Everyone knows that the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy is intelligent - all black holes are. They don't have arms and legs and they are subject to the same universal rules of gravity and energies that everyone is. If you should want to commune with it you have to go to it under it's event horizon. There is no way back out, of course. When the Pleining visited they left a memento as a benign gesture; an AI that could assist lesser races with their approach to the anomaly. Many beings changed their mind once they entered the one way street called the Glory Road but no one had ever approached by accident until Jack and Hin-Yuin arrived with their companions Frank and Charlene. The pregnant girls put up quite a fight but the result was inevitable. For reasons of it's own the AI managed to save the embryos and endeavored to return them to Sol. The location of the sun was unclear and the AI could only place them with certainty on the correct galactic arm and estimated the arrival within a few hundred light years. There are a lot of stars in a 200 light year radius. That part of the galaxy had recently been seeded and it was expected they may meet others on their journey and would glean the exact whereabouts of the planet Earth from them. It turns out the seeding was done by a plurality of races but after a few encounters of burgeoning civilizations the Earth was found. In short, Jack and Estelle romp about the galaxy with their mentor Elmer the AI. There are no magic wormholes or jump gates, all of the propulsion and habitation is accomplished with known (yet advanced) technology
About the Author: Thanks for reading these books. As lame as it sounds and as irritating as they can sometimes be, I am most thankful for a wife and three productive children and now the grandchildren I am enjoying. As a retired engineer of moderate success I have come to believe in the designer AI. It is the only thing that makes sense to me and in the earlier books I detail the logic. The earlier books also contain religious and political abrasions that I attempted to leave out in this book. Although you may have more readers when you don't offend anyone (like Hard Jack III) where is the fun in that? If you read the entire series you will have found the outline for a rocket that can reach Saturn in four months, how the moon will be the new gold rush of manufacturing, and a star drive design although I am guessing that star passage will be very dangerous for hundreds of centuries despite the scientific advances of the coming ages. Feel free to contact me - my tours and information is readily available on the internet. I do speaking engagements about the books and about aliens, the real story.