? And somehow the tapes from that reality ended up here? The recording would sound like you, because it was you who made it, but you wouldn't remember it because it was a different you, not the you who played those tapes today."

"Do you really think that's possible?"

Did he?

"We have mysterious hooded figures. And a glow cloud."

"All hail."

"All hail. And tiny murderous people living under lane five of the bowling alley. Scientifically speaking, if at this point I have to choose between 'my boyfriend is crazy' and 'my boyfriend somehow found cassettes that his teenaged self recorded in an alternate reality', I'm actually inclined to accept the latter hypothesis as the sounder and more likely of the two."

This time Cecil's smile didn't fade and he took only the tiniest sip of his vodka.

"Carlos? You really are just perfect."