Everyone was silent, appeared to have understood all of the pre-rehearsed steps, and shared an air of enthusiasm for what was about to transpire. No one had any questions since they had cycled through the steps several times before—dry runs. Now it was the real thing.
Yesha then continued, “This is the very first test to see if humanity can store the mind, the DNA and the entire human genomic sequence digitally, grow and optimize the genes with the mind turned off through optogenetics and many other highly advanced technologies, download the neural mapping and network to her new brain—replete with her memories, feelings, her awareness, everything, and then turn her on. Once her mind is turned on, after growing the body in an accelerated manner with optimally encoded genes, with cells communicating all of the right things to the other cells, we will know from then on that we can successfully grow a human, aged twenty-five, in short order, and then turn her or him on in the hopes that it will be the individual who had passed away, but in a new body. This is it. This is humanity stepping it up and demonstrating to the Universe that we were ready to preserve life, reanimate it, and protect the Universe itself from the laws of uncontrolled chaos—rather than destroy life or watch the Universe expand beyond repair.”
It was evening, and Vesha Celeste’s young and beautiful body was absolutely breathtaking, and although it lay there as if asleep, everyone in the room was watching at the edge of their seats. Yesha had briefed everyone, and everyone knew that once Yesha and Vesha entered into the Virtual Universe, that everyone else would go there too, and in this particular occasion, for an observational or a separate experience via interfacing through their biopods.
The Virtual Universe cosmic interface, quantum data analyzer and processor, and backup system were run by a complexed arrangement of twelve highly and technologically advanced database moons that orbited the Earth—far enough away from the Moon’s orbit to avoid any catastrophes of any sort. They revolved around the Earth quietly, could not be detected by any technology on Earth, save via Pathway citizen’s links, no matter the distance due to the highly robust jump gate and Sensory System. The moon satellites had immediate connectivity via the particle jump sensor technology and they served not only as robust and redundant databases but also to protect the Earth from any hostile intrusion or radiation blast of any sort. They were even secretly capable of controlling the weather and could replace all other satellites around the Earth and work much more efficiently, effectively, on their own or while collectively coordinating and reducing the hazards of traditional space flight around the Earth and the Moon, but certain systems had not been brought online due to legalities and societal unpreparedness for such advancements. Once the nations and the people of Earth were ready, these dazzling moons would be revealed by Eliza, since they served to protect Earth in every imaginable way. This system also served as a virtual paradise, where those who had uploaded copies of their minds and DNA could interface and share their consciousness, participating with those still living in the real world. Collectively, the Virtual Universe was a world of education, up-to-date information, and healing, training, and even entertainment.
Entering the Virtual Universe on this occasion, each individual would reflect in detail on his or her own lives and they would then be able to interface with or visit with anyone they wished to see who had ever been there before.
Yesha Alevtina would signal the big meeting, “And this is where we are now,” and everyone would gather around her to meld minds collectively for true understanding among each person in the Virtual Universe. With the biopod’s interface, anything experienced there would provide a tactile reference via the particle nanos optimizing the physiological aspects of the body as well as the neurological aspects of the mind. Everything experienced there would be visceral and similar to real life experiences, but with so many more possibilities—even expressing themselves according to their imaginations.
Vesha Celeste was the first Pathway member, read-in fully or honorary, who had passed away. She was a beloved individual who had also possessed a unique and very special mind, the kind of mind that had the temperance necessary to guide a Universe-wide journey through the Cosmos. Thus, one by one and as a group, everyone had realized this and would welcome her back. Due to the lack of time equivalence as per the real world, they could spend years or even millennia there, but in the real world it would only be a few minutes, or it could be a few hours.
The way it was supposed to work, or the way it would begin was Vesha Celeste would be awakened by Yesha Alevtina as she knocked on her door. The location of all of this was known as the Melrose laboratory campuses, which was in a nicely prepared area within the Pathway Industries residential underground technology campus in Massachusetts. Vesha would open “her” door, Yesha would check to see what it was that Vesha had remembered, show her the new body she had, give her a brief update on where she was—if asked, teach her about neural linking and communication, teach her the biopod commands, and then take her to the Virtual Universe. Once there, she would take her through her own life, then Eliza’s life, as well as the lives of each Pathway member and Pathway delegate, as uploaded and pre-coordinated. Finally, she would interact with each of the more than one billion members in the Virtual Universe, meld minds, and share a purpose. If a person were not available, a simulation of them would be available in much the same way—with experiential updates provided once the real individual interfaced through the neural link.
Najem Grace, Vesha’s closest friend, was ready for the proceedings to begin. She had been to the Virtual Universe many times, had schooled herself on all of the sciences that Eliza had, and had enjoyed the world so much that she developed her own Virtual Universe representation of herself. She was able to see things about her virtual physiology according to her own perceptions and enjoyed a world that was resplendent with vibrant colors of purples, blues, blacks, whites, and pinks. Najem fancied herself as a flying mermaid in the body of a twenty-five-year-old version of herself, swimming in the air or any place she chose. People who saw her would see her turquoise and purple irises, thick black limbal rings, black eyelashes and eyeliner gradually blending into beautiful colors of turquoise, purple, blue, and pink. They would see her mermaid fishtail—purple, turquoise, and black crystalline scales and color variations. Both her internal and external beauty would be on display as her left half was tattooed from neck to pelvis with a beautiful and intricate set of designs that captured her beauty and intensified it. Her crystalline encrusted perky youth was certainly not a site for the overly prudish but was an image she felt gave her a sense of freedom, and if she could she would share her breathtaking beauty with the rest of the world.
She couldn’t wait to see Vesha once the training was completed, but she would wait anyway. When the time came, she would go over her personal biological life reflections of the last ninety-three years, and then meet and greet with Vesha to show herself off as well. As it was, in the real world, her real body was aged, she had earned every wrinkle and she prided herself on her well-earned powdery white hair—as white as snow. She had an affectionate and friendly smile—a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose. In the real world, Najem went to church every weekend, participated in Pathway, worked with Pathway government contractors, as well as the American Association of University Women, and gave lectures to the Goddard Space Flight Center on the remedial sciences. These sciences were advanced to the rest of society, but certainly remedial to every member of Pathway. Not to mention, she worked with James to explore, research, and prepare briefs from afar of the locations throughout the Universe and the missions Vesha would lead with the position of IMC Commander, and as a five-star general.
Eliza Williams had long ago ensured every member of Pathway Industries and the UP both multi-quadrillion dollar enterprises but had highly recommended everyone live as humble yet versatile a life as possible, as people in everyday life, at least while on Earth living among the people in public. Once the actual space journeys bega
n or once the political climate changed, no matter where a person was on Earth, they would have the nicest living arrangements, the best cooks, and access to any location they wished. As it was, Pathway members lived normal on Earth, but with luxurious and fancy condos in the tech city of their choosing.
Eliza had revealed her scientific achievements, her outer space exploits—the asteroid and space junk mining, the database moons, the bases on the planets and planetary moons in the solar system, the high quality living spaces being maintained by James Cooper, his crew, and nano-technology self-replicating robots in each of those locations—with encoding, knowing when to stop and when to request further instructions; she had revealed the hidden space elevators, the Virtual Universe, the biopods, the particle jump sensors, the gateways—all undetected by, and unreleased to the public as of yet—only to the members of Pathway and fully read-in UP members. Eventually, she would reveal these same things to the rest of the world, in due time.
Eliza’s worth on the Earth was that of the only multi-quadrillionaire and growing, but her true value in monetary investments throughout the solar system was now beyond two-hundred octodecillion USD. She could pretty much purchase the entire world and everything on it, but she had bigger plans in mind than simply being rich and powerful—she wanted society to work together, to be advanced, to have universal health care and education, and to live healthy, productive, and constructive lives filled with meaning and purpose—a purpose determined by a desire to contribute to an advanced society and to increase the well-being of humanity and all of its friends. She had the ability to do this now, but she did not want to upset the current economic system quite yet—in time she would see it transitioned to shared prosperity, but for now, people had jobs to do, bills to pay, and lives to live the best way they knew how. She knew she had to persuade others to change, not manipulate the minds or the wills of the people—individual consent was paramount.
Eliza had put up an invisible shield around the Earth, a system to bring longevity to the length of life of the Sun, and a complex system beyond the Oort Clouds surrounding the solar system to protect it from any hostilities outside of it. Due to her abilities with reprogrammable matter and highly capable nano-technology with bots that combed the solar system and set things up and maintained them, and her ability to use particle jump sensor technology, she had done much of the legwork to ease humanity into the future. She had also done so much more. Now Yesha Alevtina was at the helm of Pathway, while Eliza continued on as the head of the UP. However, it was Yesha’s duty to take over the things that Eliza had to leave behind.
When Vesha Celeste awoke, only a week or two would go by before she would be in charge of the Intergalactic Mission Contingency, but she would work closely with James Cooper and Najem Grace coordinating the safest of journeys with missions met throughout the twelve zones within the Earth’s observable Universe. Vesha would bring humanity and preservation of sentient life from the regions around the Earth to the outside perimeter of the CMB region as viewed from Earth, and then provide follow-up reports of findings, accomplishments, and plans to Pathway Industries and hopefully the rest of the world.
For now, here was Najem, sitting in her aged and long-lived body with excitement to see her friend revived. When the time came, Najem would go through the rehearsed process, and then she would meet Vesha for the first time in two years. The splendor of it all was, Vesha Celeste, just as she, was as beautiful as anyone could imagine in the Virtual Universe, using her virtual mind which was in stasis and would be prior to her awakening, but likewise in real life—Vesha was humbly just as amazing as well, as her extraordinary and enjoyable self.
While Najem never married or never had children, to her, her missions within Pathway working closely with the internal government branch in training and transitions, her time in the space program at NASA, and the satellite programs she had seen through from infancy to space had all been her babies for more than seventy years of her life. Najem had done a lot to coordinate the development, the funding, and the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, before retiring back in the 1980’s. To her, it seemed so long ago when thinking back, but in the Virtual Universe, she could experience it all over and over again, as if it happened yesterday. At Pathway, Najem worked both in private and in public.
Najem was born in Nashville, TN to Georgia and Irwin Grace. Her mother was a school teacher and her father a geophysicist. Following her birth, on July 15, 1925, she and her family moved around the country a lot with her father’s job. It was after she had moved to Nevada and at the age of eleven that she began to show an interest in astronomy and in particular the stars. She found them so intriguing that she formed an astronomy club at school, to participate and become educated in that field with them. They would pore over books about the various constellations and gaze at the stars pointing them out to each other on clear nights.
Before high school started, Najem and her family moved to Baltimore, MD where she enrolled in a three-year accelerated program. She graduated from Western High School early.
Unfortunately, pursuing the sciences as a young woman came with a lot of kickback since she was frequently reproached by those she trusted with a lot of “that isn’t a woman’s place,” etc. As discouraging as it was in those days for women, Najem carried on. She received her BA at the Swarthmore College in 1946. She then earned her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago three years later. During her life and during her studies she would still take breaks, and on many occasions, while visiting science conventions she would run into Vesha Celeste.
Najem’s favorite pastime of all was the actual research she would conduct as part of a project with another tenured professor at the Yerkes Observatory in Michigan and the McDonald Observatory in Texas. Because she was a woman, however, she did not receive tenure there, so she moved on to the Naval Research Laboratories until she was hired by NASA. NASA had found interest in her, due to her work with the star, AG Draconis, her discoveries regarding its emissions, and her work with radio astronomy, radio source spectra, and geodetic programs.
Najem became the first NASA executive, who happened to be a woman. Through her NASA career, she worked on more than thirty major satellite programs, engaging in planning, budgeting, political approval, and the actual launching and positioning programs. Now, years later, upon reading Eliza Williams’ book, meeting her at a book signing, and then meeting her again during a follow-up visit, she had become a part of Pathway and worked closely with Pathway’s US Government technology-fusion branch.
Najem, who had been thinking about her past came out of deep thought, she remembered she was in the Melrose Laboratory Auditorium, with a scene playing before her. She remembered this was Vesha’s awakening and then the lights went out, and, “Knock, knock!” Yesha Alevtina, Pathway’s President, had tapped on the door.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Najem witnessed as Vesha Celeste arose from her bed. With the feed displaying what was going on in Vesha’s mind, she saw that Vesha did not yet realize that she was no longer in an eighty-eight-year-old body. Instead, Vesha Celeste displayed similar mannerisms indicating that she was what she had been familiar with for quite some time in the later stages of life. She was unaware of her youth. It clearly had been that Vesha was indeed walking around. Stumbling around, Najem saw as Vesha was grabbing her slippers, her robe, and then turning on the light. She made her way to the door. Najem could tell from her expressions that she sensed something was different, something was quite odd.
She then opened the door and recognized Yesha, but Najem noticed that Vesha was somewhat skeptical at first, but they talked. They conversed for a few minutes, and it became obvious Vesha recognized the fact that she was talking to one of the young ladies who had visited her so many years ago. Najem saw the historical flash of Vesha’s memories, as she recalled how Eliza and Yesha had met her many years ago when they decided to attend a science convention where Vesha was one of the speakers. This they had done, instead of going to
their high school prom. Najem witnessed as Vesha reminisced on this as she went to get some tea for her guest, who then approved of it wholeheartedly. Yesha, after catching up and enjoying the tea, suggested to Vesha that she should go to the restroom and look in the mirror.
Everyone attending the reawakening witnessed as they beheld her expressions as she saw herself for the first time in her current state, “Oh, my!” Vesha exclaimed. Najem saw Vesha, as she stood in her pajamas and robe, so used to the expressions and mannerisms of someone who had lived for the 88 years that she had, and there Vesha stood gazing into the mirror in disbelief. Najem could tell from Vesha’s mental readings on display in the Pathway private viewing campus that she liked what she saw, and how it reminded her of an amazingly artistic and spectacularly youthful, curvy, slender, and perky figure she remembered from looking in the mirror when she was about twenty-two years old, only this was truly a lot more colorful.
Yesha also smiled.
Najem watched and listened some more yet began to get the sense that she was being watched too but put that idea on hold while witnessing history in the making.
“I look… different! What exactly happened? Wait, you asked where I thought I was, and now I am at a loss; what is this place, and where am I?” Vesha had thousands of questions running through her mind, and on display before her unseen audience, as she stood in baffled amazement at what she beheld in the mirror before her. Instead of working herself into a dither, however, she found herself even more enchanted and in awe while thinking out loud, loud enough for Yesha to hear, “I won’t lie, Yesha, I thought I was dying about twenty minutes ago; I had some pretty deep and fleeting moments of memory as though my life was playing before my eyes, and a bit of a headache, but the second I sighed, breathed out, and thought I wouldn’t breathe in again, it was then and quite precisely when I felt vibrant, my pain gone, and like I could reach the stars!” She continued on as she embraced her new reality.
Further than Before- Pathway to the Stars Page 59