I asked her if it wasn’t then maybe time to leave the studio and return to her life, but she said she couldn’t imagine doing that. Not anymore. So I offered to let her become a station intern instead. Isn’t that just the best? I gave her the intern tunic and told her about the usual duties (mimeographs, making coffee, editing my slash fiction). I think she’ll do just a great job, and she’ll learn a lot while working here.

I’m pretty sure that all of our interns have gone on to do great things with their lives. I haven’t followed up with any of them or even thought about it for very long, but I’m sure they are all better off for having done their internship here.

Sheila is so happy, she took the clipboard she had once used to mark down people at the Moonlite All-Nite and broke it over her knee. Which is a waste, Sheila. Do you think community radio stations have the kinds of budgets that allow us to just waste clipboards like that? Don’t do that again, Sheila.

Moving on, many of you have written to the station asking for more information about our annual fund drive, which was held two months back. It seems that the tote bags and mugs and DVD sets of Mad About You, Seasons 2 and 5 have still not arrived for many donors.

We here at Night Vale Community Radio apologize for the delay. Please know that all donor rewards have been mailed out—were mailed out weeks ago—but, as we all know, time is weird here in our beautiful community. As a result, those weeks may have been experienced by you as mere seconds and the delivery would seem instantaneous, or those weeks may be experienced by you as millennia, and you will be a terrible, vacant, ancient form of yourself by the time you receive your reward. These possibilities and all other possibilities remain . . . possible.

Please know that our station exists because of donors like you. It also exists because a long and terribly improbable series of galactic events over the course of billions of years conspired to bring us to this very moment in our station’s existence. And we thank you for your support. Again, we apologize for the delay in receiving your items, and also for the absurdity of time.

Next on our program, I will describe a boring photo in a thousand slow, interminable words.

37

Jackie knocked on her mother’s door. After a moment, it opened.

“Hello, dear. Come in.” Her mother turned and walked back to the kitchen, and Jackie limped after her. She tenderly sat down across from the woman she did not recognize.