Everything in Alabast is quiet. Sometime there is no sound, like in space. Sometime there is sound but it is like there is cotton filling your ears or it is like grenade is going off too close to your face and you are hearing nothing but whine and everything else is soft soft and hard to hear. While I am following Ify, there is being many people around us, but no one is talking to us. No one is stopping to chat or to ask where we are coming from. Even people that is scanning our data and seeing my visa is not looking at us, even though I am seeing my face on the screen that is being reflected in his false eyes. We are just moving and I am following Ify, and she is walking through all of this almost without stopping, even though we are twisting and turning and going round corners and up and down moving stairs and platform that is taking us from one place to another. It is dizzying me and I am wondering if anyone is ever standing still here.

Her home is big and I am wondering if it is just her who is living here. It is as big as entire floor of an apartment in Lagos or even Abuja. The ceiling is high and the chair and table and desk is all spread out far and there is so much ground and the window is taller than two of me and there is so much space it is like the world outside is being held inside.

Ify is asking me something and it is like cotton is in my ears, then I am shaking my head and I am hearing her asking me if I am wanting to be resting or spending some time here or enjoying some of Alabast before we are going to the hospital. I am wondering why she is asking me this and maybe it is because I am sometime staring at thing with my mouth wide open like it is catching fly and maybe I am looking like I am seeing thing for the first time when I am not sure if I am seeing them for the first time or not. I am knowing what space travel is feeling like. But before this voyage, my body is not knowing what space travel is feeling like. And now it is.

But there is too much here that is new and strange, and I am feeling in my brain like I am reaching for something with my fingers and it is grasping nothing, and I am knowing that I am reaching for purpose. I am wanting to be doing something. I am wanting something to be focusing on. So I am saying no.