The best strategy for a labyrinth is to put one hand on a wall and follow that hand around until you reach the exit. The second best strategy is screaming. Welcome to Night Vale

We start with our lead story, the faint popping that people have been hearing under the earth. It sounds like the Mole People are making popcorn in huge numbers, but everyone knows that Mole People are deathly allergic to corn. So maybe something else.

City Council issued the same statement it does for all emergencies, explaining that everything’s fine, that we shouldn’t be worried, and that, if we are worried, it probably means we did something wrong and are guilty about it. Just what did you do? the statement asks, hundred of times and in increasingly larger fonts.

Carlos is intrigued by the popping, and has taken on a small taskforce of his top scientists, Luisa and Nilanjana, to investigate. He placed sensors in a number of locations, and is trying to track the epicenter of the sound.

Meanwhile, reports of strange aberrations in reality continue, with large gashes appearing in the sky and on walls all over town. Plus nearly daily reports of false or alternative memories, which City Council, again, would like to remind you is almost probably fine. “See we even put out a press release that says ‘everything’s fine.’ So it’s true,” they said.

More soon, but first a word from our sponsors.

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[sudden change in sound and music and personality. We are in…NORMCORE NIGHT VALE]

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City Council is still in conflict about the situation at Old Woman Josie’s house. Old Woman Josie passed away several years ago, and we all remember her fondly. I myself never got to know her well, but those close to me say that she was a generous, kind, and incredibly clever human being, and the world is poorer without her. But it has been poorer without her for a while, and City Council indicates that it is time to move forward with the planned demolition of her house for the new highway extension.

The lone voice of protest to this plan is Erika, who has been living in Old Woman Josie’s house since a few years before Josie’s death. Erika has no relation to Josie, but says that Josie took her in decades ago. No one knows much about Erika. She is a middle aged woman with short hair and a tattoo of an angel on her right forearm. She was visiting town when contact was cut off with the outside world, and of course, now cannot leave. She argues that, given that she has no way to return to the family she left behind, it would be cruel to force her out of the home she has made for herself. We will monitor this situation as it continues.

Citizens, we enter the Great Weeks of Memorial, in which we remember the vicious and inexplicable attack that almost destroyed our city, and the fruitless years of war that followed. This will be observed in the usual manner, with parades and military displays. Mayor Pamela Winchell will give a speech honoring those killed in battle, including intelligence officer Leann Hart, and John Peters, you know, the war hero.

I would like to take this moment to thank a fallen warrior from my own family. He was a great man. I speak, of course, of my brother in law, and best friend, Steve Carlsberg. Ever since the Great Change which cut us off from the rest of the world, he devoted himself to understanding what had happened to us. He had never been interested in the strange or abnormal before, but he threw himself into research and observation. He said that, contemplating the new sky above us, he could see lines and intersections, a great grid pattern across the heavens.

When the attack came, he was one of the first to enlist. We all tried to stop him. Steve was not naturally a fighter, but he said that he had to protect his wife Abby, and his daughter Janice, and he joined those brave few who left our boundaries to explore whatever is out there. He never came home.

Steve, I…I love you. Sometimes I go out at night and try to see the same lines that you did, the great grid pattern in the sky. But it’s hard to see through tears, you know?

Mayor Winchell is preparing to speak now. She is standing in front of the brand new memorial statue, with the controversial design chosen by Harriet Ramon and Benjamin Gold of the City Council, the design that depicts a human foot several stories tall. Let’s go to her speech.

PAMELA: People of Night Vale, I come to you, as I do every year, as a mere citizen. As another human being who lives in this town, who has suffered losses of her own, who has fears of her own. We are none of us alone, except when we think we are. We have all faced circumstances that can only be categorized as extraordinary, and that we are still here, that we come together today to remember, this is a sign that we too are extraordinary. Citizens, we will persist, no matter what, no matter how. No matter the weight in our hearts, we will continue forward. We will…

[transition. We are back in our Night Vale]

PAMELA: …I like the tail and I like the flank and I like the part where the fur goes up when they get excited and I like the ears. And the tongue. And the face. And those are the parts of the dog that I enjoy. I wish there was a dog to pet right now. The question might be, would I give up on a regular life in order to pet a dog at all times forever, and the answer is yes of course instantly without regret. Thank you I will not be taking any other questions. This has been my emergency press conference on the subject of the strange noises detected from below the earth. I will now put myself into a canvas bag that will be chained shut and then will be, an instant later, revealed to be empty.

CECIL: Wise words from our director of Emergency Press Conferences, Pamela Winchell.

Carlos is continuing his investigation into the subterranean popping. There are now also sounds that resemble singing, but not at a frequency that matches any possible human voice. He is trying to examine what alterations could make a human sound like that. One hypothesis is that it could be caused by severe mutations from genetic manipulation or exposure to massive radiation. He also has a chalkboard full of numbers. These are his favorite numbers, and whenever he feels overwhelmed, he can look at the chalkboard and feel like has more control over his situation.

In any case, as the City Council says, it’s probably fine. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it.

And now traffic.

For that, we take you to ten uninterrupted minutes of farm sounds.

[farm sounds for maybe 15 seconds and then, we are back in NORMCORE NIGHT VALE]

Things are looking pretty clear out on the roads. Like most days. Listeners, why do I keep reporting the traffic? I don’t know. I’ve asked myself the same question. Muscle memory, I guess. Habit. The same reason we squint when leaving our homes, as though the sun might be there this time, but we all know, the sun won’t be there. Nothing is in the sky anymore.

And we don’t have gasoline. Not since the trucks stopped coming. No more deliveries.

Out on Route 800, Trish Hidge is taking a walk, under the constant rolling thunder we’ve learned to live with. She likes to walk sometimes, in what she imagines must be the evenings, although others in town have taken those times to be the morning and others still are asleep in the middle of their nights. She takes walks out to where the road ends, and the great slopes rise up. She stands there, at the edge of town, which is now the edge of everything, and she cries. She really lets it out. No one hears her. She puts her hands just beyond end of the highway and holds them there for a moment, and then she turns and makes the long walk home, to a husband that is asleep, because she and her husband have agreed to live by different clocks, for reasons that are their own.

So that is the one bit of traffic in town I guess. If you see Trish, give her a hug. Ask first. You should always ask before giving anyone a hug.

As the parade lines form, as we prepare to march out and remember the vicious attack against us, I am drawn, as I am every year, to my own memory of what happened that terrible day. We were starting to feel that we had reaching a kind of acceptance of the Great Change years ago that took our sky, and our connection to the rest of the world, from us. And those years later we were going about our business under that blank sky, eating at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner, studying at the public library, helping John and Jim Peters in the fields so that our isolated community could continue to have food. We heard the usual loud rumblings, like a rock slide above us. But then there it was: a tower of destruction. An aberration. A terrible apparition. An abomination in our absent sky. And nothing would ever again be the same.

And afterwards, the years of war, only recently given up as lost. What did we do, to deserve all that has happened to us? First, the theft of our sky. And then, years later, the attack.

Listeners, do ever think about the moon? I was sitting outside last night, and I thought: does anyone actually know where that thing went? Have there been any studies on this? I’d ask a scientist, but I’ve never met one in person. I’ve only heard of the famous scientists like Rosalind Franklin and Lise (Lee-zuh) Meitner and Hidetaka Miyazaki. I doubt a scientist would ever deign to come to such a small and isolated town as ours, especially now that it’s so much more difficult to get here. The moon’s disappearance was weird though, right? It was there and there, and then suddenly it wasn’t. All the stars went too, replaced by a smooth blank. Where did the moon go? Is it somewhere hidden, watching us? If not, what is it watching instead? Is there something more interesting than us? Hey! Watch us moon! We may not always be the best show in the universe, but we try!

This has been today’s Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner.

And now, the weather.

Clear skies tonight, although cloudy and windy tomorrow, with gusts up to

[switching sound]

[WEATHER: "The Ends and the Means" by Robby Hecht]

Carlos and his team have found the source of the subterranean popping noise, but it is not a place we expected any more disturbance from, and it is not a place that I am comfortable with him going. They advanced on the area, nodded to each other to confirm that their suspicions were correct, and making hand signals to indicate that they should have worked out some hand signals before starting.

Listeners, I am sick with apprehension. Carlos, please be careful. He is approaching the source. The singing is louder than ever, strange and high pitched. There are popping noises, and a pulsing vibration. He leans cautiously out over the edge. He looks. And yes. It is as we feared. It is the tiny city under Lane 5 of the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex. The tiny streets are teeming with tiny parades. There are the loud pops of tiny fireworks, and the singing, which Carlos now confirms matches the unified sound of hundreds of tiny human voices. The last time Carlos approached this city, he entered it and was attacked and almost killed by the residents. This led to years of war with the tiny people, which was mostly quite manageable, because they are exceptionally small, but still, caution is warranted. Hold on, I’m going to head over there to give him moral support. Let’s return to the farm sounds, previously in progress

[a moment of farms sounds and we are back, for a final time, in the other Night Vale, which, ok, maybe isn’t actually that Normcore at all]

An aberration. A terrible apparition. An abomination in our absent sky. As we marched our memorial march, and held aloft our portable shrines to our god, and set off our many fireworks, there appeared above us the enormous face of the entity that tried to destroy our city not four years ago. Why this great being from beyond chose to return at this moment, I’m not sure. But it leaves me uneasy, listeners. It leaves a feeling that history is bubbling back up, that perhaps another great shift is coming.

Like that shift many years ago, when Huntokar the Destroyer, oh great god Huntokar, appeared to us, and took our sky away. We have prayed every year to Huntokar, but she has never returned the world that we once lived in. Surely, we will fade away unable to get what we need from the outside world. Why did Huntokar do this to us? We may never know.

And then this creature attacking us from the world above, with the giant foot so controversially depicted in the new memorial statue. Looking into his rich brown eyes today, he was beautiful. Much like us humans, but of course larger, with teeth like a military cemetery and absolutely perfect hair. No lowly mortal could ever achieve hair that perfect.

The last attack from this being led to a disastrous war with these giants, one that nearly ruined our city. I hope that these powerful beings look away from us. Leave us forgotten and dying, leave us cut off from the world. Unless Huntokar undoes what she once did to us. Unless we finally are absolved of whatever crimes we are being punished for. Unless, at last, the sky is returned, these many decades later. But until then, we will continue our Great Weeks of Memorial, and then, this fall, enter into the months of the Remembrance of the Change.

Stay tuned next for one of our most popular shows, Janelle Duarte’s advice show, Hey Janelle, What Did I Personally Do To Contribute to Huntokar’s Anger Against Us?

And under whatever starless, moonless sky it is we have lived under since the day of the change, good night, Night Vale. Good night.