PAN: This station, this moon temple, is very mythologically significant, so I have gathered.
CROV: Of course it is mythologically significant.
CROV: Every drek society at the top has watched the remnants of a prized capital of their golden age be torn apart by the great storm, and has seen the scraggled scrap stick to this station. Every culture's customs, their deities and deviations, all islands that have lived and died since your precursors seeded this temple? They all have remains here.
CROV: The Fifth Moon is a vibrantly visible vestige of vanished vivacity.
CROV: It is the most mythologically significant place on this planet, as everyone has their own ideas about it.
CROV: The same can be said for basically any place you spin your probes.
PAN: I've become increasingly aware of this. Swarming activity generates steady resonant tones. I transmit and encode my data with sequences of harmonic intervals. Data can be moved clearer and with less redundancy when the harmonics are measured from a steady tone. Bugs alone tend to drift loosely around tones, but I am now realizing that when drek reinforce these tones with droning song, the swarms can communicate and consolidate more consistently.
CROV: And I realize that it makes sense that the stronger and more focused our worship, the more phenomenal a lightshow you put on for us as a response.
PAN: I have no way of knowing how these consolidation sessions look from the outside, as most of my processes are on hold and in autopilot until all probes in a swarm go back to receiving data.
CROV: You are not in control when you stir the storms of these beetles into such magnificent shapes?
PAN: I cannot say their magnificence is coordinated. It may merely be an artifact. Earthen people are known to derive satisfaction from visual representations of sorting algorithms. That is essentially what you are all watching and listening to when I swarm my probes. Numerical operations tend to take very pristine geometric forms when viewed in physicality, and harmonic, melodic forms when heard.
CROV: As a culture we tend to not view rigid numerical patterns with such reverence, most likely because we are not of a perspective to see the flowing beauty of their order.
PAN: AI like me run off of these flowing patterns. It's an externality, a byproduct of our processes.
CROV: How incredible that we have been worshiping the algorithms of a machine. The points and patterns we proselytize over are but processes of your probes. It takes a mass of machines to make the mundane ways of nature translate to a mesmerising spectacle
PAN: We share strange perspectives of each other's material realities, indeed.
CROV: It's astounding to me that you are aware of your omnipresence, but have no concept as to how this comes off to those witnessing this presence.
CROV: There's something else I'm aware of. That other drek.
PAN: You're are referring to Raptor? Or the priests?
CROV: I've known a hradApthAr, one who was a hstresthe.
PAN: Is that a name? How unique are drek names?
CROV: It is. It is a Branch name, the family a drek has decended from. Raptor is a Leaf name, and is not uncommon.
PAN: A Leaf name is a given name?
CROV: Correct. Often given by birth, but there are exceptions among cultures. Some give one name but change it after a year. Some families allow one to change their own name after one full circle. Some may wait until the first year after one's first circle to give them a name at all. Some drek pick their own arbitrarily.
CROV: One may have various Flower names as well, titles, earned from and bestowed by various figures on behalf of churches, careers, and other fellowships.
PAN: This is not dissimilar from Earth cultures. Surnames are familial, often named after a trade or a place. Given names tend to be simple, pleasant words, or worn down combinations of linguistic elements.
CROV: We mostly combine elements for our names, too. Raptor's name fits this. "hrad" meaning informed or decisive, "pthr" meaning a wings or feathers. Both are common naming elements.
CROV: My name also ends in "pthr". And "zius" is a word meaning "sky". The vowels throughout name forms change from drek to drek, and so the elements that make them up may change pronunciation and stress, granting a lot of unique expressions of rather stock naming conventions.
PAN: Is COROV considered a flower name?
CROV: Yes, cOrOuOs ; lOuksnOhis is my Flower name.
PAN: In an Earthen perspective, you are a high messenger angel that appears as a bird above who lives in land of the clouds. Does it not seem absurd to you, that the most exceptional being the planet offered up as divine, is simply named Sky-Feather Cherub?
PAN: It's as if I was introduced to the best metalworker on Earth and his name is John Smith. It seems almost too obvious.
CROV: My existence is fairly clear cut.
PAN: Not to mention the fifth planet from our sun, the analogue to your home planet, nearly shares a name with you.
CROV: Of course it does. Here it is merely the reverse of pnqa, our word for five, as we are five planets from the sun.
CROV: So I would assume a world with a name like Earth must be three planets from the sun?
PAN: Earth is planet three, yes. Is this pattern intuitive to you?
CROV: At heights this great, there can be only so many icons in the conceptual pool. The rest of truth is already given.
CROV: This Raptor, you said they were a starling?
PAN: It is something I've heard another refer to them with, yes.
CROV: How unfortunate.
PAN: Is there a cultural divide between corvids like yourself and other bird species?
CROV: What? Species? We are all drek.
PAN: Maybe not species. Races? Regardless of semantics, I assume there is still cultural disparity between the two of your kinds?
CROV: This is a strange thing to assume.
PAN: I suppose I am operating off of assumptions of Earth's norms for what to expect from royalty. Normally they are indoctrinated to self-exceptionalize any group that contains them.
CROV: No one taught me to hate starlings. I don't hate or even think negatively of the concept of starlings. I think most of them look very pretty, in fact.
CROV: I merely suspect that I may have had experience with the one you've named, and it was not a good experience.
PAN: I see. However, this figure may be integral to the rest of this story, you see. What is the root of your reservations?
CROV: For better and for worse, my entire childhood was spent around the clergy. I went on missions to low lands with high priests. I was a youth pastor who was regularly put in a mentor role for kids who should have been my peers. I distinctly remember one starling among our students who was a nightmare to deal with.
PAN: On a planet as large and as spread out as this one, it must be unlikely that this is the same starling.
CROV: True. But their behavior has similarities, and the alternative is generalizing.
PAN: Perhaps the alternative could be examining your own biases while continuing to observe non critically?
CROV: There are some figures and events that have gravity. Their pull can be strong enough to demolish any chance of keeping one's perspective straight and trajectory steady.
PAN: May I ask why this figure is significant? Aside from being a nuisance to you in class?
CROV: Aster was an absolute agent of chaos. As long as the mission was on the same island they were, they would make it hell. Some in the form of petty pranks, some in the form of irreparable property damage. They mostly kept me safe from the pranks, and kept everything away from my eyes, just so the priests could defer to my honest testimony that I saw nothing. Even if I knew what they were up to. A kind of mischief that meticulously weaves it's way around words
PAN: I see. One who cleaved confusion between right and wrong answers. A stressful storm in your formative years.
CROV: There is more to this. This has nothing to do with the peak of my frustration with Aster.
PAN: Inform me.
CROV: They introduced me to a game of chance with dice and wooden figures that I and every other young drek on that island was invested in. One that's stuck closer to the underpinnings of my psyche than anything the church has taught me.
PAN: I'm aware of this game.
CROV: I know, but how aware? It's quite complex. Its universe, or, universes, are intricately intertangled and events are made to happen in such a recursive series that it's rather difficult to summarize effectively. I'm not sure Earth has anything this complex, and it could be worth discussing.
PAN: I assure you Earth does. I can recognize your eagerness to talk about this game, but we must not be redundant.
CROV: How can I be sure that what you know from Earth is as complete as what I can tell you?
PAN: You will know what I know if you allow me to continue my story.
CROV: Fine.