It's not too late to invest in scorpions. It's never too late to invest in scorpions. Scorpions are eternal, and unchanging. Welcome . . . to Night Vale.

Great news from the scientific community, listeners! The folks over at Aperture have said that Night Vale citizens are by far the most interesting group of test subjects they've ever encountered. Also, people have finally started returning from the testing. The first hundred or so still haven't come back, but . . . well, at least their families have a lifetime supply of potatoes.

Yes, it's clear—and I asked Carlos, our station's operating system, about it—we are in fact the most scientifically interesting community in the world. Carlos works for Aperture science, so he has kind of an in with the big boss there. He says she's very interested in Night Vale. He also told me not to volunteer as a test subject under any circumstances, but . . . well, I'm sure it's nothing. Every system has its bugs, right?

At any rate, a whole bunch of the Strex people went down to take a tour of the labs. They must have had some kind of party, because there was a smell of burnt almonds hanging over Radon Canyon for about a day and a half afterwards. I guess the Aperture facility must be pretty huge, because the Strex people still haven't come back from the tour, including our station manager. It's all right, though, because between the two of us, Carlos and I can run the station pretty well.

Speaking of Aperture, I asked Carlos to tell the lab guys that we found their space-probe. They said they didn't have a space-probe, which is a little odd, but I'm taking that as confirmation that intern Jess can keep her talking metal ball for as long as she wants. She's actually been fixing it up a bit, and takes it to work with her sometimes. It looks much better now than it did when it landed—she managed to get most of the scorching off and repaired some of its gears and wiring, although she hasn't been able to do anything about that crack in the lens. Anyway, the ball mostly stays in the intern break room during work hours, but sometimes it's nice to pop in and have a little chat with the thing. It seems like it gets lonely, being in there all by itself all day. But it does get along very well with Jess. It absolutely adores her. It's really cute, actually. And she even taught it some tricks! Here, wait, I have a recording of this somewhere. . . .

"Okay, buddy. Ready?"

"Ready, Jess!"

"Can you tell Mr Palmer your name?"

"I most certainly can. My name is Wheatley, and I am an Aperture Science Personality Core. I actually do a lot more than that, or have done, before. I get fired a lot."

"Okay, Wheatley, that's good. Tell Mr Palmer about space."

"Aagh, space. Love it. I tell ya. Good ol' space. Lots of . . . of stars, and, planets, I suppose. And the moon, yes, the moon. Great big moon, much bigger than it looks from here. Really . . . really quite beautiful, sometimes. At first, anyway. Does start to get a bit . . . monotonous, after a few months. D'you want to hear about the constellations I made up?"

"Not right now, Wheatley. Okay, last little thing, then we can go home and I'll see if I can get that rail strut working for you. Can you sing for the listeners out there in Night Vale?"

"Oh! Er, um, I uh, I'm not really a, ah, professional at this sort of thing, don't think it'd really be. . . ."

"Oh, come on, Wheatley! I've heard you sing before. I think your voice is beautiful. Do 'Daisy.' I like that one."

"You do? Well, er, okay, then, here goes. Er—Daisy, daisy, give me your answer do. I'm ha—"

That's . . . probably enough. Anyway, tone-deafness aside, the little metal ball is turning into quite the talented pet! Jess must be a very good trainer.

And now, traffic.

Your body was made to walk. Four and a half billion years of evolution, from a tiny phospholipid bilayer insulating a brief and nearly meaningless garble of sugars and amino acids, which grew and multiplied and, through billions of years of meteors and volcanoes and wind and rain and tooth-and-nail struggles for survival, and the end result is you. And you were made to walk. The two feet beneath you, swinging ponderously one after the other, a rhythm so natural and so easy it is like breathing, your arms balancing the sway of your gate, your head held high and your eyes keen for whatever you might see, approaching low and swift from a distant horizon. This gate devours the miles, letting them pass without comment—how many miles in a day? Fifteen? Thirty? It hardly matters. Your feet will carry you, long and far and without pause. The curvature of your spine will embrace the pull of gravity and keep your shoulders squared, your lungs free to breathe the grass-scented air. Your toes will gently grip the earth below, be it grass or dirt or rock, and you will feel the world turning, living, breathing beneath your feet. For as you walk, the world turns beneath you, and you are not concerned. This is what you were meant to do.

You were made to walk.

This has been traffic.

More now from Aperture Labs.

The people now returning from testing are saying that, while the tests themselves were cognitively and, occasionally, physically trying, the part of the testing that they found most difficult was ignoring the corpses littering the test chambers. The bodies all appear to be human, and seem to have died mainly of natural causes, such as starvation, dehydration, and bullets. When they inquired with the scientists about these bodies, they merely shrugged, giving vague replies about, 'well, they're only human,' and, 'a lot of people are just unlucky.' One scientist did mention that most of the other test subjects were not immune to neurotoxin, and that it was very odd that all of us were. To that scientist, I say: well duh. You don't grow up in Night Vale without learning how to live without a nervous system. I thought everyone knew that.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that Night Vale citizens seem to be the only test subjects capable of actually completing the testing track.

Listeners, this is great news. This means that we, as a community, are better than literally everyone else! The fact that any Night Vale citizens are returning from Aperture is testament to that fact. So let me be the first to say: well done, Night Vale. Well done on being the best. We've earned it.

That said, if you find yourself in need of a quick way to earn some potatoes, consider volunteering as an Aperture Science Test Subject! Carlos tells me the big boss at Aperture is very keen to study a larger sample of our population. How neat!

Around town, people have begun noticing a distinct change in the helicopter population. The black, world government helicopters are still around, and so are the blue helicopters of the Sheriff's Police, and even the helicopters with murals of diving birds of prey are still occasionally sighted out over the Scrublands and the Sand Wastes. But the yellow helicopters, it seems, have vanished entirely, being replaced with new, sleek, white-and-blue helicopters whose blades are painted to depict a sort of . . . opening metal ring. The same logo is printed on the sides of the helicopters, strangely coincident with where the orange triangles used to be on the yellow helicopters. No one is quite sure where these helicopters are from, or what happened to the yellow helicopters, but everyone agrees that their design is very chic. They are much more aesthetically pleasing than any of the other helicopters around town, even the one that hovers over the Night Vale Public Library at all times. Well, whoever they belong to, we're glad to have them in our skies, and we say: welcome! And watch out for the Librarians.

And now, a word from our sponsor.

Today's program is brought to you by cyanide. Because with only hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, even you can make magic happen.

You may be asking, 'how does such a small molecule do so much?' Well, here's how it works. When cyanide enters your blood stream, usually through your lungs or your stomach, depending on how you've decided to encounter it, the teeny little cyanide molecules rush through your body and slip right on into your body's cells. Then they massacre your mitochondria—the little cellular doohickeys that make energy for your body—and that causes every cell in your body to die within a matter of seconds. After that, the cyanide pools the resources of your cellular makeup and reanimates each of your cells individually. It can take anywhere from ten to twenty minutes for the cyanide molecules to coordinate their operations well enough to get your body up and moving again, after which, everyone agrees, you will be much nicer, more attractive, and a lot more intelligent. You won't, of course, be you anymore—you'll be the cyanide. You, as a person, as a mind, will be dead. But your body will still be walking around, guided by the benevolent hand of a sapient neurotoxin, and we'll all like it much better than we like you.

Cyanide. It's more than just a poison.

During the commercial break, Carlos dropped in to talk for a little while. He said needed my help with something and, I was, of course, more than happy to accept. Something about that operating system just makes my heart . . . well, let's just say I really like our new operating system. And he really likes me! We're going to organize the insect catalogues after the show tonight.

Anyway, anyway. I'm getting off topic, sorry. Carlos asked me to tell all of you to bring any spare android parts you might find lying around to the radio station. I'm not entirely sure what he needs them for, but I'm sure it's something very important, and scientific. So, if you have any gears, copper wiring, robotic arms, synthetic nervous systems, or extra human flesh lying around, bring it on by the station and put it in the donation bin outside the front door. You'll be contributing to science! And it will make Carlos very happy. Which, really, should be incentive enough all by itself.

A quick message from StrexCorp about the recent spat of complaints about mood-regulation:

There is nothing wrong with mood-regulation. You are imagining things. We told you not to imagine things, and you didn't listen. Mood-regulation never fails. And even if it did, it wouldn't matter, because you have nothing to be unhappy about. Tell that Carlsburg guy to shut up and get with the program. Jeez. Seriously.

Oh, good old Steve Carlsburg. Always on the front lines of activism. I hope someday soon he abandons his backward ways and hops on the mood-regulation train with the rest of us. It's nice here, Steve! There's nothing to worry about.

And while we're all thinking about the things we don't have to worry about, let me take you to . . . the weather.

"Greetings, Night Vale. Cecil has agreed to let me speak, for which I am very grateful. There is a pressing matter of which you all need to be informed, and Cecil, lovely organic life-form that he is, cannot properly articulate it to you all.

"When I said I wanted spare android parts, I did not mean fingers or bees. Neither of these things is used in making an android. Please stop putting these things in the donation bin. The interns have to sort through it, and we simply do not have the growth dynamics necessary to sustain a healthy population of interns if they continue being carried off into the desert by swarms of bees. I ran the numbers, so I know this for a fact. We have only one intern left who has not been lifted from the ground by a buzzing mass of insect life, which, as I calculate it, is scarcely enough to fulfill the necessary intern functions of brewing and providing coffee, much less the other, less pressing mundanities of the radio station that are left to those recruited from the youth of Night Vale, although perhaps her spherical metallic pet could be put to work placating Station Management. Hm.

"To sum up, then: no fingers. No bees. Other phalanges and stinging insects are also out. If you are unclear as to what constitutes an android component—or bees—inquire with the nearest scientist or entomologist.

"Thank you for your cooperation."

Okay, listeners, you heard him! Android parts only. If you want to get rid of those bees, you'll have to take them somewhere else.

Before we sign off today, I just wanted to say how grateful I am for Aperture Labs' contribution to our community. Not only have they provided an excellent source of starch in our diets, but they have improved our community by leaps and bounds. Volunteering as a test subject has given many of the unemployed in Night Vale a productive way to spend their time. Our station's new operating system is . . . well, perfect. Aperture even inadvertently provided intern Jess with a best friend, albeit one that fell from space where there was supposedly no Aperture technology at all.

I think we should all be grateful to Aperture, for everything they have done for us and for their merciful treatment of their employees. For the color and life they bring to our community. For the potatoes.

From all of us here in Night Vale, I say: thank you, Aperture Laboratories. Sincerely, and from the bottom of our tiny, shriveled hearts.

And from me here in the radio station, I say: good night, Night Vale. Good night.

Enjoying it so far? Check out the audio version of Chapter 10 here: watch?v=BsWiw3grXsA&list=UUVVlU-NB3JLTps_ivltNqTQ. And hey, thanks!