The Number of Civilizations

"Mm, indeed."

William nodded deeply in agreement.

Before The Three-Body Problem came out, William, who had yet to cross over, had hoped that humanity would find alien forces, races, and civilizations.

But after The Three-Body Problem came out, William only felt that the Pioneer and Voyager probes launched by NASA were unbelievably foolish.

Sending probes out of the Solar System was one thing, but what the hell were they thinking by engraving Earth's coordinates on them, and then engraving human DNA as well?

Were they delivering themselves right to someone's doorstep?

"Two-dimensional foil... Two-dimensional foil." At that moment, Halsey murmured to herself again. Then she firmly squeezed William's left hand with her right, her face brimming with excitement as she said:

"After hearing this term, I can finally understand why there are so many completely dark regions in the observable universe.

"They could very well be the result of attacks by certain higher civilizations against lower civilizations, or of an interstellar war between two higher civilizations, creating utterly dark regions of the universe.

"They cannot be observed, and no light can escape them. Even black holes cannot exist there.

"Just as Robert Heinlein, the author of Starship Troopers, was the first to mention concepts such as power armor and orbital drops in science fiction.

"As time passed and technology developed, our human civilization truly came to possess tens of thousands of power armor suits and orbital drop troops, just as described in Starship Troopers.

"Sure enough, scientific progress can never be separated from the romantic ideas and inspiration of science fiction writers.

"What you just told me about The Three-Body Problem suddenly made everything clear to me~."

"..." Seeing Halsey's excitement, William instantly felt as though his head had swollen. Then, with a helpless expression, he said:

"Catherine, I don't