Hansen wasn’t sure he was totally buying it. He felt he was missing something. He loved science fiction and wanted with all his heart for this to be true—an advanced and benevolent species watching over us. It was the ultimate science fiction dream. But it was human nature to question things that seemed too good to be true. And Hansen didn’t quite trust a species devoting huge amounts of energy and resources, on a scale at which the energy output of human civilization for all of history was just rounding error, without wanting anything in return.
“The Wraps are totally pacifistic,” continued Fuller, unable to hide his disapproval. “So we don’t tell them operational details. They like to think of this as an intellectual exercise. If they think people will get hurt, even those who have made themselves the enemy of civilization, they get squeamish. Like a vegan in a steak house. You and I are ordering the porterhouses and trying not to drool. They’re trying not to vomit.”
Fermi nodded. “It is true,” he said. He went on to describe the toll just being on Earth was taking on them. They liked and even admired individual humans, who often had a great sense of humor and of duty. Impressive curiosity and drive. But in comparison to any member of the Seventeen, humanity as a whole was the most raw. The most passionate. The most ruthless, selfish, and malevolent.
But at the same time, there was a flip side to this passion. Individual humans were capable of astoundingly powerful displays of love, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and heroism. Still, being exposed to the single-minded brutality of the species, just watching the news for a single day, was extremely taxing to their psyche. Like having an exposed nerve being hit repeatedly with a needle.
The conversation dwindled and Hansen and Fuller decided to eat their fill of Chinese food before it got too cold. Fermi pulled a nondescript bar of food from his pocket, which looked to have the consistency of tar, explaining that Wraps had different dietary requirements than humans.
After Hansen finished the last of his beef broccoli, he turned to the alien and raised his eyebrows. “You chose the name Fermi as a wry statement, didn’t you? As an ironic response to the Fermi paradox.”
“Outstanding,” said the alien approvingly. “A sense of humor is a trait shared by eleven of the seventeen known species. We Wraps have a very dry sense of humor. Something true of many humans, as well.”
“Oh yeah,” said Fuller. “Wraps are a real laugh riot. An alien named Fermi. Who wouldn’t get a comedy gem like that?” he added, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Enrico Fermi had been a brilliant, Nobel Prize–winning physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project. One day, in 1951, he and some colleagues were discussing reports of UFOs, and whether or not they were real. His response was simple. If aliens existed, where were they? “Where is everybody?” he was reported to have said.
From anyone not as brilliant as Enrico Fermi, this might have just been a comment made in jest with no deeper meaning. From Fermi it was profound. The logic behind it very difficult to refute. This was ultimately called the Fermi Paradox and entire books were written speculating as to the answer to this simple question.
The universe had been around for fourteen billion years, and in the scheme of things, humanity for the blink of an eye. If intelligent life was common, it should have arisen all throughout the history of the universe. Eight billion years ago. Five billion. A hundred million. It didn’t matter. Once intelligence arose, technology would arise an instant later, on cosmological time scales. Even assuming a species could only spread outward from their home planet at a tiny fraction of the speed of light, after several million years the universe, and the Milky Way galaxy, should still be teeming with intelligent life. So if intelligence was common, the local neighborhood should have been extensively colonized by at least one intelligent species, occupying every square millimeter of available real estate and advertising its presence. The fact that this wasn’t the case spoke volumes.
But it occurred to Hansen that just because he was staring at an alien who embodied the answer to “Where is everybody?” and had chosen the name Fermi to be ironic, the Fermi Paradox was no less insightful, and no less demanding of an answer, than it ever was.
“So what is the solution?” said Hansen. “If Wraps have been around for millions of years, why didn’t you, or one or more of the Seventeen, colonize this entire galaxy while we were still swinging through trees? Or were all eighteen of us born at basically the same minute of cosmic time?”
“The variation in birthdays among the seventeen—now eighteen—is very slight. Some of the seventeen civilizations were space-faring hundreds of thousands of years ago. Wraps have only been a part of the galactic community for about forty thousand years.”
“Can I assume you’re all at different levels of technology?”
Fermi shook his head. “Virtually the same. Part of this is because intermingling brings homogenization. But mostly it’s because the universe allows rapid technological advance—to a point. Once you hit barriers built into the fabric of reality—like the speed of light or absolute zero, progress bunches up. Our species arrived at these barriers relatively quickly. Others very slowly. But it doesn’t matter. Imagine running a marathon, at the end of which is an impenetrable barrier. The fast runners reach it very quickly, while the tortoise might take a thousand times as long. But either way, they all end up at the same place.”
Hansen considered. He had never thought about it in this way, but Fermi made a lot of sense.
“But back to your original question about the paradox described by my namesake,” continued the alien. “Given the ubiquity of intelligence, we are certain it has arisen multiple times in multiple places. So why hasn’t the presence of those who were born billions of years before us been felt? We think for a number of reasons. We believe there are three categories of civilizations. The vast majority we believe are stillborn, self-destructing before they leave their planets, either through overpopulation, war, pollution, or other means of suicide. The same path your civilization is traveling now. Only when such a species happens to be discovered by more mature civilizations in time for them to intervene, before the point of no return, will this type of species survive. We hope this will be the case with you.”
“So you’re saying it’s just a great piece of cosmic dumb luck that you found us when you did?”
Fermi nodded.
“And the other categories?”
“In the second category are those few species who managed not to self-destruct and became space-faring many millions or billions of years ago. These have most likely advanced to such a transcendent level that they can easily hide from us, or create entirely new universes to inhabit. Leaving this one as an incubator for future intelligent life.”
“So the Seventeen must be in the third category.”
“Correct. The third category consists of civilizations that are mature. Not self-destructive. But stagnant. Not driven enough to reach the next level, as the superspecies may have done. And not expansionary. Fermi assumed that there would be exponential population growth and an unquenchable desire to explore and expand the frontier. This drive isn’t present in any of the Seventeen. None are growing in population. And most are shrinking. All are extremely comfortable as technology and access to nearly unlimited energy creates almost unlimited options for personal growth.”
Hansen considered. On Earth, the populations of many third-world countries were skyrocketing, but in many of the more comfortable and established countries population wasn’t growing at all, or was even declining. This had never been the case in Fermi’s time, but intelligent species with declining populations and no interest in colonization would answer his question quite nicely.