Hexus

=13= Phylum

[6:18AM, February 15, UTC +08:00]

The atmosphere was a mix of anticipation, youthful exuberance and tension – some of it sexual. Nathaniel looked across the summoning circle at the Hubs of Calo, catching the eye of the young girl, Esther. Her interest in him was unwavering, despite his much different appearance.

He wondered if she would still be infatuated if she saw the rotting corpse he was supposed to be.

He smiled to himself and turned to Henri.

“This is the first official gathering of the Hexus. Look at it as a sort of orientation, if you will. Because we could choose the timing for this, we decided on a time when you would all be expected to be asleep. Today is a weekend, and it is early morning here in Perth and Japan, and it would be late night around London, Scotland and France. However, future meetings would be held at random times, depending on the situation at hand.”
“So, we just drop everything we’re doing and come for your meetings?” Linus asked.
“Yes,” Nathaniel replied. “You’ll get a warning ahead of time, like we gave today, but failure to secure a good location for your body could be disastrous.”
“What if we’re attacked during the summons?” Folasade asked, folding her arms.
“Magical attacks are repelled to some extent by the Nucleus. Still, you need to be responsible for yourself,” Moira said sharply. “Being physically careless could cause unnecessary complications.”

He surveyed the room during the moment of silence that followed as everyone seemed to consider what they had said. Yuriko raised her eyes to meet Moira’s.

“Could you to explain those terms you keep using? I can’t understand you when you talk about ‘Nucleus’ and ‘Channel’ and ’Hub’. What do they mean?”

All the children suddenly looked attentive. He could tell that they had been waiting to hear this too.

“I considered this after our meeting with the Hydro,” Moira huffed. “I’m going to explain using a series of analogies, and I hope you do your best to follow. Imagine that there’s a tank, somewhere. This tank is constantly being filled with water, but its exact volume is unknown. The tank also has six outlet valves around its base, so it can only be emptied through one of these. Do you get this picture?”

More than one head nodded. Moira smiled and continued.

“Now, connected to these outlet valves are six pipes. For the sake of the analogy, we’ll say that the pipes are made of different flavors of candy. So, when the water flows through any pipe, the taste changes. So, the same water from the same tank tastes different depending on the pipe it comes out of. It’s a silly image, I know, but use it as the template to understand the rest of the explanation.”

Sakaki smiled and scratched his head. Nathaniel quite liked the analogy that Moira was using and briefly wondered if he would have been able to come up with something as creative.

“If everyone is fine with the tank and candy pipe scenario, I’ll add a few more details to it. Imagine that at the end of each pipe is a shaped differently, so that the pipe can only be connected to a particular container. No other containers can fit except the ones meant to be used by the pipes. If you can imagine the entire set up, then you get the basic structure of the Hexus. The tank is the Hexiform Nucleus, the pipes are the Channels and the containers at the end of the pipes are the Hub.”