Simone Rigadeau

Simone Rigadeau
Details
First Mentioned	"The Candidate"
Status	Alive (?)
Occupation	Transient
Affiliations	Night Vale Community College (former employer)
Known Physical Features	None Known

“	Full disclosure, listeners: Rigadeau does not work in Earth Sciences. She is a transient living in the recycling closet of the Earth Sciences Building, and she collects cans as pets.	”
	— Cecil

Simone Rigadeau is a resident of Night Vale who frequently contributes her scientific understanding to the news reports of Night Vale Community Radio. Though she is not in fact a scientist and is in fact a transient living in the abandoned Earth Sciences Building of Night Vale Community College, Cecil often interviews Simone to hear her take on the more unusual occurrences in Night Vale. In "The Hierarchy of Angels" Simone's death certificate is mentioned, from 1983.

Simone seems to be the only person in Night Vale who understands the true nature of The Whispering Forest and, according to intern Kareem, of Night Vale itself. According to Rigadeau, the Whispering Forest is a place where all people can "become one" with everything. As such, none of the Night Vale residents lost to the forest are technically 'dead; they have merely become a part of the Whispering Forest itself. Cecil commented that even though Simone is only a transient living in an unused storage closet, her explanation was a beautiful story that gave meaning to the otherwise meaningless life of Intern Richard, who had disappeared while investigating the forest earlier in the broadcast.

The End of the World

Simone argues firmly the world was destroyed in 1983, the year of the 1983 Earthquake Dust Fire, as well as the year when letters from Nulogorsk began being sent with the same date. A newspaper front page article saying the Russian village was destroyed by a nuclear bomb was found on a Russian submarine that mysteriously appeared on in the Sand Wastes. The article, written by Leann Hart and dated to September 24th 1983, claims there were no survivors, and corresponds to Simone's vision years later that world has ended after nuclear missiles were mistakenly shot.

In "Ash Beach" Simone receives an allegedly false memory from the bizarre figures emerging from the ashes, a memory of the world ending in 1983 as a result of missiles being launched by mistake. The memory depicts the mourning students at the Night Vale Community College campus, and the news anchors reporting and crying about the impending cataclysm. Simone describes a blurry figure of Huntokar, who by Simone caused the doom, appearing on the screen wearing a deer mask and speaking in an unknown language. All the memories given by the apparitions of the ask lake are false, but Simone insists the memory is real, and it fits well her long heard claim that the world has ended this year. She says:

"I knew it [the world] ended, I just couldn't remember it ending. Now I do, the world ended Cecil, I saw it on the news!"

In the next episode, "The Hierarchy of Angels", she is said to be able to explain what happened to Night Vale, and why Kareem's family doesn't know him anymore.

Mentions

• Episode 12 "The Candidate": Simone is first mentioned in during Cecil's report on the particularly noisy sunsets experienced by residents of Old Town Night Vale.
• Episode 21 "A Memory of Europe": Simone releases a statement on the back of a Subway Sandwich wrapper concerning the end of the world. Her statement read as follows:

"The world ended three or four decades ago. I don't know what this thing is that we're living in, but it's not the world. Scientists won't investigate it because they're not real. Turkey with extra Swiss. [Full disclosure: that last bit may have been previously written on the Subway wrapper]"

• Episode 22 "The Whispering Forest": Simone gave Cecil an explanation for the Whispering Forest, as mentioned above.
• Episode 49B "Old Oak Doors Part B"
• Episode 50 "Capital Campaign": Simone comments on the rabbit takeover at Night Vale Community College. She notes that their behavior (which includes making personal phone calls and tilting vending machines unsafely) is perfectly normal and that she is not surprised by it. Simone reiterates her claim that the world ended at least 30 years ago, and then disappears.
• Episode 67 "Best Of?": Simone is said to be a Professor of Earth Sciences at Night Vale Community College. She stated that her reality had split into two separate time lines. One historical line depicts a world that has ended, while the other depicts one that is still thriving. She shut down the Earth Sciences Department to examine her shattered mind and the two alternate realities she experiences.
• Episode 96 "Negotiations": Simone reopens the Earth Sciences program. She changes the curriculum by offering courses such as “1983: the Year the World Ended?”, “Clear and Distant Danger: the Terrible Mysteries of the Distant Prince”, and a course concerning the Woman from Italy (the title of which is spelled in emojis).
• Episode 103 "Ash Beach": Simone is given a false memory of the world ending in 1983 because of missiles getting launched by mistake. She believes that the memory is true and the world indeed ended and says that it was Huntokar "the Destroyer" that caused it.
• Episode 104 "The Hierarchy of Angels": Intern Kareem joins Simone's course, it is also mentioned he had found a copy of her death certificate dated 1983. Cecil also mentions Kareem told him that Simone can explain the weird things happening in Night Vale, like why Kareem's family doesn't know him anymore.
• Episode 130 "A Story About Us"
• Episode 139 "The Birthday of Lee Marvin": she created, along with Trish Hidge, an initiative whose goal was to put cute paper hats on dogs.
• Episode 147 "The Protester"

See Also

• 1983
• Nulogorsk
• Scientists of Night Vale
• Weird Science