In 2038, humanity discovered that it was not alone in the universe but part of a larger collective.

It was a monumental event for humanity. Several delegation ships appeared in orbit, broadcasting a universally translated message: “We come in peace.”

Of course, there were those who did not believe the message, but humanity, surprisingly, welcomed its visitors with open arms.

It… well, it ended fine.

Sort of.

The meeting itself did, but the news it brought…. That was a different story, but that’s skipping ahead.

Jubilant, humanity's leaders met with their alien visitors, who looked shockingly human, aside from being half their height, with bleach white skin and uniform-colored eyes, a shockingly rich shade of emerald.

While many expected the aliens to bring messages of their intention to aid us or even take over, no one expected them to come asking for help.

The explanation was simple. Humanity had cleared several hurdles and been deemed a species that could be worthy members of a more extraordinary coalition. The hurdles themselves were relatively straightforward.

1. The functional construction of a fully operational and non-proof-of-concept fusion reactor. It was also explained that while it didn’t necessarily have to be fusion energy, one requirement was the establishment of a high-yield, fully renewable energy source. While many species had energy sources far more advanced than nuclear fusion, fusion was considered one of the baseline energy sources to meet the requirement.

2. An exceptional quality or characteristic of the species as a whole. Without being as advanced as other species that called the cosmos their home, for contact to be made, the species in question had to offer something that stood out from the rest. In humanity's case, it was a surprisingly robust and resilient physical makeup. Earth’s gravity was considered near the extreme end for a sapient species not just to develop on but also reach past the gravity of their planet. As energy yields required to leave anything with much higher gravitational fields would generally prevent otherwise intelligent species from ever escaping their cradle-turned-prison without access to technology that only space-faring races tended to have.

3. Establishment of a long-term space colony. It mainly was a technicality that humanity had qualified, something that the alien delegation told the leaders of Earth outright, but the ISS counted. Originally planned to be decommissioned earlier in the 2020s, it was given an extra twenty years to operate after the political tidings of several countries led to a surge in funding for its continued usage. Having lasted forty years, the ISS was qualified as a ‘long-term colony.’

4. Lastly, perhaps more importantly, was the discovery of extraterrestrial life through entirely self-progressed means. A research paper only three months prior had conclusively established that, without a doubt, humanity was not alone in the stars. Of course, the discovery was nothing more than microbial life on a celestial moon in Alpha Centauri. Still, while the form of life discovered was minor, it had primed humanity to the conclusive idea of no longer being alone in the universe.

And thus, with those four requirements met, humanity was finally enlightened and brought into the fold.

It was only too bad that it wasn’t under better circumstances. In normal circumstances, an extra twenty years would have elapsed before contact. Then, the gradual ascension of technological progress would have been shared as humanity broke free of its old-world thinking. Becoming a member of a galactic community required a more sophisticated and civilized mindset, after all.

This was not normal circumstances; what was needed wasn’t civilized and sophisticated thinking.

What it needed was soldiers to fight the war to end all wars. For that reason, humanity was contacted, skirting several of the qualifications through a technicality, for the simple reason that point two of the four-point system made humanity exceptionally useful during a crisis.

As for the crisis itself?

It was the War of Everything, a trans-galactic war in which member civilizations of the Galactic Union, spanning across fifteen galaxies, were waging a battle against a species known as the Sensen. Located in a distant corner of the universe, they had kept to themselves, considered an unfriendly if not hostile race; they had partaken in the purging or assimilation of contending races within their galaxy, but after completing their task they had seemingly been content to exist in their self-imposed isolation with little to no interaction with the other civilizations and races that belonged to the Galactic Union.

It was perhaps the greatest folly of the Galactic Union that more effort wasn’t made to stamp out such barbarism, as one fatal scanning from a backwater planet in the next nearest galaxy showed readings that made no sense. The wavering of dimensional reality was possible only in the extreme environment within the singularity predating the Big Bang. The same Big Bang would go on to create standard reality and countless parallel dimensional layers, but how many exactly was unknown. The last estimate had the count at over two hundred.

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What mattered was that for a wavering dimensional reality to be detected at all could only mean the creation of something capable of ripping through reality itself and in a vast area. While some civilizations used Skip-Drives to skip along the closest alternate dimensional layer, they were like dropping a pine needle in an ocean for the overall ripples they created. What was being detected was like the tectonic plates beneath a sea being gradually stirred into motion.

The Galactic Union was brought to an emergency meeting, where further investigations were held, leading to the discovery of a gigastructure at the center of Sensen localized space. Their very galactic core was in the process of being encapsulated by the most massive construction project in known universal history. An enormous device that could cause the breakdown of the laws of local physics. If initiated, it would lead to a cascading effect that would inevitably destroy the operational function of gravity.

In simple terms, under the new laws of physics unleashed by the Sensen gigastructure, any object of notable gravitational mass would collapse into a black hole. When Sensen envoys were contacted, rather than denying it, they reveled in their grand vision, explaining that unleashing the cascading effect of the reality collapser would not just cause every massive celestial object to be forcibly collapsed into a black hole. It would collapse the universe, projecting the Sensen into a higher plane of existence.

All it would take was the death of a universe and all the lives inside.

When the entire story was laid bare to the leaders of humanity, it was later reported that few could speak for some time until the President of Argentina asked a question, the question they were all thinking.

Why humanity? Why earth? If they were as advanced as they were, crossing not just the space between solar systems with ease, not just from one side of the galaxy to the other, but spanning entire galaxies worth, what worth could humanity, a single race on a single rock, have in this trans-galactic war?

The answer was surprisingly simple. They needed bodies, and the harder, the better. When asked why AI-based war machines had not been utilized, it was explained that AI, even amongst the Sensen, had been fundamentally banned. It was just too risky; all it would take was a single run-away program, a single glitch or mistake, for the emotionless task managers to head down a warpath against all life. The worst part was that it wasn’t likely to be any ‘evil’ machine like humanity often envisioned in their movies, but simply a program that concluded the most efficient way to complete their task, say creating paper clips, was to create more of itself, cannibalizing all universal mass until there was nothing less than a universal cloud of paperclip making machines.

Without being able to rely on true AI to help in their war efforts, the task of the war efforts would be split into parts. Already widely colonized galaxies and members of the Galactic Union would become their foundries of war to use against the Sensen, vast fleets of space armadas protected by shield generators powerful enough to withstand the full force of a nearby star exploding. Smaller members of the Galactic Union would search for potential allies to join the effort, those who could provide some unique benefit that the already established members couldn’t.

What humanity brought to the table were their uniquely hardy constitutions. To combat the Sensen, experimental ships were created that wouldn’t just skip across the nearest layers of dimensional reality like a Skip-Drive; they would ricochet across the differing layers, covering real space magnitudes faster than even the fastest ships the Galactic Union could offer, the normally weeks-long travel to cross-galactic space, by standard human time, could be reduced to mere days or even hours. The issue was that species capable of withstanding the forces on those experimental ships were few and far between.

Humanity just so happened to be one of those species, and thus, humanity was brought into the fold, even after only passing the requirements on mere technicalities.

When everything was said and done, humanity did what humanity loved to do in its history: It blared its horns of patriotism and a greater cause, and the war effort began. For humanity, a single planet race, this largely meant recruiting men and women alike into intense training programs to prepare them to become the backbone of the most advanced crafts in universal space.

This would make you think this story is going to be about some dashing young hero enlisting, climbing the ranks, proving his worth in space warfare, and finally helping strike down the vile Sensen threat. Unfortunately, that isn’t this story. The Galactic Union was too slow to act, and the only reason they ever found out was that the Sensen were gloating. Had the Sensen wanted, they would have left their system jammers in place, and the universe would have been none the wiser until it was too late.

So, in the end, try as the Galactic Union might, there wasn’t enough time to get the bulk of their space armadas through the meat grinder that was Sensen space. Billions, trillions, died in the effort as billions of Galactic Union ships failed to pass through the fortress systems. In the end, the only ships that had a chance were a measly one thousand of the experimental Ricochet Ships that managed to reach the galactic core of the Sensen galaxy. The battle was broadcast for all to see; the ships, sixty percent of their crew sourced from humanity alone, were the pride and joy of Earth.

And they were ripped apart by the literal bastion that the Sensen Galactic Core proved to be. It wasn’t some sci-fi movie where the united races of the galaxy, spearheaded by the finest crews of Earth, broke into the deepest parts of enemy territory only to find their most crucial sector woefully undefended.

No, the galactic core was, in fact, the most heavily defended sector in all known universal space, and as such, the thousand brave ships were ripped apart before they could cross even half of the space from the outer rim of the sector.

Rowan, though he preferred to go by Rory most of the time, shrugged as he watched the battle for universal survival conclude, lowering his phone and returning to his morning jog.

It is what it is. Rory thought to himself as he went about his jog, ignoring the faces of his fellow humanity, many sobbing, many collapsing without a word, and many still simply staring out in silence at nothing as the fact that they were all about to die broke their minds.

Not Rory, though. It wasn’t that he was exceptionally brave, tough, callous, or any such descriptive word. It was simply that, in the end, what did it matter? From what he understood, the structure at the center of Sensen's space, when activated, would instantly destroy the known universe, the collapse of everything traveling through time and space in ways that his comparatively simple human mind couldn’t process.

So, he continued his jog. It was a lovely autumn morning, and the birds were chirping, and Rory found himself smiling. The sun felt warm on his face, and his body really did feel in excellent shape today. Rory still had the smile on his face when, over a billion light years away, a single Sensen pressed a confirmation button on an interface, and like an old TV being turned off, all of reality winked off into nothingness.