The chain of life runs smoothly from one generation to the next and none of the links stand out except here and there a link one sees by accident. - Clifford D. Simak

Had the memory worn thin? Had the debt he owed been paid? Had he discharged the last ounce of devotion? “There are worlds out there,” Andrew was saying, “and life on some of them. Even some intelligence. There is work to do.” He

The past, he said. The past is too much with me. And the past has made me useless. I have too much to remember—so much to remember that it becomes more important than the things there are to do. I’m living in the past and that is no way to live.

Without consciousness and intelligence, the universe would lack meaning.