Now he understood. This was the purpose. Not the long survival of humankind into a dismal future of decay and shadows, the final retreat into the lossless substrate, where nothing ever changed or grew. The purpose of humankind - the first intelligence of all - had been to reshape the universe in order to bud others and create a storm of mind. By striving for a meaningless eternity, humans denied true infinity. We had all of infinite time and space in our hands. We had ultimate responsibility.