"What is going on?!" Carlos yelled at the younger Cecil.
The older Cecil grabbed Carlos' arm and pulled him back. "Carlos, you're being impolite." Cecil smiled at him. "He said he wanted to talk, I'm sure he's going to explain everything to us and it will all make sense."
Carlos narrowed his eyes in disbelief, but stepped back.
"Yeah…" the younger Cecil looked aside awkwardly, then he snapped his fingers and three chairs rose up from the sand. "We and Carlos should sit down. This…might take a while."
They sat down. The chairs felt absolutely real in every way.
"We suppose…" the younger Cecil began, biting his lip.
Carlos noticed that something in the body language was very similar to Cecil, but…off. It was a bit too unnatural and forced, like someone who observed Cecil very closely and knew all his little quirks was trying to imitate him.
"We suppose that it's best to start at the very beginning-"
"-are you going to explain what you are?" Carlos interrupted. "Is this a time travel thing?" he asked the older Cecil.
"Well, it sure seems…no, I don't think so …it doesn't feel right…"
"We will explain everything, we promise," the younger Cecil said calmly. "But first you need to SHUT UP FOR A SECOND YOU NOSY OUTSIDER!"
When the young Cecil shouted, his voice had a strange echo to it. He then paused and smiled another dorky smile. "So let's begin our story…"
He waved his hand slightly and a small sand model of a town rose from the ground.
"That's Night Vale, right?" older Cecil asked.
"Well… not quite, this is Desert Bluffs," the younger Cecil answered. "At least, Desert Bluffs from when our story takes place. From what we realize the place has advanced a lot from back then. If there's one thing we can say about StrexCorp is that they have always been very efficient with progress."
"StrexCorp? I know that name." Carlos said. "It's a pretty big corporation. What do they have to do with Desert Bluffs?"
"I've never heard that name," the real Cecil said. "I think…" he sighed, "this is much more confusing than the usual existential crisis…at least I know how to handle those."
"Yeah, well another thing StrexCorp is good at is covering up stuff," the young Cecil said. "You're not curious why you never heard about the gore-covered state of the town, Carlos?"
"Yeah, I was wondering about that…" Carlos replied. Night Vale was a pretty secluded place, but he still heard things about it. Desert Bluffs was always considered a completely normal city.
"StrexCorp does more than just normal corporation stuff. They slowly buy entire towns and turn all the people there into their slaves…" The younger Cecil then started to…degenerate. His tone and mannerism did not resemble Cecil when he spoke about something he hated. His voice became inhumanly high pitched and body language more erratic. His skin started developing a sandlike texture. "W…with happiness-inducing drugs, and violent gory death to anyone who goes against Strex and…"
Younger Cecil started glowing purple and the ground started shaking, and then suddenly stopped. "Oh, dear, we're sorry. I think we lost concentration for a bit, we just hate them so much." He chuckled.
Carlos thought the younger Cecil description didn't sound all that much worse than Night Vale, outside of being more gory, but now was not the time to argue with Cecil. Much less with two of him.
"Anyway, back to our story," the young Cecil continued. "In this town, there was a boy, who wasn't like all the other people there. He was a freak, a weirdo. Not only he was interested in reading books about evil computers and monsters and conspiracies, rather than hugging techniques or the joys of working, not only was he interested in the dark and the strange, not only did he talk and act in an odd way, but he also had… powers. He could make things happen… create things." He moved his hand around, making the model spin. "Which would have been a pretty good thing for StrexCorp if the powers didn't also made the poor boy immune to all forms of mind control. The boy was mocked, and bullied and experimented on, until one day he managed to control his powers enough to escape." A small explosion happened in the model city and a tiny figure ran from it. "He ran and ran, but as Desert Bluffs disappeared over the horizon," the model, save for the tiny figure, dissolved into sand again, "the boy realized he had nowhere to go. It was clear that even if he could find someplace away from StrexCorp's influence, people would still hate him, he would still be a freak. So he created his own town." The younger Cecil's face brightened as he made a new model city rise from the ground. "A place where he was normal, because everyone else was just as odd as him. Where all kinds of exciting and scary things happened all the time and things from his favorite stories were real. Where everybody knew everybody and there was a real sense of community."
The younger Cecil now spoke a bit more softly. "Creating such a complex thing put a real strain on his powers, and he couldn't use them consciously anymore. He could only keep his new home active and safe subconsciously. But the boy didn't mind. He didn't want to rule his town, or to be anyone important, he just wanted to be like everyone else. So he also pushed away his real memories, of StrexCorp and Desert Bluffs and the feelings that made him create the town in the first place and he created new, better memories. But the real memories and feelings didn't go away, they were just blocked.
"And now the boy has grown up and he might do something stupid, so those memories had to be given physical form," Cecil's manifestation excitedly gestured towards itself, "to prevent him from ruining everything that he created. The end," it added coldly.
The real Cecil was distraught. "So this was about me and Night Vale…a…and…" He sighed, suddenly feeling very tired. "Carlos, please tell me that you saw some hole in that story… or that you found it ridiculous or… or SOMETHING?!"
Carlos shrugged. "Night Vale being the creation of a young sci-fi and horror geek? I can believe that."
"CARLOS!" Cecil shouted in distress.
"Sorry, bad joke, I really shouldn't have said that. It's a lot for you to take, huh?" Carlos took Cecil's hand.
"Maybe I just need some time to process it," Cecil replied. Carlos hugged him.
"Wait, so nobody from StrexCorp ever tried to look for you - for Cecil"? Carlos asked the manifestation.
"After we created Night Vale, we also created a double of us that went back to Desert Bluffs and said something about realizing the error of his ways…and that he lost his powers in the desert…" The manifestation shrugged. "It's still there… it has degenerated a bit due to being so far away from us, but it's still doing its job…argh…do you have to know everything?"
"Yes," Carlos answered, dusting off his lab coat. "So… are you a split personality or something?"
"Sort of… This-" the manifestation gestured toward itself, "doesn't have any self-awareness, just like the people in Night Vale. It's simply a puppet we subconsciously control, and we make it act like it's sentient because it's easier to communicate and argue with something like that."
"Argue?" Carlos asked.
"Oh, yes. The reason why we decided we need to explain everything to us," the Manifestation replied. "We've stumbled over little holes in our paradise before, we've had our suspicions. But usually we dealt with it pretty easily. We had the Secret Police take us to "re-education", where we just made ourselves forget about the thing that made us suspicious and fix whatever flaw was in Night Vale. But this time…" it sighed, "you were there. It was your fault," it pointed at Carlos, "and we knew that 'fixing Night Vale' would mean we would have to…get rid of you. And we didn't know what to do, and you saw what kind of mess happened… buildings floating in the air, giant monsters." It waved its hand absent-mindedly. "And by the time we realized that you weren't actually close to the truth at the start of it, it was too late. We couldn't make our mind work the way normal people did, so the logical solution was to manifest the memories and feelings that made us create Night Vale in the first place into this sand puppet and have it explain everything to our conscious self," it pointed at Cecil, "then we could discuss and convince us to remain in Night Vale!"
"Oh, naturally," Carols said sarcastically. It was Cecil's mind, after all.
"WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP ALREADY?" the manifestation yelled again. "DIDN'T YOU CAUSE ENOUGH DAMAGE? IF YOU REALLY LOVED US, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE CAUSED ALL OF THIS! YOU MANIPULATIVE, NOSY OUTSIDER!"
Carlos just sat there for a while. He suddenly wanted to run home and close himself off from the world. He knew that it was just a bizarre sand projection and probably overreacting, but for some reason it really got the "you are horrible and don't deserve anyone's love" parts of his brain going. Maybe it was the fact that the manifestation looked and sounded so similar to Cecil. Or maybe it was the fact that Carlos' brain was used to thinking like that for so long.
Cecil was also worried, but for a different reason. He got off the chair, grabbed Carlos and took him to the side. "C…Carlos, if this kid is part of my mind, then what he said to you was-oh, sweet Carlos, I love you, but-" the thought that he was unknowingly holding back all that poison toward Carlos was just another worrying thing in this very bizarre day- "I mean, I obviously didn't know about any of that, so it's possible that I just didn't know about this, either. And there was one time I thought my favorite ice cream flavor was pistachio, but then the City Council announced that the favorite ice cream of all the town's citizens was actually Eldritch…but, that never happened anyway. Really, when you get right down to it nothing in my life really happened." No matter how Cecil examined it, he couldn't find any positive way to look at the situation.
Carlos hugged Cecil again. "It's…well… look at it this way…"
Dammit, he couldn't do it. Carlos wanted to comfort Cecil, but he had no idea how. It's not like he had ever been in a situation like that. He could say the wrong thing and make everything worse. Cecil was actually good at that kind of thing. If the roles were reversed, Cecil would've found what to say by now. Carlos was just terrible at everything that didn't involve locking himself in a lab alone with a couple of test tubes. He-
Carlos tried to push those thoughts away.
"Look, I… if you're worried about what that version of you said to me… it said it was just a collection of your feelings that caused you to create Night Vale in the first place. I don't think it CAN feel anything about me outside of 'that one person who ruined everything'". Carlos chuckled nervously. "And I know you love me, and I love you, too. And I'm going to help you get through it, I promise." Carlos knew it was a really trite thing to say, but that was the most accurate way he could put it. Maybe their whole relationship was trite, but he didn't care.
"Oh, thank you, Carlos!" Cecil said as he gave him a big hug and a kiss. Cecil still was unsure and more than a little confused, but at least he had something he could rely on. "And you know something? For you, maybe I will leave Night Vale!"
The manifestation suddenly appeared behind them. "WHAT?! We can't be serious!" it groaned. "Cecil, we're about to make a huge mistake."
"Um, d…do you think?" Cecil held Carlos' hand tightly. Cecil had to admit he didn't really think before he said that, and he wasn't sure he could now back away from that statement even if he wanted to. "Night Vale is my home, even if it's not real, and I guess simply making me forget everything that happened would be the most efficient way to handle this current crisis regarding everything in my life, but… but Carlos is really…neat, and I don't think he'll like living in a lie forever." Cecil leaned closer to the manifestation. "He's always going on about 'uncovering secrets for science' and 'Cecil, you can't just ignore the black hole in your refrigerator just because the Sheriff's Secret Police told you so'. It's adorable!" he chuckled, "but…"
"WE CANNOT BELIEVE THAT WE COULD BE THAT STUPID! We just told us what was at stake!" The manifestation groaned again. "Wh-what if… what if I told us that Carlos is as made up as the rest of Night Vale?"