It is with great delight that I welcome you to Hexagon, the great hub of Ile-Ife. I know a majority of you traveled from distant planets inhabited in one of the Milky Way spiral arms. Let me inform you that your yacht, carrier, molue, shuttle-hiace, and other transport machines are safely parked in our garage.

My name is Keke. I am a regenerated humanoid and the manager of this hub. Equally, I will be your guide, and the one responsible for your safety and comfort here. I have thirty-nine years’ experience as a communicator and translator on twenty-eight planets, many of which are unknown to many of you. In addition, I have twenty-four years’ experience as a commandant of the second-generation dreadnought, twenty years as a National House of Assembly Member in the Ejigbo South Galaxy, am a fourteen-year ranked administrator with an award of the Order of the Realm, and a First-Class Knight of the Eighth North-Side planet.

Safety is the nucleus of our service here. In your duration here, you will not suffer any hurt, either verbal or physical. Embedded inside of me is a preloaded language database of all the inhabited planets in the galaxy. I can tell from your diverse tribes that some of you think communication will be an issue. Please note that this has been sorted out. Our carrier-drones will each give you a device called a Spiich. Spiich has been modified to fit into your hearing aids, based on the morphological variations in your ears, appendages, and nodes.

It is of great importance that I read out the rules of engagement to you. Hexagon has been in existence for centuries, existing to cater to the planets whose reputation we do not consider hostile. Our forefathers thought it good to expand for more clienteles, hence, the need for an open entry to indigenes of other worlds. Tap Spiich twice, and a hologram will appear a few meters from your eyes. I have itemized in bullet points all our rules for your perusal. The writings have been translated to your languages.

We do not permit use of vulgar words such as aliens, outsiders, and foreigners. Your co-tourists will be addressed as traveler, pal, friend, or you can call them by their names if you can pronounce them. Fighting and/or the use of weapons is highly prohibited. I know all of you are elites in your various planets, we expect a high class of demeanor. If you have concealed any weapon in any parts of your body, please surrender it now. Lastly, we forbid entrance into areas tagged for staff only.

Hexagon is run on an advanced technology that is arcane to all of you present here today. Any attempt to sabotage, subterfuge, or coax any member of my staff to release classified information about our operations or blue-prints of this place will lead to your automatic expulsion and permanent ban from visiting Hexagon. Let me also inform you that our staff are people from different planets with unfamiliar body parts. Please respect them. We also have two human staff members here, just in case the four travelers from Earth wish to greet them.

You have each been assigned a messenger bot named Gino. She has been installed with all your profiles. She knows about your hobbies, food preferences, movie shows and documentaries, and other personal activities you relish in. She will lead you to your different lodges. A wristwatch has been gifted to you all. You can contact me directly through it. If in any case you want Gino to be changed, or you feel her services are no longer required, simply speak to me through the wristwatch while I assign you another.

Any questions?

In the absence of none, I want to welcome you all again to Hexagon. We are glad to have travelers who are first time tourists from their planets: Mouxa from the ice planet, Blacphi from the Gray planet sharing borders with Mars, and Threed from the salt planet.

Welcome and enjoy your stay.

• • • •

Now that the last traveler is here, we can all head to the next segment of this trip. Keke is unavailable at the moment. I am his assistant, Mitui. He delegated this section to me. Please accept the sunglasses from our carrier-drones. You will need them in the place we are going. The sunglasses have been programmed with thought-sensors that connect with your neurons to transmit the messages vis-à-vis your desired outcome. But before we go, we need to wait about a minute while the Hexagon morphs into another shape.

You see, Hexagon’s exterior camouflages with the image of the constellations. Sometimes it changes to the shape of an asteroid, sometimes it appears as a conical spaceship going invisible to conceal us from space hijackers, other times it cloaks itself among the passing clouds to keep us off the radar. It’s not safe to be outside during this transformation. The twirling, turning, and jerking of the hinges connecting the pillars exude electromagnetic sparks, pulverizing any objects up to eleven meters away from it. During the process Hexagon is donning a new look, her interior is transformed for a better view. Diverse light ascends from the floor, bursting into an array of amplifying colors to create a paradisiacal scene. The walls sink, flip inside the crevices, and produce a new set of aesthetic paintings that fascinate the eyes. Music from underground speakers eases out slowly, saturating and allaying the mind of each traveler. I can tell you that some of you will not know when this transformational stage will take place.

The transformation is over, so let’s proceed. The elevator we are entering descends all 332 floors. Each floor is closely monitored by a group comprised of a race who sleeps for only three hours a day. You can wave to the camera planted above. They will respond through the speaker, but you must wear Spiich to hear their greeting. You will see that the elevators are not connected to each other. The science of gravitational attraction was created by our best minds, used to build a machine that works simultaneously for the ascending and descending elevators.

Please put on your sunglasses. We will soon be arriving the 306^th floor. An area thirteen million miles from a dwarf planet that is inhabited by millions of beetles. They are in their mating season. The sunglasses you have put on will enable you to see their teal-blue bioluminescence, and your Spiich will help you to hear the discordant buzz. These kinds of wonders are the main thing we want our travelers to take to their various homelands, actively conscious in their memories. I am sure you are wrapped up in the view of these social creatures. Be careful not to get giddy, as these activities can go on for hours. We have as of today ninety-seven million subscribers on our Space World channels all around the galaxy. They watch from their various cables, the lives of the extraterrestrial. This has been one of our major strengths in nudging travelers to our hub.

We are approaching the 263rd floor. We know some of you like to gamble, drink at bars, sing karaoke, eat half-cooked spicy worms, drink from a barrel, smoke cigarettes, and dance with your legs, horns, and tentacle feet. This is why our next stop is the Blue House. Upon entering, each of you will be given a colored tag to wear on your wrist. Gino will lead you to where you will be given blue coins. Here, we spend Byrae coins. For the purpose of your trip, we have converted these coins to ten thousand blue coins for you to spend. If you feel the need to spend more blue coins after exhausting the ones you were given, do not hesitate to inform Gino. Of course, please note that you will have to pay for the extra coins to be debited from your account.

This information is for the humans. We do not have human geishas for your pleasure, yet. But if you crave bodily pleasure, you can go to the pleasure room. Here, a headset is available for you. It triggers your nerve cells, transports your consciousness into a realm where humans from your world, and pleasure-givers from other planets, have mastered the art of lovemaking. If what you desire is physical touch, I strongly recommend the purple oval-faced ladies with fairylike wings—they are always interested in humans.

• • • •

Welcome to our History Room. The city you are watching in a 5D clip is older than mankind, and scholars have argued that her existence is tantamount to the birth of the savior of the world in Christian history. Created by the hands of the first generations of beings to walk the earth, she was erected with reddish-brown stones ubiquitous at every section of her stretch—this fine material is now in extinction. Her finest features include a museum and a library, built to rise to the sky and bask in the ambience of the heavenly.

The city was a safe haven for her inhabitants, built at a time when the climate clashed with the environment, causing catastrophic events. Not too long from when this nameless city began to breathe, she became friends with the sun who blessed her crops with nutrients and ground with minerals, and the moon who stood as watchman over the night. Soon, the scents of the city were picked up by others whose homes were destroyed by environmental disasters.

On a breezy day when her inhabitants engaged in the breaking of pods, basketry, shelter making, and harvesting, a gigantic creature intruded on their lands. For the first time ever, they sighted a diplodocus with her young beside her. Fear crept into their hearts, and a stimulus kicked in to guard their city jealously. They later realised these creatures needed a place to stay, besides, the land was rich and the crops copious. A triceratops, argentinosaurus, and hadrosaurus soon found their way into this city.

At night, the city sacrificed to their god, asking for safety and protection from foes who wished to enslave them. They had earlier sent scouts who travelled and brought back news of giants as tall as their roofs. Men took turns at the belfry, wielding swords and spears. The inevitable happened, men of humongous heights wandered into the city—hungry giants whose voracious appetite had no borders. The city who was without stains suffered bloodshed, and pain began to fall gradually when invaders of men and animals encroached her land. As the day and night aged in gray and time sped by, her relevance began to wane in the sands of time.

Further clips of the city will show rulers who took over the regenerated nameless city, erected their flags, and made her inhabitants slaves so as to raise the influence of the city to her past glory. We have a section of the hub where collated scrolls, parchments, bones, currency, and weapons of the ruined city are on display. I will take you there after our session here.

• • • •

One of the thrilling features of this hub is her library. She has over a hundred thousand books in hard and digital copy. Spiich can translate the languages to you when you desire to read a digital book. The right wing captures a wide range of historical artifacts sought by our team of researchers. Standing upright in front of you is the skeleton of a velociraptor, although some bones are missing in the formation. Its bones were found in the rubble of the nameless city after its eventual collapse years later. Adjacent to the velociraptor is a killer robot called the warhammer. From the look of it you can tell whoever rides it is certain to crush any enemy. On its left hand is a gun affixed to it nicknamed Hercules Z14, claimed to fire thirty-two cartridges from different calibers in forty-five rounds. Next to it is my personal favorite, Dreadnought M-103H. For those of you who are familiar with space battleships, this is the mother of them all. In my old life as a battle commander, I was in charge of another model of this ship. The Dreadnought M-103H was the prototype for other battleships to be created.

• • • •

I hope you have been enjoying your stay here. Please do not hesitate to let me know of any assistance that you cannot request from Gino. I believe my assistant, Mitui, made your stay with him worthwhile. Before we go to our next location, let me quickly address the issue that may be bothering you. The blast you heard this morning at exactly 01:45 came from an area of 37,053 kilometers away. An unstable planet located by our satellite, found on the extreme ring of the orbit, is responsible for this. While the information of this planet is sketchy, we know a black hole has found a home in it. At intervals, it bounces hues of darkness, engulfing everything around it. We have the weaponry to repel it from perceiving the life force in our planet. Safety is our motto, and we keep our word.

Now let’s move on to the activity of today. The submarine you are seeing is forty-six years old. Her body parts have been modified with the latest steel builds, and protective gears and tanks to keep you safe. We will be going down 6,002 feet.

Feel free to capture images of these creatures living beneath. Many of them are now going extinct. If you look closely, you will see a net barricade; we do this to keep the apex predators from harming the weak ones. The water houses 11,304 creatures. This also includes sentient plants which have shape-shifting parts to lure prey into their mouth and blend in with their environment at the sight of prey. As we descend deeper, I will be detailing any plants or creature of your interest. All you have to do is point to it.

The huddle of trees appearing from the west is a slekpi. They are a wide array assembled together, akin to what humans call a forest. Their branches grow twelve inches per day. One leaf grows every 300 seconds, making it one of the most crowded plants in the water. It is home to Cyclops fish and rainbow squid who have formed a symbiotic union with it.

The starlike mattress where the seahorses came out is called a purple lora. They share an affinity with coral reefs. They spread their sentient nodes across the moving waters. Be careful of their touch. In unison they can trap an organism and choke the life out of it in seconds.

We have moved below 5,003 feet. The creature you see clinging to our submarine is a book-fish. Its multi-layered coarse leafy body and rectangular shape earned it its name. It is the only fish in these waters that is immune to the sting of other poisonous creatures. No amount of lethal venom can cause its system to shut down. You can say it looks harmless. But beware of its long tongue, in it lies a venom whose saliva contains over ten poisons.

I’m sure you all are fascinated by the colorful flowers waving their leaves as though inviting you. These are called green-eyed anemones. A closer look at the mounds and you will see that they bear green spots like eyes. They gather in groups, sportive in their sways. This is a ritual these plants exhibit at this time of the day. The bioluminescent light displaying out of them is caused by the jellyfish living at the bottom of the mounds. Sometimes, the green-eyed anemones suffer from other creatures, such as crustaceans, when they get visited due to their being the cynosure of their environment.

It’s time to go back to land. The turbidity of the water has increased. Soon, it will be unsafe for us to remain here.

• • • •

We are now at the last section of this trip. Every traveler who comes here likes to experience another world. The room has been installed with motion sensors that are triggered according to your body temperature upon entrance. You will find headgear with dotted blue lights circling them. Each headgear is tethered to a server with an antenna in the nebula, picking up signals from hundreds of planets out there.

Let me give a warning: Beware of wandering too much in this other world. The unknown life forces residing in this area make it hard for you to play around. Once you put on the headgear, an automatic response will confirm where you would like to visit. Considering many of you are not familiar with other planets, I advise that you allow the machine to recommend a safe zone for you.

The atmosphere of this new place may look odd from your different planets. Remember, the creatures and people living here cannot see you. But the wind, dust, and air can tousle your hair, cause a sensational feeling on your body. Your memories while in this world will become photographic, capturing everything you heart desires to remember. You have twenty minutes of travel time after which the headgear will switch off and return you to your present state.

I do hope you enjoyed your stay here. The next batch of travelers will be arriving tomorrow. If you wish to extend your stay, please speak to Gino, and she will make the necessary arrangements. Please be sure to fill in the survey for us to serve you better. We appreciate a good rating. The ratings will earn us the extra recognition throughout the galaxy, making us the standard for other hubs to be created.

Courtesy of the house, all your transporters have been cleaned. We wish you a safe trip back home.