Fredrick Hudgin

The Three Hour War Fredrick Hudgin

The aliens who gave humanity its death sentence are still not responding to our overtures for a negotiation. We keep trying to open communications with them but all we get back is silence. Russia tried to nuke them but all that happened was Moscow was sent into the sun. Even with the invention of an artificial uterus, the so-called Baby Machine, the Earth's population of humans has begun a steady decline that, unless something changes, will end in ninety-some years with the death of the last human being. The three graduate students who discovered wormholes, Lily Yuan, Kevin Langly, and Douglas Medder, have created successful lives for themselves. In the two years that have passed since Book One ended, all three of them finished their PhDs. Lily and Kevin began working on new, peaceful uses for wormhole technology. They exchange emails with Doug at least once a week. Doug is working at the Canadian Aerospace Research Centre as chief architect of a Rosy transportation infrastructure that, within Canada, will replace long-haul trucking, train cargo, and air cargo transportation with wormhole portals. Countries all over the world have begun asking Canada for help with setting up their own systems. A major new industry was created in Canada overnight: manufacturing the freight portal system and selling it to the world. Phase two will be to replace human long-distance transportation (airplanes, cars, buses, railroads) with wormhole portals. But wormholes and their close cousin, dark energy portals, have continued to be weaponized by the countries and terrorists of the world. Because wormhole attacks are so deadly and can happen with a five second warning, many countries have built huge automatic retaliation mechanisms that can respond to a wormhole attack instantly, without requiring permission from a head-of-state or even a general to begin the counterattack. And without children or a future, civilization begins to erode across the world. Violence and crime escalate. Law enforcement seems unable to stop its growth. This is how the story of The End of Children continues to unfold.