After an over sized breakfast and a quick check-in with the Overman, Randall went back to his sleeping quarters and grabbed his smaller nap sack, his light and a few small water skins.  After a bit of hesitation, he decided to take the small metal box and his fathers old draegermask.  They all fit in, with just enough room for a snack or some emergency rations.  He wouldn’t be going deep in the tunnels so he doubted he needed the mask, but it was small and lightweight enough that not bringing seemed foolish.  He had one more stop to make before heading beyond the outskirts of Sanity where the Overman would be waiting.
The farm houses at the edge of town doubled as food storage.  The roofs on these houses were a mix between having a root with the top like the narrow end of an egg, and open aired patios, which would be used to dry harvested leaf sheep fruit.
Randall hoped he wouldn’t have to eat of the fruit.  It’s not that it tasted bad, it was  pleasant tasting, but it brought back bad memories, terrible memories, that he regularly had nightmares about.  Those same memories are why he knew it was so important that he bring some along, even if you only went a few yards in a tunnel.  Running out of food underground was bad, you could forage, but that was dangerous in a different way.  Randall could almost hear his fathers voice as he muttered to himself. “Yes, better to have plenty of leaf sheep fruit than to go hungry and eat the wrong type of fungus.”
He wasn’t sure when he had stopped walking or how long he had been staring at the drying racks or even what he had been just thinking about.  This had been happening quite a bit since the trip back to Sanity from Junkton.
He decided he’d better pick up the pace, so once he made it to the edge of town, he alternated between running and jogging.

The Overman was waiting upstream of the closest fork in the river that ran through Sanity.  For most of the new tunnelers, this would be further out of town that they had been before inside of the canyons.
In the canyon, it was safe while the sun is up, but from dusk until dawn the more unsettling creatures would come out from under the ground or from where ever they hid to drink from the river.  The town used devices that had been created shortly after the great disarray to keep most of the creatures from getting to close, but was was far enough that once the sun went down, you would want something to keep them away.
Anything bright or loud worked well enough for the creatures that were herbivores, so if you could scream or had some form of light, chances were you could make it away from the curious ones, but the carnivores weren’t always deterred by sound and noise.  Your best chance of survival would be to try to make it back to town or the river spire.
The river spire emits a hum that keeps everything from staying too close for long.  The closer you get the stronger the effect.  For people, the hum started off annoying but would eventually cause wild hallucinations and delusions .  That’s were they were going, close enough to see what short term exposure would do to each of the tunnelers.  From this, each of them would be given an estimate at how long they would have if left exposed and without any sort of equipment to dampen the effect.
Some people were more sensitive to the effects and the closer you were to the river spire, the stronger its effect would get.  Part of this initial training helped the Overman judge how sensitive each of the new tunnelers were.  Identifying when you’re under the influence of is one of the first milestones a new tunneler must reach.  Without the Overman and their assistants to watch over them, so of the tunnelers could lose their lives or their minds.
Randall heard rumors about new tunnelers going to the spire before their training started.  Some of them were about a small group losing their way and being found years later as bones identified only by the now dormant nanites. No matter the rumor, the tunnelers lives always ended horribly.
There were a number of devices that could help and even some that completely block the effect of the hum.  Some of the simpler devices relied on electroshock set to a timer or some kind of sensor that triggered a shock.  The more advanced equipment, including “hum canceling” headgear and suits were hard to come by.  There were plenty of counterfeit devices sold by the traveling salesmen in the wasteland, but real equipment was usually found among caches hidden deep underground or cobbled together from old tech.  The latter being less reliable but far more common.

Randall had been here before with his dad when he was much younger, before he had become afraid of the dark.  Back then, he hadn’t heard a hum, it was more like gentle whistling coming from all around and you felt a bit dreamlike and happy.  No, not happy, it was more like completeness and feeling unconditionally loved and cherished.  It was knowing that you loved the world and the world loved you back.  It was pure bliss.

That’s not how it sounded to Randall as he walked in to the area where the hum started.  At first there was a terrible breaking sound, like a hammer smashing glass, then it slowly changed and became quieter.  It sounded a lot like the ‘static’ that old radios made stations and when there was no broadcast.  It was low and sounded a lot like the river but it had a rhythm to it. It was a mechanical, almost like the the water wheels in town.  Together, with the sound of the wind, it sounded like whispering.
Randall listened closely for a moment, trying to hear what the whispers said.  For a moment, he thought he heard ‘Come home’ and he paused, he closed his eyes and put all of his attention to listening, the static noise stopped and everything went completely silent for a moment, then, he clearly heard “Don’t leave us.” Before he could open his eyes, an ear piercing noise replaced the silence and he felt himself fall before everything went white.

“Randall!”
He thought that sounded like his fathers voice.  As he sat up, eye’s still closed, he tried to open his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He had no strength in him.
“Randall!?” the voice sounding less like his fathers and more like the Overman.
“Randall! …. Run!” the voice seemed out of breath and panicked, but it sounded quieter again.
Everything went white again.  Randall felt himself fall back again, but before he felt his head hit the ground he was suddenly elsewhere.

He was laying on the floor inside the house and he was a young boy again.  Both his parents were sitting on the couch, smiling at one another.  He was drawing something on paper it looked a bit like a pudgy dog that had a curled tail and a smushed face.  He could also make something out written on the top, it looked like it said ‘Maw’ and the ‘a’ kept flipping itself backward and forward.  It was terrible handwriting, so he knew it was his own.  It almost seemed like it was moving a bit.
“I don’t remember any of this” he heard himself speak out loud with his 5 year old voice, it was a lot higher pitched that he remembered.
His mother looked at him and a voice that was not her’s said: “You wouldn’t remember this… or you couldn’t remember this until now.”
His mother’s face looked both worried and full of love.  He could see the tears streaming down her face, but her words were strong, even though it wasn’t her voice he heard.
“Right now, the only thing I need you to remember is that you’re about to wake up and see something terrible.  It’s from the old world, it’s angry and hungry, but it’ll listen to you.  It always listens the the youngest of our family” tears still streaming down her face.
Randall’s father mouth moved, but no sound came out.  He smiled at Randall before fading into a mist of nothing.
Randall wanted to ask what was going on, but he couldn’t move on his own and his gaze went back to the drawing.  Seeing it again, he could tell it wasn’t a dog.  It looked a bit like one, but it’s limbs were a bit grotesque.  It had a mouth that ran all the to end and was filled with small sharp teeth and a countless number of tongues.  He was seeing it as his 5 year self did when he drew it.  He also noticed that it was a bowl of kibble that it was eating from.  That! That, was a walled town and those were people being eaten and trying to run.
His mother spoke again in the voice that was not hers, “It’s important not to be afraid of Maw.  If you allow your fear to overwhelm you, you won’t be able to help Maw calm down.  It can’t help itself, it eats when it’s afraid or angry.  It’s not the monster from the children’s stories you heard.”
“It’s not a monster” this time sounding like herself.
Everything started to turn a bright white.  He could hear both parents laughing cheerfully before they faded into to silence.