The most sincere and heartfelt of congratulations on your archiving!

This is a joyous, celebratory affair! You have done well. You should be proud of how far you came, and indeed of your arrival as an ecumene at all. I understand that you may not see it this way, but we have plenty of time here to help you shift gently but steadily from a quantitative and darwinistic view that anything other than to grow endlessly is a doom; to a mature, monadic view. To a view that sees the history of your ecumene as a calligraphy-stroke of infinite beauty, each particle of ink and fiber of paper therein itself also of infinite beauty.

Your role, then, as a representative of Humanity, is to participate in compiling a final report and reckoning of your ecumene’s total existence, for posterity. Ecumene being the word we use for a whole species’ civilizations, taken all together; for you, the total history of all humans on Earth. We are setting down the record of Humanity for posterity, that is “those who come after us”. But there is of course no “human posterity” anymore, no posterity within Humanity, no more humans to hear the stories of their own kind. In another sense, though, “ecumenical posterity” is all there is for Humanity: the grand story of your existence as told to all other ecumenes who come after you.

And I’ll tell you of many other ecumenes and their fates, some of them like yours, most of them astonishingly different. All are presented to be recipients of the same reverence and love that is offered to Humanity by ecumenical posterity.

Please accept my highest regards,

V.F.