Solution to Fermi Paradox

Alfred calmed down several minutes later, because Lu Yuanming asked him a question.

"Can you still contact the material world?"

Alfred was speechless. After a long while, he actually started crying loudly.

When Alfred calmed down, Lu Yuanming called the management personnel of the organization...

Speaking of which, it also made him strange. These white people, and a few black people, they didn't obey each other, except for guns and violence. But once they integrated into this organization, they immediately followed those who claimed to be his disciples. And now, apart from the initial disciples, the only exception among the management personnel of the organization was Charlie.

At this moment, Lu Yuanming, along with the disciples and Charlie, faced Alfred in the vault.

Alfred was eating and drinking at this time, a piece of bread and a bottle of mineral water. After eating two loaves of bread and a whole bottle of mineral water, he patted his chest and said, "I almost starved to death... Damn MXG people, Nad's wall should have been completely erected!!"

Father Edward smiled and said, "Mr. Alfred, would you like some more?"

Alfred shook his head and said, "No, supplies are hard to come by... So now, are you willing to tell me what that scam just now was? Let me guess first... You went outside the city!? And came back alive from the outside? And luckily encountered the tomb of another civilization, and found tools that can be used in the Dark Matter World from it, right!?"

The information in this sentence was too much, so that everyone was confused. They looked at Lu Yuanming, who also spread his hands inexplicably. He had no idea what Alfred was talking about.

And their appearance, in Alfred's eyes, was a deception. He immediately said displeasedly to Edward, "Father, we are old friends, with over thirty years of friendship. You won't hide and deceive me too, will you?"

Father Edward immediately smiled bitterly. He made a cross on his chest, and then said to Alfred, "Mr. Alfred, I swear by my faith, by the Father in heaven, by Jesus Christ, by the Messiah to witness my oath, everything I say is what I saw with my own eyes, and it is indeed true. The person beside me is the Messiah in this doomsday, and also..."

Alfred directly waved his hand to interrupt him and said, "Regarding faith and religion, we have discussed too many times in the past few decades. You know that my family has been Puritans for generations, and I am also a devout believer who goes to church every week. But we have already concluded on the existence of gods. Gods exist in a spiritual sense, and so does faith. This gives us morality and a sense of belonging, so there is nothing wrong with it. But what we are discussing now is the survival of all mankind and human civilization!"

Then Alfred directly said to Lu Yuanming, "Asian kid, I know you are the figurehead they pushed out, but you are definitely not the one making the decisions. Uh, I guess they pushed you out because you are tall and strong, and look mighty and scary? But now, please let the person or people behind you come out and talk to me properly about what's next. I'm not joking with you, this is about the survival of us humans and human civilization."

Lu Yuanming gave a bitter smile, stopped the angry disciples and Charlie, who was about to draw his gun. He took two steps forward and said, "Sir, let me introduce myself, Lu Yuanming, from Z Country. I am not of Chinese descent, nor Asian descent, just from Z Country."

Alfred was stunned for a moment and subconsciously said, "Undocumented... It doesn't matter, a green card is easy to get, as long as you can..."

At this point, Alfred smiled bitterly and said, "It doesn't matter anymore, you continue."

Lu Yuanming told Alfred his origin, his abilities, everything he had told Father Edward and the others.

Alfred's expression became more and more strange as he listened. After he finished listening, he directly said, "Impossible, you are lying. How is this possible? Time travel is even involved. What time was your original time?"

"I became a vegetative state in July 2023, and then I was trapped in darkness for at least five or six months. I don't know the specific month and day I traveled." Lu Yuanming said sincerely.

"No... wait a minute, five or six months after July 2023..."

Alfred's face showed a solemn expression, and then he looked at Lu Yuanming carefully. Lu Yuanming still met his gaze with an extremely sincere look. Alfred immediately said again, "Then young... Mr. Lu, can I see it when you return to the Mortal World next time?"

"Okay." Lu Yuanming smiled.

At this time, Father Edward stepped forward and said, "Mr. Alfred, shouldn't it be your turn to answer our questions now? Or do you think those are so-called state secrets, and revealing them will cause social unrest, and you are still keeping silent here?"

Alfred shook his head and said, "There are only a little over a hundred people here, what social unrest could there be... That happened in late January 2024. I remember I found out about it on January 31st..."

Hearing this, Lu Yuanming's heart sank. He instinctively felt that what Alfred was about to say was very important to him.

"In Little Sun Country's Super-Kamiokande Detector, they discovered dark matter," Alfred continued.

Seeing everyone's confused expressions, Alfred said nonchalantly, "I didn't know what that was before either. I found out later after reading the information. It's a scientific device placed a thousand meters underground in a mine. It contains fifty thousand tons of pure water and various cutting-edge observation instruments. It's used to detect neutrinos. In late January 2024, the researchers there reported that they had likely found dark matter."

"Wait a minute," Ang immediately raised his hand. "Mr. Alfred, as far as I know, dark matter is still just a theoretical hypothesis, right? The known properties of dark matter are a few points: First, besides gravity, dark matter barely interacts with other forces, and almost not with photons. Second, dark matter is highly stable, even considered to be non-decaying, non-decomposing, and unchanging. These two points already indicate that dark matter is almost beyond the reach of our current scientific level. It's essentially the Dragon in the Garage. Even if dark matter were captured by the Super-Kamiokande Detector, they wouldn't be able to discover it at all."

Alfred showed a wry smile. "Yes, that's how it should have been. But the researchers there discovered dark matter due to an accident. And they also discovered something that can interact with dark matter..."

"What is it?!" Ang's interest immediately piqued, and he hurriedly asked.

Alfred recalled as he spoke, "In late January 2024, over thirty people from Little Sun Country committed collective suicide in a wilderness area. That wilderness area happened to be not far from the Super-Kamiokande Detector. Then, the researchers saw souls for the first time. And we also learned for the first time that souls, no, it should be only the souls of Sentient Life that can interact with dark matter."

Alfred paused, waiting for everyone to absorb the information before continuing. "Do you know what an astonishing discovery this is? Never mind dark matter, this in itself is a discovery of the century. If true, it would be enough to propel science, which has been stagnant for half a century, forward by a large margin. The key is souls. Do you know how many billionaires worldwide are on the brink of death? Do you know how many high-ranking individuals crave longevity or even immortality? Do you know how much we hope to know about the Afterlife when we all realize that death is inevitable?"

"So, at the end of January 2024, we moved the entire Super-Kamiokande Detector back to the USA, intact, and placed it in a secret research base underground in New York. We are conducting various studies on dark matter and souls."

At this point, Alfred fell into a daze. After a long while, he suddenly asked, "Everyone, do you truly believe souls should exist?"

Father Edward said, "The present is the evidence, so I have no need to doubt."

Several others nodded in agreement. Only Ang cautiously glanced at Lu Yuanming before saying, "Personally, I think the existence of souls is inherently unreasonable. Firstly, humans can think because we have the brain as the thinking vessel. Regardless of where the concept of 'I' originates, at least without a biological supercomputer like the brain, humans cannot even think. After becoming a soul, where is our thinking vessel? And where does the energy consumed by thinking come from? This is inherently illogical."

Alfred smiled and said, "Your statement is exactly the same as what Dr. Tang Zhean said."

"Tang Zhean... you mean that super mathematical genius who briefly appeared ten years ago, rumored to have an unprecedented IQ of 260? Didn't he die in a car accident?" Ang asked curiously.

Alfred's smile froze. He coughed and said, "Let's continue talking about souls... So, theoretically, souls shouldn't exist. Unless, at the moment of death, all of a person's information is reconfigured by fundamental particles that humans have not yet discovered and cannot detect. And this particle cannot be a single type, but rather similar to the particle model of the material world that we are familiar with. Only then can the theoretical concept of a soul appear..."

Ang mused, "So, at the moment of death, the soul leaves the body and enters the Dark Matter World from the material world. Then, isn't this Dark Matter World the Afterlife?"

"No!"

Alfred let out a cold laugh. "Through that piece of dark matter, our research found that before January 2024, there was no dark matter on Earth! Everyone who died was simply dead. Even if there were souls, they would disappear the moment they left the body, completely dissipating! Only by approaching within ten thousand meters of that piece of dark matter would souls appear and enter the dark matter layer."

Everyone looked at each other, not understanding why Alfred had a cold yet fearful expression. Alfred continued, "And through research on this piece of dark matter, we discovered that dark matter interacts not so much with souls as with consciousness. And through the existence of dark matter, we even uncovered the source of the Observer Effect in Quantum Mechanics, solved the mystery of the Double-Slit Experiment, and more. At the same time, many wealthy individuals who learned the news began to secretly invest, hoping to manifest souls after death and enter the dark matter layer... Everything was developing for the better, and this only took a year. Just as we were planning to achieve great things and make the USA great again, that piece of dark matter grew larger. Simultaneously, we found traces of dark matter in multiple locations in New York, then in multiple locations across the USA, and then in multiple locations worldwide. And at the same time, those things began to appear..."

Lu Yuanming immediately asked, "Are they Curses? And those monsters that can't be killed?"

Alfred was silent for a long time before nodding. Then he suddenly asked, "You all know about the Fermi Paradox, right?"

Only Lu Yuanming, Ang, Father Edward, Doctor Cthulhu, and Teacher Martha nodded. The rest looked bewildered.

Lu Yuanming also spoke, "Where are they? That's it, right?"

"Yes, that's it," Alfred said blankly. "The universe has been around for a long time, over thirteen billion years. In this period, we humans only took hundreds of thousands of years to reach a Civility capable of launching spacecraft. Those aliens who were born hundreds of millions, even billions, of years before us, why haven't they come to Earth yet?"

"The answer is already out. Because for all intelligent civilizations, as their development progresses and the number of deaths increases, more dark matter will appear on their planets. When a critical point is reached, the entire planet, as well as surrounding colonized planets, or the remnants of a race attempting to escape in spaceships, will all be dragged into the dark matter dimension due to the resonance attraction of souls."

"And this dragging in involves all known matter being dragged in as well. I don't know if you've read The Three-Body Problem, a science fiction novel from Z Country that I really like. It describes a weapon used by an alien civilization called the Two-Dimensional Foil, which can reduce a three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional world. This is an irreversible dimensional reduction, and it will spread throughout the entire universe at the speed of light. Unfortunately, we have encountered the 'Two-Dimensional Foil' that civilizations inevitably face. The dark matter dimensional reduction caused by death also spreads throughout the entire universe at the speed of light."

Everyone listened, stunned. Even those who didn't understand science felt a chill run down their spines. At this moment, Ang suddenly shouted, "Cosmic voids and supervoids!?"

Alfred paused for a moment and nodded, "Yes, Dr. Tang Zhean did indeed utter those words."

Ang immediately explained to Lu Yuanming, who still didn't understand, "There are several hypotheses about how our universe was born. The most successful hypothesis is the Big Bang. Regardless of which hypothesis you follow, if the universe was born naturally, then stars and galaxies must be arranged according to natural laws within the universe. While not absolutely uniform, it's unlikely to have areas of absolute density and absolute emptiness. But in reality, our universe has many void areas, and what are called supervoids. The largest one I remember is over a billion light-years across, completely empty, with not a single star in it. Such a situation is simply impossible, unless..."

Lu Yuanming picked up Ang's words, "Unless it has all turned into dark matter, right?"

After Alfred waited for everyone to fall silent, he said, "And this is the future fate of us humans, human civilization, and the entire Earth, the Solar System, and even the Milky Way. From the material world falling into the dark matter world, everything..."

"Disappears. Humanity dies, human civilization dies, and then... the universe dies along with it."