The plan was to send the family back to Mexico, and through their connections with the cartels, the Zemani’s oldest living son, Tito, who was now twenty and pursuing a degree in biogerontology, would be recruited or killed to make a point, and they would be handsomely rewarded. Their daughter, Laetitia, who was now eighteen, would be taken and shipped to a brothel in Eastern Europe for the entertainment of the wealthy with malevolent intentions, and their neighbors would be rewarded monetarily yet again. Their neighbors stood to make quite a bit of money and were promised continuous anonymity.
El Jemelo, whose mission it was to recruit or kill the Zemani’s eldest living son, also happened to know the “nice” couple in Europe. He had point-blank executed Laetitia’s eldest brother in front of the Zemani’s eyes, yet, as it turned out, his murderer had also been involved in the human trafficking trade too. Upon successful collusion with the Zemani’s neighbors and their successfully forced return to Mexico, he awaited them to make a brutal point of Tito and sell Laetitia to the highest bidder, who happened to live in Eastern Europe. Although, as it stood, Andres’ murderer had recently found some difficulty in contacting the “nice couple.”
For the Zemanis, after settling down in the US, with four years of peace, obtaining an education, employment, paying taxes, and finding a plausible hope for the future, the family couldn’t have been more grateful. What followed, however, were a series of very bad days.
Without notice, the police had shown up with an anti-immigration agent, put them in handcuffs, forced them into their vehicles without question or answer, and took them to see the representatives of the various government agencies working congruently with Mexican authorities to return them to their home of residence just south of Chihuahua. The anti-illegal immigration policies in the United States had played right into the machinations of the cartels and the trafficking-in-persons networks, and there was nothing the Zemanis could do to prove it or do anything about it.
A life of peace, of dreams of a better and more promising future, was torn asunder. Without legal representatives to support their cause, they had pretty much been mute while still in the US. After legal proceedings the family was returned to their home in Chihuahua, which in their absence, they discovered, had been mysteriously maintained, and where they had some speculation but no idea nonetheless that the cartels awaited them, to make examples of them. Oh, El Jemelo and Los Wiskis would wait a few days or maybe a week or two and let them experience a sense of hope before they tore them down, but they were always nearby, planning, scheming, looking to get rich or show their strength over innocent people in any way, and after all just like any bureaucracy they needed their numbers. To them, the Zemanis weren’t people; they were instruments of their own malicious whims. They did not care about life, longevity, the Universe, or anything of the sort. These monsters were evil to the core, and they were very smart in all ways of malevolence. And, Laetitia had a strong hunch about all of this, but little means to prove it. Instead, all she could do was to love her family and finish her studies.
After the whirlwind of bad luck, the Zemanis finally felt at ease in their homes and Laetitia returned for her first day back to school since they had left for the US. Because of all of the moving and trauma, she had been held back a grade, so she could absorb the information. On her second day at school, it hit her with so much clarity, that the individual who had killed her brother had been following her from class to class, just behind each corner, and with no doubt the worst of intentions. Still, she would get home as fast as she could and when she did, she let her Father know why. Finally, on the third day, he followed her home and as luck would have it, a group of vehicles appeared surrounding their home. Her father gathered her mother, Tito, and Laetitia, took them downstairs, locked the hidden door, and when everyone was settled and comfortably hidden, he turned out the downstairs lights.
As soon as the lights flickered out, the family heard the familiar voice of El Jemelo on a megaphone. He told them that if they did not abandon their home within ten minutes, every person within the home would be executed.
Laetitia’s father looked toward the family and wrote a short note in silence and showed it with the light of a small match, “No les confíen nada. Quedamos aquí y no les decimos nada. Si vamos a morir prefiero que estuviéramos juntos.”
The family defiantly said not a word. Where they were hidden it would take a while to get to and they were protected by ten feet of dirt and three-inch steel doors. It would take a while, but they wouldn’t have enough ammunition to get through and the chainsaws they were using to chop up the outer corners of their home wouldn’t be able to penetrate the entryway nor the shell that encapsulated them.
Laetitia could pick up on the locations of fifteen distinct machine guns and four chainsaws, and the separate voice of El Jemelo on the megaphone counting down every minute. There she was, with all of the reason to fear for her life, but she hugged her second oldest brother, her father, and her mother. If today was the day, at least they’d be together and go out in a manner of their own choosing.
Sudden sounds began to penetrate her ears as if a fire had been lit through the sounds of the chainsaws followed by both the shooting of bullets and that of rocket-propelled grenades. They were setting the house ablaze, planning to smoke them out, and then execute them either on sight or in the most brutal way possible, and then leave the scene for the capital city and their friends to see the pitiless points they had made.
What the cartel did not notice as the smoke rose to heights beyond their view, was a cloud of nanos descending ever so smoothly, as though against the current, yet no particle of smoke touched or swayed the nanos or vice versa. As the nanos poured into the Zemani’s hiding place, her entire family thought it was white smoke, and that soon they would asphyxiate due to the smoke infiltrating their home. It had only been four minutes, but the sounds of the guns, grenade launchers, and chainsaws seemed to grow more distant, but they had chosen their own fate in their own manner and had no desire to surrender their manner of death to the cartels, instead they would numb out the world as they died from the smoke. The cartels had no right to determine their demise nor did they have any power over the Zemanis. The cartels and every member of them were an unfortunate mob of individuals, each of whom was lost in a swath of a desire for survival, acceptance, power, and greed.
Laetitia hugged her mother, her brother, and her father, and then they all stood together with their backs to the farthest wall and their faces toward the white smoke as it gathered before them. Perhaps the air pressure would not allow the white misty, almost glowing smoke to reach them; perhaps they could survive by making the cartel think they had died of smoke inhalation.
The smoke stopped several feet in front of them and began to dissipate into what looked like a large, white, glowing donut with purple, blue, and black accent colors on the buttons and digital displays. As if with magic, a beautiful woman with white-blonde hair and iridescent highlights, with eyes so unique they were a mixture of crystalline, blonde and iridescent colors and thick black limbal rings, a suit that was form fitting, glowingly white with trim that matched her highlights, and enough exposed skin on the left side of her body to reveal a toe-to-neck body tattoo with a white and iridescent mixture of henna, mandala patterns, and a kaleidoscope of memories. They watched as she walked through this gateway from nowhere.
“Venid conmigo,” she said, as she reached out her hand with a gesture to follow her. Without thinking twice, they followed her through this portal. Twenty more seconds had passed. Once they had, they saw that they were now in a very different place. This was more alluring and more beautiful than they could ever have imagined. They happened to be on what appeared to be the peak of a large one mountain island, surrounded by a large, yet clear and crystalline structure in the waters beyond the land. As they looked around, they saw about a thousand women that looked very similar to her, yet each with an ever so slightly unique hairstyle and arrangement of highlight
s and artwork. All of whom were just as glowing and beautiful as the next.
“Priméramente, gracias por salvar nuestras vidas,” Laetitia coughed, perhaps clearing the smoke from her lungs as her body adjusted to the beautiful and pleasantly aromatic ambiance, “but, where are we and who are you?” She realized instantly that she could speak English as if it were her first language. She looked, and it appeared that her family had understood too.
“I am Sky Taylor, and these are my daughters. We haven’t much time before we need to return, but first, please follow me. We have some training to do. I’ll answer your first question soon. Soon a fraction of time will give you a wealth of time.”
They followed her to a plateau on the side of the mountain with enough area to carry walkways to what seemed like several thousand glowing white tanning booths. “These are biopods. Normally, I would take the time to tell you what they are, but please trust me, climb in one per person, say ‘Link 1, 2, 3, 5 minutes, 20 years’.”
Given the seemingly miraculous nature of all that they beheld, twenty more seconds passed by and as if in unison each of the four Zemanis climbed into their own biopod and uttered the shared command. All of a sudden, they felt every nerve twitch, tickle, and stand on end. They then felt almost every synapse, cell, and particle in their bodies reach a state of euphoria. Then like that, they saw each other as they stood near a statue of an angel overlooking a pond filled with coy fish and frogs, being fed by a waterfall and surrounded by flowers, walkways, trees, and a beautiful structure off to the distance.
“Mom and Dad, you look like you are twenty-two, and so beautiful and handsome again!” They perceived each other’s thoughts, as Laetitia explained mind to mind everything she knew about the cartels. She had been there unable to do a thing about it when her oldest brother was killed. Now the cartels were after her other sweet brother as well as the entire family. Her brother looked 22 as well, and apparently so did Laetitia, “Is twenty-two the default age in here?”
“Not necessarily, but you have each apparently experienced so many traumatic histories together that your microbiome and your right brain have expressed twenty-two as your optimal age. In here, you will find that each of you has been healed and optimized to full capacity, both physiologically and neurologically. Once you have been optimized to full capacity, you will have the choice of expressing yourself anywhere between the ages of twenty to thirty-five, or older, as needed. In the period of five minutes in the real world, you’ll gain twenty years’ worth of experiences if not more, here in the Virtual Universe. I brought you here because through a chain of mental networks of very some very surly individuals it came to my attention that you did not have much time before you would have died.
“I know, you would ask why I wasn’t here four years ago, but I am only four months old and my daughters are only one month old. They are nearly an exact replica of me in all ways that matter. I saw the need to heal the world, but there was only one of me, so I created a thousand more. Ultimately, we’re here to see to it that the laws of Universal Ethics are understood to the degree of allowance for personal motivation to observe them, with clarity on how to contribute to the advancement of civilization through healing and not harming. There is a lot you can do here, so let me give you some training and a tour, and then you are free to do as you please.”
The Zemanis learned about Eliza Williams, her biography, the many creations, inventions, and achievements she shared as she built Pathway from the ground up, enlisting the aid of Yesha, James, and their ever-growing crews. Their crews had grown to more than two-billion people. She then took them to the core of the Earth, the Moon, the Sun, and every spheroid throughout the solar system. The moons were terraformed, shielded, and much more, and each tech city was beautiful in so many ways, unique in the most beautiful of ways, and blended well in contrast to the environments surrounding them.
After showing them all of Eliza’s and Pathway’s developments and inventions, and after training them on their new abilities, she allowed them to absorb the knowledge and experience of more than a dozen PhDs each, every style of martial arts, and the neural link of all who had been to and experienced the Virtual Universe before. The beautiful flavor of each thought, experience, and memory unique to theirs was exquisite in every possible way. Gone was their manner of linear thought and omnipresent was their ability for exponential thought and wisdom. It was incomparably amazing, the beauty of collective memories and shared wisdom, combined with their own unique and beautiful individuality.
Finally, they shared with each other their fears, their hopes, and their dreams, realizing how much they loved each other. Each of the Zemanis grew closer and with a heroic bond that they never thought could be shared. After what seemed like twenty years had passed by, they looked to Sky and said, “We’re ready.”
Like that, they woke up on Sky’s Island, felt more alive than they ever had before, and listened to Sky with clarity in their own minds as to how they would contribute to the efforts of healing, and not harming. “Follow me. We have twenty seconds, but as we go, I will speak. First, we will need to return to your house which is still on fire, and the difference between the norm is we will be able to approach each cartel member, look them in the eyes without suffering from bullets, grenades, or whatever they throw at us, see them for the lost boys that they are, and when it is safe for them we will render them unconscious.
“Looking into your mind, Laetitia, you are correct. There are twenty people outside your home, so we will bring fifteen of my daughters with us, bring the twenty cartel members here, take them to the biopods, and meet them in the Virtual Universe. From there, they will experience every aspect of pain they have caused to others, be quickened with compassion, and healed both physiologically and neurologically to the point of which they will have clarity on how to help in the advancement of civilization. There will be so much more, but they will each be left with my symbol on their right buttock cheek. This is a marker that will serve as a protection, so they will be available for judgment and penance at a later date. This will provide the victims and their families the appropriate vindication, and ultimately allow them to learn more profoundly the lessons of civilizations past, the error of their ways, and a new path they can take in life. Your land is one of promise, as is any land with the hallmark of love, beauty, and kindness written into its people and their love of life.
“Come.”
The Zemanis followed Sky and fifteen of her daughters back through the portal or the jump gate, and as they learned, the ten minutes reached its finality. They could here El Jemelo on his megaphone again, but they ignored him as they walked through the fire, the barrage of bullets and grenades, and spread out as planned and coordinated with their neural links. Due to their optimizations, wherein they were given upgrades with smart suits and invisible shielding that allowed the bullets to ricochet off their bodies they were also unweathered by fire or shrapnel. They forged through the bombardment, walked up to each of the cartel members and at the time that was safest for each killer they simultaneously rendered each one unconscious and carried them over their backs.
From there, they followed Sky’s lead, walked back through a jump gate that appeared just outside of the Zemani residence, and placed each of the twenty, including El Jemelo, in separate biopods that were pre-programmed to take them to the Virtual Universe. It was time for immediate correction and training. Their lives as they were, were spent anyway for all of their barbarity and untamed ruthlessness, so doing what Sky was doing based on the laws of Universal Ethics, which governed her very own island of her own creation, was within complete reason, and like it or not these murderers, extortionists, and thieves were about to be healed—this was the ethical equation, no matter how public society would try to manipulate it.
In the span of twenty real-world minutes, the Zemanis, Sky, and her daughters took each cartel member separately through several centuries of life, trials, and experiences all designed to work with the unique p
syche of each person and give them the set of trials necessary for personal development, reparations, and healthy cognition. Each experience was designed to provide maximum enrichment with the purpose of increasing their wisdom, their empathy, and healing the neurological misfires that had caused them to unleash their violence, barbarity, and vile machinations with little regard for anyone else with little impunity. The result for each individual would be an increase in neurological capacities toward compassion, kindness, desire for the well-being of others, and the clarity of mind to contribute to the advancement of civilization, in the spirit of healing, rather than harming.
Despite the miracles the Zemanis beheld that day as they witnessed Sky’s daughters’ coach, teach, mentor, and sculpt each cartel member into honorable men, they knew at the heart of it all was science and Eliza’s ability to multiply upon capacity the greatest talent one could ever receive—the mind. Each malcontent was put into situations where they endured many years of long-suffering, learning, love and loss, and experienced many centuries worth of experiences, wisdom, and personal need for compassion. When near completion, Sky Taylor looked upon Laetitia and thanked her for being so wise, despite her youth. Much of the success that day and in the days that followed was because of what Laetitia had quietly stored in her mind until the time was right. And oh, the time had been overwhelmingly perfect for that compartmentalized release of information.
In the space of twenty minutes, each of these lost individuals had unleashed what could have been untold brutality yet was found again. Gone was the desire to hurt, harm, maim, or kill. Now, in the place of those destructive desires was the intent and clarity for healing the minds and bodies of all they knew. They apologized to Laetitia for treating her as an object and thanked her for having such a strong mind. They then told the entire family that no matter the quantity of service they could hope to provide, they knew there would never be a day where their efforts would suffice as full payment. Instead, they all got down on their knees, admitted that they were indebted to humanity, pledged to listen, to be of service, and to help the mission of Pathway to advance and succeed.
Further than Before- Pathway to the Stars Page 85