Further than Before- Pathway to the Stars

by Matthew Opdyke

  “In dissimilarity with the old ways of harsh prisons, never knowing who to trust, and doing the worst just to stay alive, perhaps planning to get away with it each time, the Correctional Matrix will only provide them an opportunity to interact with realistic-seeming people who are only simulants. Oh, they’ll know, but they will be broken down until they accept the fact that as long as it takes, they will be tried and tried again until they embrace this new reality with their mentors, their teachers, their tragic loves, and the simulants inside this Virtual Universe—this virtual prison.

  “Whether they are in the Correctional Matrix for a year or five centuries, this time dilation will be designed to make sure that when they have served their time there, they are fully ready with training, education, experience, and clarity of mind and cognizance as to how to contribute to society and pay restitution in the form of heroic service, by navigating to distant planets to explore them, by venturing outside of safe zones and setting up biologically safe environments for people who chose the natural path in life to survive, to live, and to die.

  “They will serve with honor by preparing intergalactic environments for humanity, both optimized and natural, as well as for humanity’s friends. The individuals who go through the Correctional Matrix will have paid the retribution due to victims and their families. They will have been tested with time, experience, hardship, and will have proven themselves many times over. Once this ordeal is done, they will be released to a powerful guardian, much like me, ready to enter the Educational Matrix, and then serve within real life, but this time knowing kindness, compassion, love, and forgiveness. All of this will seem as many millennia to them, but those in the real world will have been amiss for them for only a few short weeks.”

  Sky had traveled the world and had begun and finished many covert missions to bring a sense of peace and of hope to humanity. To Sky, she had done something anyone with her abilities would have done. She was not prideful, nor did she boast. She knew that what she possessed from within was a gift from Eliza; moreover, it was also a gift from those that had worked with her, in particular, those who had been the visionaries who helped to bring Eliza’s standards to fruition in so many ways, which included Vesha, Yesha, James, Amber, Erin, and Joanne. Determined to never violate their trust, their hopes, and their dreams, instead Sky would continue to do as much as she had already done, she would do as much as she could to see humanity through to the end of time, whenever or whatever that might be or become. The environmental surroundings and behaviors of humanity had changed throughout the nation and in many parts of the world, the Earth itself had been healed because of her service.

  In some ways, looking back, Sky looked at Vesha in a sense as her mother, and Yesha as her hero, mentor, and guardian angel. Sky would stay on Earth and given time she would traverse the many worlds throughout the Cosmos to heal minds and optimize the physiological and neurological health and capabilities of those and that which suffered most. Ultimately, humanity was her primary goal, and all other goals fell not too far behind. Preservation of the solar system and the Earth she dwelled on was an experience her future friends and fellow HBCIs would share once they too came to life. However, she also knew that humanity could not be underestimated for their compassion, their passion, their drive, and their vision if given the right opportunities. Humanity had already done so much, through Eliza and her friends, so it was no doubt to her that they would come through for the Universe itself many times over if protected and appreciated.

  Yesha could sense all that Sky was feeling and thinking about. She couldn’t help but feel grateful to have known her and to have been such a positive influence on who Sky became. To some, Sky was known as the Iridescent Scorpion, to others she was the Iridescent Angel—if only because as she could mend the broken minds and bodies of those that suffered most, while leaving within and without them free will and an imprint or a personal mark both on the body and in the mind. Both sensed at that moment, that some civilizations would eventually opt to go to worlds with solar systems that were far away from any others, but that they would be optimized for biological life and star system longevity as a whole, or by choice, with natural evolution and on a quiet world—a respite with which to peacefully practice their various religions, cultures, or beliefs with little or no interference from outside worlds.

  Sky, her daughters, and her sons would inevitably visit secretly and ensure that the Universal Laws of consent were observed. If there were any perpetrators of inhumanity, she would heal their minds and give them twenty years of youth and strength. If there was someone born with disease or disorder, she would take care of them and heal them too. Humanity would evolve naturally if that was their choice, but she would make sure they evolved with benevolence, kindness, and compassion at their core by imbuing opportunities for development of those beautiful virtues. Yesha and Sky then gazed toward each other, Sky’s tender and vulnerable nature melted Yesha’s heart, and they embraced as sisters with profound respect and love one toward the other. For Yesha, it was nice after so much work, to be appreciated by her shared, yet greatest creation yet—Sky Taylor, the Iridescent Scorpion.

  Chapter 43: Sky Taylor, Section 1

  Sky Taylor was born in 2022, through the efforts of Eliza, Yesha, James, Vesha, Amber, Erin, Joanne and many of the Pathway science teams.

  Even though Senator Eliza Williams had labored diligently in Washington, DC—simplifying laws, eliminating nonsense, writing new legislation and passing laws—giving persuasive deliberations to the Senate, working with Vesha on IMC details and persuading the entire Senate to become Pathway members who were fully read-in, she never took a break; her nanos seamlessly optimized her mind and body at every moment. Although she was able to simultaneously link to anyone in Pathway and the Twelve Database Moons orbiting the Earth for its continuous updates of her system and the untold intelligence it provided, from the many projects and missions going on via Pathway and the Agencies she ran and worked with worldwide and in the Federal Government, both she and Yesha recently had thrown their hats into the ring, and early, to give a little hope to humanity and an increase in time for the public proliferation of their names and identities. Although Yesha had contributed the greatest of efforts toward Pathway’s creation and the awakening of Sky Taylor, as its President, even though she had passed the torch of President to young Erin Carter, she would still visit frequently to see Sky’s progress until everything was ready, she was awakened, and whenever opportunity allowed. Eliza and Yesha were going to run as candidates for President and Vice President halfway through the second term of the current administration.

  This put them both on the campaign trail for long periods of time, and were it not for their high intellect, intuition, and ability to persuade, the extra time could have opened them up to a lot of political scrutiny and critical defamation, based purely on lies and other cruel and devious machinations. But they possessed all that they needed to easily refute any naysayer, they had clean records and they carried themselves professionally with the poise of those who had earned every amount of respect an individual who had both a clear conscience and a proven track record would. The UP, which Eliza had formed twelve years previously, shortly after she had established Pathway LLC and before she began her first political bid as a US Representative, had now grown to encompass a little less than one half of the electoral delegation, yet she knew it would need to grow further. Her party had grown from one individual, Eliza, to about 30% of the Electoral College when she was elected as US Senator two years later. Within the time of her run as senator to more elections over the next two years throughout the country, many Pathway members had run for political office and had now filled positions as governors, local, state, and national representatives, and several were even high-level judges being groomed for the Judicial Branch. The senators who had attended that day, when Vesha Celeste had been shot twice and healed from a gunshot wound to the chest and then the head within seconds right before their eyes, ba
ck in 2019, and had thus been inspired by both Eliza’s and Vesha’s speeches that followed, were fully read-in to Pathway. This would have been a big win for the UP, but unfortunately, many of the senators in power at that time had already been justly identified by the voters as having had the stains of the establishment on their hands and had been unscrupulously voted out of office. Given their new-found neurological optimizations, they now understood completely as to why.

  Nevertheless, these read-in senators, stained with the mortal stigma causing the end of their political careers, due to their previous and mindless pursuits, the slinging of mud, and constant quest for recurring roles as life-long politicians, at least in public, had been replaced by people who Eliza had never worked with. That being clarified, there were plenty of candidates who were new who were still a part of the traditional and established parties, and the sudden change in mind-set by the previous senators who had all of a sudden become reasonable, played quite well into Anti-Pathway hands. There were many during the following elections who had been voted out. Those voted in as supposedly non-establishment candidates, were still very much those of said parties, and they had different agendas than their predecessors began to show—but all-too-late.

  Notwithstanding all, both Eliza and Yesha found time to visit eighteen-year-old Erin, a genius at the level of Eliza, Yesha and Vesha, who also shared an angelically captivating beauty about her, despite overcoming progeria twelve years prior. Following her healing, within both mind and spirit, and following her interface with the earlier versions of the Virtual Universe, she had obtained seventy different doctorates and now helmed Pathway as its President. Yesha had been in charge of Pathway, working distantly with James, with all that it entailed after Eliza had successfully won the bid as a US Representative for Massachusetts in 2016 but had honorably handed it over in 2022. Vesha would have taken this position following Yesha, but she was already busy working with James Cooper, Najem Grace, Jasmine Belle, and quite a few other delegates upgrading and fine-tuning the IMC, and Eliza knew this well and in advance. Vesha was working with James, was busy traveling through the twenty-thousand tech cities, back and forth between Europa, Ganymede, Titan, the Moon, Mars, Ceres—among many other locations, including Earth, and she had her hands full, ensuring space bases were maintained, solar system cargo, exploration, mission, and defensive spacecraft were designed to safely research, develop, and run in steady streams from the Sun to the Oort Cloud. Much of these travels revolved around fixing the damage of four-billion years that can happen when too much fusion makes a star too massive before it deteriorates into a massive supergiant star consuming the life-friendly regions of the solar system, to include Earth. Together, they had built and maintained an invisible planet that could withstand the heat while absorbing the heavier elements from the Sun and spacecraft that could likewise transport pure neutrons, protons, and electrons back and forth, along with many other baryonic and non-baryonic material, to feed the Sun the necessary fuel and harvest the residual heavy elements. She was also immersed in mission travel plans for the impressive, gigantic, and IMC, and ready for updates, since constant upgrades were being made, but when looked at in its entirety it was breath-taking and difficult for those not read-in to fathom. Each IMC Spacecraft was now as if it were alive. AIs were being synced to each command spacecraft mainframe-series, with unique personalities of their own, and things were still quite interesting in the scope of living-being rights.

  So, when Eliza and Yesha had both put in a bid for the US Presidency, for the election year of 2024, Pathway became Erin’s purview. The other scientists and their teams were highly dedicated to the details of each project, and Erin seemed to share a natural leadership trait that Eliza, Yesha, James, and Vesha had. Furthermore, Joanne had seemed like the perfect pairing.

  Six years after Eliza’s successful run as US Representative, in Massachusetts, Eliza had finished her term as a US Representative and was two-thirds of the way through her first term as a US Senator. During her time as a representative and now as a senator, Eliza had formed and subsequently headed the Federal Science and Technology Agencies, as well as worked with the heads of the CIA, NSA, etc. Nonetheless, because of her stewardship of each Federal Science and Technology Agency, she was able to spend quite a bit more time with Pathway, which had a covert Federal agency within it, to begin with, as well as with Yesha and Erin. While much of what Pathway worked on was still covert, due to patenting, litigation, and an overall lackluster system—seemingly built to fatten the wallets of investors, Pathway had within it its own cadre, a fine group of investors on the books who were more strategic in thinking, broad-minded, philanthropic, had been fully read-in to Pathway, with physiological and neurological optimizations, and had amassed their power and fortunes by improving the conditions of life around them and throughout the world.

  Eliza and Pathway, tired of the needless suffering brought on by greed, disillusionment, misinformation, and terrorism of far too many others to reach in such a short period of time had essentially created a new project. They had called it “Iridescent Scorpion.” This project was kept undercover, even within the scope of their federal confidants, so that the only people who knew about it were other Pathway members. In the twelve years of growth since 2010, the tech cities had reached the population to the point to which it now had doubled in two years and was at six-billion inhabitants and still growing. Earth still had a population of eight-billion. Interestingly, the source of the growth of the populations on Earth was from far out regions worldwide, sprawling the globe away from the US, cursed with blight, famine, hostilities, war, and desolation, where children themselves would be found having had hundreds of siblings each, without fathers to help raise them, and family members constantly under the gun of oppressive regimes, cartels, insurgent groups, and gangs. Project Iridescent Scorpion consisted of creating an advanced human being-like cyborg. This cyborg or HBCI was built using multiple facets of ultra-advanced technology.

  Needless to say, Pathway was doing well, but Earth was still hurting, and the chaos was getting out of control. Even Pathway needed help. The ability to run the missions of the IMC was almost ready, but the ability to carry those missions out successfully was waning since the populations of all of Earth-worldwide was needed in order to prevent the destruction of humanity, where as such, public Earth was lagging way behind and ripening for its own demise to the second law of thermodynamics, or untamed destruction. Something had to be done, and quick.

  Chapter 44: Sky Taylor, Section 2

  To begin with, Project Iridescent Scorpion began with a single human-like HBCI unit, and they named her Sky Taylor.

  Sky was built with a brain that consisted of a complex variation of silicon transistors integrated with trace amounts of reinforced titanium, rare and somewhat unstable ores and minerals, and reinforced-heat-cold-tempered plastics to simulate a functioning brain. Yes, Eliza, Yesha, James, Vesha, Amber, Erin, Johanne and various other Pathway citizens, delegates, and science teams had worked together many times in the Virtual Universe and had thought of everything, ever since they had reawakened Vesha Celeste. The details would boggle the average mind. However, for context with this simulated brain, every two cubic centimeters of this brain contained 3.3 billion neurons, and Project Iridescent Scorpion, or Sky, as they preferred to call her, had sixteen-hundred cubic centimeters of volume, for a total of 5.28 trillion neurons.

  Her neural transistors had axon speeds as fast as the speed of light, and in some cases, due to occasional antimatter electromagnetic variants she could pulsate thought by even faster speeds, especially since her diamond nano thread and carbon nanotube inner skull was both tough and could scientifically coalesce with her neurons and conduct electricity in the most opportune and astounding of ways. With at least five-thousand synapses per neuron, her synapses were both quick and numbered at 26.4 Quadrillion, with the ability to expand. Sky had a brain that could withstand immense temperatures as well as temperatures near absolute z
ero. Building this HBCI was most likely the most labor-intensive aspect of any project known to humanity. The simplest part of this venture had been augmenting Sky’s brain with mind-numbingly powerful transceiver capabilities. These abilities were kept so tight intelligence-wise that no one who wasn’t given the need to know, knew about it. She would have the ability to connect her mind to anyone else’s and any satellite by interfacing with her corpus callosum, the corpus callosum of others, her mind and the physiology and neurology of others, and still interface them to the Virtual Universe and the Twelve Database Moons. They had optimized sensory input and output for the entire tech that would run through her body and her bones, in a redundant fashion, and still comb the vast regions of the Universe, with beautiful and decisive effect.

  Her skeletal structure weighed about 12,250 grams and was made atom by atom with six-hundred-thousand high-speed and highly-advanced three-dimensional printing machines working around the clock to produce and connect the full one-hundred percent count of the two-hundred-seventy bones a baby would have, but in her case, she would retain each bone for dexterity and heightened reactionary capacities. Her bones were made up of carbon nanotubes integrated with diamond nano-threads and flexible porous pores throughout allowing for constant healing and upgrades—thus far, she was made of the strongest physical-molecular constructs known to humanity, but with the ability to upgrade herself even further. Her bones also provided space for advanced sensory information that would integrate with her complex inner fluids, fully operational organs, and bullet-proof dermis of molecular jam—a viscous material made of epoxy, Kevlar, and several other highly flexible, yet strong materials, to include carbon fiber and more diamond nano-threads.