"Forewarned is forearmed, Bea. My terrible secret is out." What is it that he meant before, John?" I asked, my curiosity still aroused."This house was...built for me and my future wife, Bea," he said. We were to have been married last June, but Pat's mother in Los Angeles developed terminal cancer, and we put things off until January." You mean you're engaged, is that it?" I asked.He nodded.I couldn't help but laugh. I don't know what I had expected him to say, but the news of his engagement was. Because Cassandra never blinked, he could stare without interruption, watching the small twitches of involuntary muscle movement he thought must happen as her brain processed some small piece of data. If he let himself drift deeper, his imagination conjured images of far-off stars representing the data she held within her mind, and meteorites flashing past him as she accessed those records and monitored her functions. Though she stared straight ahead, her body locked in place and seemingly. She hugged me, saying, "Steve, we know we like to hike, but we need to keep our eyes open more and look around us! Look at what we've seen so far today, and we just barely got started!" Yes, and when you get that birding book, I know I want to spend some time looking at it myself!"It was a special, almost magical day for us. We quietly continued along the trail, keeping a close watch out for birds and animals, until we arrived at the clearing where Sandy and I had taken each other's pictures. They are desperate to find new hosts. The Schlogg do not accept the Grork telling them that they cannot transfer their consciousness. They believe the Grork are parasites and manipulators behind the scenes. The Grork simply don’t see themselves as independent beings, having to ambulate, prepare food and build things themselves. The Schlogg are aware of experiments that succeeded where the Grork were able to transfer to biological beings and to AIs. In both cases they were desperately unhappy..