They still don't seem to have figured out that they breached an entirely new layer of reality.
Pro Tip: If you want to explore the universe, do it with humility and reverence, not forceful demands.
Imagine "demanding" that the universe make sense to you.
>the true nature of what these "beings" really are?
When you forcefully alter the world, you pervert the natural state of affairs. They're "contacting" other "layers" of reality, but they've mistakenly identified what they encounter as coalescent beings, when in reality it is reflecting the unnoticed errors of their own self-perception.
It's basically like AI feeding off it's own output, and it just keeps spiralling down into a bottomless abyss the further they go.