Some graduate students discover how to open a wormhole. A wormhole is a hole in our universe that goes from one place to another, bypassing everything, including the distance. When the students open their first wormhole, an alert is sounded by the wormhole detectors that were planted on the moon fifty thousand years ago.The alert causes humanity to be evaluated by the Ur, the Confederation of Sentient Species in our galaxy. Wormholes would allow humanity to begin spreading and exploring the rest of the galaxy. We are evaluated to see if we have progressed enough to begin trading and interacting with the other peaceful species who already inhabit much of the galaxy. We fail to pass their evaluation primarily because we keep killing each other. Because there is no way to stop us from developing starships using the wormhole technology and spreading our war and greed throughout the galaxy, humanity is selected for elimination. This is done by simply turning off our ability to have children. Without the need to preserve our world for our children, civilization begins to unravel. We plead with the Ur to give us a second chance, but no one answers our calls. Our government weaponizes wormholes to use them as a bomb delivery system. The technology escapes our country, giving every despot and terrorist the ability to deliver bombs anywhere in the world without warning. This leads to World War III which destroys the infrastructure, the governments, and the military worldwide. Only two governments manage to escape the holocaust-Canada and the US. Canada because they refused to use wormholes as a weapon and the US because the president was flying to California on Air Force One for a goodwill visit when the war started. After the war and the anarchy that follows, the governments of Canada and the US slowly rebuild their countries, reaching a new level of cooperation and partnership.As the governments of Earth are blowing each other up, our galaxy is being invaded by a force from another galaxy. The Ur are losing planet after planet without a clue what to do about it. After so many millennia of peaceful coexistence, the generals of the Ur have forgotten how to fight. Suddenly humanity's killer ape is not such a liability.This is the story of how it all unfolds. Book 1 - The Beginning of the EndBook 2 - The Three-Hour WarBook 3 - The Emissary
About the Author: I have been writing poetry and short stories since I took a Creative Writing class at Purdue University in 1967. Unfortunately, that was the only class I passed and spent the next three years in the army, including a tour in Viet Nam. After leaving the army, I earned a BS in Computer Science from Rutgers and struck off on a career as a computer programmer. I find that my years of writing poetry have affected how I write prose. My wife is always saying to put more narrative into the story. My poetry side keeps trying to pare it down to the emotional bare bones. What I create is always a compromise between the two. Short stories and poems of mine have been published in Biker Magazine, two compilations by Poetry.Com, The Salal Review, The Scribbler, That Holiday Feeling, a collection of Christmas short stories, and Not Your Mother's Book on Working for a Living. My home is in Ariel, Washington, with my wife, two horses, two dogs and three cats. My e-mail address is fredhudgin@ mindspring.com. All of my books and a number of my short stories and poems are available on Amazon's Kindle web site. Do a search for Fredrick Hudgin.