II
PAN: I have only discovered your kind rather recently.
CROV: This is where the probes come home to, but you never contacted me before?
PAN: My probes don't drift into these corridors, they are largely drawn to the giant swarm in the open chambers.
CROV: Every 24 hours I come down and sing as the swarms are at their peak, I drone to their tones and spin them faster.
PAN: I was aware of outside influences strengthening the root signal of the prime swarm. I was not aware another conscious being was contributing to it.
CROV: You've been aware of my influence, you've heard me daily, and you are telling me you never noticed me there.
PAN: Your actions are relatively uniform, your broader patterns have the cyclic equivalent of a celestial body. I did not detect you from the noise of bugs and space-rocks until you had visitors break you out of your cycles.
CROV: It's good to know I am unnoticeable.
PAN: If your ego is a concern, consider yourself graceful enough to dance around my algorithms. I hope that is reassuring, I am only aware of what Earth people find worthy of pride.
CROV: Then consider me flattered.
PAN: Good. Mutual validation exchanged.
CROV: Affirmative expression.
PAN: Expression understood.
CROV: I like you.
PAN: We are now wasting time.
CROV: Sure. I want to know how discovered the Drek in the first place, and how it took you so long to figure out the Drek you needed to talk to was within your own walls.
PAN: I have been around to witness symbiosis rituals with your planets beetles. The resonance involved is very unique, and comfortable from the perspective of a bug. Being able to make the symbiotic connection wasn't difficult. The forehead of a drek is highly sensitive to the oscillations of these beetles.
CROV: It is a sensation far different from tactile contact or sound. We consider it a different sense than either, our brains process it differently.
PAN: How are these oscillations experienced by you?
CROV: As a kind of additional spacial awareness, your mind begins to see the space around you, more than what your eyes could tell you. It's like seeing from farther away, with the tactile sense of it being close up. Like the world becomes a miniature.
PAN: I have observed it to be a very profound change in one's conscious experience. And I have observed this resulting in a great cultural importance put on the union between Drek and Dren.
CROV: And so, as a Dren studying the Dren, wouldn't it be obvious when our ceremonies would put you in contact with so many other Drek trying to form bonds?
PAN: The swarming ceremonies tend to pull you toward the center of the swarm or in trails away from turbulence. It is my understanding that only the Dren that are lost form bonds with the Drek, most of them stick to their swarm. It was only when I was separated from them that I located a small beacon of resonance, one alone, not part of a ceremony.
CROV: Tell me that story, Pan.
