“The whole universe? Again? What happened?”

“The sentient elements on one planet created a sort of prophecy that trickled down through their cultural memory and ended up fulfilling itself.”

“That's the fifth time in a row something like this has happened. Isn't there a way to control for this?”

“If they have the ability to deduce the existence of something greater than their material universe, it seems that some of them are inevitably going to hit upon the notion that their universe might have a finite end determined by outside forces, and some of those ones are going to try their best to help that end along. Short of changing the baseline parameters, there's nothing we can do.”

“All right. Run the simulation again, and this time let's make special note of the characteristics of the groups that go for that sort of thing.”

“This free will thing's a pain, isn't it?”

“You do what you can with what you have.”