Pictures with clues related to the scene were difficult for Joanne to look through, partly due to the fact that they were horribly graphic in nature, and partly because he was her brother and there was that unstoppable emotional connection, but she fought through it all anyway and she had those images burned into her mind quite well. Everyone in Pathway had seen them to some extent since every part of the file was pretty much written from her mind and into the Virtual Universe’s twelve large database moons and was shared with all three-billion Pathway members with complete clarity. She wanted to afford everyone a chance to be involved; on the off-chance, they would meet someone with a connection to her brother’s killer or killers. Joanne had also organized each of the clues in her own real-world filing system and then in the Virtual Universe into plausible theories and in chronological order.
In the first section of the report, there were several pictures of her deceased brother at the scene of the crime, a little over one mile from their home, and the analysis made by the Sheriff on each one. Although they were difficult for her to view for obviously personal reasons, she had categorized and taken copious notes on them herself and she knew that it was very necessary that she examine them in detail no matter how gruesome the scene was. She loved her brother and would always feel the pain of loss but the strength in compassion toward him and passion to resolve the case wouldn’t let her forget any of what she knew. No matter the circumstances, her neural optimizations had helped Joanne to finally crack those untouched files open and to try to put everything into perspective. She had a lot of information, and hopefully, this meant that she could get scientific about each aspect, and then come up with a solid hunch.
The second section of her file included several pictures of a bloodied bat and where it had been found in the woods or in Bucks Brook State Forest, as well as the eyewitness report from one of her classmates. With these particular pictures was another set of reports that indicated there were no fingerprints on the bat, as well as more pictures of a left-footed sized-twelve shoeprint where one of the proposed killers had allegedly stepped into the puddle of blood following the attack and taken a couple of steps before walking off the blacktop on the side of the road and then into the muddy and wooded area—it had rained the day previous.
The third section of her file included pictures identifying two different types of shoeprints going into the muddy area and into the woods, which accompanied the first set of shoeprints, as they made their escape side by side. Each of these pictures corroborated the eyewitness account that there were three people involved. Included with these pictures were the suspect interviews, the interviews of the quarterback, each team member, the coaches, their alibis, and their family members.
Finally, the fourth section was Thomas’ letter to the quarterback. This letter had been turned in to the sheriff’s department by the high school quarterback about two weeks after the investigation had started. Not more than a day later, the case went cold and the file was given to the victim’s family. Along with his letter was a report as to why this case could not be solved.
Joanne and Erin had read the report of the eyewitness a number of times. The young lady, who was another fellow high school student, had stated that she saw three different hooded men. One of the men had allegedly wielded the bat, presumably the individual who left the bloodied footprints leading to the edge of the sidewalk, the muddy area, and into the woods. The other two had held Thomas in place and in such a way as to allow the bat to hit Thomas’ head to knock him out. Once he was out, they laid him down on the sidewalk and the wielder of the bat continued to hit his head until blood and other fluids were coming out of his nostrils, mouth, ears, crushed skull, and subsequent wounds. It was a brutal and calloused murder. The eyewitness had stated that it was twilight when the crime occurred, and the pictures showed the results of the brutality. Who could have done it, the quarterback, the coach, or his teammates?
When the young lady, Martha, was asked why she had returned home so late, she stated that she had been in school at study hall working on her homework and that the teacher had left her there on her own, in part because he trusted her, and in part because he needed to head home to his family. On her way home, she had heard the brutality as it was going on and then hid just out of view on the other side of the street terrified for her life. She had hidden there because she was worried, they would hurt her too if they saw her. When asked if she knew anything else, she stated that the three hooded men disappeared into the woods with the bat and that she had returned home from the scene of the crime shocked, broken, and scared.
Her parents had called the sheriff, once they heard their daughter’s account of what it was that she had seen, and they had been interviewed as well. They had indicated that their daughter was an “A” student, an upstanding young woman, that her story ought to be trusted, and that she was a friend of his at school and had talked about him often at home and how much she liked him. It was obvious from the report, that the sheriff’s department dismissed her as a prime suspect, due to the fact that this would certainly not fit her character. Joanne had remembered her being at the funeral, crying, completely shaken up, and how she was genuinely sad at the loss of such a wonderful young man.
There was her brother’s letter, which had been returned to the family, when the sheriff’s department ended the search, on the account of, “no one in our town could have done it,” and “we have nothing to go off of.” The quarterback had attended the funeral and he too was cordial, polite, and even apologetic. He had been a close friend through sports and academics, therefore the Sheriff after interviewing his fellow teammates, coach, alibis, and family came to the conclusion that it couldn’t have been him. There were the pictures of the tread marks of one of Thomas’ assailant’s shoes, but the quarterback had no shoes with the description of those treads, and neither did anyone on the team.
There was a picture of the bloodied bat that was used, but the sheriff’s department hadn’t found any fingerprints, and after questioning each store that sold sports gear, it was noted that none of the stores in town or in the surrounding towns sold that particular type of baseball bat. The only revelation to the possibility that there were perhaps three individuals involved was the fact that the location where he was killed was on his way home, and on the way home there was a small wooded area several yards from the highway, and between the highway and the woods was an area with three different types of shoe prints in the mud that had been cordoned off during the initial investigation, with pictures of the overall route taken, the path of each footprint, angles of the indentations in the mud, and the barrel that had nothing but ashes inside and residue on the outside of a hot and flammable substance, from there, the tracks faded into the woods.
As far as combing minds and information within the Virtual Universe was concerned, for one, there was nothing other than a few scanned newspaper articles chronologically talking about the facts of what they knew had happened by the local newspaper reporter, the facts as shared in a second article by the local newspaper reporter based on interviews of the Sheriff, the potential suspects, and each of the families closely affected, and a third talking about why the case had been closed, on the account that “there were no plausible suspects.” Nothing had been mentioned in Thomas’ letter. As far as each member of Pathway was concerned, a great majority of those at Pathway were mostly from other regions throughout the world outside of the United States, and thus none of them were of any connection whatsoever to the small town of South Otselic that Joanne grew up in, before moving to New York City, New York, following her initial success as a singer, songwriter, and performer, right out of high school following her graduation.
Joanne mulled over the details with Erin, but together all they came up with was some speculation, and they knew that and decided not to press the issue further for a while. Whoever had wielded that bat had cleaned up everything except the crime scene itself, the bloodied bat, the three tracks of footprints into
the woods, and the burn barrel itself. Whoever had carried out this particular horror show had made sure prior to the crime that it was completely clean of traceably incriminating evidence in every way. All they had was a hunch.
Joanne and Erin realized they had done what they could, for now, agreed to look at this later, and then focused on the many other projects they had to work on both in and around Pathway that were much more inspiring, upbeat, and full of hope. They worked together often and were somewhat inseparable. They had traveled to resorts together, had visited Europe together, and Erin, who enjoyed female vocal trance had quite a range of tastes in music that transcended to include a healthy appreciation of Joanne’s cross-genre, electronic rock and pop style of music, which afforded them an “in” with the likes of Above & Beyond, Raz Nisan, and Armin Van Burren and their unique and heavenly brand of music.
As best of friends they traveled the world together, attended ASOTs together, camped in areas completely devoid of light pollution of any form, and gazed upon the stars. Joanne had put together a “Best of” tour and went through some of her favorites with her audiences in 2022. During Joanne’s concerts, Erin would often be in the front row with a backstage pass. After every concert they would explore the cities they were in, frequent the local and hopping bars, buy everyone a round of drinks, and recruit people, to include the homeless or otherwise broken victims of society to Pathway. All they did, was in a manner that reached to the hearts of others, where unnoticed. In this way, they could change the lives around of so many and afford them the opportunity to become who they always dreamed of becoming. They loved helping those who were struggling most, and they enjoyed seeing that freeing smile of joy, as people who once felt at a loss in life, were now filled with the clarity of the mind that gave life a sense of purpose, freedom, and hope.
Erin was the Vice President of Pathway during that timeframe, yet she and Joanne did so much to raise the spirits of those around them. They came up with untold solutions to many life-threating issues rampant throughout the world, and at times they worked with Yesha, James, Vesha, Amber, Najem, Jasmine, many others in Pathway, and even Eliza.
Chapter 41: Pathway and the UP, Section 4
Database Moon Archive, Celestial-Sol Date: 2022 March 24. Erin Carter, Yesha Alevtina’s Vice Commander, summarizes the experiences of Senator Eliza A. Williams, her bid for POTUS, and the preparations for bringing Sky Taylor online. These memories are from many Pathway Leaders, recorded within the Virtual Universe, interfaced within Pathway Melrose Campus. Input by: Erin Carter, VP, 2018-2022, and President of Pathway, 2022-2029.
Eliza had been serving her first year as Senator, in 2019, when she had appointed Erin as Yesha’s Vice President of Pathway and had asked Erin and Joanne to work closely with each other. This had been followed by the internal elections throughout Pathway’s then 2.2 billion members, who were fully read-in. As it turned out each internal election resulted in unanimous support of every single one of Eliza’s appointments. Now, three years later, Pathway had grown to three-billion members, Eliza was still in her first term as Senator, with a lot accomplished, and two more years were left until the 2024 US Presidential Elections.
When Joanne had met Eliza in 2019, Eliza had been taking a little break from the Senate at the T.O. and at that time she had recruited, trained, and put Joanne to work. Eliza was one to never slow down, even when she was technically “slowing down,” and she too had taken some time to be well-versed in Joanne’s case looking through her digital files to see who it was that had murdered Joanne’s brother, Thomas. Even Eliza couldn’t go any further than the Sheriff had. Joanne had a good mind about dealing with it for now, and Eliza knew that Sky would be coming online soon, with the ability to read non-read-in minds. She also knew that Sky would have priorities of also saving the lives of many who were currently under threat and with limited clues as to Joanne’s case, everyone decided to carry on for now. “We’ll get this figured out, soon enough,” Eliza would say, as she would give Joanne a pep-talk from time to time to remind her.
Now, Eliza was ready to go public as the UP candidate running for President of the US for the elections of 2024, and secretly she was still working a few Virtual Universe hours a day, coming up with real-world-applicable solutions to issues presented to the senate. In some cases, she would work on issues in this way with the Senate itself.
In the world of Presidential Elections, hopefuls, candidates and such, the constituents, delegates, and candidates throughout the solar system of the UP all wanted the UP to get an early start. The elections of 2018 had been somewhat successful, as were the elections of 2020, and 2022 was looking good too. This was in part, due to the fact that there were positions of all levels of government filled by the UP both within each of the United States, its territories, as well as within the governments of other countries who conducted free elections.
All of Pathway had agreed that Eliza had the vision necessary to usher in the crucial changes to bring humanity to the level of that of a presumably formidable and successful Cosmos-faring civilization, and she was willing to step up to the plate as the kind of leader to help make that happen. She would often be quoted as saying, “We don’t need to wait around for someone else to do good things. We can do them, and then solve the next issue as soon as we can.” They also had agreed that the more exposure they could receive and the sooner the UP could be more than a household name, the more likely another drove of UP successes could occur. As the UP witnessed the Presidential Elections of 2020 go by without their own candidate for president yet, many people from the UP throughout the US (and anywhere else throughout the world where the people could vote), had been voted in as local through national-level legislators, district attorneys, judges, and governors, and essentially, about 30% of the US Electoral College consisted of members of the UP. The 2022 Legislative Branch and local elections would begin soon.
One of the delegates from the UP, Yesha’s mother, Yesenia, was slated to take Eliza’s place as Senator, or at least fill her position beginning in 2022 following Eliza’s announcement to run as POTUS Candidate, and in her subsequent absence. She would then run again in her stead for the 2024 Senatorial Elections. Ever since Yesenia immigrated to the US, she had done a lot to help Eliza and Yesha in an honorary capacity and became fully read-in to Pathway by 2017, prior to becoming a public figure. She had also been unknown in politics previous to that time, so it wasn’t on anyone’s radar in any way that she had allowed the effects of optimization to take hold, letting her health and appearance be that of a thirty-five-year-old. She was actually eighty-five, yet she never mentioned her age or changed her official documents. If someone looked, they would find out her age, and then scratch their heads in confusion. Her feeling was that if the public found out, well then, maybe it would serve as an opportunity to explain her lifestyle choices and recommend them. She wasn’t afraid of the truth, yet she wasn’t eager to undermine proper timing.
As it was, Yesenia was an almost identical match to her daughter, Yesha, who was actually thirty-five, yet with the visual youth of a twenty-five-year-old. They both still conferred with Eliza in the Virtual Universe to keep her abreast of everything, and she enjoyed the thought that this was perfect in every way for the Legislative Branch of the Federal Government, because she knew that Yesenia would be both wise and influential.
Yesenia’s daughter, Yesha, was a legal and natural born citizen of the US, while her mother was a legal immigrant, and as such Yesenia would not be able to run as POTUS, for the foreseeable future. As far as long-term plans were concerned, Yesha, Eliza, and Pathway had planned for Yesha to run as POTUS in 2032. At that point, Yesenia would cross over from politics and return back to business, research, and development as the President of Pathway. Joanne, having served a few years as Pathway’s President, would cross over into politics and become Yesha’s running mate. Erin would go from being the President of Pathway to Vesha’s Vice Commander for the IMC Command Spacecraft, Zone-13, by
then.
Over the last ten years, Yesenia had been an indispensable support, and now she had been working as a Pathway delegate. As such, she had become increasingly involved in a plethora of missions that helped to increase the size of the organization. She too had joined ranks with Erin and Joanne by immersing herself in an abundance of amazing projects and she too had taken the time to peruse the contents of Joanne’s digital folder. Notwithstanding, Yesenia was not alone, in that she had found no success when it came to Thomas’ killers.
Yesenia had a lot of other concerns she was juggling as well, and at one point or another, almost every UP delegate and Pathway citizen had worked together and had shared journeys in the Virtual Universe to increase their education and awareness of the realities going on in public Earth, so they too could help to improve the conditions of the real world and prevent similar mishaps that tended to occur from any type of environment that leads to violence and misfortune.
She had worked with Joanne, Erin, and many others, and had been a strong advocate for the changes that the UP was backing up in every move they made. With the combined efforts of Pathway’s leadership, the phenomenal talent, and brilliant minds, and with the millions of delegates that were employed within Earth-side industry, millions of employees had been recruited and billions of refugees had been helped and given better lives in the tech cities, far from Earth. Yesha, her daughter, as well as Erin, had each helped Joanne go over her notes on Thomas’ tragedy, but to no avail. They knew eventually justice and vindication would be served.
Further than Before- Pathway to the Stars Page 73