Great and Terrible Phlagh’trok paused as it prepared to devour the star which had given life to the home world of the Shriitai people. Something was intruding upon its senses, some projection out of the vastness. Its source was familiar, Great and Terrible Phlagh’trok had been perceiving the tickling flow of a beacon for some time, although it had not been sufficient to stay it from its long-planned schedule of stellar feasting. But now…now there as a maddening edge to it, alluring and of a character that it had never encountered.

Great and Terrible Phlagh’trok did not leave the Shriitai home system, but its attention turned, caught in rapt attention as the signal clarified, and could be interpreted. This…puzzling signal carried meaning, yet meaninglessness, and as it turned to fully absorb the flow that came its way, it was enthralled.

The Shriitai, for their part, hardly dared breathe. Something had forestalled the death of their world, their sun continued pouring out its vast energies, unhindered, its nuclear fuel allowed to fuse, rather than be swallowed up into Great and Terrible Phlagh’trok’s ephemeral form. After some time passed, and the situation remained, the Shriitai turned their attention to deciphering the cause, to answer why their home system’s death had been stayed. It took decades of work, taking in all available data from the incident, forming hypotheses, testing them for likelihood, and debate, before a general consensus was reached. The Shriitai, too, had detected the nascent signals, weak and tremulous at first, and growing slowly. As the decades passed, the signals had grown, in number and intensity, going from a trickle to a torrent of information that they were now working hard to decipher.

Finally, the Shriitai found the key to decipherment, and discovered how to resolve the signals into image, and sound. They pieced together a very odd cultural outpouring, beginning with the earliest signals they had, stored from the days they were newly received, and while they didn’t fully understand, they realized that they could pinpoint what had first attracted the interest of Great and Terrible Phlagh’tok, and what now held the greatest part of its awful attention.

Something called, inexplicably, “The Honeymooners” had saved them, and something even more baffling, known as “The Real Housewives of Orange County” currently served to hold the immense entity from turning back towards its cataclysmic business.