Crime Day. It was such an odd concept to Carlos. All Taurus's are exempt from crime for 24 hours. What could he do with this valuable time?
Right now, he was currently wasting it by eating breakfast.
There's so much he could investigate. Where would he begin?
The City Council, maybe? Or what about the library? Maybe he could think about the Dog Park. Or acknowledge the existence of angels.
Well there was Steve Carlsberg.
Two days ago Steve Carlsberg was whisked into a Sheriff's Secret Police van and carted off to God knows where. Carlos liked Steve. He was curious and the only person who seemed to notice that anything was wrong with this town. It was against the law to help anyone who the SSP had caught breaking the law, but today, of course, Carlos was exempt from those. If he could wire his equipment and hack into the city's tracking equipment...
Carlos sat at his desk in slight dismay about how to go about this. And where would the City Council even put the database of trackers?
Cecil would know. He picked up the phone that sat next to his desk and dialed up the station.
Cecil picked up right away. "Night Vale Community Radio. Cecil speaking."
"Hi Cecil. I'm calling for... non-personal reasons." He felt the slight need to clear that up. "Where would one find the City Council's tracking database?"
"Carlos, it's always on their website. Just type in ' '. It's the first link on the top. They have it up there in case anybody wakes up not knowing where they are."
"Okay. Thanks. Bye, Cecil."
"Good-bye, Carlos. Call me again sometime."
"Of course," he replied. He loved conversations with Cecil. They'd taught him many things about Night Vale, radio work, and cats."
It was a moment before Carlos hung up. Cecil's voice just had that hypnotic quality that made you want to keep listening forever. With a sigh he quickly typed the website in the address bar. Immediately the City Council's website popped up. He clicked the "Tracker" link and typed "Steve Carlsberg" into the name space. The little blinking blue light showed that he was in a town nearby, Desert Bluffs.
Carlos didn't remember how he got to Desert Bluffs, just that he drove into the town with the intention of finding Steve Carlsberg and returning him to Night Vale.
According to the Tracker, he'd find Steve at a place called "Styro's", a local ice cream shop, in the third booth from the door. He'd printed out some directions on how to get there, and the streets were very efficiently lined that it was extremely easy to find. The whole city seemed to move with an eerie efficiency that made Carlos uncomfortable.
Steve was indeed sitting inside the shop, eating what appeared to be a styrofoam ball in a waffle cone while his head was bleeding profusely. "Jesus-" said Carlos before turning, running back to his car. He pulled out a first aid kit and grabbed some gauze. Then he sprinted back inside, or tried to, he ran into a man.
Were it not so weird, Carlos wouldn't have stopped. This man looked like an inverse Cecil, though he had the same tall and scrawny body shape and facial structure. Instead of dark skin and white hair, he had white skin and dark hair. His tattoos backwards, dots on the outsides of the tentacle sleeves on his forearms, not the inside. He also had no eyes, although the third one on his forehead was sewn shut, where as Cecil had beautiful eyes, and the third one was white. And his clothes were a different color scheme, red and orange and yellow as opposed to purple and black and white. That made Carlos notice that the whole town was composed of those colors. How did these enormous cities pull off such color coordination?
"Sorry!" said the man, in a chipper manner. Unlike Cecil, his voice was higher-pitched. "I just wasn't looking where I was going!"
"Pardon me sir." Carlos pushed past Cecil's look-a-like and into the ice-cream shop.
Steve was babbling something. Carlos couldn't catch much other than "Janice" and "helicopter training". The scientist quickly and efficiently bandaged up Steve's head. He scooped the surprisingly-light Steve Carlsberg up in his arms and carried him out the front door.
Carlos wasn't really sure how they got back to Night Vale. He just knew that as soon as he opened the back door to help Steve out, he'd insisted on not having Carlos walk him back home.
"Please, you've done enough." The man had big brown begging eyes and a surprisingly good puppy-face.
"Fine," said Carlos. "Be careful, okay?"
Steve nodded and walked away, babbling once again, Styrofoam ice-cream cone still in hand. Carlos sighed, got in his car, started it up, and drove back to the lab.
