Cosmic Contact

Cosmic Contact: The Next Earth is a sci-fi, action adventure that takes place ten years after books one and two. The SPI Team members have become internationally recognized scientists. They are approached by Major John Dallant, who now heads the CIA and NSA, to address a seemingly impossible mission—find a means to save some semblance of humanity, which is on a path to extinction. The potential impact of runaway climate-change has long been grossly underestimated. The world is rapidly approaching an existential crisis—the Anthropogenic Extinction—the sixth annihilation of Earth-bound species since life first appeared 3.5 billion years ago. Assisted by teammates Eric Evans and Bella Moreno, and Thay Tuan, the team’s consigliere, Luc Ponti, now an astrophysicist at MIT, succeeds in creating a stabilized micro-wormhole, which is launched by NASA into high-Earth orbit and used as a means to contact intelligent life on exoplanets well within the “Goldilocks” zone—potentially human-habitable planets. Communication through the wormhole enables near-instantaneous contact over hundreds of lightyears of distance. The plan is to reach extraterrestrials who have technology that could help Earth achieve a level of sustainability above what now is sure extinction. A connection between consciousness and artificial intelligence (AI) is explored throughout this adventure.