Immanuel Kant was not responsible for the extinction of the galaxy. He lived in Königsberg on eighteenth-century Earth and died long before galactic civilization began. His name remained in the galaxy because of the good will. For Kant, the value of a good will was not determined by whether an action succeeded. If someone acted according to a principle they judged to be right, a bad outcome did not make the will itself evil. Humans could not know all the consequences of their actions. Galactic civilization made use of this idea for a long time. Supporters of the Declaration of the Right to Connection argued that citizens of sparsely populated settlements could not be treated merely as means to increasing trade volume. Supporters of the Third Passage Mandate Act maintained that the safety of even one person had to be protected before an accident occurred. The Return Eligibility Ruling held that even beings unable to respond in the present, if they had the potential to form intentions in the future, could not be deprived of that potential for the sake of convenience. Those decisions actually saved countless lives.
Kant had not proposed the laws underlying those decisions. His writings contained no judgments concerning wormholes or stored units. Later jurists and politicians applied his concepts to their own problems. With each application, the sentences grew shorter and their meanings were narrowed. The demand to treat human beings as ends became a regulation that no entity entitled to protection could be excluded. A philosophy concerning the moral worth of the will was also used as administrative language suggesting that responsibility for consequences could be reduced if the purpose was good. Kant had never said that stating a good purpose eliminated the need to examine the consequences. The demand to establish principles that could be applied universally was also interpreted in opposing ways throughout the galaxy. Some argued that if a reserve passage was permitted for one settlement, it had to be permitted for every settlement in the same circumstances. Others argued that safety which could not be provided to every settlement should not be promised to only a few. Both sides sought to prevent exceptions from becoming privileges. One side built more passages. The other called for reducing their number. Both sides' calculations included people they sought to protect. The same problem arose with the Return Eligibility Ruling. If a facility was maintained because one stored unit might be restored, the same standard had to be applied to records with similar prospects of restoration. But maintaining power to every record reduced the power available to currently active citizens. If stored units were abandoned, someone became a means. If all stored units were protected, someone still bore the cost.
Kant's name appeared more frequently as the crisis deepened. Those who wanted to close passages cited him, and those who wanted to keep them open cited him as well. The Alliance maintained that entities entitled to protection should not be treated differently from one sector to another. The sectors opposing it replied that taking oxygen away from living residents to preserve possibilities elsewhere was also treating people as means. Kant endorsed neither side's registry. He could not. He did not exist in that era. The Restoration Church constructed personality models from his writings, letters, and records left by his contemporaries. These were not beings that had inherited Kant's memories. They were systems that calculated what answers he might have given based on the surviving materials. The first model demanded that it not be called Kant. The second replied that it was necessary to determine whether that demand represented Kant's views or the model's own judgment. The third model said that Plato might be able to answer that question. The court classified all three models as research materials. It did not rule on whether the three models had the right to challenge their own classification.
The Kant models were also summoned when the last scientist examined the connection to the storage space. What he could decide was how to use the energy remaining in the black holes. With that energy, he could sustain the next thoughts of the consciousnesses that still existed or create the first boundary of the storage space. The storage space was where any remaining usable difference in the energy that had already leaked away would accumulate. Whether life would arise within it was unknown. The first model replied that citizens who currently existed could not be treated merely as means to the possibility of life that did not yet exist. The second replied that using power for current citizens did not, by itself, justify failing to examine the possibilities for the future that might still be preserved. The third said that it was first necessary to define whether the same rights could be applied to "citizens" and "possible life." While a definition was being requested, the time rate of a computing station decreased. Its citizens did not die. The time until their next thought grew longer.
The last scientist changed his question. "If one chooses between two incompatible duties, does the fact that the other has been violated disappear?" The first model replied that genuine duties could not conflict with one another. The second and third models could not determine what constituted a genuine duty. This was not merely because the data needed for judgment was insufficient. Even if the data were complete, whose next moment should take priority could not be determined by calculated values alone. The last scientist could not receive orders from the philosopher. Nor could he transfer responsibility for his own choice to him. Just before connecting the storage space, the scientist left behind a sentence opposing his own plan. "A being alive in the present is not fuel for a being not yet born." That sentence became a reason not to create the storage space. There was also an objection to the choice of leaving the remaining difference in the energy already lost to accumulate nowhere. Neither objection could cancel out the other.