The first clue to appear in the News section was "jess are you there?----------Xi is almost ready". This clue first appeared on February 6, 2009 in Europe and on February 11, 2009 in North America. The first video appeared on February 12, 2009 in Home's Bowling Alley (North America) and Home Square (Europe) and featured a big black monolith bearing the Greek capital letter 'Xi' and the graffiti version of the 'Xi' logo (more specifically, the one that was located in Europe's Home Square). The monolith was later revealed to be a big black door in The Hub of 'Xi'. The door remained locked until the final days of the game. Between February 12 and March 23, there were many clues and videos released in Home hinting at the nature and launch date of Xi. The last clue told the users that the graffiti logo which had appeared in Europe's Home Square and North America's Central Plaza would teleport players to 'The Hub' - a new Home space that acted as the information centre for the game. Xi had begun in earnest. When users first accessed The Hub, they experienced a fly-through tour with the voice of 'Thom' offering a guided tour of the space and a brief introduction to the game's story: he is a member of the alphaAFK alpha testers who had helped to build Home, and one of his colleagues, Jess, has gone missing. After Thom's introduction, the user was given the chance to opt in or out. If they opted in, Thom gave them their first task. This introduction remained the same for all players, no matter what date they started the game. The first task was to find scattered pieces of the AlphaAFK symbol within The Hub. Collecting these unlocked a weblink to the alphaAFK clan website, which Thom then told users to access via the Online Getaway found in The Hub. Thom guided the users through a simple “Odd One Out” puzzle. After solving the puzzle and entering the answer into the HoloPAD in The Hub, users acquired the first of 24 fragments. Users were also invited to talk to Stapler, a robot who explained each of the 20 optional expeditions that offered 20 butterflies. The first butterfly expedition asked users to name Jess's favorite band The Automatic, which could be discovered by reading through the blog posts on CafeConMiguel.com - the blog of another alphaAFK member. The users then needed to input the answer into the HoloPAD to receive the first of 20 butterflies.