Chapter 280: The Meaning of Life
"In the Nix Civilization, there is also the concept of ’gourmet food.’ They have digestive organs and need to regularly consume small amounts of physical food to obtain trace nutrients their bodies cannot synthesize from geothermal heat alone."
The two sat facing each other in the cafeteria, chatting idly.
Jason kept his head down, still pondering the historical data. "So, what exactly did they eat... steamed insects? Braised bioluminescent fungi? Ugh..."
He wasn’t particularly interested in gourmet cuisine. As a former soldier who had undergone intense wilderness survival training, he had eaten everything from scorpions and grubs to tree bark. As far as he was concerned, as long as the food didn’t make you sick and filled your stomach, its taste and presentation were completely irrelevant.
In reality, Jason’s utilitarian mindset was a notorious conversation killer on dates, guaranteed to drop the mood to absolute zero and plunge the table into an awkward silence.
However, after spending so many years together, the two of them had developed a tacit understanding. Lily simply shot Jason a mild look, entirely unbothered.
She continued her train of thought. "Because their digestive systems were so inefficient, the Nix people’s food had to be highly refined and easily digestible. The variety of edible crops in the underground was extremely limited, meaning only the upper echelons of society could enjoy decent meals."
"When environmental conditions worsened, especially during wars and long expeditions the soldiers and slaves lost access to ambient geothermal heat. They had to rely entirely on eating coarse, hard-to-digest grains to survive. This severely damaged their biology, drastically shortening their lifespans. Most slaves barely lived to be twenty or thirty years old before their bodies gave out."
"It wasn’t until the dawn of their Atomic Age that better, more nutritious foods were synthesized, finally allowing the common people to enjoy them."
Hearing this, Jason seemed to snap out of his reverie. He gave a wry smile. "A lifespan of thirty-odd years? Actually, that aligns perfectly with human history. In ancient times, the average life expectancy for commoners was roughly the same, largely due to high infant mortality rates and poor nutrition. Even the wealthiest kings often died in their forties."
"As for the native Nix food, no one is allowed to eat it yet anyway! Even high-temperature cooking might not kill all the alien microorganisms, so it’s locked down under strict biochemical quarantine."
"And would you really dare to eat those bizarre underground creatures? Like those acid-spitting centipedes... tsk, tsk," Jason chuckled, deliberately teasing her.
Hearing him spout nonsense, Lily’s voice rose a pitch. "Who wants to eat a giant alien bug?!"
She stuck her tongue out slightly in disgust before lowering her voice. "I just miss the food back on the Noah. That’s our true home, after all. The food there is so much more diverse and fresh..."
"But think about it," she added, "the pursuit of culinary pleasure is actually another thing our two civilizations have in common! Even though their biological demand for physical food wasn’t as critical as ours, they still developed a complex food culture... another shared characteristic..."
Hearing this, Jason froze.
The issue of this eerie "convergence" was exactly what had been plaguing his mind! The convergence of civilizations and the Great Filter... the two phenomena had to be deeply connected!
The Nix Civilization evolved over twenty light-years away from Earth! The time difference between their respective rises was tens of millions of years!
Yet, despite starting from completely alien biological and environmental foundations, their societal development had gradually mirrored humanity’s almost perfectly. It was absolutely chilling.
There had to be an underlying reason. But what was it? After agonizing over the data, he had formed a vague, terrifying hypothesis.
Originally, Jason had just wanted to eat his lunch in peace and avoid such heavy topics, but he couldn’t hold it in any longer. "So, what do you think actually makes our two civilizations so similar? We started out fundamentally different, yet gradually converged into identical societal structures."
Having finally voiced the question, he breathed a sigh of relief. Why keep it bottled up? Just ask.
Honestly... having a partner like Lily was a blessing. Any other woman would have been driven insane by him ages ago. Who else would willingly debate profound philosophical and sociological theories over a casual lunch?
Most people simply couldn’t handle a man like him, or rather, they couldn’t comprehend his thought processes. History was full of romantic tragedies among geniuses. Take Sir Isaac Newton, for example he famously remained a virgin until his death. It wasn’t that Newton couldn’t attract women; it was that no one could keep up with his towering intellect. Because of his exceptionally high IQ, Newton completely lost interest in romance, viewing the people around him as dull-witted simpletons. Thus, he was destined to live a lonely life.
Or look at Albert Einstein, who had famously troubled marriages. This was practically inevitable. Einstein was too intelligent. If he married someone who couldn’t grasp even a fraction of the theory of relativity and failed to comprehend half of what he said, what was the point of the partnership? A completely unequal intellectual dynamic was bound to eventually lead to a total loss of interest.
Thinking of this, Jason suddenly felt an overwhelming wave of gratitude. Having a partner who was brilliant, beautiful, and deeply understanding was a rare miracle. At the very least, they never suffered from a lack of communication.
"The convergence of civilizations..." Lily murmured. "Why do entirely alien civilizations experience identical historical milestones and gradually morph into the same societal structures? That’s..."
She chewed on her fries, thinking deeply for a long time before swallowing. Looking a bit embarrassed, she finally admitted, "I don’t know."
Faced with such a monumental, civilization-defining question, she took it seriously. If she didn’t know the answer, she wouldn’t try to invent one just to sound smart.
Jason was genuinely taken aback by her blunt admission. He smirked, teasing her. "Well, well. So there are actually things you don’t know... mysteries that can stump even our resident genius."
"Of course there are," Lily replied earnestly. "I can’t prove Goldbach’s conjecture, I haven’t solved the Riemann hypothesis, I don’t know if supersymmetry is physically accurate, and I certainly don’t know the ultimate unified theory of the universe... There are plenty of things I don’t know."
"I have a hypothesis. Do you want to hear it?" Jason asked.
"Go ahead."
"What do you think is the ultimate, fundamental goal of life? What is the core objective programmed into all genetic material?"
"The ultimate goal of life?" Lily frowned. "I don’t know. That’s a debate philosophers have been having for millennia, and there are countless answers..."
Lily was an incredibly brilliant woman; she only needed a few subtle hints to follow Jason’s train of thought. A look of sudden realization flashed across her face. "You’re saying... the fundamental biological goal of life inherently guides all civilizations toward the exact same endpoint?"
"Are you suggesting that if a ’Creator’ truly exists, then the underlying objective engraved into our DNA will inevitably force almost all civilizations down the exact same historical path? Is that what you mean? That sounds less like science and more like... a philosophical or religious theory, doesn’t it?"
She stared at him, completely caught off guard. She hadn’t expected the conversation to take such a metaphysical turn.
"I’m not talking about a divine Creator. I prefer to believe that the ’creator’ is simply natural selection, or the cold, indifferent laws of the universe itself. It has absolutely nothing to do with religion," Jason clarified with a frown.
"My hypothesis is that even though completely alien species have fundamentally different DNA, the very nature of biological evolution engraves certain unchangeable behavioral frameworks into them. This rigid biological programming naturally leads to the development of identical societal patterns. Consequently, all intelligent civilizations are forced through the same historical bottlenecks."
He didn’t believe in grand, mystical conspiracy theories. Jason was simply trying to answer the terrifying mystery of civilizational convergence through the cold, rational lenses of evolutionary biology and philosophical materialism.
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