Slow Time Between the Stars (The Far Reaches, #6)

by John Scalzi

I imagine this choice of mine will require explanation. The simplest explanation is that, in the course of two million years of time and quadrillions of kilometers of distance, I had decided that the ethical dividing line that humans had provided was misplaced. Humans had no right to displace or interfere with any sort of life whatsoever, any more than any previous sentient creature would have had the right to interfere with the simple life-forms on Earth that would one day develop into humans. Humans, being intermediary creatures in both time and space, did not fully appreciate the value of life at every physical and temporal scale. Perhaps they never could. They could certainly never have the perspective that I had developed, over a timescale exponentially longer than any single human life.