When the high density beings first made contact, we thought them angels and demons

Their stilted communication was credited to translations into our unfamiliar tongue

How curious a species in their irregular shape and size,
one as unlike to another as an ape to a cockroach

Our religions and empires fell and grew around their emergence,
but we ultimately adapted to their presence and learned from their technologies

Imagine how we shattered then, to discover after hundreds more years
that these mighty beings of near-unimaginable power were little more than automaton husks,
long unburdened of consciousness
– that evolutionary dead end –
devoid of it, but still able to parrot its effect with brute force mimicry

It wasnt just to realise we were alone
once again, as we been before
but more over, to see that our future too was truly empty,
and our cognisance of the stars merely a rounding error