QUOTE : It is my suspicion that the galaxies are drastically distant from one another so they can only be traversed by beings who have already overcome bivnik—by species able to contain their lust for cosmic abasement long enough to resist writing their names on the stars and selling nebulae for advertising space—a kind of evolutionary selection pressure, if you will. Those species that give in to avarice and limitless expansion are doomed to extinction long before gaining the means to leave their galaxy or transcend to the higher-dimensional realms.