Heilin: переводы

→I’d love to be near Carlos again. We’ve had a great time talking nearly every night, but it’s…hard to know how much meeting eyes or touching hands means until it’s gone. Plus, I could use a vacation. Other than that brief escape through the same desert otherworld this spring, I don’t think I’ve been out of Night Vale since…wow, um, Luftnarp? Svitz. Ugh. Time flies, comma, is weird.

→“Neat,” he said.

→“We’ll see. It does sound nicer than I remember,” I said.

→[Sigh]

→I asked if he found an old oak door with only one side that could possibly bring him back to Night Vale.

→Carlos used that classic saying to point out that this desert is a great opportunity for his career as a scientist. And I respect that.

→He quoted that old adage, “when God closes a door, God opens a window, then God cracks a few knuckles, then God kicks a pine cone up the sidewalk. God also chews a whole bunch of gum. God recently quit smoking, and is really fidgety.”

→He feels like this desert – the most scientifically interesting place in the otherworld – is where he needs to be. For now.

→He said he used to feel that way. But now he no longer feels threatened by the rumbling beneath the sand, or the strange armies that move about the beige wastescape. None of them fighting, only…wandering.

→He said after a few months of feeling helpless he’s made some friends, like the giant soldiers Doug and Alicia, and even gotten a lot of research done. He doesn’t feel trapped at all. I told him that he was locked in that alternate desert against his will, and has been unable to return so, that seems to me like a pretty strong definition of “trapped.”

→I talked to Carlos the other night, listeners. He’s still trapped in the…[clears throat] not trapped. I told him I’d stop saying he’s trapped in the desert otherworld. He is…doing work there.

→It’s super-festive and I love it! Whoever put that thing up, good job! It must weigh…20 tons? Don’t know how you did it, but way to get us all into the holiday spirit!

→Last night, there was no 15-foot tall, two-foot thick rectangle made of blue slate towering over the faded grass and weakened tulip garden in front of City Hall. But now, there is. A monolith, with indifferent geometry and a long, sharp shadow cast by the low morning sun. It is an ominous construction, channeling ancient powers and long-dead gods. Perhaps, it is even connected to our primordial extra-terrestrial ancestry. And now, just a few days before Christmas, this looming, dark stone shows up mysteriously in the night, casting scornful shadows across both our dreams and our primitive understanding of the world.

→Listeners, someone built a monolith in front of City Hall overnight.

→Welcome to Night Vale.

→If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck…you should not be so quick to jump to conclusions.

→But Pamela would not hear us. We had given up all hope, and were casting about for other things to give up:dreams, aspirations, and then, digging further, anticipated muscle pains – pre-grief for loss that hadn’t happened yet, post-grief for losses long ago – and further still, until we were ready to give up that shifting, shivery spark that is our human heart itself.

→“Pamela!” we cried, unified under threat, just as we are often at odds through peace, “Pamela! Do not retire! We need you!” we cried. “Specifically, we need you to stop demonstrating your retirement! Stop doing that right away!” we said in unison and in fear.

→She then asked everyone to meet her tomorrow at 7:00am sharp in the newly-rebuilt Press Conference Gazebo, for her first official emergency press conference in that role.

→But then…but then…