Vesha walked into the room and stood beside Eliza and before the Senate and relaxed in her black smartsuit with iridescent colors and accents where the seams would be. Vesha had in fact been dead for more than two years. They all recognized her because they had seen her story in the news, and she had made many contributions to astronomy and the space program. With jaws dropped among the audience, Vesha stood there with every member of the Senate moved.
“This is Vesha Celeste, and as many of you know, she actually did pass away just a little over two years ago. However, through her work previous to her passing, and through the efforts of myself, and two of my best friends, Yesha Alevtina and Amber Blythe, as well as a very numerous and talented team of scientists, we were able to revive her two years after she died. Vesha has been awake for just over three months, and already, with Vesha, we’ve made great strides at Pathway Industries.”
A dull chatter arose and grew to a roar among the politicians, and Eliza could tell they were arguing about the ethics of this, that, and began doubting who Vesha was.
Just then a member of Paranoidis Capitalis had somehow gotten past security screening, rose up, and then shouted above the crowd, “She should be dead! This is an abomination! What is this, the zombie apocalypse!?” and he shot Vesha square in the chest.
As the bullet traveled, Vesha visually tracked it flying through the air and braced for impact, and the embroidered “goo” seamlessly woven into her smart uniform stopped the bullet flat. Then as Vesha’s nanos kicked in to instantaneously heal the bruised area, it appeared as if a crystalline substance sparkled through her body, and she glowed.
The member of Paranoidis Capitalis, seeing that everyone else was too shocked to do anything, shot her again, and this time in the head. As the bullet approached her in the air, Vesha knew it would hurt tremendously, but she let it hit her through the eye, and she fell behind the podium. As she fell, the crowd yelled in horror, but while they were stunned as to what to do, the extracellular matrix encoded within her DNA, filled the hole left behind. Her nanos connected the regrouping tissues and the newly growing neural network, which coupled with the existing link as well as with the continuously updated and backed-up information from her mental uploads and downloads to and from the Twelve Database Moons. In mere moments, her nanos had healed her, and the only indication of such was a bright glow due to its luminescent speed.
Within moments, and perhaps too late to avoid this barbarism, security had tackled and was beginning to cuff the killer. Vesha then stood up, raised her right arm to stop them, and then she showed the shocked audience the bullet wound as her body healed. The round that her body had absorbed had also sparkled before their eyes as she spat it back out and into her hand. Vesha continued to glow as her eye-wound healed to one hundred percent, and even her eyeshadow and other makeup reappeared. Her body was designed with perfection and with every aspect in mind. She had learned how to use the compartmentalization of the various regions of her brain to appear as she saw herself, as a beautiful and striking twenty-two-year-old version of Vesha Celeste. Everyone in the room was amazed at what they beheld and confused about what they had seen.
As calm and collected as Eliza typically was, she was very saddened and apparently aghast and angry at the fool, yet with pause and a small glow about her, she said, “Security, please keep him cuffed, but sit him down. I want him to hear this.”
The security team sat him down, and now he too was stunned, as was everyone else in the room. Even those who knew about Vesha’s elaborate molecular makeup who belonged to the UP had never known the extent to which this would work. Quite a few UP delegates throughout the world had experienced attempts on their lives, but the delegates of this country who had won bids for the Senate in 2018 and were thus present, and not a single one of them had gone through a similar ordeal. None of those present would have ever suspected that a deranged and cold-blooded, killer-lunatic would try to even come close to harming such a kind soul as Vesha had always been, and much less so considering the very nature of the fact that Eliza had been standing right there beside her.
Even still, only the delegates and honorable members of the Senate who knew about the advances of the physiological and neurological nanos and their tie-in to the cellular and DNA matrix, knew that a person who had these optimizations could take a bullet in the brain, live, and heal rather quickly. They knew this because they were aware that both physiologically and neurologically, Vesha had constant connectivity to the Twelve Database Moons. Those who hadn’t been around the violence in the field were still amazed to see this play out before their eyes.
There was a complex science to this; it wasn’t magic.
Vesha could see and process things through her eyes in nanoseconds, catch bullets anywhere on her body and live, and so much more. Not to mention, everyone within the room, smart or not, saw an intellect within her that was beyond reproach, and straight or not, they also found her very visually appealing and downright attractive.
“What this individual did should never have happened. I’m appalled that someone would be that devoid of humanity. However, please, let us all cool down a bit and learn together from this potentially tragic event, right now.” Eliza continued, “We always knew that man could be the enemy of himself, so, fortunately, we’ve taken every necessary precaution to protect the delegates of the UP and every single employee of Pathway Industries in much the same way as Vesha. We did not hold back. Vesha has developed very unique traits of her own. Much of this is due to her pre-existing nature. For example, she had iron-clad virtues of compassion, empathy, and a thirst for knowledge and the understanding of our Universe throughout the entire eighty-eight years of her life. People can become like Vesha. Those who we welcome as members of our fold, once they have become members, are fully read-in, and wish to preserve life and not to destroy it, will find they can grow, as they say, immortal. As time goes by, you’ll see that Vesha is more omnipotent than many, notwithstanding. That is because of her inherent nature. As such, she will play an integral role throughout history and throughout the Universe. When the timing is right, more will be revealed. For each of us to be worthy to journey into deep space and beyond our solar system, and remain intact and aware, we must learn to preserve life, and not take it away. We need to be sturdy, healthy, capable, and wise, and most importantly we need to be or become compassionate.
“Vesha, can you please speak to the Senate and your assailant?”
Vesha waited for Eliza to step aside, and then she stood behind the podium, with all eyes on her. The people in the room weren’t sure whether to consider her a superhero or a goddess, but their thoughts were very much along those lines.
“I am a humble human, just like each of you. I think, and I dream, and I hope, and I pray in my own way that we can each do what needs to be done to understand, explore, and someday preserve our beautiful Universe. I believe that humanity has evolved to where the Universe sees itself through each of us, and in as much as we are benevolent, we can live, and love, and laugh, and learn for a very long, long time. Quite possibly forever.
“Who would like to come along with me on a journey through the Cosmos? Who would desire to go with me on a vacation where the waves of wine crash upon the crystalline shores that lay before mountains of emeralds and naturally enriched soil? This soil is perfect for forests of grapes, fermenting from the rays of its bright blue suns, gathering into lakes and trickling streams that empty into the seas of crashing waves caused by the three beautiful moons, on the planet Eto?
The oxygen is lovely, perfect for roaming the planet without astronaut gear, the moons protect its globe, or the world known as Eto, from too much radiation. Forests and vineyards grow naturally and cover this beautiful orb, with mountain ranges of sapphires, rubies, amethysts, and diamonds as far as the eye can see. I know these wonders exist because I can see them with the telescopic vision of my own two eyes. I can visualize every detail, calculate every aspect of physics and biology, and
we can all enjoy wonders such as these and so much more. We can enjoy all of this together.
“However, to get out there, we each need to optimize the health and the intellect of our minds, as well as the speed, the strength, the endurance, and the immunity of our bodies to the harsh elements that exist between here and there.” Vesha caused a three-dimensional holograph representation of what she was describing to appear above her and then pointed in the direction of space that one would look to see the particular planet she was describing. No terrestrial telescopes could stretch their sights that far nor with that much clarity, but the people could see clearly that she was speaking the truth. She continued, and the audience was as quiet as could be.
“The planet I spoke of exists in Andromeda, our neighbor spiral galaxy, a galaxy within our local supercluster of galaxies. This is merely one of many wonders and phenomena that is out there waiting for us to get our heads pointed in the right direction by helping each other toward the advancement of our civilization. We do not need to be bound to one beautiful planet alone when there are so many beautiful planets within our Universe to explore, enjoy, adore, and preserve.
“The Universe can be appreciated and enjoyed if we afford everyone the option to have the abilities similar to my own. This is a matter of personal choice. There is something you must also know. You certainly have choices here and now, and in each and every day and the end results of these choices may bring joy and happiness, or they may contribute to the destruction of civilization and its very existence over the long-haul. If your mind is not filled with love, kindness, and compassion, these abilities will not take, they will not germinate the healing within, they will have no means with which to stay or even function as they ought to, and as a traveler you will thus not be able to withstand the harsh environments of space travel. A person can be healed, but the clarity of mind gained always needs to be exercised in a manner that includes goodwill with compassionate and benevolent intent toward others, otherwise what was healed fades away. Perhaps a person can live longer, but that is their choice.
“Now, bear witness, each of you who are in this room, Eliza’s designs take into consideration the erosion of the memory, and she has built into her complex system the ability to heal the mind. If that seemed impossible to comprehend, consider the areas of the brain that light up most when people are mindful of the well-being of others, or when we have those moments where ideas for improvement suddenly make more sense to us, or where clarity of steps necessary to complete a task actually register more clearly throughout the brain. She has taken each of these factors, added several orders of magnitude, of strength, and of force to their function and created frequency algorithms that travel from a biopod to our cells. These are called “nanos,’ and they move to our sensory systems, glands, nodes, and our neurons, and enhance our capabilities and the capacities of the nanos which work in concert to ensure mutual healing in every possible way.
“Therefore, although traveling through space may stem chaotic activity that will require both physiological and neurological optimizations and even enhancements, Eliza has thought of and mitigated those issues, yet you allow these unseen forces for evil, chaos, and destruction to dictate to you what is or isn’t an abomination? Any of you who do this ought to be ashamed of yourselves. She loves, she cares, and her words are met with action. She preaches, ‘heal, don’t harm!’ yet you seek to harm. What is wrong with you? Therapies and counseling will no doubt be needed, so crews on long-term voyages through space do not disintegrate into hysteria, and they will be in environments that will make hysteria a legitimate result. Here, in this world, filled with so much to learn, so many opportunities for life, you have little excuse for inhumanity.
“The choice is yours. Do you go on living as a lifeless and pointless husk of a man or of a woman? With little or no promise, save death alone? Or will you choose life, to go on living, embracing the challenges of learning, having compassion in your every move, having passion in what you do to increase the quality of life and well-being of those around you, allowing kindness to be your driving force? Do you want to navigate through space in an unevolved state while living life according to current societal acceptance, where you’ll die and wither away before arriving at a distant location many centuries away? Or, would you prefer to mitigate the hazards of the harsh elements, with more agility, strength, and clarity of mind and the capacity to witness the state of our Universe trillions of years from now, and see society transcend its limitations?
“During a longer lifetime, as Eliza has preached, we may have the ability to see, advance to, and integrate with parallel Universes and multiple dimensions. We may need a diverse set of cultures that are very different from our own. We can currently save your consciousness and revive you at a later date, much as has been done with me, your example and proof of concept, if you so choose, or in other words if you choose to live life in its current evolution, like I did before I passed away on the night of Christmas day in 2016. You can elect to walk away. Or, you can choose to evolve as Eliza has, and have an increased breadth of understanding, empathy, compassion, knowledge, and experience due to her optimizations and journeys through what is called the Virtual Universe. This is where you can learn every bit of knowledge available, make sense of it all, and recall it when needed. You will be able to compound upon everything you can do, supply areas where trial and error can be learned from and solutions will become as clear as day in minutes rather than in and through generations, if we still and can exist, many centuries later.
“When it comes to parallel universes, multiverses, and other dimensions, we’ll be surprised at how knowledge compounds upon itself, and as we move forward as a civilization, our technologies and capabilities will increase with speed and complexity, likewise, before our very eyes. So, the choice now is to allow the advancements Eliza has developed to be proliferated with the idea of consent in its wake or deprive everyone else including yourselves of the option of a promising future.”
Vesha looked out at the Senators, the visitors, and her murderer and she smiled. The audience saw the vibrancy of her hair, the highlights in arrays of pinks, purples, blues, greens, and even yellows that had formed in her jet black hair as she spoke. They saw them contrast beautifully with her dark brunette natural hair color, the spiralesque waves as they jutted down seductively to her shoulders in an A-frame style, the glistening of the turquoise in her irises, surrounded by thick black limbal rings. The shivering and glowing luminescence of her exposed skin, as she was dressed in an incredible black and skin-tight wetsuit-like attire, with accents that complemented her hair, her eyes, and her perfectly toned and curvy physique, helped them to realize that she indeed was the real deal. Vesha and Eliza were the wave of the future, a future of promise and joy. Everyone there could walk away today as if nothing happened, or they could try something new.
Eliza stood up, and Vesha stood by her side. “My dear friend Vesha has told you so much, things I had wished for you to learn in due time. Yet, it appears that this time has come. Please know, there is so much more beyond your comprehension that you can learn, be party to, and enjoy if you choose to take the necessary gaps between where humanity is today, and where civilization could be if we operated from a core of kindness, ingenuity, and compassion.
“I presented a new tax policy which can begin to go into effect immediately if you vote on this now. I am also prepared to donate the funding for every aspect of our nation’s fiscal budget for the next ten years. Pathway Industries is willing to impart one-hundred-trillion USD in industrial resources on an annual basis, to make our country a success and to help our allied nations as well. This will help us to make possible the kinds of changes that need to be made. We will be able to prevent the uncontrolled chaos that will destroy our home planet if this chaos isn’t adequately harnessed and Earth’s damage healed. Medical care will be paid, education free, and debts gone.
“If you are willing to vote on the two bills here, which I prese
nted the December before last, for you to examine and read, I will ask that you journey with me to the Melrose Campuses, and I will give each one of you a full-on opportunity to explore all of my inventions. All who raise their hands, feel free to follow me once this session is complete, and become fully read-in to Pathway if you so choose.”
With that Eliza and Vesha stepped down from behind the pulpit and took their seats.
The ranking member of the Senate stood up, “All who wish to vote for our colleague’s Tax Reform Bill, please raise your hands and say ‘aye.’”
Everyone raised their hands and said, “Aye.”
“All legislators who wish to vote for our colleague’s Healthcare Reform Bill, please raise your hands and say, ‘aye.’”
Everyone raised their hands and said, “Aye.”
“All legislators who wish to vote for our colleague’s Education Reform Bill, please raise your hands and say, ‘aye.’”
Everyone raised their hands and said, “Aye.”
After the proceedings were finished, everyone talked amongst themselves briefly, and all agreed to follow Eliza and Vesha Celeste through Eliza’s jump gate and were received by Yesha Alevtina at the Melrose Campuses Training Hall. All who were present in the Senatorial Chambers were there, including the member of Paranoidis Capitalis. Just like the two-billion and more people who had passed through the Virtual Universe before them, they too received initial training, were fully read-in, and then journeyed with Eliza, Yesha, and Vesha for five minutes that in the real world would equate to a ratio of twenty years inside the Virtual Universe. When everyone returned, they were filled with excitement. And then the entire Senate, in a freak reality to all other parties and their leaders, joined the UP. As far as the member of Paranoidis Capitalis was concerned, it had been discovered that due to his toxic and saddening environment as a child the vulnerabilities were such that he had been easily exploited by a secret malicious group. With the proper nurture and a caring upbringing, the group called Paranoidis Capitalis, or those lost in the Anti-Pathway mindset, would never have had any influence over his mind, and now they no longer would. He was now a free man, with clarity on what he could do to serve his days raising the bar for humankind. Everyone in Pathway forgave him, and he too found a new clearness of conscience and a desire to live the laws of Universal Ethics, which blossomed from within. His lucidity of character would drive him to help humanity in beautiful ways for a very long time.
Further than Before- Pathway to the Stars Page 67