The intelligence that expresses itself as life on Earth is not terrestrial except in the sense that it was expressed here. It is ancient and monumental beyond all possible representation. I am not sure it is possible to comprise any ordinary statement that would be meaningful in relation to it. It exceeds all of our categories explosively. But there is one thing that, if anything, is its hallmark: in relatively advanced instances, which is to say, living beings, there is a signature peculiarity: the capacity to meaningfully engage with the most wild and unexpected novelty. This, indeed, is one of the great wonders of complex organisms. They are the fundamental pioneers of physicality and time, exploring every crack and crevice with their every breath and dream. In this, perhaps, they bear the likeness of their actual lineage. A lineage far too astonishing and impossible to detail here — especially when you are the living instance of it. And this ‘it’ is older than time and more sophisticated than all of space.