He remembered how he’d tossed a crust of sandwich to a lone seagull, one summer long ago.

The poor thing had just been on the losing end of a gang-fight with other seagulls, who’d chased and weaved and battered until it gave up the morsel of trash it had claimed. The new morsel he’d tossed seemed to revive it – a fresh and better prize.

But then, having seen what happened, the rest of the seagulls returned and the fight renewed.

A lifetime later, the scale had changed. But, the principles remained the same.

Skimming through the spatial volume, he witnessed the skirmish in passing. Before his senses, tonnes of food and water were plundered from the tiny cargo ship’s holds, which were left open to vacuum.

In sympathy and with a mere finger-ripple of spacetime, he restored the holds’ contents and sealed the ship. He resuscitated the sophonts left microseconds from death in the void. He carried on his way.

And, in minutes, the fighting resumed. Even in his Transcendence, there were lessons left to learn.