#desolate future

(Starter for @thesmilinggodsradiohost)

    Kevin sat at the little table in his bedroom, one of the new rooms he’d added onto the Station to make it function as a house along with being a working radio station. He’d made a lot of renovations to make the place a little nicer, honestly, now that he actually cared how it looked.

    On the table in front of him, along with a number of tools for things he needed to make or fix in order for everything to feel more homey, was a thin metal circle. A collar, to be more specific. One of StrexCorp’s Mood Regulating collars, it’s wiring and circuits having been freshly tampered with to rid it of that title and purpose. The purpose he had given it instead, however, might still be ... frowned upon.

    With a foggy, distant look to his eyes and frown deep enough to counteract the faint scars at the corners of his lips that strived to make every expression of his a smile, he picked the contraption up and turned it around. The small metal points on the inside caught the dull light, and a fog seemed to roll over his thoughts.

    Kevin wandered the endless sands of the Desert Otherworld, diligently keeping track of how far he had gone and in which direction, keeping an eye out for anyone lost in the ever-changing dunes. He’d been traveling towards anything that caught his eye and had mostly been met with disappointment at finding nothing but rocks or cacti so far.

    The radio host was beginning to plan his trip back to the station, the heat becoming more uncomfortable than he was used to, when he rounded a particular grouping of rocks and spotted a form taking shelter in the shade of it. They looked far less prepared than anyone should be for wandering into an unending desert, and he quietly unhooked one of the canteens he kept hanging from his belt.

    Kevin startled where he was sitting in the lounge, accidentally dropping a few of the cookies he had been munching on and nearly spilling tea on the papers he had been pouring over. He didn’t usually edit his scripts anywhere besides his studio, but Lauren had been bothering him too much for him to work.     The next best place, of course, was the lounge in the office that had somehow become connected to his recording booth. Not only had he found it to be generally quiet, but he could eat while he worked.

    He looked up at the person who he had most certainly not met before, and tried not to look too uncomfortable. He hadn’t really talked to anyone other than Marlise yet, after all, and he knew he could look a bit frightening.

(Starter for @cecilwtnvpalmer)

  Kevin blinked awake slowly to the sound of his slightly dusty broadcasting equipment crackling to life. Without even bothering to move his head, he shut his eyes again and wished to go back to sleep. These days, the only time he was awake was when Lauren came in and violently shook him out of his sleep, insisting he broadcast even though there was no news to tell. She was becoming delirious, inflating the smallest occurrences for an excuse to get the radio host talking. She couldn’t stand how quiet the Desert Otherworld was now.

  There was crackling from the electronics again and he finally lifted his head, confused that his babbling assistant hadn’t burst through the door the moment the equipment came to life. She had a habit of turning it off and then back on when she wanted him to do a show, just to make sure he hadn’t cut the power to his booth again so she couldn’t make him broadcast.

  “Lauren?” He called quietly, his voice slightly creaky, and mostly hoped that she wouldn’t actually respond. After a few minutes he pulled his headphones on in hopes of going back to sleep but heard a faint bit of noise from them.

  With a confused crinkle of his nose, he turned the volume up so that he could better hear the garbled static and started to tune the equipment until the noise became clear words.

    Kevin was hunched over slightly, trying to make himself smaller to avoid the judging eyes and hateful whispers of the citizens of Night Vale. Holding tightly onto the straps of the large bag he carried was the only thing keeping his hands from shaking as he walked quickly towards the grocery store. The sooner he bought what he couldn’t grow in the Otherworld, the sooner he could go back to the safety of his station.

    About a block from the store, the edges of a total emotional breakdown starting to creep across the radio host’s mind, something hit the side of his head hard enough to knock him over and make him see stars. When he reached his trembling fingers up to his head, they came away coated with blood.     With a quick look at the ground nearby, he saw a brick with the same crimson on it. Someone had thrown a brick at him. Not that he was surprised; They hated him. He was more surprised it was only one brick.

    He stood, pausing to blink away the dots of light that obscured his vision for a moment, and continued towards his destination with shouts and jeers behind him. The only thing that stopped him was someone he didn’t immediately recognize, putting themselves in his way and saying something he couldn’t quite understand. Everything was slightly muffled, but on the bright side he wasn’t shaking as badly as he was before. Or was he shaking more?

    Kevin sat in his booth, as he did most moments of his existence now, his head leaned against his desk and one hand lazily turning a dial on his receiver. He’d lost hope a long time ago of coming across anything on the empty radio waves, but it was at least something to do. And if he did have a chance to talk to someone, he would jump at it.     After a while he stopped registering the shifts in the static, starting to space out, and sighed in an odd moment of silence.     What brought him back to attention was a voice on the other end.

    Kevin was not as perceptive as he used to be. He often missed little details that were very important, like the room around him shifting just slightly in his perception. If he weren’t lethargic, uninterested, and dazed, he’d have noticed that he was no longer seeing his recording booth in the Desert Otherworld, but his booth back in Desert Bluffs. Or, rather, if he noticed, he just didn’t care.

    He often stopped experiencing the right reality, either tuning out the world as it was completely or drifting into monochrome daydreams of the past that more often than not left him sobbing and unable to breathe. Therefore, it didn’t surprise him when, sitting next to him in an office chair, was himself.